Ruby, Don't Take Your Love To Town - Kenny Rogers & the First Edition (cover-live by Bill Sharkey)

Ruby, Don't Take Your Love To Town (Kenny Rogers & the First Edition, 1969). Live cover performance by Bill Sharkey, Home Studio, Hawaii Kai, HI. 2025-04-23. "Keeping the Oldies & Classics Alive"
"Ruby, Don't Take Your Love To Town," written by Mel Tillis, was the First Edition's third top 20 hit rising to the no. 6 position on the Billboard Hot 100 chart in 1969 (Whitburn, 2013). This was the first release by the First Edition that included Kenny Rogers' name (Whitburn, 2013). According to songfacts, "Tillis based the song on a couple who lived near his family in Florida. In real life, the man was wounded in Germany in World War II and sent to recuperate in England. There, he married a nurse who took care of him at the hospital. The two of them moved to Florida shortly afterward, but he made periodic return trips to the hospital as problems with his wounds kept flaring up. His wife saw another man as the veteran lay in the hospital. . . . Tillis changed the war in the song to the Korean War, and left out the life ending: the man killed her in a murder-suicide. In the song, the man says he would kill [her] if he could move to get his gun" (2025). Kenny Rogers has stated that "the guys who said 'Ruby' was about Vietnam were way off target – it was about Korea" (songfacts, 2025).

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Lyrics:

You've painted up your lips
Rolled and curled your tinted hair

Ruby, are you contemplating
Going out somewhere?
The shadow on the wall
Tells me the sun is going down

Oh, Ruby
Don't take your love to town

It wasn't me
That started that old crazy Asian war
But I was proud to go
And do my patriotic chore
And yes, it's true that
I'm not the man I used to be

Oh, Ruby, I still need some company

It's hard to love a man
Whose legs are bent and paralyzed
And the wants and the needs of a woman your age
Ruby, I realized
But it won't be long
I've heard them say until I'm not around

Oh, Ruby
Don't take your love to town

She's leaving now 'cause
I just heard the slamming of the door
The way I know I've heard it slam 100 times before
And if I could move I'd get my gun
And put her in the ground

Oh, Ruby
Don't take your love to town

Oh, Ruby, for God's sake, turn around