help looking for cowboy songs

Subject: help looking for cowboy songs
From:
Date: 08 Aug 00 - 10:37 PM

Can anyone help me? I am teaching in a community that has a rodeo and am wanting to do a unit with my students about cowboy songs...does anyone have any ideas or lesson plans to share? Thansk.

Subject: RE: help looking for cowboy songs
From: Giac
Date: 08 Aug 00 - 10:44 PM

For an abundance of cowboy songs, try this:

click here

Type rodeo, or cowboy in the search box.

Subject: RE: help looking for cowboy songs
From: GUEST,Barry Finn
Date: 08 Aug 00 - 11:14 PM

A few favorites of mine are the CDs by Skip Gorman, I'm sure Sandy or Dick can point you to those. Good Luck, Barry

Subject: RE: help looking for cowboy songs
From: katlaughing
Date: 09 Aug 00 - 12:31 AM

You can also go to the DigiTrad search box in the top righthand corner of the page and type in @cowboy and there will be many which come up, some of which will have a midi, too.

Also, if you put just the word Cowboy in the main search box, which you will find at the top of the thread title, on the main Forum page, and hit the Go button, yu will find several threads which list all kinds of songs.

If you want a midi of a few of the ones I know, let me know and I can send you a voice file of me singing them, nothing to write home about, but I can carry a tune.

The other thing you might consider, if you have Internet access in your classroom, is setting up a specific time to go into our virtual song cicle on the Mudcat HearMe page, which you can access through any of the links in various HearMe threads of the link which is in the first permathread, the Mudcat FAQs. If you let some of us knwo a good time, we could meet you and your class in there and sing a few for them.

All the best,

katlaughing

Subject: RE: help looking for cowboy songs
From: GUEST,Sluefoot Sue
Date: 09 Aug 00 - 12:37 AM

How about: Utah Carroll, Doney Gal, Sierry Petes (Tyin’ Knots in the Devil’s Tail), The Yellow Rose of Texas, Home on the Range, Red River Valley, The Ballad of Billy the Kid, Jack o’ Diamonds (Rye Whiskey), Blood on the Saddle, Night Rider's Lament, or Ten Thousand Cattle Straying?

[Some song titles in this thread have been converted to links by a Mudelf.]

Subject: RE: help looking for cowboy songs
From: katlaughing
Date: 09 Aug 00 - 12:55 AM

CLICK HERE to go to a recent thread, "Favourite Cowboy Songs"

Also, the Super Search box I was talking about is at the top of the thread titles on the main Forum page. And, we have a virtual song circle. Aren't typos a wonderful thing?**BG** Sorry...

kat

Subject: RE: help looking for cowboy songs
From: Sandy Paton
Date: 09 Aug 00 - 01:04 AM

Kat's suggestion that you type @cowboy into the Digitrad search box is a good one. I've just done it to see what would come up, and it's a whole bunch of good 'uns!

If you want some CDs, Barry's right. Skip Gorman's work can be found on the Folk-Legacy website CLICK HERE. Skip's CDs are on Rounder, so Dick can get them for you at Camsco.com, too, but he and Susan are off to England for the grand folk tour, leaving Thursday. If you aren't in a great hurry, his price on these CDs might be a dollar or so lower than mine. It pays to shop.

Sandy

Subject: RE: help looking for cowboy songs
From: ddw
Date: 09 Aug 00 - 01:14 AM

Hi Luv2,

I'm a little surprised nobody jumped in to recommend the great collection by Ian Tyson — his "Cowboyography" series. Ian started in the early '80s to record a group of songs REAL cowboys would like; he cut the first album — Old Corrals and Sagebrush — in the living room of his ranch house in Alberta. Since then he as done five more — all pretty good, but getting progressively slicker through the series.

If you're interested particularly in songs about rodeos, there are several in the later albums. Some idealize the riders, but many recount the fear, disillusionment and longing to get out of the game that you'd expect in such a rough sport.

I highly recommend you look into the whole series. If memory serves, they are, in order:
Old Corrals & Sagebrush
Ian Tyson
Cowboyography
I Outgrew The Wagon
18 Inches of Rain david

Subject: RE: help looking for cowboy songs
From: ddw
Date: 09 Aug 00 - 01:24 AM

Hi again, Luv2 —

For a little closer look at Ian Tyson's stuff, click here

enjoy

david

Subject: RE: help looking for cowboy songs
From: Joe Offer
Date: 09 Aug 00 - 01:54 AM

