Authorship and Nostalgia in Contemporary Cowboy Repertoire

History of Cowboy Song

The history of cowboy song is inextricably tied to cowboy poetry. The extant catalogue of poems, initially passed on orally until written collections emerged in the early 20th century, far outweighs its musical counterpart. The combination of extended periods of free time or solitude while working, an occupation that lent itself to dangerous encounters and wild tales, and an interest in literature found among many cowboy poets led to the creation of long narrative poems, often told from a personal point of view. Those who could sing would lift well-known folk and popular melodies for composition purposes, setting their poetic texts to easily (or already) memorized tunes. The difference between cowboy song and poetry seems relatively straightforward: In the words of poet-singer Dale Girdner, “Them that could sing usually did, and them that couldn’t carry no kinda tune would usually just say the verses” (Seemann, 2000, p. 135).

By the time Jack Thorp and John Lomax published their collections of cowboy songs in 1908 and 1910, respectively, the repertoire had grown considerably, spread among working cowboys through the Western United States and upward through Canada. This was a mixed-race group; as such, musical traditions brought forth by Mexican, African American, and Aboriginal cowboys were folded into the cowboy song sound, as were emerging popular and minstrel songs. Cowboy music nevertheless has some distinct features. Initially, it was a solitary music, often cited as one of the principal ways in which to calm skittish cattle from unexpected sounds in the night, so was mostly performed a cappella. When instruments were incorporated, singers used harmonicas, Jew’s harps, and the occasional fiddle, but rarely a guitar, as it was an unwieldy instrument for long periods of travel (Seemann, 2000, p. 140). The voice is pleasant, often in a higher register with a clear timbre singing long, dense sets of lyrics. Later manifestations of the music see the more obvious influence of African American music (yodeling, work songs, spirituals), Mexican music (mariachi, corridos, and guitar-accompanied singing), and popular song (e.g., the swing fad that stirred the creation of Western swing, the loping beat added by drums and fuller bands, and crooners like Frank Sinatra; Green, 2002, pp. 17-18; Seemann, 2000, p. 140; Stanley, 2000, pp. 10-11). The guitar was not a fixture in Western song until the singing cowboy image of 1940s Western films became popular; similarly banjos, fiddles, and other accompanying instruments are more likely found in the popular incarnations of Western recordings around the same time.

In terms of subject matter, cowboy songs focus primarily on work, whether from a humorous or matter-of-fact perspective, which has led to poems and songs that address techniques, appropriate dress, and preferences in gear. Animals form the basis for a large number of songs, obviously mostly cattle and horses, as do their cunning and anthropomorphic behaviors. The cowboy’s value system is foundational to many songs, with texts that glorify the virtues of bravery, loyalty, honor, and steadfastness. The raucous social life of the cowboy and his romantic pursuits are other common topics, and finally, nature is treated with the same kind of reverence as animals in both song and poetry (Stanley, 2000, pp. 11-12). As Green (2002) notes,

So the young, displaced skilled labourers who were the real cowboys have taken on a huge psychic and cultural load . . . they carry the weight of nostalgia, for they represent for us the wilderness we will never know, an era we can never experience, yet one that we seem to feel is priceless beyond measure. (p. 13)

The theme of nature rarely changes. Although contemporary issues related to environmental damage or politics surface, cowboy songs continue to hinge on a sentimental yearning for the “old ways” of doing the work, or a time when the land was untouched by industry and development. A clear example of this is in Charles Badger Clark Jr.’s poem, The Plainsmen, from 1919, matched in sentiment by Corb Lund’s 2007 song, “Especially a Paint”:

When the last free trail is a prim, fenced lane

And our graves grow weeds through forgetful Mays,

Richer and statelier then you’ll reign,

Mother of men whom the world will praise

And your sons will love you and sigh for you,

Labour and battle and die for you,

But never the fondest will understand

The way we have loved you, young, young land

  The Plainsmen (1919)

  —Charles Badger Clark, Jr.

