CD Odyssey Disc 614: Marty Robbins

This next record I discovered through my Mom, so it was appropriate that the review was delayed while I showed her around town for the past few days. 

Disc 614 is…. Gunfighter Ballads and Trail Songs

Artist: Marty Robbins

Year of Release: 1959

What’s up with the Cover? This cover is a bit of a bummer, because it is not the original. The original vinyl cover had a pinkish-red background and all the songs listed, and had no weird eighties colour lines. Fortunately both the CD and vinyl version has this image of Marty decked out in his gunfighter outfit, ready to shoot any man dead as soon as look at ‘im. I can remember as a young boy staring at this image for hours, imagining all the romanticism of the Wild West, but particularly enthralled with the idea of The Gunfight.

How I Came To Know It:  My mom had this record when I was growing up, and it was a favourite of everyone in our house, so it got played a lot. Now that I’m an adult I have it on CD, and it still gets played a lot.

How It Stacks Up:  Although I have another Marty Robbins album on vinyl (1966’s “Saddle Tramp”) this is the only one I have on disc. Even including “Saddle Tramp” “Gunfighter Ballads” would easily be the best, and I can’t imagine there being an album better.

Rating:  5 stars

There was a time when country music was actually country and western music. Western music is mostly forgotten now, although Corb Lund keeps the spirit alive, but in the fifties and sixties western music was still a big thing, at least in small towns like the one I was raised in. Of all the western music I’ve heard, however, nothing has ever come close to the sheer brilliance that is “Gunfighter Ballads and Trail Songs.”

The album is a mix of traditional trail songs, compositions by other prominent or up-and-coming western artists at the time and also three songs written by Robbins himself (including the album’s massive and enduring hit, “El Paso”).

Half of the songs are about cowboy life, including taming broncos, herding cattle and in a couple of cases just generally enjoying the frontier lifestyle. The cowboy life is a dangerous one though, as exemplified by the album’s final song, the tragic and heart-wrenching “Utah Carol,” about a farmhand who saves the ranches daughter from a cattle stampede at the cost of his own life.

This and the other trail songs have grown on me over the years, but my favourites have always been the gunfighter ballads. The songs are short, and the story moves forward pretty quickly. On “Running Gun” a man flees Kansas City after killing twenty men (which seems to be the cutoff for ‘badass’ on a gunfighter ballad), getting all the way to Amarillo before getting gunned down by a bounty hunter. It’s all over in 2:14.

As a kid my head would be filled with all kinds of extra detail filling in ever more detail for the characters on “Gunfighter Ballads” as I listened to it again and again. Even as a young kid I knew that as adventurous as these songs were, they were also cautionary tales. As an adult, I am much more consciously aware how all the gunfighter songs have a strong moral undercurrent. The characters in them typically get gunned down at the end, repenting their wicked ways as they die in the streets.

On this listen I was struck by how much of an ass the main character in “El Paso” is. We all know this one, but here’s a reminder on how his tragedy gets started:

Out in the West Texas town of El Paso

I fell in love with a Mexican girl.

Night-time would find me in Rosa's cantina;

Music would play and Felina would whirl.

Blacker than night were the eyes of Felina,

Wicked and evil while casting a spell.

My love was deep for this Mexican maiden;

I was in love but in vain, I could tell.

So to summarize, this guy hangs out in the pub, gets frisky for a pretty local. When she doesn’t feel the same way he assumes she is wicked and evil. Later, when she makes eyes at some other guy, our ‘hero’ stone cold murders the man.

By the end of this song, when a posse guns him down we should be cheering but instead we pity him, like it is some terrible and tragic twist of fate instead of a well-deserved come-uppance. Robbins is so masterful at turning a phrase and filling every lyric to the brim with emotion that this murderous misogynistic horse-thief has become an enduring anti-hero for the past 55 years.

Robbins’ does equal service for every song on the album. His voice is high and powerful, with a tension that makes him sounds like he’s leaning out over the end of a cliff, but somehow never falling.

On “They’re Hanging Me Tonight” we hear that voice drip with emotion, as he begins with the ominous lines:

“When I hear the rain a’comin’ down

It makes me sad and blue

‘Twas on a rainy night like this

That Flo said we were through.”

It isn’t much to read, but in the hands of Robbins it is a harbinger of the murder, regret and bleak frontier justice that follows (spoiler alert – Flo doesn’t make it).

My favourite track on the record is “Big Iron” (also written by Robbins). It is a song where the gunman is a good guy – a Texas Ranger in pursuit of the villainous outlaw “Texas Red.” Robbins voice soars over the song, and the backup singers deliver low supportive harmonies that give the feeling of the townsfolk oohing and aahing as they watch the ranger and the outlaw face off at forty feet. The song ends with this advice (albeit a bit late) for Red:

“O, he might’ve went on living

But he made one fatal slip

When he tried to match the ranger

With the big iron on his hip.”

Robbins’ genius alone might’ve earned the album four stars, but the guitar work by the sessional players is equally incredible. I’d heard the record all my life and didn’t even notice until my friend Casey turned my ear to it. When I did I realized how amazing the Flamenco guitar is, trilling away blue notes in and around the artistry of Robbins’ voice.

I’ve heard some of Marty Robbins non-western stuff, and it comes off as saccharine junk. But when he trades in his white sport coat and pink carnation for a black hat and a six gun, the result is magical. If you only ever own one album of western music, that album should be this one.

Best tracks:   All tracks. Big Iron is a standout, but they’re all amazing in their own way.

P.S. One of my weekend stops with my Mom was Butchart Gardens. I’ve lived in Victoria for over twenty-five years and never been there, but I have to admit it was pretty cool. Here’s a picture from my visit, which I call “Blogger In His Natural State.” It makes sense if you know your flowers.