The Songs Of The Singing Cowboys

Kicking off the album, Gene Autry starts with one of his well-known classics.

While I prefer Johnny Cash's version nowadays, this is the first version of this song I ever heard.

The only copy of this song the makers of this album were able to find was evidently off an old scratchy (and somewhat warped) record.

In addition to singing songs, the old cowboys evidently played the occasional instrumental as well; this was the only one of those on this album.

Like other singers, cowboys would often make up songs about anything that came to mind; tumbleweeds, for instance.

Unlike most of the songs on this album, I still occasionally hear this old tearjerker by Walter Brennan on a certain local radio station that plays classic country.

A lot of popular singers have done this particular song (I'm particularly partial to the Everly Brothers' version myself), and Gene Autry is one of them. My own father's silvery hair having been black, I always substitute "coal" for "gold" in the refrain.

While I've heard various versions of this song on the radio, for some reason I've never heard this classic version by Tex Ritter there.

Here's another song that's so old, the only copy the album's compilers were able to find was on a scratchy old record. Incidentally, contrary to how they titled it on the album jacket, the possessive word "its" is not supposed to have an apostrophe in it.

Here's another fairly well-known classic. For some reason, the compilers decided to close out side A of the album with this piece.

Another famous Tex Ritter song, this (of course) was the theme song for the 1952 movie of the same name.

This sad tale of a man who made a promise he never intended to keep to a Mexican gal is also the theme song for the 1939 movie of the same name.

This old cowboy song is one of the major reasons why old country & western music is often considered to consist mainly of "drinking and cheating songs" as Alan Jackson and George Strait's rendition of "Murder On Music Row" once put it. This first of two Jimmy Wakely songs on the album certainly qualifies as a song about cheating.

Perhaps to make up for Jimmy Wakely's rather controversial song being the previous track, this more pious and reverent piece by Rex Allen is a song that would fit nicely in a church on Sunday. Curiously, the other versions of this I've heard all omit the fourth verse for some reason.

While I've heard other versions of this song—some by this very same group, in fact—the only place I've ever heard this version (with its awesome introduction) is on this album; which is a pity, since in my opinion, this is the absolute best performance of this song ever recorded.

Maybe because the previous song is a hard act to follow, this next song is one of the most famous old cowboy tunes known to man, with Roy Rogers being one of the most famous old cowboys to have sung it. (Of course, its mention of "the red man" does rather date it to a time when you could casually refer to America's native tribes that way without anyone—including "the red man" in question—so much as raising an eyebrow.)

Speaking of stuff that might raise a few eyebrows these days, this song also rather dates itself with its decidedly naive lack of consideration for the possibility that inhaling the rough equivalent of bus fumes into one's lungs might endanger one's health. Not at all coincidentally, this made an excellent theme for the opening credits of the 2005 movie Thank You For Smoking.

This third somewhat famous Tex Ritter tune about a cowboy who claims his spurs are (somehow) what's keeping him from getting married and settling down with any of his potential love interests helps round out the album.

Jimmy Wakely's second song on this album—also having to do with infidelity, albeit at more of a distance—has one wondering whether the kind of songs he liked to perform ever made his wife a bit doubtful and uneasy about his fidelity to her. (Of course—contrary to what the song says there at the end—if in the alternate reality he envisions, the narrator had arranged for the one who currently has his heart to have his name, chances are she wouldn't have his heart because the one who has his name in this reality would then have his heart instead; the grass is always greener on the other side, you know...)

While most people remember the Commander Cody version of this song, Johnny Bond's version (which closes out this album) predates it by more than a decade.