116: The Ballad of Ben Gay

The Ballad Of Ben Gay, 1973
written by Darrel Gulland & Edd McNeely
performed by Ben Gay & The Silly Savages
Elm Records, 1973. GNP Crescendo, 1974.

Hi, I'm Ben Gay.
I'd like to dedicate this song to Wayne and Bruce
and all my friends at the Chartreuse Moose
One, two, buckle your shoe!
OK boys. Lets slap it from the bottom.

Born to be a cowboy,
That's what I try to be.
Wanted to be a cowboy,
But they poked fun at me!
Dreamed of riding horses,
Roping and herding cattle;
Oh how those brutes terrorised me
when they saw my velvet saddle.
(Can I help it if my skin's delicate?)

I tried to be a wrangler
Really and truly I tried
But after this experience
I'll stick to pony rides
You should've seen the way they looked,
Their faces all turned pale,
Each time I took my brush out
and ratted my horse's tail
(I though it looked just dahlin'!)

OK boys. Play the bridge
(Bridge)
Not that kind of bridge, you silly savages
You want Ben Gay all over you?

A cowboy's life is not for me,
in fact it was a curse.
Want to know why I gave up
They took away my purse
Now my wrangling days are over
But I can honestly say
Whoever heard of a cowboy
named Hopalong Ben Gay
(I don't know why they took my purse.
They have saddle bags, don't they?)

If you want to be a wrangler
Take Ben's advice. Hang Loose!
Come see old Wayne and me
we'll be at the Chartreuse Moose
Fix you up. Whatever!?
They laughed at me when I ripped my panty hose pulling them on over my spurs!

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An American song to balance off the contemporaneous English parody by Bill Oddie. A deliberately fey, and lispy flirty voice for this one. And the joke being the delicate, fashion-obsessed sissy gay transposed into a cowboy environment, and then this gay cowboy doesn’t realise why it is that he’s being picked upon. This was sufficiently popular that it was re-released by a larger label.