Our Singing Country

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	Outlaws
	BUGGER BURNS No record. John T. Vance, Washington, D. C, 1939. This companion piece for "Brady and Duncan" was furnished us, words, music and note, by John Vance, Chief of the Law Division of the Library of Congress, who has been known to forget his dress suit when he caught a train, but never his guitar. Mr. Vance says: "I first heard this song along about i8q4 in an alley behind my house on South Upper Street in Lexington, Kentucky, There was a little barrel­house in there where the Negroes congregated on Saturdays, and one of their favorite songs was this ^Bugger Burns3 thing. They used to pick it out on the banjo} long before 'Frankie and Johnnyy or the blues or any of these cocaine songs ever were heard in that part of the country. "Years later I tried to sing it and could only recall a few stanzas, so I wrote to Lexington to get more stanzas. Sam Johnson, a Negro barber, sent me four or five I didn't have, with the following note:{Bugger Burns was a policeman in Louisville who had shot and killed several men. Finally a colored man by the name of Danny Major killed him and made his getaway, and the colored folks made up a song about it. There is no words and music to this song.y"
	* The singer of this song states that the two refrains can be alternated at will in succeeding stanzas. Occasionally, stanza 2 is used as a chorus.
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