Your favorite cowboy/western folk songs

Subject: RE: Your favorite cowboy/western folk songs
From: GUEST,henryp
Date: 05 Feb 20 - 07:26 AM

Someday Soon by Ian Tyson is based on the story of his romance with Sylvia Fricker. Are these the original lyrics? Source: LyricFind lyrics © Universal Music Publishing Group, Warner/Chappell Music, Inc.

My parents cannot stand him 'cause he works the rodeo
They say he's not your kind; He'll leave you crying
If he asks, I'll follow him down the toughest road to hoe
Someday soon, going with him, someday soon

When he visits me, my pa ain't got one good word to say
Got a hunch he was as wild back in his early days

Mr Fricker worked in the white goods department of the Eaton store in Chatham, Ontario. On Friday nights he would go to a bar with my Uncle Peter. Uncle Peter said all he talked about was the 'pseudo-cowboy' who had run off with his daughter.

Subject: RE: Your favorite cowboy/western folk songs
From: GUEST,Jerome Clark
Date: 05 Feb 20 - 11:26 AM

Ian Tyson's version of "Rambler Gambler" towers above any other I've ever heard. It still moves me decades after it first passed through my ears. I believe he learned it from Alan Lomax's LP "Texas Folk Songs."

It bears mentioning that his Western originals are realistic songs, about working lives rather than gunfighting ones or (as in the cowboy-pop likes of Gene Autry and associates) the alleged romance of the range.. The violent "Four Rode By," another of my favorites of his, is not a cowboy ballad but a true story about a crime spree in 1879 British Columbia.

In "Someday Soon" the line, though frequently misquoted, is "roughest row to hoe," not "road." Rows, not roads, are hoed, and Tyson is a careful writer.

Though it may have been true at one time, it's been a long while since Tyson was a "pseudo-cowboy."

Subject: RE: Your favorite cowboy/western folk songs
From: gillymor
Date: 05 Feb 20 - 11:40 AM

I remember reading that Tyson set out to be a rodeo rider but wound up as a songwriter/performer early on due to a broken ankle.

Subject: RE: Your favorite cowboy/western folk songs
From: Stilly River Sage
Date: 05 Feb 20 - 12:40 PM

Nearly 10 years on and my top songs are still the same, though there are many songs that are pretty darned good.

Subject: RE: Your favorite cowboy/western folk songs
From: GUEST,HiLo
Date: 05 Feb 20 - 01:35 PM

Yes, Gillymor, he did set out to be a cowboy, took up the guitar whilst recovering from an injury.
Mary MacCaslin did some great cowboy songs. Her is an old album that I constantly go back to.

Subject: RE: Your favorite cowboy/western folk songs
From: gillymor
Date: 05 Feb 20 - 01:58 PM

Thanks, HiLo.
I'd forgotten about Mary MacCaslin. I'd number her "Way Out West in Kansas" among my favorites but she does a good job on a lot of the Western songs.
Here's Pharis and Jason Romero, one of my favorite duos, doing "Long Gone Out West Blues". They're also world-renowned banjo makers. It ain't fair.

Long Gone Out West Blues

Subject: RE: Your favorite cowboy/western folk songs
From: GUEST,henryp
Date: 05 Feb 20 - 03:08 PM

When he was in New York, Ian Tyson was drafted. Thanks to his 'rodeo knee' he was classified as 4F - not fit for military duty. "Otherwise I would have been in Fort Dix and shipped off to Asia."

Subject: RE: Your favorite cowboy/western folk songs
From: The Sandman
Date: 05 Feb 20 - 03:52 PM

Goebel Reeves in the film "The Silver Trail" (1937)

Subject: RE: Your favorite cowboy/western folk songs
From: The Sandman
Date: 05 Feb 20 - 03:55 PM

Goebel Reeves--"H.O.B.O. Calling"

Subject: RE: Your favorite cowboy/western folk songs
From: The Sandman
Date: 05 Feb 20 - 04:28 PM

Vernon Dalhart singing "Hallelujah! I'm a Bum" on YouTube

Subject: RE: Your favorite cowboy/western folk songs
From: GUEST,Hilo
Date: 05 Feb 20 - 06:16 PM

Why would Ian Tyson be drafted, he was not Americans, to my knowledge, never lived in America, Albertan to his head and toes.

Subject: RE: Your favorite cowboy/western folk songs
From: GUEST,henryp
Date: 06 Feb 20 - 03:12 AM

Any male Canadians admitted to the US for immigration were subject to the draft. Ian Tyson appeared to be unaware that he could have avoided it by merely going home.

Ian Tyson was born in Victoria, Vancouver Island, and grew up in Duncan B.C.. He suffered a rodeo accident in 1956 and learned to play guitar while in hospital. He played his first solo coffeehouse gig in 1957 while studying at the Vancouver School of Art. He then moved to Toronto where he met Sylvia in July 1959. To get more concert bookings they had to move to New York, where in 1961 Ian wrote Four Strong Winds in the office of their manager Albert Grossman.

Subject: RE: Your favorite cowboy/western folk songs
From: GUEST,HiLo
Date: 06 Feb 20 - 03:40 AM

Thanks Henryp, I was not aware of that,

Subject: RE: Your favorite cowboy/western folk songs
From: Murpholly
Date: 06 Feb 20 - 03:51 AM

I am still searching for the rest of the words of

You're as pretty as a palomino pony
You're a gal a man could go for mighty strong
But the cattle must be tended and the fences must be mended
So I reckon I'll be moseying along.

Any help anybody.

