Cowboy Jack: A Song History

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"Cowboy Jack" is a sentimental Western ballad of unknown authorship, catalogued by folk-song scholars as Laws B24.[1] Its story is one of regret: after quarreling with his sweetheart, Jack rides off to join a cattle outfit, and a song about a faithful girl persuades him to go home and make amends, but he arrives too late, for she has died with his name on her lips.[1] The Traditional Ballad Index points to a similar plot in "Blackbirds and Thrushes," gives its earliest date as 1928, in Sires's Songs of the Open Range, and reports it from both the Southwest and the Appalachians.[1] It does not appear in the tables of contents of the 1929 printing of John A. Lomax's Cowboy Songs and Other Frontier Ballads or the 1921 edition of N. Howard Thorp's Songs of the Cowboys consulted here.[2][3]

Bronze sculpture of a cowboy riding a rearing horse, one arm flung out for balance

Frederic Remington, The Broncho Buster, bronze, 1895, revised 1909, cast by November 1910. Shown for its subject; it has no connection to the song.

Peg Moreland's version came out on Victor in 1929, and between 1930 and 1936 it was issued on records by Marc Williams, the Arkansas Woodchopper, the Girls of the Golden West, Bill Carlisle, and Homer and Walter Callahan, among others.[1] The Carter Family recorded it in Camden, New Jersey, on May 8, 1934, with Sara and Maybelle Carter singing in duet over two guitars; the master take was issued on Montgomery Ward and on Bluebird, the Bluebird release dated 1939 by the Ballad Index.[4][1] Victor's ledgers credited A. P. Carter as composer, a credit the Discography of American Historical Recordings takes to reflect, presumably, his role as adapter or arranger rather than author.[4] The song also appears in later printed collections, among them those of Ohrlin, Logsdon, and Tinsley.[1]

Stephen Seifert includes it in Cowboy Songs, a collection of 37 Western songs arranged for mountain dulcimer, nearly all in DAD tuning.[5]

Our book that contains the song "Cowboy Jack"

Sources

  1. Traditional Ballad Index: "Cowboy Jack [Laws B24]".
  2. Project Gutenberg: "Cowboy Songs and Other Frontier Ballads" (John A. Lomax).
  3. Internet Archive: "Songs of the Cowboys" (N. Howard Thorp, 1921).
  4. Discography of American Historical Recordings: "Victor matrix BS-83129. Cowboy Jack / Carter Family".
  5. Stephen Seifert: "Cowboy Songs".
  6. Image: Frederic Remington, The Broncho Buster, bronze, 1895, revised 1909, cast by November 1910. The Metropolitan Museum of Art.

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