  From Saffel (2001)

I was raised with the West around

Enough to hum the tune

But I never knew the place like the old boys did

Chinooked and mountain-viewed

’Cause this was all a cathedral then

And the cowboys, they all knew

That you can’t keep a loop on paradise

She disappeared so soon

  © 2007 “Especially a Paint”

  From Horse Soldier Horse Soldier

  Written by Corb Lund

  Used by permission from author

Why the preoccupation with the land? An obvious answer is the nature of the cowboy’s work. Conducted alone or in small groups, the work entailed traversing large swaths of land, often places that were undeveloped and difficult to cross. Moreover, this land, stretching from the plains of Texas northward through states like Colorado, Wyoming, and Montana, and on to Alberta, is noted for stretches that are largely uninhabited and visually spectacular. Whether featuring a backdrop of mountains, or great spreads of flat prairie under a big sky, the landscape was both intimidating and inspirational.

The Land in Cowboy Song

Cultural geographers regard landscape as something of the mind; it is imagined. R Douglas Francis (2004), paraphrasing Simon Schama, calls landscape a mental construct of the world of nature, first a work of the mind “‘before it can ever be a repose for the senses’” (pp. 29-30). Francis explores early discourse on the Western Canadian landscape to show how various conceptions of it shaped regional identities. In one sense, there existed an environmental determinism: A region’s physical environment created a distinct social environment (Francis, 2004, p. 33). The harsh climate and long distances of the prairies gave birth to the hardy pioneer, esteemed for his ability to withstand the most difficult of circumstances with vigor and optimism. In another sense, the West was viewed as a land of abundance, generating exhaustion among the inhabitants trying to tame it. As such, it shaped the prairie dweller negatively, causing feelings of alienation and creating a cold, unyielding character (Francis, 2004, p. 35). Meanwhile, cowboy authors such as Andy Russell (1993) underpin their tales with vivid descriptions of the land’s wildness; wrapped up in these stories is a yearning for times when private property and barbed wire did not impede the cowboy’s movement, as well as a deep connection between the land and the animals these men were trying to control. The landscape, however conceived, is a natural framework for Western rhetoric and cowboy culture. As spaces began to fill in, anxiety followed. Ian Tyson suggested to me in conversation that the filling up of the West was something that troubled him, considering the wide open spaces were fundamental to the cowboy’s reinvention of himself (I. Tyson, personal communication, August 7, 2013). This sentiment has been exacerbated in recent years by the encroachment of industry on the Western landscape. For example, landowners only retain surface rights to their properties, allowing oil companies to drill in exploration, stirring ever more anxious responses to the destruction of a once undeveloped area (B. Turnbull, personal communication, 2013). Recent literature addressing music and place has reversed the trend of assuming a unidirectional impact of landscape on music and identity, and instead suggests that music constructs a place, creating an identifiable soundscape (Cohen, 1998; Connell & Gibson, 2003; Doyle, 2005; Feld & Basso, 1996; Leyshon, Matless, & Revill, 1998; Swiss, Sloop, & Herman, 1997; Wrazen, 2007). A sonic environment does as much to shape perceptions of place as any other marker. Cowboy music does much to influence the sound of the Western landscape; in what Francis terms “mythic regionalism,” cultural workers are charged with the task of shaping identity. In fact, this sort of identity creation works backward, wherein geographers, historians, artists, and writers make up what it means to be Western in the mind before that is acted out (Francis, 2004, pp. 37-38).

For the Western writer, Eli Mandel (1977) suggests, the West is a state of mind that

has a good deal to do with a tension between place and culture, a doubleness or duplicity, that makes the writer a man not so much in place, as out of place and so endlessly trying to get back, to find his way home, to return, to write himself into existence, writing west. (p. 28)

An artist like Ian Tyson is trapped within that cycle of being out of place and trying to get back. He is negotiating with an audience receptive to his original songs and eager for his enactment of Western identity. Meanwhile, he situates himself among Western writers of the past, showing their version of a past West through his intertextual references to other Western artists like Will James or Charlie Russell, or through his presentation of a past cowboy song repertoire. His integration of classic cowboy songs illustrates the ongoing dynamism of the tradition. Despite its emphasis on individual experience and originality, both singers and audiences are familiar with a canon of songs dating back to the 19th century, many of them now catalogued by folklorists.

