Gunfighter Ballads and Trail Songs

Robbins, Marty

album cover

The Wild West, in Song

Western mythmaking a high point on American television in 1959—that year there were some twenty dramas about the Wild West on the networks, including Gunsmoke, Maverick, and Wanted: Dead or Alive. (Another of the best, Bonanza, would debut that fall.)

Even in those days, before television drove the big loco-motive of popular culture, it was inevitable that singers would seize this trend, providing a soundtrack for the eternal chase between lawmen and outlaws. Marty Robbins's vivid concept album, Gunfighter Ballads and Trail Songs, hails from that moment. Recorded in April 1959 with a crew of singers and the excellent guitar tandem of Thomas Grady Martin and Jack H. Pruett, the album, with its epic tales of gunslinging lawlessness and deceit on the open prairie, struck a chord. The record became a hit, and one of its big singles, the memorable "El Paso," was the rare country song to reach the top of the pop charts. It brought Robbins one of the first Grammy awards for country music.

"El Paso," which tells of a cowboy's obsessive love for a "Mexican maiden," benefits from Robbins's casual, smoldering vocal, and Martin's trembling south-of-the-border guitar ad-libs. It's one treasure among many here. Robbins idolized Gene Autry, and deployed a touch of the screen star's easygoing affect to make these clippity-clopping songs of saddle tramps and conniving outlaws as riveting as the Wild West itself. Or, at the least, the made-for-TV version.

Genre: Country
Released: 1959, Columbia
Key Tracks: "El Paso," "Big Iron," "In the Valley," "Billy the Kid."
Catalog Choice: Devil Woman
Next Stop: Jim Reeves: The Country Side of Jim Reeves
After That: Sonny James: The Minute You're Gone
Book Page: 650