The Kid's Last Fight was a song written by Bob Merrill and first recorded by Frankie Laine in the early 1950s at Columbia Records. The recording by Laine reached #20 on the Billboard charts.The song was eventually covered by The Statler Brothers for their 10th Anniversary album, released in 1980 on Mercury Records.
The song tells the story of a young fighter, Kid McCoy, fighting against Tiger Wilson. He hopes to win enough prize money to buy a bungalow for him and his darling Bess. The Kid is fighting while battling a fever and although he knocks out Tiger Wilson, the song says "Twas the fever that won the fight".
The song starts with a pianola sound like that used on silent movies.
Famous quotes containing the words kid and/or fight:
“When that kid looks into your eyes and you know it’s yours, you know what it means to be alive.”
—Anonymous Father. Quoted in When Men are Pregnant, by Jerrold Lee Shapiro, ch. 15 (1987)
“We fight our way through the massed and leveled collective safe taste of the Top 40, just looking for a little something we can call our own. But when we find it and jam the radio to hear it again it isn’t just ours—it is a link to thousands of others who are sharing it with us. As a matter of a single song this might mean very little; as culture, as a way of life, you can’t beat it.”
—Greil Marcus (b. 1945)