When The Work's All Done This Fall: A Song History

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The words of this cowboy ballad are credited to Dominick John O'Malley (1867-1943), whose family moved to Fort Keogh, Montana Territory, in 1877, and who rode for the N Bar N outfit from about 1881 to 1896.[1] His papers at the Montana Historical Society note that the poem, under the title "When the Work is Done Next Fall," first ran in the Miles City Stock Growers' Journal on October 6, 1893.[1] Its story follows a cowhand who hopes to go home to his mother when the season's work ends, but dies in a stampede before he can.[2] The Traditional Ballad Index names O'Malley as the most likely author, since the earliest known printing is his, while recording J. Frank Dobie's attribution of the song to Marshall Johnson of Texas.[3]

Old photograph of a small clapboard frontier house behind a rail fence, with a woman holding a baby and a man seated on the front porch

Unknown photographer, [A Frontier Home], albumen silver print from glass negative, 1860s–70s. A plain frontier house photographed in the 1860s or 1870s at an unrecorded place, shown for the home to which the song's cowhand hopes to return when the season's work ends; the photograph has no connection to the song.

The poem came to be sung, and John Lomax printed it, with no author named, in Cowboy Songs and Other Frontier Ballads.[4] On August 4, 1925, in Camden, New Jersey, the singer Carl T. Sprague recorded it for Victor with his own guitar accompaniment, and the disc appeared as Victor 19747.[5] Within a few years George Reneau, Ernest V. Stoneman, Marc Williams, Jules Verne Allen, Bradley Kincaid and others had recorded it too, and the Discography of American Historical Recordings credits O'Malley on each.[6]

Folk collectors kept finding it well beyond ranch country: Alan and Elizabeth Lomax recorded Clay Walters singing it in Salyersville, Kentucky, in October 1937, and Max Hunter taped a version in Mountain View, Arkansas, in 1971.[7][8][2] For mountain dulcimer players, Stephen Seifert arranges it in DAD tuning in Cowboy Songs, his 78-page collection of 37 western songs, each with an MP3 recording.[9]

Our book that contains the song "When The Work's All Done This Fall"

Sources

  1. Archives West / Montana Historical Society: "D. J. O'Malley papers, 1863-1985".
  2. Missouri State University, Max Hunter Folk Song Collection: "When the Works All Done This Fall".
  3. The Traditional Ballad Index: "When the Work's All Done This Fall [Laws B3]".
  4. Project Gutenberg: "Cowboy Songs and Other Frontier Ballads" (John A. Lomax).
  5. Discography of American Historical Recordings: "Victor matrix BVE-33125. When the work's all done this fall / Carl T. Sprague".
  6. Discography of American Historical Recordings: "Dominick John O'Malley".
  7. Association for Cultural Equity: "AFS 1577".
  8. Alan and Elizabeth Lomax Kentucky Recordings: "When the Work's All Done This Fall (#2)".
  9. Stephen Seifert: "Cowboy Songs".
  10. Image: Unknown photographer, [A Frontier Home], albumen silver print from glass negative, 1860s–70s. The Metropolitan Museum of Art.

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