Hi, Luv2 - I think you'll find many of us would love to help you with your lesson plan. If you have any questions, throw 'em at us. I'd say that among us all, we must own every cowboy songbook ever written. There are more scholarly books available, but I'd like to recommend two little books by Wayne Erbsen, Cowboy Songs, Jokes, Lingo, 'n Lore, and Outlaw Ballads, Legends, & Lore. You can find them at the usual online stores like Amazon (click), or you can get them direct from Wayne at Native Ground Music (click). The books are fascinating - full or stories and pictures. Wayne is a professor of music or folklore or something like that at a college near Asheville, North Carolina. And he's got a great bluegrass show on the Asheville public radio station.
Good luck.
-Joe Offer (e-mail sent)-

Subject: RE: help looking for cowboy songs
From: Sandy Paton
Date: 09 Aug 00 - 02:34 AM

Fife, Austin E and and Alta S. Cowboy and Western Songs: A Comprehensive Anthology. New York: Clarkson N. Potter, 1969.

Lingenfelter, Richard E., Richard A. Dwyer, and David Cohen. Songs of the American West: Berkeley and Los Angeles, University of California Press, 1968.

Larkin, Margaret. Singing Cowboy: A Book of Western Songs. New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1931. (Reprinted by Oak Publications in 1963)

Lomax, John. Cowboy Songs and Other Frontier Ballads. New York: Sturgis and Walton, 1910. Revised and reprinted in 1911, 1916 (reprinted by MacMillan, 1918), revised again with Alan Lomax, MacMillan, 1938. 13th printing, 1961.

John A. Lomax also gave us Songs of the Cattle Trail and Cow Camp. New York: MacMillan, 1915. I've just added this one to my collection. Found it in a shop in New Preston, Connecticut.

And there are lots of others we could suggest, if you want 'em or need 'em.

Sandy

Subject: RE: help looking for cowboy songs
From: Midchuck
Date: 09 Aug 00 - 08:39 AM

It ain't, strictly speaking, folk...but check out Tom Russell's Cowboy Real and/or Song of the West. Great stuff!

Peter.

Subject: RE: help looking for cowboy songs
From: katlaughing
Date: 09 Aug 00 - 12:07 PM

Lomax's Cowboy Songs and Other Frontier Ballads also was reissued in 1986. GOOD book and used copies can be found at www.bibliofind.com or www.bookfinder.com.

kat

Subject: RE: help looking for cowboy songs
From: Sandy Paton
Date: 09 Aug 00 - 12:09 PM

Hard for us old fogies to keep up to date, Kat, m'luv!
Sandy

Subject: RE: help looking for cowboy songs
From: Naemanson
Date: 09 Aug 00 - 12:18 PM

There is one book you'll want to steer clear of if you are working with kids but it's a great resource if you'll be working with an all adult audience. The name of the book says it all, The Whorehouse Bells Were Ringing. For all that it is a scholarly work of collection. Very good but raunchy.

Subject: RE: help looking for cowboy songs
From: Kim C
Date: 09 Aug 00 - 12:27 PM

All the above suggestions are good. I also highly recommend anything by Don Edwards, who is my all-time favorite yodeler and cowboy musicologist. Several years ago when I had some similar questions, I wrote to him and he was kind enough to take the time to answer.

Did anyone mention Jim Bob Tinsley's book "He Was Singing This Song" ?

Subject: RE: help looking for cowboy songs
From: MMario
Date: 09 Aug 00 - 12:35 PM

y'know - There are quite a few different collections of older songs that I consistently hear "Good songs, but raunchy". Do it tend to give you the idea that perhaps todays standards are - shall we say - a bit narrow?

I've seen Victorian Teas songs that most people today would claim as raunchy - but these were being sung by a people who are famed (in our time) for prudishness!

Do anyone know where I was ehaded with this? I've lost track!

Subject: RE: help looking for cowboy songs
From: katlaughing
Date: 09 Aug 00 - 12:36 PM

Oh my dad has that one, KIm, as an old cowboy himself, has really spoken highly of it.

Sandy, I tried to be gentle, darlin' (that was the first time I'd ever seen the book; Rog came home so full of himself for spotting it and buying it for me)....like you don't have TONS more to keep track of than I do! Good to see you around, Sandygrampsmyluv!

luvyakat

Subject: RE: help looking for cowboy songs
From: Mark Clark
Date: 09 Aug 00 - 12:48 PM

Gee, nobody thought of Glenn Ohrlin. He's been mentioned in quite a few threads here. I think Dale Rose is a friend of Glenn's, and probably Art Thieme too. A list of his work may be found here at Johns Hopkins University. Glenn used to come to Chicago for the annual University of Chicago Folk Festival.

In a document about Archie Green I found the following on Ohrlin:

Subseries 4.17. Glenn Ohrlin About 280 items.