Repertoire

The cowboy genre is a rather forgiving one; it is a flexible tradition that tends to absorb the sounds of its surroundings. Its movement through diverse regions of the American west and its current status as part of a broader roots music genre has meant that common conceptions of how it sounds vary widely. As such, events like the National Cowboy Poetry Gathering in Elko, Nevada, feature a range of styles that fall under the broad umbrella of cowboy music. The impetus for early collection of cowboy songs, however, seemed to come from the view that they were folksongs endangered by two things: the rise of recorded popular music and the disappearance of cattle driving as a viable occupation. This view resulted in rapid documentation largely conducted by early folklorists like John Lomax who were anxious to capture the culture of the Old West before it vanished. And while early cowboy song collections no doubt contributed to the genre’s longevity and served as a foundational canon when Western music reached a peak in the 1940s and 1950s, these collections also seem to have had the effect of institutionalizing songs that naturally changed through oral transmission processes, exemplifying the larger problem of mythologizing the West.

I examined six volumes of cowboy song and poetry for this project: Jack Thorp’s (1908/1921) Songs of the Cowboys; John Lomax’s (1910/1938) Cowboy Songs and Other Frontier Ballads; Hugo Frey’s (1936) American Cowboy Songs; Glenn Ohrlin’s (1973) The Hell-Bound Train: A Cowboy Songbook; Katie Lee’s (1976) Ten Thousand Goddam Cattle: A History of the American Cowboy in Song, Story, and Verse; and Julie Saffel’s (2001) Cowboy Poetry. I was curious about the extent to which singers like Tyson draw on the material found in these anthologies: How much has survived through generational transmission, and for whom is this material still meaningful? Of the songs that continue to be performed, how many center around the hope for recovery of a lost West, and its associated culture, or lament its changing landscape? Because these anthologies are among the few resources available to contemporary cowboy singers, I was also curious as to whether they held any relevance for performers like Tyson, or those of a younger generation, or whether they were simply documents of generations past, mainly of interest to folklorists. Most of these anthologies include transcriptions of song melodies, some contain chord progressions, and all feature at least the most commonly sung verses (some of these songs are hundreds of verses long, so not all appear in print). All editors, with the exception of Frey and Saffel, describe the process of finding or collecting the songs. ²

There was less crossover than I had anticipated. Of the 675 songs that appear in the six anthologies, 88 of them appear at least twice, if not three or four times. The song that appears with the most frequency is “The Cowboy’s Lament” (or “The Streets of Laredo”), in all of the anthologies with the exception of Ohrlin’s (although he includes songs that use some of the same lyrics). Well-known cowboy songs such as “The Old Chisholm Trail,” “Utah Carroll,” and “Windy Bill” appear in most of the anthologies, whereas space, time, or other constraints (such as available performers/informants) kept the purview of most collections somewhat limited. By far, the most comprehensive collection is Lomax’s; others such as Thorp’s feature songs written by the collector while still others like Lee’s include parodies and new editions. Here, the line between the folk and commercial blurs: Thorp clearly has both folkloristic and entrepreneurial aims in including some of his own songs; many cowboy singers now cite Thorp’s book as the beginning of the commercialization—and canonization—of cowboy song (K. Grombacher, personal communication, 2013), not only because it features his own works but also those of other named songwriters.

Generally, melody seems to be a negotiable element of cowboy songs. An example is “When the Work’s All Done This Fall”: It was initially often set to the tune of “After the Ball” until 1925, when singer Carl T. Sprague recorded the version that is now known. Classics such as Curley Fletcher’s “Strawberry Roan” from 1915 (1917) has a melody that remains relatively unchanged, though this may be a function of the time it was written, when conscious recording was well underway and the commercial potential of the music was being recognized. The doctoring of lyrics by scholars like Lomax has been well-documented, particularly in relation to the songs that had first appeared in Thorp’s collection; these collections need to be regarded, like most folksongs, as representing a moment in time rather than as urtext versions of an entrenched tradition.

