"Burl Ives Presents
America's Musical Heritage"
114 Best Loved Songs & Ballads for Listening, Singing and Reading
A Treasury of American Folk Songs & Ballads
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The Big Country:
Cowboys, Indians, Badmen & Settlers
Introduction
Until very recently, the songs of pioneer America were known only in small areas in isolated parts of our country. They were handed down within a family circle or to a small group. There was no way for them to become known over the whole country; they were not really a part of everyone’s heritage or the nation’s general culture.
The songs first became widely known when collectors and researchers grew interested in putting them into books, or doing scholarly studies on them. Then many singers became interested in the songs and they were heard nationally, over the radio. Now, through educational projects in the schools, this musical heritage of America is becoming a part of every child’s experience.
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Side One:
The Roving Gambler
One of the phenomena of the westward movement was the gambler. He appeared on riverboats and in the western boom towns. His romantic appeal for women was part of the legend that grew to create a type in style of dress, manner and conduct.
Billy The Kid
In most bad-men ballads, the outlaw is romanticized to hero status. Not so in the ballad of “Billy The Kid,” whose real name was William H. Bonney. Unlike his contemporary, Jesse James, he was thoroughly bad. Nobody has ever found a kindly word for him.
Jesse James
Jesse James is the Robin Hood of American outlaws. Much of the sympathy for him stems from the fact he was shot unarmed by a supposed friend. The name “Howard” mentioned in this ballad is the name under which Jesse James lived in hiding at the time he was shot.
John Hardy
Some folklore specialists claim the “John Hardy” was originally the ballad story of a West Virginia murder. Others deny it. Fame is a strange thing, for today many western states lay claim to the ballad and to the western outlaw, John Hardy. This song is closer in feeling to old ballads like “The Gallow’s Tree” than the two previous bad-man ballads.
Midnight Special
The unromantic truths about prison life are too easily forgotten in the few seconds of a television western. There is a tremendous body of powerful, true music that stems from the desolation, fear and hope of these prisons, especially from the songs of Negro prisoners. One of the most poignant of these songs is “Midnight Special.”
Sioux Indians
The Indian tribes were forced beyond the Mississippi and then further west. The bravery and intelligence of some of their chiefs, Tecumseh, the Prophet, Black Hawk and others is legendary. After the Louisiana Purchase, President Jefferson sent out the Lewis and Clark Expedition. The books and articles that followed the successful completion of the Expedition led many settlers toward the Oregon Territory. The resolution of the argument between the United States and Great Britain was finally determined by the tremendous number of immigrants that went into the territory. This song is an eloquent and realistic ballad describing the fight of a group of pioneers with the Sioux Indians. Unlike most Indian songs of the time it is truly folk, non-melodic, and was performed unaccompanied as in the style of this rendition.
Patrick on the Railroad
Patrick became the national name in the United States for all Irishmen. The Irish were a singing nation and brought their songs with them. They were admirable men and poured their sweat and brawn into the building of the railroads. As workers, they became an essential part of the development of the country. It was they who built the Erie Canal and it was they who worked on the railroads.
The Utah Iron Horse
This is another western ballad in the same style as “Sioux Indians.” The joining of the two ends of the Union Pacific Railroad ended the isolation of the west. None were more conscious of this than the Mormons, in whose city of Salt Lake the two parts of the railroad met in 1869. As this song reflects, they dreaded the corruption of outside ideas and peoples in their strictly religious community.
What Was Your Name in the States?
There was a feeling of room for all in the new country, and of judging a man for what he was, regardless of his past. As long ago as early colonial days, Thomas Cooper had written in his “Letters In America,” “In America a false step is not irretrievable, there is room to get up again; and the less unfortunate stumbler looks round at leisure, and without dismay, for some profitable paths to be pursued.”
