I Ride An Old Paint: A Song History

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"I Ride an Old Paint" is a cowboy song whose verses wander among several subjects: the rider's travels, the lost children of Old Bill Jones, and how the cowboy wants to be laid to rest.[1] The earliest date the Traditional Ballad Index gives for it is 1927, from Carl Sandburg's The American Songbag.[1] In his headnote Sandburg credits the version he printed to Margaret Larkin of Las Vegas, New Mexico, who sang cowboy and Mexican songs with guitar, and to Linn Riggs, a poet and playwright from Oklahoma; the two had learned it in Santa Fe from a cowhand who had since moved on.[2] The Encyclopedia of Oklahoma History and Culture identifies him as the playwright and poet Rollie Lynn Riggs (1899–1954), and says that after a breakdown while a senior at the University of Oklahoma he spent time recovering on a Santa Fe ranch.[3] Sandburg wrote that the song "smells of saddle leather," and he singled out as poetic the rider's wish that after death he and his horse should travel on together toward the west.[2]

Decorative pen drawing of a cowboy on horseback with horses running in a landscape

J. R. McFarren, Cowboy, engraving, 1886. Shown for its subject; it has no connection to the song.

The song shares its horse's name with "Goodbye, Old Paint," in which a cowboy takes leave of a girl and heads off to Montana.[4] The Traditional Ballad Index files the two as separate songs, though both entries carry Roud Folk Song Index number 915.[1][4] The farewell song reached print before Sandburg's book, as "Old Paint" in the 1916 enlarged edition of John A. Lomax's Cowboy Songs and Other Frontier Ballads.[5]

The Almanac Singers recorded "I Ride an Old Paint" for the General label in 1941, and Pete Seeger also recorded it.[1] Sandburg recorded it himself for Decca in New York on June 3, 1943, singing with guitar.[6] Stephen Seifert includes it in Cowboy Songs, a dulcimer book of 37 western songs in DAD tuning with an MP3 recording of each, where "Goodbye Old Paint" appears as a separate piece.[7]

Our book that contains the song "I Ride An Old Paint"

Sources

  1. Folklorist (Traditional Ballad Index): "I Ride an Old Paint".
  2. Internet Archive: "Carl Sandburg, The American Songbag (1927)".
  3. Oklahoma Historical Society, Encyclopedia of Oklahoma History and Culture: "Riggs, Rollie Lynn".
  4. Folklorist (Traditional Ballad Index): "Goodbye, Old Paint".
  5. Internet Archive: "John A. Lomax, Cowboy Songs and Other Frontier Ballads (1916 edition)".
  6. Discography of American Historical Recordings: "Decca matrix TNY 1019. I ride an old paint ; Colorado trail / Carl Sandburg".
  7. Stephen Seifert: "Cowboy Songs".
  8. Image: J. R. McFarren, Cowboy, engraving, 1886. Library of Congress.

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