Singers like Ian Tyson as a result enjoy a fair amount of flexibility in their approach to older cowboy material. I am cautious of using the word “traditional” here, given that many of these songs have known authors; nevertheless, the length of time that they have been part of the repertoire allows them to be recognized as traditional at some level.

Probably the best-known Western song ambassador, Canadian songwriter Ian Tyson has recorded 11 albums of cowboy songs since 1973. Although Tyson is revered for his songwriting skills, most notably in the Canadian folk classic “Four Strong Winds,” he does cover songs from the cowboy repertoire, especially on two of these early albums, Old Corrals and Sagebrush and Ian Tyson (Tyson, Kellogg, Harrow, MacGonigill, 1983). ³ Cox (2002) suggests that Tyson’s songs “document and celebrate, from within, a judiciously detailed, profoundly resonant, demandingly difficult and ironically beloved culture . . . [and its] never-certain survival” (p. 281). Evidence of the allowance for experimentation and a personal imprint on the repertoire is heard in his covers of three songs: “Windy Bill,” “Whoopee Ti Yi Yo,” and “Goodbye Old Paint.”

In “Windy Bill,” a song about a young roper who is challenged to take on a notoriously rough steer, Tyson’s version, though lyrically consistent, does not retain many similarities to the melodies transcribed in the anthologies, suggesting that Tyson did not turn to the collections in order to learn the songs, or that perhaps tunes written in these anthologies are merely instances of many interpretive possibilities. This song appears in three anthologies, Lomax, Frey, and Ohrlin; each version has a different melody, but all three have a similar rhythm, which Tyson adheres to relatively faithfully. The song appears on Harry Jackson’s album, The Cowboy: His Songs, Ballads and Brag Talk, recorded for Folkways Records in 1959. While Jackson sings this and most of the songs a cappella, his melody is clearly the inspiration for Tyson’s rendition, who cites Jackson’s work as foundational to his exploration of these songs (I. Tyson, personal communication, August 7, 2013). Jackson draws out his lyric lines and plays with tempo as he is not beholden to a backing band keeping time, but otherwise is playing original to Tyson’s cover in the pitch and phrasing of the vocal melody’s delivery. Tyson occasionally “unsings” portions of the melody, adopting a somewhat spoken delivery of the text, which also matches Jackson’s tendency toward improvising spoken sections. It doesn’t appear that either performer consulted the transcriptions contained in the anthologies for these renditions.

Similarly, “Whoopee Ti Yi Yo, Git Along, Little Dogies” is liberally interpreted by Tyson. Here, he disregards some of the verses documented by Lomax and others, keeping the central thread of the narrative in a shorter, commercially friendly format. Frey’s and Lomax’s versions also differ in melody, with Frey’s less static than Lomax’s; they too follow a similar rhythm and general melodic contour, which Tyson retains for his performance. That static approach to the rhythm is mirrored in Peter La Farge’s (1963) recording of “Whoopee Ti Yi Yo” for his album, Peter La Farge Sings of the Cowboys: Cowboy, Ranch and Rodeo Songs, and Cattle Calls, also on Folkways. La Farge’s vocal melody, while very similar in pitch to Tyson’s, adheres strongly to the beat, with few dotted rhythms, and only slight melodic decorations appearing in the chorus. Conversely, Tyson is dedicated to ornamentation, using the faster tempo and subject matter as reasons to be more playful in his singing. He roots the melody’s swung rhythm in the Western swing arrangement played by the band, drawing notes long past their expected duration. In the chorus, he is especially experimental, adding small glissandi to the ends of phrases, exploiting vibrato in certain closing notes, and growling.

