The Timeless Appeal of Cowboy Laments, Lullabies and Yodels
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SingingThe timeless appeal of cowboy laments, lullabies and yodels. intheSaddleBy D OUGLAS B. GREEN, MA’71 hen studying the popular portrayal of the for periods of time in particular circum- cowboy, it is fascinating to reflect how few of these stances, a tradition of song by or about those men and their work develops. Sailors, log- men are shown actually tending cattle. Folklorist J. gers, railroad workers, boatmen, miners and Frank Dobie observed that Owen Wister’s The Vir- others all have musical traditions. ginian is “the classic cowboy novel without cows,”and Wister’s book is far As for cowboys, even witnesses who were there in the days before singing became a Wfrom alone in this peculiarity. In films this fantasy, upon the lowly figure of the cowboy. profession on record and radio and film can’t contradiction is exaggerated to the extreme. So the young, displaced skilled laborers seem to agree. Journalist John Baumann The cowboy hero is often a lawman or ranger, who were the real cowboys have taken on a wrote for the Fortnightly Review of April 1, openly or undercover; he may be a cattleman huge psychic and cultural load. They have 1887:“The younger hands are whiling away or ranch foreman; he may be a drifter, a doc- become, through the imaginative eyes of writ- the time ‘whittling’ and ‘plug chawing,’drawl- tor, or a two-fisted newspaperman—but sel- ers and singers and songwriters and film- ing out yarns of love and sport and singing dom is he portrayed as a bottom-level makers, the repository of our national dreams, ribald songs, until someone strikes up the workaday cowpoke. In a significant number transmogrified into heroes and peacemak- favorite wail ‘Oh bury me not on the lone of the singing-cowboy films, he is a radio, ers. In addition, they carry the weight of nos- prairie, Where the coyotes howl and the wind stage, or film performer, righting wrongs talgia, for they represent for us the wilderness blows free.’” with fists and guns between performances. we will never know, an era we can never expe- Harry Stephens, claiming authorship of What he is, really, is a professional hero, with rience, yet one that we seem to feel is price- “The Night Herding Song,”told John Lomax: no need to perform such messy chores as less beyond measure. All these conflicting “Well, we always got night-herd years ago when dehorning or branding. and complementary impulses are inherent they didn’t have so many fences and corrals, Plainly, that spirit of independence, of in western music as well. This is why the cow- and that was the biggest job for the cowboy. owing nothing to any person, of living up to boy, whose numbers have always been few, We generally have a two-hour shift, and two a personal code, is what generations have val- has come to mean so much to us, why the to four men on a shift according to the size of ued in this western hero, investing him with image and sound of his music—no matter the herd. And when I made up this song, why, properties real cowboys may or may not have how far parted from reality—has continued we always had so many different squawks and possessed. This is why the cowboy hero is to fascinate us and move us for more than a yells and hollers a-trying to keep the cattle frequently a man from nowhere; why it is century and a quarter. quiet, I thought I might as well have a kind of convenient to have him come to town or Popular mythology has cowboys croon- a song to it.”The highly regarded Texas folk- ranch with no past, no baggage, no ties; why ing soft lullabies and yodels to the cattle on lorist and historian J. Frank Dobie remarked it is simple for him, in these morality plays, the open ranges to pacify jittery longhorns, that “no human sound that I have ever heard to right wrongs and clear up injustice with singing old familiar songs and hymns from approaches in eeriness or in soothing melody quick decisions, quick draws, quick fists, and back home, or creating new songs or new that indescribable whistle of the cowboy,”while occasionally a song or two. In an increasingly verses to existing songs in the long, dark hours stockman Joseph McCoy wrote in 1874 that industrial and bureaucratic age, the appeal of the night. Although this image has long he had “many times sat upon the fence of a of a lone figure answering only to his own been highly romanticized, the association of shipping yard