Jesse James in Music - Other Appearances

Other Appearances

• Prefab Sprout's 1990 album, Jordan: The Comeback featured a song called "Jesse James Symphony", which segued into another named "Jesse James Bolero". (These songs are bracketed by a corresponding pair about Elvis Presley, to whom Jesse is implicitly compared.)
• Warren Zevon, wrote and recorded a song called "Frank and Jesse James", and the song "Poor Poor Pitiful Me", which contains the lyric "I met a girl in West Hollywood, but I ain't namin' names/She really worked me over good/She was just like Jesse James", on his self-titled second album.
• Rap singer Scarface released a song titled "Jesse James" on his seminal 1994 album The Diary
• Irish folk-punk band The Pogues have a track (a version of the above mentioned traditional song) named "Jesse James", about him on their album Rum, Sodomy and the Lash.
• Clubland recorded a ska tune entitled "Jesse James", in which Jesse is referred to as "the rudest rude boy..."
• Terry Allen's song "New Delhi Freight Train" begins "Some people think that I must be crazy / But my real name is just Jesse James", and is narrated by the outlaw. Originally recorded on Allen's 1979 album Lubbock (On Everything), the song has been covered by Ricky Nelson, and by Little Feat.
• In the 1970s Mary McCaslin, noted American folk singer, recorded "The Band of Jesse James," written by her performing partner and husband Jim Ringer. "He's wild as a half grown child at a grown-up party Like a mustang dang near kicking down the stall He's the kind to pay no mind to what he started He don't care, `cause he'll be somewhere else by fall A wanted man in Reno, he moves on to Cour d'Alene You know that man could've rode with the band of Jesse James."
• An outtake recorded by the Bruce Springsteen Band in 1972 called "Don't You Want to be an Outlaw" focuses on the mythical aspects of the American West, with a line in its chorus "Don't you want to be an outlaw / Just like Jesse James."