American
Cowboy Songs
The songs and music of cowboys have held a special place in
the musical heritage of the United States for over 80 years.
Originally sung by cowboys as a way to pass the time and as
entertainment while working the cattle, cowboy songs became
a massively popular subgenre within country music in the 1930s.
As a result, the life of the cowboy came to be one of the major
themes of country music, with the cowboy's freedom, individuality,
and closeness to nature appearing in country songs even today.
The first cowboys in what is now the United States were Mexicans
who settled in New Mexico. The Europeans who settled on the
East Coast mainly came from countries such as England and France
without traditions of ranching and open-range cattle herding.
The Spanish had originated these traditions, so they adopted
them on the plains of the American Southwest. By the 1800s,
American pioneers had picked up the techniques of these early
vaqueros, or Mexican cowboys, and established cowboy and ranching
culture throughout much of the West.
Though documentation is scarce, early cowboys sung songs and
recited poetry as they road and at night around the campfire.
Their songs and poetry told the stories of their lives-hard
work and lonely days. Some cowboy songs still sung today have
their roots in this tradition, such as "Old Paint" and "Old
Dan Tucker." Songs like "Night Herding Song" and "Get Along
Little Doggies" seem to have been sung to drive cattle along
the trail, while other songs may have been sung at night to
calm the cattle. Though riding a horse left little room for
extra possessions, some cowboys carried lightweight instruments
like guitars, banjos, or fiddles to accompany them when the
work was through.
Cowboy songs first appeared in print beginning in the late 1800s,
in popular newspapers, as broadsides, and in songbooks. The
first major collections were compiled in N. H. Thorp's Songs
of the Cowboy, published in 1908, and the prolific folk
music collector John Lomax's Cowboy Songs and Other Frontier
Ballads in 1910. These collections serve as the best record
of the original cowboy songs.
Early Recordings and Hollywood
In the 1920s, improved technology and mass production initiated
a tidal wave of commercial recordings in many genres of music.
Though not as embraced as some other genres, cowboy singers
were recorded as well, including Charles Nabell for Okeh in
1924, Charles T. Sprague (known as the "Original Singing Cowboy")
with "When the Work's all Done this Fall" in 1925, as well as
the Cartwright Brothers, Goebel Reeves (the "Texas Drifter"),
Jules Verne Allen ("Longhorn Luke"), and Harry McClintock.
In 1934 a stampede of interest in cowboy music occurred when
Gene Autry began recording songs and starring in numerous Hollywood
films. His success began a "singing cowboy" love affair from
the American public that lasted the next 30 years through the
rise of television. Along with Roy Rogers, Tex Ritter, Sons
of the Pioneers, and many others, Autry sang songs with cowboy
themes that musically owed much to the Tin Pan Alley and popular
music traditions of the time. Songs like "Back in the Saddle
Again," "Riding Down the Canyon," and "Strawberry Roan" often
had lush orchestrations-a far cry from the simple songs of real
cowboys. Nonetheless, the songs, with their characteristic yodels
and languid melodies, had huge appeal and became the standard
to which most future cowboy songs adhered.
Cowboy Songs Today
The spirit of the cowboy remains a powerful image in popular
country music. However, many artists and groups continue the
tradition of cowboy music in the style of Sons of the Pioneers,
Gene Autry, and the other legends of cowboy music. Michael Martin
Murphey, Don Edwards, Sons of the San Joaquin, and Riders in
the Sky are four of the more well-known and commercially successful
purveyors of cowboy music during the last 20 years. Countless
other musicians around the country, along with children in music
classrooms everywhere, keep cowboy music in its place as a standard
of the American musical tradition.
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