How To Play Pancho And Lefty
By Willie Nelson

In this article I want to explain to you how to play Pancho And Lefty By Willie Nelson and Merle Haggard on the acoustic. I also have an instructional demo video clip on this page and free lyrics and tabs that should also be beneficial.

The late Townes Van Zandt is the one who penned this great story and recorded a version himself back in 1972. Besides being recorded by Willie and Merle, Emmylou got her hands on the song in 1977.

A few years later in 1983, Merle and Willie teamed up for a duet album, and this song became the album's title track.

Two singles were released from this album. "No Reason To Quit" peaked on the country charts at #6, while "Pancho and Lefty" went on to become a #1 hit for the duo.

In 1983, both Merle And Willie were really at their peak some would say in country music. So when this album was released, it stayed on the charts and country radio for most of 1983.

Well there was a Mexican General who was known as Pancho Villa during the Mexican revolution, who later became Govenor of the largest northern Mexican state of Chichuahua in 1913 and 1914.

And according to Van Zandt, Villa had a best buddy who was known in Spanish as Lefty.

But Van Zandt claims the song just came to him without him having any prior knowledge about these two real life Mexican characters. Pancho Villa in real life was assassinated, whereas in the song Pancho is hanged.

So the story seems to have come from the brilliant mind of Townes Van Zandt himself and not history.


I'll talk about the intro in a moment. The rest of the song is basically D, A, G, and Bm. As far as the intro goes, it starts in D, using the bottom 3 strings mainly up on the 10th and 11th fret but you can also play the open D string. Then slide down in the normal D chord formation on the 7th and 8th and then on the 6th and 7th.

                 

Free Tab Available


-- $3.25 --

Full Tutorial - .wmv format - 15 min 25 sec

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The second half of the intro is a G and B string slide on the 6th/5th to the 4th/3rd ... to the 2nd fret both strings to the open with both strings. Then I'm playing an A chord with my index finger and using a hammer on at the B string on the third and the D string at the 4th at the same time.


I like to use Bass Note Strumming here. It's basically Note-Up-Dn-Up, Bass Note-Up-Dn-Up and you repeat and you move thru the chords. You'll notice I do use a double bass a few times on the Bm and the A chord before playing the bass note.

There is a bit of picking in this one for the break and again at the end of the song. All patterns of course are fully explained in the full version tutorial from the link above. Grab the free tabs in the right menu.

I hope you found this How To Play Pancho And Lefty by Willie Nelson useful and informative. Feel free to tweet about it (bottom of the page), like it on Facebook from the "Like" button above or below, as that is also most welcomed.

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How To Play Pancho And Lefty By Willie Nelson

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