The rusty wire that holds the cork that keeps the anger in Gives way and suddenly it’s day again The sun is in the east Even though the day is done Two suns in the sunset, hmph Could be the human race is run
Real, songs of the west and working cowboys will always be one of my most treasured genres of music. Many of these men are serious poets.
OG posted songs from one of my biggest singing heroes Marty Robbins. I've also grown up listening to Michael Martin Murphy, Red Steagall, Don Edwards, Ian Tyson and others. They and others perhaps less well known(many of whom are working cattleman) have done much and are responsible for keeping this music surviving and brought to new audiences. Songs of the cowboy like a sailor's sea shanties and sea songs are really folk music. Don Edwards is a very knowledgeable student and teacher of this musical history. He would tell you there is definitely a difference between cowboy music and western music.
There's also the poets like Waddie Mitchell and Buck Ramsey and many, many other poets and singers. Much of cowboy poetry and music is extremely rich and profound.
Besides being very musically talented, Marty Robbins was a mans man. He was a Coxswain on an LCT in the Solomon’s in WW2. He was a good NASCAR driver.
These two things reveal the depth of his character :
“In 1972, at the Winston 500, Robbins stunned the competition by turning laps that were 15 mph faster than his qualifying time. After the race, NASCAR tried to bestow the Rookie of the Race award, but he would not accept it. He had knocked the NASCAR-mandated restrictors out of his carburetor and admitted he "just wanted to see what it was like to run up front for once."
Robbins is credited with possibly saving Richard Childress' life at the 1974 Charlotte 500 by deliberately crashing into a wall rather than t-bone (broadside) Childress's car that was stopped across the track”
Good people sleep peaceably in their beds at night only because rough men stand ready to do violence on their behalf.
Someday your life will flash in front of your eyes. Make sure it is worth watching.
Those insights into his character OG are part of why I love the man too and not just the singer. He's of that generation. From what I understand his mother lived with her kids in a tent in the Arizona desert. They had it hard like most folks did then. There's also a great story out there of how he talked down a disruptive drunk in one of his shows. I wish I could find it but he basically kept him from wrecking things for the audience and managed to do it in a manor that disarmed the man's behavior and kept things going for the sake of others.
Wormfood is winning. If ya don't agree, we'll just overrun your position and take no prisoners.
Oh, a song, a WESTERN song :
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Those insights into his character OG are part of why I love the man too and not just the singer. He's of that generation. From what I understand his mother lived with her kids in a tent in the Arizona desert. They had it hard like most folks did then. There's also a great story out there of how he talked down a disruptive drunk in one of his shows. I wish I could find it but he basically kept him from wrecking things for the audience and managed to do it in a manor that disarmed the man's behavior and kept things going for the sake of others.
When we were stationed at Fort Campbell and living in Clarksville, TN my Mother made a trip back to Germany to see her parents. This would have been 1968-70 or so and while waiting at the airport in Nashville for her flight a man asked if was OK to sit down at a table she was at. She said yes and they had a nice conversation for a while drinking coffee. It was Marty Robbins and my Mother said he was such a nice man and when he heard her accent they ended up talking more about Germany and our family life in the Army since we had already back and forth from the States & Germany a few times already. When she got back and told us and her friends the story her friends said he was probably hitting on her but she said absolutely not, he was the prefect gentleman and she never felt that he was being anything other then conversational. RIP Mr. Robbins
Thank you for sharing that great story David K. I had a high school teacher that saw him perform, I think at the Grand Ole Opry. He recalled how Marty would playfully mess around, turning an making faces from the piano bench at people.
Here's one from Don Edwards. I can't recommend enough all the great western/cowboy albums done by Marty Robbins, Don Edwards, Red Steagall, Michael Martin Murphey and so on. If you enjoy this genre of music it will certainly feed your soul.
I love them all but I've always liked the joyfulness of this one Marty did on his Gunfighters and Trail Songs album.
I did not become aware of them until later in life but I discovered in recent years Tompall and the Glaser Brothers. I really took to their music and especially family harmony. I was tickled to find out that they were actually hired by and sung back up for Marty Robbins. Not only that, it is their harmonies that you hear on a lot of Marty's music including his gunfighter album. I think one of the brothers even co-wrote songs like "Running Gun". So all these years I had been hearing the Glaser brothers backing Marty.
Here's one of theirs that has a Western sound and a Spanish flavor. The story the song tells could either be now or a hundred and fifty years ago.