“Goodbye Old Paint” is treated even more freely by Tyson, who recorded the song under the title “Leavin’ Cheyenne.” The ends of the verses that are documented in Lomax are used to start Tyson’s strophes, which are finished by the beginnings of others. Again, the melodies differ markedly between his version and those presented in Frey and Lomax, with the exception of the repeated closing phrase, but the basic rhythm remains the same. This song was recorded as “I Ride an Old Paint” by both La Farge and Jackson, whose melodies are similar to Tyson’s. Tyson seems to have combined this song with “Goodbye Old Paint” to make “Leavin’ Cheyenne.” “Goodbye Old Paint” is the source for his chorus:

Goodbye old paint

I’m leavin’ Cheyenne

Goodbye old paint

I’m leavin’ Cheyenne

Leavin’ Cheyenne, going to Montana

Goodbye old paint

I’m leavin’ Cheyenne

  1983 “Leavin’ Cheyenne”

  Old Corrals and Sagebrush

  Ian Tyson

Whereas he keeps the verses sung by La Farge and Jackson in “I Ride an Old Paint,” as well as the vocal melody, for the verses of “Leavin’ Cheyenne,” Tyson is acting as both songwriter and folksinger here: In appropriating the verses to create his own mashup, as it were, he acts as a composer of sorts; nevertheless, he is exhibiting the common behavior of a folk performer in adapting the music of an oral tradition for his own purposes, with little regard for how the song is “supposed” to be performed. Miller (2001) notes that this sort of experimentation frustrated collectors like Lomax, who responded to an informant in 1911 with the following:

I am after the untutored and unedited expressions of the original plainsmen. I am frank to confess that what you send me savors of the conventional popular song. Won’t you tell me just what you have written yourself and what you have picked up on the plains? (p. 3)

Tyson learned “Windy Bill” and other cowboy songs from a variety of sources, including his father (who worked as a cowboy when he came to Alberta from the United Kingdom), La Farge, who he knew, and the recordings of Harry Jackson (Tyson, Kellogg, Harrow, MacGonigill 1983; I. Tyson, personal communication, August 7, 2013). The recording process for Old Corrals and Sagebrush, while somewhat “grassroots,” injected the album with a certain authenticity: Coyote howls were recorded “by stretching extension cords from the barn out to the field to a reel-to-reel tape recorder and a microphone” (N. MacGonigill, personal communication, August 7, 2013), and engineer Richard Harrow laid in the mud to capture pounding horses’ hooves as they rode by. The esthetic was extended to all aspects of the album’s package: Jay Dusard was hired to photograph the band against the backdrop of Tyson’s ranch and to write the liner notes; Tyson himself is pictured on the cover sitting atop his horse, Smoky, at the Diamond V’s (neighboring ranch) weigh scales. Yet, the creators regard the album as “magical,” all elements coming together somewhat serendipitously—and its reception was unexpected, given the country music climate at the time, which favored a sort of soft-shell, pop-oriented sound heard on films like Urban Cowboy (N. MacGonigill and I. Tyson, personal communication, August 7, 2013). In recording the old cowboy songs, Tyson played into the “private and public longings shared by many northeastern white intellectuals” who wished for an “authentic national culture that existed outside of the morally compromised world of the market” (Miller, 2001, p. 3), and he may have awoken a buried nostalgia for a West many thought had disappeared.

Nostalgia and Cowboy Song

“How can one be homesick for a home that one never had?” asks Svetlana Boym (2001, p. xiii). Fantasizing about another place or time characterizes the mind-set behind discourse on the West. But the nostalgia that drives these fantasies is actually, as defined by Boym, “a longing for a home that no longer exists or has never existed. Nostalgia is a sentiment of loss and displacement, but it is also a romance with one’s own fantasy” (Boym, 2001, p. xiii). Nostalgia, regardless of one’s social background, physical location, or personal history, has moved from being thought of as a physical disease (Boym; Lowenthal) to a persistent trope in contemporary popular culture. In fact, it is rare to encounter recollections of bygone eras without a sense of loss or sadness creeping in. Historical reconstructions and reminiscences of past years, whether in the form of collective or personal experience, are framed within a yearning for that which is no longer. But nostalgia often blurs reality and fantasy, particularly when it comes to remembering places, as Boym notes, “The danger of nostalgia is that it tends to confuse the actual home and the imaginary one” (xvi). Lowenthal (1985) agrees: “nostalgia is memory with the pain removed” (p. 8), enabling a descent into idealized visions of the past. Nevertheless, nostalgia connects disparate groups and individuals across temporal and spatial distance, and adds emotional weight to artistic expression.