and sang to an enclosed herd conscience is strong indeed, and popular cul- music and the cowboy is not purely fictional. whilst a train would be rushing by. And it is COUNTRY MUSIC HALL OF FAME COLLECTIONS ture has settled this longing, this need, this Anywhere working men have been isolated surprising how quiet the herd will be so long 44 Fall 2002 V anderbilt Magazine 45 as they can hear the human voice. … Singing stampeded in grand shape. … I finally about gathered together for long periods of isola- turn of the 20th century. As early as 1901 the hymns to Texas steers is the peculiar forte of three o’clock got them stopped and after tion and boredom, any man who could come Journal of American Folklore published the a genuine cowboy, but the spirit of true piety singing a few ‘lullaby’ songs they all lay down up with the slightest fragment of enter- lyrics to “Oh Bury Me Not on the Lone Prairie,” does not abound in the sentiment.” and went to snoring.”Later he describes a tainment besides poker or some other card and in 1909 it published “Songs of the West- Other contemporary accounts point to typical night on the trail:“The nights would game was providing welcome relief from the ern Cowboy,”collected by G.F.Will in North “Sam Bass” or “Red River Valley” as songs be divided up into four equal parts—one endless hours not actively spent at work. In Dakota. The most significant publication frequently sung by cowboys. J. Frank Dobie man ‘on’ at a time, unless storming, tormented lonely bunkhouses, in line camps and at trail was N. Howard (Jack) Thorp’s booklet Songs agreed:“Of course not all the cowboys on all with mosquitoes, or something of the kind, sides, some of the more creative of the band of the Cowboy, which appeared in 1908, fol- days sang. Many a waddie could no more when every one except the cook would have of men loosely defined as cowboys doubt- lowed in 1910 by John Avery Lomax’s land- carry a tune than he could carry a buffalo to be ‘out’ singing to them.” less dreamed up the poems that, when put mark Cowboy Songs and Other Frontier Ballads, bull. Often all hands were too busy fighting On the other hand, Jack Thorp, the first to old familiar melodies, became cowboy and in 1919 by his Songs of the Cattle Trail and cussin’ them dad-blamed cattle to sing. collector and one of the first composers of songs. Thus D.J. O’Malley’s 1893 poem “After and Cow Camp. Thorp was an amateur col- But in general the cowboys sang.”Ramon cowboy songs, proclaimed bluntly:“It is gen- the Roundup”—initially printed in the Stock lector (and writer as well; he “collected” his Adams recalled:“Away back at the beginnin’ erally thought that cowboys did a lot of singing Grower’s Journal—was popularized by cow- own “Little Joe the Wrangler”), while Lomax of the cow business, it didn’t take the cow- around the herd at night to quiet them on pokes who learned the verses and set the lyrics was a trained academic who borrowed heav- man long to savvy that the human voice gave the bed ground. I have been asked about this, to two very different melodies: the jaunty ily from Thorp. Lomax became a tireless cattle confidence, and kept ’em from junin’ and I’ll say that I have stood my share of night popular song “Little Old Log Cabin in the advocate for folk music in general, and cow- around. … The practice got to be so com- watches in 50 years, and I seldom heard singing Lane” and the tender waltz “After the Ball.” boy songs in particular, throughout his long mon that night herdin’ was spoken of as ‘sin- of any kind.” Only three decades later, having finally evolved life. Charles Siringo published a companion gin’ to ’em.’” And E.C. Abbott (Teddy Blue) Regardless of how much singing was done a tune of its own, this plaintive tale became volume to his A Lone Star Cowboy in Santa painted the legend in detail in his landmark on night guard, it is a fairly safe bet that in the first recorded cowboy music hit, in Carl Fe in 1919 called The Song Companion of a book, We Pointed Them North: the days before radio, anytime men were T. Sprague’s 1925 version on Victor Records Lone Star Cowboy, and Charles Finger pub- AUTHOR’S COLLECTION One reason I believe there was so many under its now much more commonly lished Sailor Chanteys and Cowboy Songs in songs about cowboys was the known title,“When the Work’s All Done 1923 with a small Kansas publisher; it was custom we had of singing to the This Fall.” expanded and the sailor chanteys dropped cattle on night herd.