[See "Moseyin' Along" -- A Mudelf]

Subject: RE: Your favorite cowboy/western folk songs
From: GUEST,Guest Mike Rogers
Date: 06 Feb 20 - 11:41 AM

I'm not sure that all of these are folk songs but they're fine songs anyway.
A small selection from Marty Robbins:
El Paso
Big Iron
Old Red

A Border Affair (Spanish is the Loving Tongue) (Badger Clark)
Spanish Johnny (Paul Siebel)
Ballad of a Runaway Horse (Ballad of an Absent Mare) written by Leonard Cohen, superbly sung by Emmylou Harris)
Pancho and Lefty (Townes van Zandt)

Subject: RE: Your favorite cowboy/western folk songs
From: Mike in Brunswick
Date: 06 Feb 20 - 11:05 PM

Lots of good songs are mentioned here, as is often the case in threads of this type. My favorites include The Goodnight-Loving Trail, Me and My Uncle (Judy Collins did a nice version of this one), and just about anything by Bob Wills. Also, Si Kahn's Queen of the Cowboy Café and Dave Carter's When I Go.

Mike

Subject: RE: Your favorite cowboy/western folk songs
From: punkfolkrocker
Date: 07 Feb 20 - 09:38 AM

Thanks mudcat mates..
Don't have time to read all this now, but the thread is a keeper for future reference..

I went through a contemporary alt country cowboy bands phase about 10 to 15 years ago,
but not listened to the CDs for a long while..

Back in the mid 90s I picked up a newly recorded double CD set of cowboy songs
recorded by an older American or Canadian guy.
Just his voice and acoustic guitar.
Very traditional..

Can't remember who now..
The CD has been boxed up at my mum's house for 20 years...

Subject: RE: Your favorite cowboy/western folk songs
From: GUEST,HiLo
Date: 07 Feb 20 - 10:18 AM

Hi Pfr..could it have been Wilf Carter ?

Subject: RE: Your favorite cowboy/western folk songs
From: punkfolkrocker
Date: 07 Feb 20 - 10:24 AM

HiLo - probably not..
in my hazy memory he was a middle aged to older singer,
and the double CD set was recorded sometime in the 1990s...???

Subject: RE: Your favorite cowboy/western folk songs
From: Stewie
Date: 07 Feb 20 - 09:19 PM

They don't come much better than this one:

The Last Wagon [Lyrics]

The entire album, 'The Crooked Trail to Holbrook', is a joy.

--Stewie.

Subject: RE: Your favorite cowboy/western folk songs
From: Joe Offer
Date: 07 Feb 20 - 09:51 PM

The Slim Critchlow Album ('The crooked trail to Holbrook') is available from Smithsonian Folkways, with downloadable notes. The recording is available on Spotify and YouTube.
It's a terrific album.
-Joe-

Subject: RE: Your favorite cowboy/western folk songs
From: PHJim
Date: 10 Feb 20 - 07:23 PM

punkfolkrocker, Could it have been Merrick Jarrett? He recorded "Songs Of The Old West" and "The Old Chisholm Trail . Traditional Songs Of The Old West".
Merrick was a Canadian folk singer/collector who had a grand knowledge of old cowboy songs. He knew everybody worth knowing in Canadian folk music and everyone worth knowing knew him. He played at the very first Mariposa Folk Festival in 1961 and I had the pleasure to share a workshop stage with him at a later Mariposa in the nineties and a number of living room jams at the home of his daughter and son-in-law, both talented musicians .
We lost Merrick in 2005.

Subject: RE: Your favorite cowboy/western folk songs
From: GUEST,henryp
Date: 14 Feb 20 - 11:58 PM

Lay Down, Little Dogies, lay down
We've both got to sleep on the cold, cold ground
The wind's blowin' colder and the sun's goin' down
Lay down, little dogies, lay down

I can hear this being sung by a cowboy, but it was actually written by Woody Guthrie.

Subject: RE: Your favorite cowboy/western folk songs
From: GUEST,akenaton
Date: 15 Feb 20 - 05:15 AM

Remember buying Marty Robbins "Gunfighter ballads and trail songs" when it first appeared. I thought it was great, and the backing did not seem incongruous at that time.

Subject: RE: Your favorite cowboy/western folk songs
From: gillymor
Date: 15 Feb 20 - 06:52 AM

One of the best recently-written western songs I've heard-

The Cypress Hills by John Reichsman and the Jaybirds.

Re Marty Robbins "Gunfighter Ballads and Trail Songs", Grady Martin's guitar licks and the backup singing, reminiscent of the Sons of the Pioneers, are a huge part of those recordings with Marty's excellent voice at center stage, of course.

Subject: RE: Your favorite cowboy/western folk songs
From: pdq
Date: 15 Feb 20 - 07:37 PM

Backup vocals on the Marty Robbins' record were by the three Glaser Brothers, sort of a poor man's Jordanaires. Thomas Paul Glaser changed his name to Tompall Glaser and was part of the Outlaw Movement of the 1970s along with Willie Nelson, Waylon Jennings, David Allan Coe and Jerry Jeff Walker.

Subject: RE: Your favorite cowboy/western folk songs
From: gillymor
Date: 15 Feb 20 - 09:51 PM

I loved to hear the Glaser Brothers sing together, Jim Glaser was an incredible harmony singer.

Not necessarily a western song but here they are doing Loving Her Was Easier than Anything I'll Ever do Again

Subject: RE: Your favorite cowboy/western folk songs
From: GUEST,henryp
Date: 16 Feb 20 - 12:15 AM

Cowboy Man by Lyle Lovett

He lost an argument with a three year old Charolais bull.