The Big Corral: A Song History

← Back to Browse By Song

"The Big Corral" is a cowboy song that the Traditional Ballad Index credits to Romaine Lowdermilk "and friends," with a cross-reference to the gospel song "Press Along to Glory Land" for its tune.[1] Hymnary.org gives 1911 as the publication date of that hymn's words, by James Rowe, and a 1917 gospel songbook it indexes credits the music to Emmett S. Dean.[2][3] Writing in True West, Arizona historian Marshall Trimble says that Lowdermilk, a Kansas-born dude rancher and balladeer who died in Phoenix in 1970, performed the song with two friends at a 1922 talent show in Wickenburg, Arizona, borrowing the hymn's tune to poke fun at the chuckwagon cook.[4]

Bronze sculpture of a cowboy holding on as his horse rears up on its hind legs

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

Trimble adds that because Lowdermilk never put his name on it, the song came to be taken for a traditional one, and that his friend John I. White did not credit him in a 1929 folio of cowboy songs.[4] White's own 1967 article on the subject, as indexed by the University of Arizona, explains that the long-accepted folk song had begun with Lowdermilk as "a piece of Wickenburg nonsense."[5] White retold the story in his 1975 book Git Along, Little Dogies, which the Ballad Index lists among its references when it gives 1922, on White's authority, as the date of composition.[1] The Discography of American Historical Recordings lists a version titled "Press Along to the Big Corral," recorded in San Antonio, Texas, on October 30, 1938, by the Twilight Trail Boys, a vocal trio with guitar, and issued on Bluebird and Montgomery Ward.[6] Trimble notes that the song is still a standard for Western singing groups.[4]

Stephen Seifert includes "The Big Corral" in Cowboy Songs, a dulcimer book of 37 western songs, each with an MP3 recording, where it is set in DAD tuning.[7]

Our book that contains the song "The Big Corral"

Sources

  1. The Traditional Ballad Index: "The Big Corral".
  2. Hymnary.org: "Press Along to Glory Land".
  3. Hymnary.org: "Press Along to Glory Land" (The Guiding Star, 1917, no. 53).
  4. True West Magazine: "Singing at the Big Corral".
  5. University of Arizona, Arizona Historical Indexes: "And that's how a folksong was born".
  6. Discography of American Historical Recordings: "Victor matrix BS-028826. Press along to the big corral / Twilight Trail Boys".
  7. Stephen Seifert: "Cowboy Songs".
  8. Image: Frederic Remington, The Broncho Buster, bronze, 1895, revised 1909, cast by November 1910. The Metropolitan Museum of Art.

← Back to Browse By Song