Ragtime Cowboy Joe: A Song History

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"Ragtime Cowboy Joe" is a popular song of 1912, with words by Grant Clarke and music by Lewis F. Muir and Maurice Abrahams.[1] The Library of Congress says the song was inspired by a young Brooklyn boy dressed as a cowboy.[2] The historian Michael Amundson identifies the boy as Abrahams's four-year-old nephew Joseph, wearing a full cowboy outfit.[3] F. A. Mills of New York published the sheet music that year, with a cover by the illustrator André De Takacs showing a cowboy on a white horse.[1] Amundson suggests that audiences may have been losing interest in cowboy songs that looked back to the old frontier as ragtime took hold, and argues that this song renewed the cowboy craze on record by joining western imagery to ragtime.[3]

Watercolor of a seated cowboy in a fringed buckskin jacket and broad hat singing and playing a banjo

Thomas Eakins, Cowboy Singing, watercolor and graphite on off-white wove paper, ca. 1892. The Metropolitan Museum of Art. Public domain (CC0). Shown for its subject; it has no connection to the song.

The baritone Bob Roberts recorded the song for Victor in Camden, New Jersey, on April 23, 1912.[4] Victor released it in July 1912 on disc 17090, backed with the American Quartet's "That Slippery Slide Trombone."[5] That Victor recording can be heard in the Library of Congress's National Jukebox.[6] Roberts also recorded the song for Columbia in New York on June 20, 1912.[7] Amundson counts Edward Meeker and Ed Morton among the other singers who recorded it before the First World War, says these records gave it modest success in the autumn and winter of 1912–13, and says it did even better in England after Alf Gordon recorded it for the British Cinch label in the spring of 1913.[3] A London edition of 1912 from Francis, Day & Hunter says the song was sung by the Hedges Brothers and Jacobson.[8]

The song stayed in circulation long after the ragtime years: Pinky Tomlin recorded it for Decca in Los Angeles on August 15, 1939, with Harry Sosnik's orchestra and the vocal group the Foursome.[9] In 1959 David Seville and the Chipmunks took it onto the Billboard Hot 100, where it reached No. 16.[10] Amundson, who calls the University of Wyoming his alma mater, writes that the song became that university's fight song, with Wyoming put in place of Arizona in the words.[3] The Library of Congress now counts it among the standards of the western repertoire.[2]

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Sources

  1. York University Libraries, Clara Thomas Archives (John Arpin Sheet Music Collection): "Ragtime cowboy Joe" (F. A. Mills, 1912).
  2. Library of Congress, Songs of America: "Western and Cowboy Songs".
  3. Buffalo Bill Center of the West, Points West (Michael A. Amundson): "Talking Machine West 1902–1918 (part 2)".
  4. Discography of American Historical Recordings (UC Santa Barbara): "Victor matrix B-11906. Ragtime cowboy Joe / Bob Roberts".
  5. Discography of American Historical Recordings (UC Santa Barbara): "Victor 17090".
  6. Library of Congress, National Jukebox: "Ragtime cowboy Joe" (Bob Roberts, 1912).
  7. Discography of American Historical Recordings (UC Santa Barbara): "Columbia matrix 19980. Ragtime Cowboy Joe / Bob Roberts".
  8. Victoria and Albert Museum: "Ragtime Cowboy Joe" (sheet music, Francis, Day & Hunter, 1912).
  9. Discography of American Historical Recordings (UC Santa Barbara): "Decca matrix DLA 1405. Ragtime cowboy Joe / Pinky Tomlin".
  10. Billboard: "David Seville — Chart History (Hot 100)".