Origins: Old Chisholm Trail

Subject: RE: Origins: Old Chisholm Trail
From: Lighter
Date: 19 Aug 14 - 09:54 AM

I remember John A. Lomax singing "Buffalo Skinners" on a Library of Congress disk.

John Lomax, Jr., does a good job of "Chisholm Trail" (with *two* uncommon tunes) on the Folkways album of "The Tex-i-an Boys."

Except for the hammy alternation of tunes, I'd say that Jr.'s rendition of the song is the most realistic I've heard.

There's even one note in the refrain I don't think he quite manages to hit right.

Subject: RE: Origins: Old Chisholm Trail
From: StephenR
Date: 08 Aug 23 - 03:25 PM

Can anyone enlighten me on why someone would dispatch a cow with a skillet handle? I feel like I may be missing something here. I've looked at various versions of this online, and they most all say he "shot" or "hit" the stray with a skillet handle.

Now, I'm far from a cowboy, but this seems like a very ill-advised action. The only reason I can figure for it to be in the song is that "kill it" and "skillet" is a superb rhyme. But why use the handle in particular? Seems the body of a skillet would be the intuitive way to whallop something.

Is there something I am missing, or am I just overthinking it?

Subject: RE: Origins: Old Chisholm Trail
From: cnd
Date: 08 Aug 23 - 04:01 PM

Two possible explanations, my own rose-colored version first: I assumed it meant the cowboy didn't "shoot" the steer as instructed, but instead gave it a swift hit with a pan so it would run away into the wilderness and have a shot at life.

The more likely explanation, as explained in a couple editions of "Plains Folk" by Jim Hoy and Tom Isern: "if somebody else's steer happened to come along, then the trail crew could have fresh meat." "[R]ange custom allowed it; besides, if one of your steers got in someone else's herd, you knew that it would be eaten." (as printed in the [Kansas] Council Grove Republican, July 3rd, 1997, p. 4 and August 3rd, 1994, p. 4

Subject: RE: Origins: Old Chisholm Trail
From: cnd
Date: 08 Aug 23 - 04:05 PM

(To clarify, the impetus was that a stray steer was "free" meat to be cooked and eaten by the hired hands. A boss didn't want to sacrifice one of their own head of cattle to feed the workers, but someone else's lost cattle was a different story)

Subject: RE: Origins: Old Chisholm Trail
From: Lighter
Date: 08 Aug 23 - 05:07 PM

I believe the correct words are "I shot him in the ass/ And he landed in the skillet."

Subject: RE: Origins: Old Chisholm Trail
From: StephenR
Date: 08 Aug 23 - 06:34 PM

Lighter, that would make a lot of sense. It certainly fits with what cnd wrote. Have you encountered that variation anywhere, or is it your guess of what it originally was (perhaps before a mishearing that got recorded and popularized)?

Subject: RE: Origins: Old Chisholm Trail
From: meself
Date: 08 Aug 23 - 08:33 PM

I had the verse in my head as:

Stray in the herd, the boss said, Kill it;
I shot that stray and threw him in the skillet.

I must have gotten that from somewhere!

Subject: RE: Origins: Old Chisholm Trail
From: Lighter
Date: 09 Aug 23 - 09:28 AM

At this point, all I can say is that I think the lines came from Benjamin Capps's well-informed novel, "The Trail to Ogallala," which came out about sixty years ago.

Another stanza from the same book was (essentially):

"Goin' to the boss to get my roll,
Goin' into town to get some taller on my pole."

Subject: RE: Origins: Old Chisholm Trail
From: Lighter
Date: 09 Aug 23 - 11:00 AM

For the familiar tune, compare "The Swapping Song" as sung by Peggy Seeger:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zcycDatJfjs

Subject: RE: Origins: Old Chisholm Trail
From: Lighter
Date: 09 Aug 23 - 12:04 PM

From Lonn Taylor & Ingrid Maar, "The American Cowboy" (1983):

“Lomax… severely bowdlerized some ballads, thinking, quite correctly, that the sexual allusions they contained would not be acceptable to any publisher. The original versions, as preserved in the Lomax Papers, offer an insight into the cowboy’s attitudes toward cattle and women that Cowboy Songs does not. In a typescript copy of ‘The Old Chisholm Trail'... we find

My foot in the stirrup, my ass in the saddle
I ’ll bid goodbye to these God damn cattle.

instead of Lomax’s published

Feet in the stirrup and seat in the saddle
I hung and rattled them longhorn cattle.

and

There’s old Miss Annie she’s a mighty fine squaw
She lives on the banks of the old Wichita.

I wanted for to frig her and I offered her a quarter
Says she, 'Bill Moore, I’m a gentleman’s daughter.'

instead of

Well, I met a little gal and I offered her a quarter
She says, 'Young man, I ’m a gentleman’s daughter.'

Verses like

I’m going down south fore the weather gets cold
I'm going down south to get some tallow on my pole

and

I’m going down south just whooping and yelling
If I don't get a woman I’ll take a heifer yearling

didn’t get into print in any form. As Lomax himself said of the song, ‘many stanzas are not mailable.’

“The point is not that Lomax was an inaccurate collector or a prude, but that Cowboy Songs was not a terribly accurate reflection of the song vocabulary of the average cowboy, which included many songs that had nothing to do with cattle and did not include many of the supposed songs, actually poems, included in Cowboy Songs. Significantly, the first edition of the book contained 112 texts and only fourteen tunes."

Subject: RE: Origins: Old Chisholm Trail
From: StephenR
Date: 09 Aug 23 - 04:54 PM

Thanks Lighter. Sure enough, inside "The Trail to Ogallala," the chapter 10 heading is:

There's a stray in the bunch and the boss said, kill it,
So I shot him in the rump and he landed in the skillet
Come-a ti yi yippi, yippi yea, yippi yea,
Come-a ti yi yippi, yippi yea.

Subject: RE: Origins: Old Chisholm Trail
From: Lighter
Date: 09 Aug 23 - 05:02 PM

So the ol' memory banks are still workin'. Heh heh.

Subject: RE: Origins: Old Chisholm Trail
From: Lighter
Date: 11 Aug 23 - 09:50 PM

Will Rogers (1879-1935) wrote in 1911 that he was "was weaned on ['Sam Bass'] and ‘The Dying Cowboy’ and ‘Ty yi yippy, ty yi ai'" in the Indian Territory (now eastern Oklahoma), presumably around 1890.

Subject: RE: Origins: Old Chisholm Trail
From: Lighter
Date: 14 May 26 - 08:16 AM

Ahead of the 1910 publication of "Cowboy Songs," Lomax printed two familiar stanzas in the "Fort Worth Record" (March 16, 1909).

He remarked there that "The greater part of it is unfit for publication."

Subject: RE: Origins: Old Chisholm Trail
From: GUEST,CJB
Date: 15 May 26 - 06:54 AM

The Old Chisholm Trail …

https://archive.org/details/radio-ballad-operas-in-america