Bob Dylan & Joan Baez Duet: Deportees, Fort Collins, Colorado 23 May 1976





The crops are all in and the peaches are rott’ning,
The oranges piled in their creosote dumps;
They’re flying ’em back to the Mexican border
To pay all their money to wade back again


…. a numinious ‘Deportees’—the best duet Joan Baez ever managed with Dylan.
~Michael Gray (The Bob Dylan Encyclopedia)

Hughes Stadium
Colorado State University
Fort Collins, Colorado
23 May 1976

  • Bob Dylan (vocal & guitar)
  • Joan Baez (guitar and shared vocal)

Goodbye to my Juan, goodbye, Rosalita,
Adios mis amigos, Jesus y Maria;
You won’t have your names when you ride the big airplane,
All they will call you will be “deportees”

My father’s own father, he waded that river,
They took all the money he made in his life;
My brothers and sisters come working the fruit trees,
And they rode the truck till they took down and died.

Some of us are illegal, and some are not wanted,
Our work contract’s out and we have to move on;
Six hundred miles to that Mexican border,
They chase us like outlaws, like rustlers, like thieves.

We died in your hills, we died in your deserts,
We died in your valleys and died on your plains.
We died ‘neath your trees and we died in your bushes,
Both sides of the river, we died just the same.

The sky plane caught fire over Los Gatos Canyon,
A fireball of lightning, and shook all our hills,
Who are all these friends, all scattered like dry leaves?
The radio says, “They are just deportees”

Is this the best way we can grow our big orchards?
Is this the best way we can grow our good fruit?
To fall like dry leaves to rot on my topsoil
And be called by no name except “deportees”?

Here is a another nice duet – Arlo Guthrie & Emmylou Harris:


-Egil

3 thoughts on “Bob Dylan & Joan Baez Duet: Deportees, Fort Collins, Colorado 23 May 1976”

  1. My wife and I were at this amazing concert…..still one of my favorite songs…stunning!
    Doyle and Yvette Jeter West Monroe, Louisiana Owners: Enoch’s Irish Pub

  2. Chilling song , but reality for many. Dylan knows how to write a song that goes to your bones. Awesome duet , Dylan never let’s personal relationships affect his musical mastery , good or bad ones.

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