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A poem long before it was a ballad, The Streets of Laredo is more sad than frightful, but the image of a cowboy wrapped in white linen... 'cold as the clay' yet walking the streets of a hot, dusty border town...goose bumps and sleepless nights guaranteed. Don Edwards does the best version I've heard in years, along with some turn of the century postcard imagery of 'The Gateway to Old Mexico'...fascinating and evocative accompaniment:
Carl T. Sprague – not exactly a name you associate with a hit record, but Sprague is the name of the man who recorded the first cowboy/country ‘hit.’ In 1925, the young Texan traveled to Camden, New Jersey to record ‘When the Work’s All Done This Fall.’ The song – remarkably clear and concise for a recording from the first quarter of the 20th century – went on to become a huge hit, selling over 900,000 copies (a recording was considered successful in those days if it sold 5,000).
Another of Sprague’s early hits was ‘The Cowboy,’ recorded in 1927.
Sprague was born in 1895 on a ranch near Houston, Texas. As a young man, he accompanied his uncle, who had worked as a cowboy from the late 1880s, on cattle drives between Texas and the railheads in Kansas. That’s where he first heard the poems, ballads and songs of the drovers who lived their lives on the move, sleeping under the stars and spending hot days coaxing stubborn cattle into line. Sprague imbibed the complete atmosphere of life on the trail (along, perhaps, with a little Texas whiskey), and from it emerged a direct and sincere voice almost perfectly suited to portraying the sometimes grand and sometimes tragic life of the cowboy.
XIT Ranch, Texas. 1903. On day herd with the XIT outfit in Texas. Credit: Library of Congress.
Sprague served in World War II and went to college at Texas A & M. During his college years, he played in a band and conducted a weekly radio program. In 1925 Victor offered him a recording contract, but between 1925 and 1929 he recorded only 33 songs. As with so many other musicians of the era, the Great Depression stepped in to squash any hopes he had of making music his full-time profession.
Sprague did not record again until 1972, when he cut an album for a German folk label. He was 77. He died on February 19, 1979.
My wife and I grew up in different states – she in a small town in Montana, and I in a middle class subdivision of Salt Lake City. But we each had a favorite album that we listened to over and over as children. And we discovered a little while ago that it was the same album: Cool Water by The Sons of the Pioneers.
Left to right: Tim Spencer, Bob Nolan, Hugh Farr, Roy Rogers (Gus Mack, announcer). Photo courtesy of bobnolan-sop.net
The Sons of the Pioneers have left a long (and dusty) trail in the history of cowboy music. Starting in 1934, their original members included Tim Spencer, Bob Nolan, Hugh Farr and Roy Rogers (of Dale Evans fame). They were about as famous as you could get in those days: their music appeared in over 90 western films, and they are the authors of some of the most iconic cowboy songs that have ever been written. Bob Nolan, the main songwriter in the group, wrote Cool Water and Tumbling Tumbleweeds, two songs that have defined the west as much as cattle and rattlesnakes.
Here is Cool Water, from an original 78rpm Gramophone:
And here’s Tumbling Tumbleweeds:
You can also listen to dozens of different versions of each song by following these links: Cool Water; Tumbling Tumbleweeds.
As a group, The Sons of the Pioneers are still around today. They’ve won about every award possible in the country/cowboy music genre, including the Country Music Hall of Fame, the Western Music Association Hall of Fame, the Smithsonian Institute’s ‘National Treasure’ Designation, the National Cowboy Hall of Fame, and the Golden Boot Award. They even have their own star on Hollywood’s Walk of Fame. More than that, though, they are the group that was instrumental in putting cowboy music on the map. Before them, there really wasn’t much of a genre called cowboy music. After them, cowboy music was ridin’ easy in the saddle. As Doug Green of Riders in the Sky put it: ‘Any of us who sing Western music, it all goes back to the Pioneers.’
Actually, people were paying attention to cowboy songs prior to the appearance of The Sons of the Pioneers. In 1921, N. Howard (‘Jack’) Thorp collected and published a collection of cowboy poems and songs. The volume is now in the public domain, and you can download it for free here. Or you can purchase a more recent edition here.
Here are the first two stanzas of The Cowboy’s Life, heard by Thorp ‘at a little round-up at Seven Lakes, New Mexico, by a puncher named Spence’:
The bawl of a steer To a cowboy’s ear Is music of sweetest strain; And the yelping notes Of the gray coyotes To him are a glad refrain.
And his jolly songs Speed him along As he thinks of the little gal With golden hair Who is waiting there At the bars of the home corral.
Sunday, October 23, 2011 at 7:27PM Tweet 
