The Trail To Mexico: A Song History

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"The Trail to Mexico" is a traditional cowboy ballad of unknown authorship, catalogued in the Traditional Ballad Index as Laws B13.[1] In the Index's summary, a cattle drive to Mexico for A. J. Stinson costs the narrator his sweetheart, who chooses a richer suitor while he is gone, and although she then begs him to stay home where it is safe, he goes back to trail work for good.[1] Cox and Fife both derive it from "Early, Early in the Spring" (Laws M1), an older ballad whose jilted hero is a sailor sent to sea, and the Index adds that some texts of that song recast the sailor as a cowboy.[1][2] The Index dates the sailor's song to an 1869 printing and notes a broadside form that appears to go back to the seventeenth century.[2]

Etching of horses and riders at harvest beside tall poles and a haystack on a flat New Mexico plain under a cloudy sky.

Peter Moran, Harvest at San Juan, New Mexico, etching, c. 1883. A harvest scene in the Southwest in the 1880s, shown for the cowboy country of the ballad's cattle drive; the etching has no connection to the song.

John A. Lomax printed "The Trail to Mexico" in Cowboy Songs and Other Frontier Ballads, first published in 1910, and the Ballad Index gives that book as the song's earliest date.[3][1] Skip Gorman's liner notes for his 1987 Folk-Legacy album Trail to Mexico connect the song to the cattle trail James Stinson opened into New Mexico Territory in 1882, explaining that cowboys tended to drop the "New" from the territory's name.[4] A historical marker at Vaughn, New Mexico, on the route of the Stinson trail, records that Stinson, managing the New Mexico Land and Livestock Company, sent 20,000 cattle in eight herds from Texas to the Estancia Valley that year.[5] The song also reached Scotland: the Index cites a version from the Scottish singer Jeannie Robertson under the title "I Made Up My Mind."[1]

Carl T. Sprague recorded it for Victor as "Following the Cow Trail" in Camden, New Jersey, on 5 August 1925, accompanying himself on guitar.[6] Harry "Mac" McClintock and his Haywire Orchestra made their Victor version in Oakland, California, on 23 March 1928, and Jules Verne Allen recorded "The Cow Trail to Mexico" in Hollywood on 29 March 1929.[7][8] Later recordings survive in university archives: Texas A&M's Owens Folk Music collection holds a two-part recording of Brownie McNeill singing it in Austin, and the Max Hunter collection has Chester Box's performance taped at Fort Smith, Arkansas, on 14 July 1967.[9][10] For mountain dulcimer, Stephen Seifert gives it a DAD-tuning setting in Cowboy Songs, the 37-song western collection he publishes himself as a 78-page download with a matching MP3 for each piece.[11]

Our book that contains the song "The Trail To Mexico"

Sources

  1. The Traditional Ballad Index: "The Trail to Mexico [Laws B13]".
  2. The Traditional Ballad Index: "Early, Early in the Spring [Laws M1]".
  3. Project Gutenberg: "Cowboy Songs and Other Frontier Ballads," collected by John A. Lomax.
  4. Smithsonian Folkways: "Skip Gorman, Trail to Mexico (Folk-Legacy FSI-103), liner notes".
  5. The Historical Marker Database: "Vaughn Historical Marker".
  6. Discography of American Historical Recordings: "Victor matrix BVE-33143. Following the cow trail / Carl T. Sprague".
  7. Discography of American Historical Recordings: "Victor matrix PBVE-42121. The trail to Mexico / Haywire Orchestra; Mac".
  8. Discography of American Historical Recordings: "Victor matrix BVE-50567. The cow trail to Mexico / Jules Verne Allen".
  9. Texas A&M University Libraries: "Trail to Mexico [part 1]; Trail to Mexico [part 2]" (Owens Folk Music collection).
  10. Missouri State University, Max Hunter Folk Song Collection: "Trail to Mexico".
  11. Stephen Seifert: "Cowboy Songs".
  12. Image: Peter Moran, Harvest at San Juan, New Mexico, etching, c. 1883. The Cleveland Museum of Art.

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