Written by Brent Borman. 21 October 2014.

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Released in 1959, Marty Robbins’ album Gunfighter Ballads and Trail Songs is considered one of the most influential country music albums of all time. During an interview in October 1981, Robbins offered an explanation behind the album’s title, “What is a gunfighter ballad? You see, that’s not country-and-western. That’s cowboy music, or western music” (Nash 446). Indeed, Gunfighter Ballads and Trail Songs consists of cowboy music, both original tales and folk legends. Robbins’ childhood fascination with cowboy stories and his lifelong pursuit of high-spirited interests allowed him to both eloquently and meaningfully narrate these cowboy stories to a post-World War II American audience.

Robbins “endured a hardscrabble childhood on the desert outside of Glendale” as one of nine children in an itinerant Arizona family (Nash 436). Life in the desert was hard and money was tight, but Robbins found inspiration in his grandfather, Texas Bob Heckle, whom he would visit in town every 3 or 4 months. Heckle, who was a former Texas Ranger and medicine-show barker, would enchant young Robbins with cowboy stories that he had heard from the campfires across his travels. Robbins recalled, “That’s how the stories were related back in the early days of the American West, just like in England, you know. Stories were told by different people. News went around by word of mouth, and that’s the way the early American cowboy songs were done” (Nash 447).

Robbin’s love for his grandfather’s cowboy stories would eventually lead him to become a storyteller of his own. While Robbins was not exceptional in school, he “demonstrated a flair for storytelling, rooted in the tales his maternal grandfather, a medicine-show barker, shared from his travels” and began to translate his stories onto paper and into song with the help of his English teacher (Nash 437). Robbins attributes his talent and love for cowboy stories to Texas Bob Heckle, saying that “the talent that I do have came from my grandfather, because he was able to write… my grandfather only inspired me to be a cowboy, I guess… Because I thought a lot of him, and he was a cowboy, you know” (Nash 447).

Robbins spent his teen years “getting into minor scrapes with the law and pursuing a variety of romantic, high-spirited interests— amateur boxing, herding wild horses, and hanging out at the stock car races ” (Nash 436). He finally began to shape up when he discovered that the townsfolk were organizing a petition to have him and two other troublemakers sent off to reform school. At age 17 he enlisted as a coxswain (navigator) in the United States Navy. His service took him to the Pacific Ocean during World War II, where he became involved in the Bougainville campaign. It was during the war that Robbins taught himself how to play guitar, if not simply as a way to pass the time and entertain his fellow soldiers.

The Ballad Of A Gunfighter

The Bougainville campaign (also known as Operation Cherry Blossom), a siege waged on the Japanese-controlled island of Bougainville, spanned across nearly two years from November 1, 1943 to August 21, 1945 and consisted of two distinct phases. The first phase involved a year of bitter fighting between American and Japanese forces, before around 70,000 Americans were relieved by the Australian II Corps. The Japanese forces under the command of Lieutenant General Kanda held out for another 9 months before succumbing to the Australian assault. It was never truly determined how many Japanese forces occupied the island, but Australia II Corps estimated that 8,200 were killed during the American phase and twice that amount died of disease or malnutrition.

A group of United States Marine Raiders pose for photo in front of a Japanese dugout, on Bougainville, January, 1944.

The Japanese proved to be a “shrewd and able” adversary during their occupation of Bougainville. They showed little tolerance for their sick or wounded, and suffered casualties that ran “20 to 1 over Australian losses” (Curthoys). They were surprisingly full of fight and bitterly defended the island by booby-trapping jungles, laying tank mines, and burning bridges. Despite being isolated from aid or reinforcements, many Japanese soldiers were able to cultivate their own farms to keep themselves unusually well-fed. These factors, along with the “density of the jungle, the unending mud and the hole-to-hole existence for weeks make the unspectacular fighting on Bougainville among the hardest of the Pacific war” for the Allied forces (Curthoys). Robbins and many other Americans eventually left these hostile foreign battlefields and returned home.

Upon his discharge from the service in 1945, Robbins took jobs as truck driver and electrician’s assistant while playing guitar at social clubs at night. He ended up getting a job as a disc jockey in Phoenix, where he was eventually recognized for his commanding voice by Little Jimmy Dickens. With his help, Robbins landed a recording contract with Columbia Records in 1951. Gunfighter Ballads, a collection of cowboy stories and legends, became Robbins’ most successful album to date when it was released in 1959.

Gunfighter Ballads became most well-known for the #1 single “El Paso”, a tale of love, murder, and justice narrated by Robbins and a Spanish guitar. Although “El Paso” won the Grammy Award for Best Country & Western Recording in 1961, Robbins admitted, “I don’t consider “El Paso” a country-and-western song. It’s a cowboy song, early American folk music from the western United States. It’s not an old song— I wrote the song— but it’s the type of song that you would have heard eighty years ago” (Nash 446).