Because nostalgia has been most prevalent in the ages of modernity and post-modernity, its object is not just earlier years, but places one is not currently experiencing. This “sideways” longing is fostered by increased global travel and the virtual accessibility of other places through technological means. Boym (2001) concurs:

Nostalgia is . . . a result of a new understanding of time and space that made the division into ‘local’ and ‘universal’ possible . . . [it is] about the relationship between individual biography and the biography of groups or nations, between personal and collective memory. (p. xvi)

Nostalgia’s earlier manifestations in immigrants far from their homelands and soldiers at war, while considered physical ailments, were inextricably linked to place-specific markers such as food and art, the most prevalent of these being music. The sounds of one’s childhood home, the ingrained melodies and timbres of indigenous music, are often considered to be the initial stimulant for nostalgic feeling (Lowenthal, 1985, p. 10).

What, then, is the function of nostalgia? The most obvious purpose is its facilitation of pain-free recollection, but it has wider implications and uses. For Lowenthal, who examines the benefits and risks of revisiting the past in great detail, nostalgia provides comfort in an uncomfortable present, offering relief through the lens of contemporary ignorance. Concern for the past helps to create a communal identity and ensure continuity with previous generations (Lowenthal, 1985, p. xvi).

Nostalgia is thus crucial to a region such as Western Canada, where long-term migration to the area, beginning in the late 19th century and continuing until today, has resulted in a population boom and a fracturing of a once (supposedly) monolithic regional identity. Add to that the severe winter of 1886-1887, falling cattle prices, and poor range management; meanwhile, immigrants were rapidly settling the plains and starting up farms on small parcels of land offered by the government (Seiler & Seiler, 2004, p. 158), and the conditions were perfect for lamenting modernization and change. Cultural offerings that remind audiences of “how things used to be,” even when those audiences never experienced such an era, provide escape from contemporary reality. The Calgary Stampede serves the same purpose, as a basis for a regional identity that marked Western Canadians as separate from their Eastern, or U.S., counterparts. Seiler and Seiler note that the annual exhibition, rodeo, and fair is based in the popular myth of the West, which featured the region as both a hostile, barbaric land and a place of opportunity (Seiler & Seiler, 1998, p. 57). Guy Weadick, the founder of the Stampede, went to Calgary as part of a Wild West show in 1905, and returned in 1908 to propose a contest-based, cowboy-driven show for the city. Rejected for wallowing in the past and ignoring the present dominance of agriculture in the province, Weadick persisted until the show was established in 1912. The Victoria Park fairgrounds (the site of the Stampede to this day) were consistently crowded with spectators, prompting the return of the show in 1919 after the First World War, and again in 1923 to continue uninterrupted until today (Seiler & Seiler, 1998, pp. 60-61).

Yet, the Stampede has been recognized by many scholars (Foran, 2008; Pannekoek, 2008; Seiler & Seiler, 1998, 2004; Wetherell, 2008; also see Turnbull, 2009a, 2009b) as a cultural event that embodies the contradictory narratives of progress and tradition in the West. The efforts to preserve and showcase the past history of Alberta alongside a celebration of present progress were evident right from the start, as is clear in the Calgary Herald’s reporting on the first Stampede: “The past and present were plainly shown” (Baillargeon, 1995, p. 558). The cowboy and his conquering of the Western frontier became rich symbols of Western identity and heritage for Alberta’s inhabitants, regardless of their lack of personal connection to such a history, any historical inaccuracy present in this narrative, or the ranching industry’s limited influence on the economic and social development of the province.

