SONG SYLLABUS / WEEK 13

Week 13: Thursday, April 12
Cowboy Songs: FRONTIER


"Streets of Laredo" (J&A Lomax 195/206)
Tom Glazier (is this in S&P archive?)

"I Ride an Old Paint" (J&A Lomax 198/214
Carl Sandburg (iTunes store)
SGS Harry Jackson Very slow & compelling version!!!

These songs are classics as well:
The Old Chisolm Trail
Get Along Little Dogies
Home on the Range (hear the Rosalie Sorrells version on SGS)
Buffalo Gals

And the following (along with much other material) are available on the SGS Smithsonian Global Sound Archive:

LISTEN TO THIS ENTIRE ALBUM:
Cowboy Songs on Folkways
Smithsonian Folkways Recordings
Catalogue Number: SFW40043
Released: 1991

"Fifteen performers sing, boast, tell stories, holler, and recite poetry on 26 tracks that portray the life and times of honest, hard-working cowboys. Features performers from many backgrounds with a wide variety of musical styles. Includes Pete Seeger's Home on the Range, Cisco Houston's Little Joe and the Wrangler, Woody Guthrie's Get Along Little Dogies, several old tales from the range, including Chisholm Tale and Jesse James, and Rosalie Sorrells's version of Gene Autry's 1943 hit There's an Empty Cot in the Bunkhouse." (from the liner notes)

This collection was assembled from Folkways Archives and issued in 1991. Among the songs included—and recommended:
Little Joe the Wrangler / Cisco Houston
Little Joe, the Wrangler's Sister Nell / Harry Jackson
Get Along Little Dogie / Woodie Guthrie & Cisco Houston
The Dyin' Cowboy / Cisco Houston
The Devil Made Texas / Hermes Nye
Put Your Little Foot / John Lomax and the Tex-I-An Boys
Chisolm Trail / John Lomax and the Tex-I-An Boys
Phildelphia Lawyer / Woodie Guthrie
Utah Carl / Harry McClintock
Buffalo Skinners / Woodie Guthrie
Empty Cot In The Bunkhouse Tonight / Rosalie Sorrells



You can also look back to an earlier version of cowboy songs, from Folkways, with John Lomax, Jr. himself-and the Tex-I-An Boys. Recall that it was John Lomax’s book, Cowboy Songs and Other Frontier Ballads, published in 1910 to critical and popular acclaim that started much of the recorded folksong revival. That’s the volume that Moe Asch found in a Paris bookstall in the early 1920’s. Everything, it seems, is related…

Songs of Texas
John Lomax, Jr. and the Tex-i-an Boys, released in 1961.
Folkways Records
Catalogue Number: FW05328
(you can hear this in SGS--Again, listen to the whole album)

There are numerous entries under the keyword “cowboy” in SGS. Lots more by Cisco Houston, Woody Guthrie, Harry Jackson and many others (Omer Simeon Trio, for example).

* * *

AND various YouTubes (none of these are really about cowboys; some ARE about cows, however—the rottweiler clip is particularly dramatic):

Roy Acuff / Great Speckled Bird
Merle Travis & Johnny Cash / Sing Me Back Home

Harry Carey Sr. The Bronx Cowboy (clips)
The Searchers (trailer) / John Wayne
Ghetto Cowboy (bonethugs-n-harmony)
Willie Nelson / Gay Cowboy Song
Blazing Glory
Longhorn Cattle Drive (parade)
Fort Worth Cattle Drive (parade)
Rottweiler Herding
Nebraska Cow Drive