I'll tell you about Jesse and Frank James My grandfather was personally acquainted with them My grandfather lived in the southern edge of Baxter County, Arkansas And they stayed all night with him lots of nights And my grandfather told me there was a lot of those robberies that was layed to Jesse and Frank James And he knew they didn't do it 'cause they was at his place when it happened But you couldn't tell the public that When they get their minds made up that somebody's done something Why the public's gonna stick to it anyway My grandfather, he knew them as boys And they could come to his place and go without anybody paying attention 'cause nobody expected them Down in Arkansas, see, 'cause they was from Missouri Now that's the story that my grandfather told me when I was just a boy And he said that Frank James, at that World's Fair, I think it was 1901 in St. Louis him and Jesse were both there My grandfather and Frank James were together there And that Frank James offered to bring Jesse there alive He said that the man that the Ford boys killed wasn't Jesse James at all But the fellow they killed was just about the size of Jesse and he was red headed And he wasn't any relation to the Fords See, Jesse James was a known cousin to Charles and Bob Ford That's what my grandfather said He said Jesse and Frank were not even in that part of the country when that fellow was killed And the Ford boys, why, they collected a thousand dollars for killing Jesse James! Now the song says that the Ford boys killed Jesse None of us up here in the mountains believe that, no sir!