I've Got No Use For Women: A Song History
"I've Got No Use For Women" is a cowboy song in which the singer complains that women only want a man's money and then tells how his partner died: the partner killed a man who had insulted a picture of his sweetheart, was killed in turn, and was buried out on the prairie.[1] The Traditional Ballad Index files it as "I've Got No Use for the Women," and many of the early records it lists carried the title "Bury Me Out on the Prairie" or "Oh Bury Me Out on the Prairie."[1] The Index treats it as a song distinct from "Bury Me Not on the Lone Prairie" but cross-references the two, with an editor's note that the shared wording goes well beyond chance.[1] Sources differ on its authorship: the Index lists the author as unknown, while the earliest recording the Index lists and the sheet music issued the same year credit Travis B. Hale, Dean Fitzer and Prescott Brown.[1][2][3]
Erwin E. Smith, A Texas cowboy, photographic print, 1907. Shown for its subject; it has no connection to the song.
Hale, singing with his own banjo, recorded "Oh Bury Me Out on the Prairie," subtitled "The Cowboy's Lament," in Chicago on June 6, 1927, and Victor issued it as number 20796.[2] That year Villa Moret of San Francisco published it as sheet music, promoting it as a song featured by Jerry Wilford of radio station KSL in Salt Lake City.[3] Other recordings soon followed, by Bradley Kincaid (1928), Vernon Dalhart (1931) and the Delmore Brothers (1933), among others.[1] The Tune Wranglers, with vocalist Buster Coward, recorded it as "I've Got No Use for the Women" in San Antonio on October 24, 1936, for Bluebird B-7089.[4] Missouri State University's Max Hunter Folk Song Collection holds a recording of it sung by Ollie Gilbert of Mountain View, Arkansas, on August 31, 1971.[5]
Stephen Seifert includes it in Cowboy Songs, a dulcimer book of 37 western songs that he arranged.[6]
Sources
- Traditional Ballad Index: "I've Got No Use for the Women".
- Discography of American Historical Recordings: "Victor matrix BVE-38633. Oh bury me out on the prairie / Travis B. Hale".
- University of Alberta Libraries (Internet Archive): "Oh bury me out on the prairie: cowboy's lament".
- Discography of American Historical Recordings: "Victor matrix BS-02878. I've got no use for the women / Buster Coward ; Tune Wranglers".
- Max Hunter Folk Song Collection, Missouri State University: "Got No Use For the Women".
- Stephen Seifert: "Cowboy Songs".
- Image: Erwin E. Smith, A Texas cowboy, photographic print, 1907. Library of Congress.