Goodbye Old Paint: A Song History

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"Goodbye Old Paint" is a cowboy's farewell, sung as a restless rider takes leave of a sweetheart and sets out for Montana.[1] The Traditional Ballad Index files it and "I Ride an Old Paint" as two separate songs, though both entries carry the same Roud Folk Song Index number.[1][2] "I Ride an Old Paint" reached print in Carl Sandburg's The American Songbag of 1927, a song Sandburg obtained through the poets Margaret Larkin and Lynn Riggs (spelled Linn in that source).[3] "Goodbye Old Paint" was in print earlier, appearing as "Old Paint" in the 1916 enlarged edition of John A. Lomax's Cowboy Songs and Other Frontier Ballads.[4] A note in that book describes it as a closing waltz at Western dances, with the whole room singing once the fiddler stopped playing.[4] N. Howard Thorp printed it in his 1921 Songs of the Cowboys, crediting an unnamed cowhand he had heard sing it after some carousing in Pecos City.[5]

A saddled horse stands on open range while a cowboy kneels beside it, with a herd of horses grazing behind

Erwin E. Smith, The horse wrangler, photograph, 1910. Shown for its subject: a cowhand and his saddled horse on the open range.

The Library of Congress holds a May 1942 recording, made in Dallas by Lomax, of the Texas fiddler Jess Morris (1878–1953) singing the song to his own fiddle accompaniment.[6] Morris credited his source in a written account: as a child he had the song from Charley Willis, a Black cowhand, who in turn had acquired it while driving cattle around 1871.[7] According to BlackPast, Willis was born in Milam County, Texas, in 1847, went north to Wyoming Territory as a trail drover in 1871, and taught the song to the seven-year-old Morris in 1885.[8] Accounts of authorship differ: Duncan Emrich's 1952 Library of Congress notes argued that Morris should count as the composer, BlackPast names Willis as the author, and Morris's own account has Willis learning it on the trail.[7][8] A 2010 NPR report by Hal Cannon points out that Lomax acknowledged the song's African American roots yet never recorded a Black performer playing it.[9] Morris's performance was issued in 1952 on the Library of Congress album AFS L28, later reissued on CD as Cowboy Songs, Ballads and Cattle Calls from Texas, and one reviewer judged it "surely the greatest on record."[7] A commercial recording had come earlier: Harry "Haywire Mac" McClintock recorded it in Oakland, California, in March 1928, and Victor issued it on disc 21761.[1][10]

Stephen Seifert includes it in Cowboy Songs, a 78-page dulcimer book of 37 western songs in DAD tuning with an MP3 recording of each, where "I Ride An Old Paint" appears as a separate piece.[11]

Our book that contains the song "Goodbye Old Paint"

Sources

  1. Folklorist (Traditional Ballad Index): "Goodbye, Old Paint".
  2. Folklorist (Traditional Ballad Index): "I Ride an Old Paint".
  3. PBS American Masters: "Carl Sandburg - The American Songbag: I Ride an Old Paint".
  4. Internet Archive: "John A. Lomax, Cowboy Songs and Other Frontier Ballads (1916 edition)".
  5. Internet Archive: "N. Howard Thorp, Songs of the Cowboys (1921)".
  6. Library of Congress: "Goodbye, old paint" (Jess Morris, 1942).
  7. Musical Traditions: "Cowboy Songs, Ballads and Cattle Calls from Texas" (review).
  8. BlackPast: "Charley Willis (1847-1930)".
  9. NPR: "Who Were The Cowboys Behind 'Cowboy Songs'?".
  10. Discography of American Historical Recordings: "Victor matrix PBVE-42120. Good-bye Old Paint / Mac [i.e., Harry K. McClintock]".
  11. Stephen Seifert: "Cowboy Songs".
  12. Image: Erwin E. Smith, The horse wrangler, photograph, 1910. Library of Congress.

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