The Lavender Cowboy
“The Lavender Cowboy” is the story of an adult-child with his dream of becoming a western hero. This is one of the many western songs collected by John Lomax, the first great American folk-song fieldworker. He and his son Alan have done more than anyone else in this country to publish this material.
The Cowboy’s Lament (Streets of Laredo)
The story of the “Unfortunate Rake” is told in an old Irish ballad of about 1790. Parodies using almost the same melody are found wherever the English settled. On the border of Texas there developed this variant of the old Irish song. Its time of composition? Could have been any time after the Americans started to settle in Texas. The words, “Beat the drum slowly and play the fife lowly, play the dead march as they carry me along” – from the Dead March from “Saul” – the part of the pomp and ceremony of a British military funeral, and have no reference in American life. Australia has a similar folk-song about “The Dying Stockman,” set to the same melody. The Australian stockman is the man who herds sheep and is the Australian equivalent of our cowboy. The tow songs seem to have developed independently of each other, having in common only their mutual ancestor.
Side Two:
The Old Chisholm Trail
Jesse Chisholm, interpreter to the Indians, gave his name to a trail between Wichita and San Antonio. After the Civil War, this was the route over which Texas cowboys drove cattle to the nearest railroad station in Kansas. The song has innumerable ad-lib verses. In this version we limit ourselves to one incident.
Old Paint
This song, or variations of it, deserves a place not only in the West, but wherever there is a feeling for the life of the cowpuncher and his dependence on, and love for, his horse. It is difficult to tell from a song like this, which is so poetically rich in both humor and implication, whether or not it was deliberately composed. Carl Sandburg, who must always be spoken of not only because of his love for folk songs but for his poetic evaluation of them, brought this version into the light of day.
Git Along Little Dogies
There are many variations of this song and many ways in which it is sung. It evokes a sense of distance, dry land and loneliness. Dogies are orphaned calves.
Oh! Susannah
In 1848, at the height of this song’s popularity, nothing was known about the composer, Stephen Foster. The famed minstrel, Edwin P. Christy, had bought the song from Stephen Foster, popularized it, and helped make it the national favorite, which it persists as to the present day. It coincided with the Gold Rush, and found its first spate of popularity on the boats and wagon trains going west. It remained as a song and square dance in every western community.
Green Grow the Lilacs
It is told that Mexicans referred to the Americans by their pronunciation of the first part of the title of this song, “gringo – Green Grow.” True or not, this little story stands as evidence for the widespread popularity of the song. Like “Oh Susanna” and many others it became a standard at community gatherings and around the piano.
The Little Old Sod Shanty
The western settler was a squatter who had to make a home and wrest a living from the land. Often the land proved unproductive and the climate antagonistic. This song recounts a series of tragic incidents which only too often faced the pioneer who staked a claim in the West. He frequently built several homes, moving further west as the next class of emigrants took his land.
The Young Man Who Wouldn’t Hoe Corn
The frontier moved ever westward, and the back-breaking labor of trying to make a living from the land was the same in each place. On the frontier everybody worked; “the young man who wouldn’t” is a comic fiction. Benjamin Franklin wrote as far back as 1775 that “America is the land of labor and by no means the English lubberland.”
Home on the Range
This simple western ballad of home is still the best loved of all western songs. The words have been attributed to one Dr. Brewster Higley, a pioneer, and the music to one Dan Kelly. The date: 1873. Place of origin: Beaver Creek, Smith County, Kansas.
Red River Valley
Red river valley are so numerous that from Baffin Bay to the Gulf of Mexico and song finds a place and a claim of authorship. Like many songs, this one seems to have been built upon an earlier folk song, from New York state, entitled “The Bright Mohawk Valley.”
Big Rock Candy Mountain
The second half of the 19th Century saw a new American character enter the western scene, the itinerant hobo.
The life of the hobo was hard but he had his dreams too. “Big Rock Candy Mountain” gives us a whimsical picture of the hobo’s idea of paradise. More realistic is “Goin’ Down the Road Feelin’ Bad.”