Correspondence, interview notes, financial and legal materials, and writings relating to Green's involvement with Ohrlin on a range of projects. Ohrlin, a cowboy musician, performed for the Campus Folk Song Club at the University of Illinois while Green was a faculty advisor. The Club also produced a recording, The Hell-Bound Train, of Ohrlin's music in 1964 for which Green wrote the liner notes. See also Series 6.

Searching the Web didn't turn up much else but I'll bet Glenn would be a wonderful source of material.

- Mark

Subject: RE: help looking for cowboy songs
From: Midchuck
Date: 09 Aug 00 - 12:51 PM

MMario:

"I've seen Victorian Teas songs that most people today would claim as raunchy - but these were being sung by a people who are famed (in our time) for prudishness!

Do anyone know where I was ehaded with this? I've lost track!"

We do live in an era whose combined obsession with sex, and prudishness, (they go hand in hand, in my opinon) rivals that of the Victorians.

I suspect that part of the problem is that we have two different prudishnesses in our culture (U. S.) at the same time. The conservatives are offended by anything that they think God might find offensive, and the liberals are offended by anything Women, or any minority group whatever) might find offensive. That doesn't leave much.

Peter.

Subject: RE: help looking for cowboy songs
From: Naemanson
Date: 09 Aug 00 - 01:03 PM

Actually, to continue the thread creep, I have my own theory of raunchiness in old songs. If you read the words to the songs in Pills To Purge Melancholy you'll find that they are pretty raunchy without being nasty if you get my drift. Some of them could be sung in (our) polite society without causing a twitch. The chanties we sing have been "cleaned up" but I contend the originals probably weren't as bad as all that.

Remember that the society that engendered those songs were a little more polite than today. Look at the list of words used for cursing and insulting one another and you will get an idea of what I'm talking about. Try these on for size: Bilious, Arse-Kissin', Addle-Pate (Oaf), Blasted, Bat-Fowling, Baggage (Harlot), Bawdy, Belly-Bumping, Base-Son (Bastard), Cockered (Pampered), Bilge-Lickin', Belly-Piece (Mistress, Also Prostitute), Constuprated, Biscuit-Eatin', Belly-Bloat (Defiled), Craven, Boil-Brained, Bilge Rat, Cretinous, Bottom-Bonking, Bunter (Thieving Slut), Curst, Bum-Basted, Burble (Pimple), Errant, Bung Hole, Canker-Blossom, Fawning, Canker-Ridden, Catch-Fart, Fetid, Chum-Sucking, Clinchpoop (Dunce), Gorbellied, Crook-Pated, Cormorant (Glutton), Gouty (Diseased), Fly-Blown, Coxcomb (Fool), Keelhauled, Light-Fingered, Doxy (Harlot), Mammering (Stuttering), Lily-Livered, Fart-Licker, Mewling, Lop-Sided, Fantods (Diarrhea), Poxy, Maggot-Ridden, Golly-Wobbles (Queasy Stomach), Puling, Onion-Eyed, Gudgeon (Easy Victim), Puking, Pox-Ridden, Gutter-Snipe, Putrid, Rum-Fogged, Harlot, Rank, Scum-Spewing, Jackanapes (Idiot), Recreant (Cowardly), Sheep-Shagging, Lickspittle (Sycophant), Roguish, Squid-Sucking, Maggot-Meat, Ruttish (Horny), Wall-Eyed, Miscreant, Saucy, Whey-Face, Moldwarp (Spy), Scurrilous, Nancy Boy (Fop), Scurvy, Plague Rat, Slimy, Poltroon (Coward), Slovenly, Poof Or Poofter (Effeminate Man), Tarry, Pillock, Thieving, Puttock (Buzzard), Toadying., Sea-Cow, Tottering, Sea-Dog, Vile, Sea-Slug, Villainous, Sea-Snake, Vomitous, Slattern (Loose Woman), Weasely, Strumpet (Harlot), Weedy, Tosspot (Drunkard), Yeasty (Trifling), Varlot, Vassal (Subservient Person), Whore

See what I mean?

Subject: RE: help looking for cowboy songs
From: Stewie
Date: 10 Aug 00 - 01:55 AM

I unreservedly recommend Slim Critchlow's 'Cowboy Songs' on Arhoolie. It is a delight from start to finish.

Click Here

--Stewie.

Subject: RE: help looking for cowboy songs
From: JedMarum
Date: 10 Aug 00 - 08:57 AM

I found a great book by Will McCain Clauson called Old-Time Cowboy Songbook. It is available at amazon.com, but you may be able to find it among the bargain books at your local Borders or Barnes and Noble. Great Book!

Subject: RE: help looking for cowboy songs
From: SINSULL
Date: 10 Aug 00 - 01:36 PM

Take a look at the Mudcat Thread "Songs from TV westerns". There's all sorts of stuff there.