Those who see the Stampede as an event during which fun and nostalgia mix freely do not recognize or care about myth. Similarly, those who appreciate myth, who see it as an agent for collective identification . . . also have no difficulty accepting and participating in the Stampede cornucopia. Oppositely, it is the regenerating and exploitative capacity of this myth that draws the intense and largely recent criticism of the Stampede. Many cringe at its distortion of history . . . These critics see the Stampede as a giant hoax and an anachronism in an urban environment. (Foran, 2008, p. x)

The Stampede of 1923, when it began its uninterrupted run until today, was driven by nostalgia for past times, a common reaction throughout North America and Europe at the time to the forces of modernity (Wetherell, 2008, p. 35). Simultaneous to this was the drive to formulate nationally identified works of art and cultural practices, seen particularly in the celebration of frontier expansion in the United States. Wetherell (2008) notes that “Stampedes of the interwar years refined this nostalgia into a pursuit of identity through a critique of modernity, perhaps expressing a search for authenticity and certainty in a time of rapid social and technological change” (p. 35).

A similar tension is embodied by the cowboy genre. Now considered part of a larger roots music category, cowboy songwriters must carefully balance the contemporary music industry’s valorization of originality against adherence to a well-established Western canon. Moreover, they are singing about a disappearing occupation and way of life, leaving the songs susceptible to being regarded as quaint commentaries. How songwriters go forward with the weight of these expectations will determine the genre’s fate. Contemporary cowboy singers, perhaps in deference to their adopted personae, are pragmatic about nostalgia for the past West. Western Canadian singer Corb Lund notes,

The wide open spaces are closing in and [it’s awful] for sure . . . but that’s what it is. Time marches on. I’m sure every changing culture for the last few thousand years has had people lamenting the changes, [but I’m] not sure what you can do about it. (C. Lund, personal communication, July 19, 2013)

Cox (2002) suggests that while Tyson often succumbs to nostalgia, “to present cowboy culture through wistful filters of longing . . . is antithetical to his artistic purpose,” usually, Tyson insists on a “present-tense reality of cowboy life” (p. 283). The contradictory impulses of the songwriter and the folklorist meet in cowboy repertoire; possibly their irreconcilable differences contribute to keeping the genre dynamic. Lomax may have been driven by the fear that an oral tradition such as this was dying as its practitioners found other occupations, yet 70 years later, new folklorists were still desperately collecting songs and freezing their versions in anthologies. Meanwhile, most cowboy singers ignored this material and wrote their own songs; if they recorded the “classics,” they likely learned them from another singer. Tyson notes that he learned them “purely in the traditional way,” some from his father, and acknowledges Jackson and La Farge as his sources (I. Tyson, personal communication, August 7, 2013). Younger cowboy singers such as Corb Lund found songs through Tyson and Marty Robbins recordings, his grandfather, and other old records (C. Lund, personal communication, July 19, 2013). While Lund knows a fair amount of the traditional cowboy repertoire well, he largely avoids it in performance. He occasionally sings “The Strawberry Roan” and has incorporated “Jack O’ Diamonds” into songs on both albums and concerts. He tends more toward original songwriting (as does Tyson on albums after Old Corrals), using the narratives common to the cowboy repertoire to inform songs in that vein. However, much in the way Tyson favors musical experimentation, exploring jazz harmonies and popular song forms, Lund pushes at the boundaries of traditional folk song, writing pieces that ignore conventions of structure (e.g., the absence of a chorus in “Priceless Antique Pistol Shoots Startled Owner”) or privilege dense lyrics over melodic beauty (“All I Wanna Do is Play Cards”). Such an approach might have led collectors like Lomax to dismiss Tyson and Lund as authentic cowboy singers; he “identified the cowboy by his isolation and the authenticity of his culture by the absence of modern, commercial music” (Miller, 2001, p. 3). But much like Lomax’s actual informants, who “fought social isolation” by watching larger national cultural trends, collecting comic and sentimental songs, and incorporating that material into their own collections alongside original compositions about the range, today’s cowboy singers know they cannot build an audience by simply regurgitating a traditional repertoire that has little meaning for most listeners (Miller, 2001, p. 3).

