by Katy Beem Many have memories of Buddy Red Bow’s music. In our living room in Huron, Red Bow’s records shared shelf space alongside our other beloved outlaws: Willie, Waylon, and the boys. My mother, playing and replaying “Standing Alone” on our scrappy Kmart SounDesign stereo, smoked generic cigarettes and instructed me to attend to the heartache in Red Bow’s voice. “Listen – really listen,” she’d gently order, pointing at speakers straining to capacity. “He gets it. He really gets it.” Just like the eagle / we’re flying alone, we’re flying alone . . . . I was prone toward “Pistolero.” I liked how the Spanish guitar style and mariachi horns made me feel both wistful and alive. Later in life, friends and I blared “South Dakota 4
Learn. Dream. Grow.
Buddy Red Bow with his daughter Stardust.
Lady” as in summer we drove open-windowed on highways 40 and 41 in southwest South Dakota. But she should not worry, be afraid, for she will not be alone . . . We liked to think of ourselves as South Dakota ladies. Journalist and publisher Tim Giago (Oglala Lakota) recalls, “The songs Buddy wrote and sang can be classified as ‘protest songs.’ They were songs about the buffalo and of its slaughter. He sang about the medicine man Black Elk. The song so many of the young Lakota of his day loved so much was ‘Run, Indian, Run.’ It went, ‘Run, Indian, run, run while you can, here comes the white man.” Born in 1948, Warfield Richards “Buddy” Red Bow grew up near Red Shirt, raised by Maize Two
Photos: Stardust Red Bow.
New SDPB doc shares journey of Lakota country music artist Buddy Red Bow.
Bulls-Red Bow and Stephen Red Bow. He left high school in Rapid City to pursue acting and went to Vietnam as a Marine. He started a recording company, Tatanka Records, in Denver and recorded three albums, working with producer Dik Darnell. In South Dakota, Red Bow commingled musically with touring country music mega stars. Barb Hamilton, who married Red Bow in an Indian ceremony and is mother to their daughter Stardust Red Bow, recalls many late night jam sessions with big names. “He would take Stardust and me to concerts, and we’d meet very interesting people, like Waylon Jennings, David Soul, Lou Diamond Phillips,” says Barb Hamilton. “They were his friends outside of this. He knew Willie
