The Mudcat Café TM
Thread #120527   Message #2622219
Posted By: Stilly River Sage
30-Apr-09 - 05:57 PM
Thread Name: Yiddish cowboys
Subject: RE: Yiddish cowboys
There's actually quite a lot of it.

I used to hear a radio program in New York City on WKCR-FM (and WBAI-FM) called "Cowboy Joe's Radio Ranch." The period was the late 1970s, early 1980s. It played on NPR for a while. WKCR was a station with lots of little specialized programs, and is out of Columbia University. The same guy did a program called "Cajun Jamboree." Paul Aaron. I remember that he was very proud to have been awarded the Western Heritage Wrangler Award for his contribution to cowboy music collecting and scholarship. This came from the National Cowboy and Western Heritage Hall of Fame in Oklahoma City, OK.

I did a search and came up with a short mention in the New York Times from 1997:



I just put in an old cassette tape of one of the programs. His theme song was "Ragtime Cowboy Joe" and he had lots of versions of it. Anyway, I remember hearing one program with a New York City Yiddish Cowboy band that performed live on the studio.

I find an email paulacowboyjoe@aol.com on a page that was (apparently) last updated in 2004.

That's about as much as I can squeeze out of a net search. I might have some of the performance on a tape; if I do I'll add more information as I come across it.

SRS