The impulse to collect and preserve is one that confounds Lund:

I hate that kind of stuff [songbooks]. Bookishness kills it for me. And cowboy songbooks are always so “Sears Catalogue-ish” . . . I’m not sure many people performing [cowboy songs] in a meaningful way learned them from Lomax. I suspect they learned them more organically, in which case the songs would still be here with or without Lomax. (C. Lund, personal communication, July 19, 2013)

Conclusion

The cowboy song tradition has always relied on, and acknowledged, its composers. Whether they appear in a collection like Lomax’s as the source of a song he located in his travels, they are given credit for classics, or they are writing contemporary songs and releasing them on solo recordings, songwriters are recognized as the source by practitioners, collectors, and listeners alike. The individual stamp of the songwriter is key to his or her narratives, and it seems this is an even less important factor than having actually done the work of the cowboy. Cowboy music sits somewhere between country and folk in this respect. The real experience of a rural background and all that it entails is valorized as true authenticity in country. In contrast, folksingers encounter fewer such expectations, as demonstrated, say, in the disaster songs researched by Sparling (2013) and McDonald (2013) that are composed by artists like Sarah Harmer and James Keelaghan. This is an intriguing aspect of cowboy music, given its very specific and obscure language, and reliance on narratives that are unlikely encountered by the average non-cowboy.

I argue, then, that cowboy music sits somewhere at an intersection between folk, commercial, and art music, acknowledging that these categories are obviously not mutually exclusive, especially in the contemporary music industry. As a folk music, it is, though not always, written by those who practice the work they sing about; its repertoire spans a long period that has seen moments of commercialization, and survived beyond those periods of popularity; it has, to some extent, been passed down orally; it is collected by both professional folklorists and practitioners; it borrows melodies from other songs; its texts and musical content are subject to alteration depending on context; and reusing material is a frequent practice. As a commercial music, a very specific image accompanies cowboy music’s increase in popularity; newly composed songs borrow largely from popular music and current trends rather than the original repertoire; it is fused with other genres; and much of the original content is lost to mass marketing interests (stories of intrigue, danger, the “heroic” cowboy instead of stories about work, for instance).

The cowboy’s position in North American culture is an odd one. Because his image is so pervasive, his presence is mainstream, part of North American consciousness, unquestioned. Individual cultural consumers can find a manifestation of the cowboy that appeals directly to them; if his overt masculinity and cold exterior displease, there are many friendly, unthreatening cowboys to replace him. If the movie cowboy’s heroics require too much suspension of disbelief, one might appreciate the realistic documentation of the cattle driver’s daily chores. He is something of a folk hero, a character all can aspire to, especially because the values that define the West—virtue, individualism, hard work, pragmatism—are embodied in the cowboy. Yet, unlike other folk symbols, the cowboy is one that seems to bridge class differences, perhaps because his image is so available across all forms of popular culture. Ian McKay’s (2009) authoritative work, The Quest of the Folk, begins with a description of a poor East Coast family depicted on an 1890s postcard titled “A Simple Life,” made to sell to tourists eager for tangible markers of the folk experience (pp. xv-xxi). This depiction of a haggard family in fairly horrid conditions appeals to a middle-class desire for a simpler existence devoid of material baggage: “the postcard presents the fisherfolk as the Other, as a spectacle . . . [it fulfills] an intensely individualistic thirst for an existence released from the iron cage of modernity into a world re-enchanted by history, nature, and the mysterious” (McKay, 2009, p. xix).

While the cowboy might appeal to the same impulse, and for many of the same reasons, his allure seems to extend beyond the middle-class hunger for authenticity. This is exacerbated by his literacy, a facility with language that is appreciated by both his peers and an educated audience. He may be, in fact, the quintessential folk hero in that he fulfills the desire for a simpler existence through the language of the middle class. A tacit understanding between the cowboy singer and his audience is facilitated by common ground, be it work, shared culture, or appreciation for that which is no longer available. Perhaps the cowboy and his work embody a contradictory North American desire to retain tradition while ensuring tradition be elastic enough to absorb the inevitable forward motion of modernity. That, combined with the enduring popularity of the cowboy and all of the cultural baggage assumed by him means that cowboy music experiences continued popularity, despite the ebb and flow experienced by other similar folk musics.