It is pertinent to our discussion of Gunfighter Ballads and Trail Songs that we understand Robbins’ distinction between modern country and western music at the time and Robbins’ own cowboy songs. Comparing it more closely to folk music than typical country music, Robbins bluntly stated that, “Folk music is songs about what happened in this country … And your cowboy songs … that’s American folk music” (Nash 446). Robbins seemed to have considered folk music, or cowboy music in particular, to be the most appropriate format for telling stories of America’s rich cultural history. Released to post-World War II America, the songs of Gunfighter Ballads weave a tale of love, loss, crime, justice, peace, and war that remains relevant to Americans to this very day. Robbins seemed most comfortable sharing his experiences within the context of a western tale.

Marty Robbins: September 26, 1925 – December 8, 1982

The listener can truly appreciate Marty Robbins as the narrator of his various cowboy stories. Not only was his childhood fueled by his grandfather’s tales of cowboys, but he also lived the life of a farm-hand, soldier, musician, racer, and actor. He was a larger-than-life individual who was fueled by larger-than-life dreams of cowboy legends. Marty made the music that he made because his life naturally led him to do so. He learned how to tell stories during his childhood, and he learned how to play guitar during his service in World War II. Telling cowboy stories by song was the truest form of expression that he knew. His emphasis on the western aspect of country music still influences music to this day. During Robbins’ eulogy, veteran country disc jockey Ralph Emery called his death “the most devastating blow to country music since Hank Williams died” (Nash 436).

Side 1:

1. “Big Iron” (Robbins)
2. “Cool Water” (Nolan)
3. “Billy the Kid” (traditional)
4. “A Hundred and Sixty Acres” (Kapp)
5. “They’re Hanging Me Tonight” (Low, Wolpert)
6. “The Strawberry Roan” (traditional)

Side 2:

1. “El Paso” (Robbins)
2. “In The Valley” (Robbins)
3. “The Master’s Call” (Robbins)
4. “Running Gun” (Glaser, Glaser)
5. “The Little Green Valley” (Robison)
6. “Utah Carol” (traditional)

1999 reissue bonus tracks:

1. “The Hanging Tree” (Livingston, David)
2. “Saddle Tramp” (Robbins)
3. “El Paso” (full length version) (Robbins)

Works Cited:

Curthoys, Roy L. “BOUGAINVILLE PUSH SEES VICTORY NEAR: Australians’ Final Battle to Be in Buin Area After About Two Years of Struggle 13,000 Bombing Sorties Japanese Full of Fight.” The New York Times 26 July 1945: 2. Print.

Nash, Alanna. “Marty Robbins.” Behind Closed Doors: Talking with the Legends of Country Music. New York: A. Knopf, 1988. 436-54. Print.

Gunfighter Ballads and Trail Songs is the fifth studio album by Marty Robbins, released on the Columbia Records label in September 1959 and peaking at #6 on the U.S. pop albums chart. It was recorded in a single eight-hour session on April 7, 1959,^[1] and was certified Gold by the RIAA in 1965^[2] and Platinum in 1986.^[3] It is perhaps best known for Robbins' most successful single, 'El Paso', a major hit on both the country and pop music charts, as well as for its opening track 'Big Iron,' a song that gained a resurgence in popularity on the Internet as a meme.^[4] It reached #1 in both charts at the start of 1960 and won the Grammy Award for Best Country & Western Recording the following year. A follow-up album of cowboy songs, More Gunfighter Ballads and Trail Songs, was released in 1960. In 2017, the album was selected for preservation in the National Recording Registry by the Library of Congress as being 'culturally, historically, or artistically significant.'^[1]

Reception[edit]

AllMusic gave the album four-and-a-half stars, calling it 'the single most influential album of Western songs in post-World War II American music'.^[7] It is included in every revision of the list of 1001 Albums You Must Hear Before You Die.^[8]

Years after the album's release, members of the Western Writers of America chose six of its songs as being among the Top 100 Western Songs of all time. Three of them were written by Robbins: 'El Paso', 'Big Iron', and 'The Master's Call'. Three were written and previously recorded by others: 'Cool Water', 'Billy the Kid', and 'The Strawberry Roan'.^[9]

In 1999 the album was reissued for compact disc on the Legacy Records label with the tracks resequenced and with three bonus tracks, including the full length version of 'El Paso'. It was part of Sony's American Milestones reissue series for classic country and western albums including, among others, At Folsom Prison by Johnny Cash and Red Headed Stranger by Willie Nelson.

In 2010, with the release of Obsidian Entertainment'sFallout New Vegas, the album was rediscovered by people who played the game and listen to the in-game radio. Although the radio only included Big Iron, other songs on the album were soon found by the players online. Many internet memes were created as a result, with the most common being edits of the cover art.

Track listing[edit]

Side one[edit]

Side two[edit]

1999 reissue track listing[edit]

Personnel[edit]

• Marty Robbins — vocals, guitar
• Grady Martin — lead guitar
• Jack Pruett — rhythm guitar
• Bob Moore — bass
• Louis Dunn — drums
• Tompall & the Glaser Brothers, Bobby Sykes — backing vocals

Marty Robbins Gunfighter Ballads Vinyl

References[edit]

1. ^ ^ab'National Recording Registry Picks Are 'Over the Rainbow''. Library of Congress. March 29, 2016. Retrieved February 22, 2019.
2. ^RIAA Gold and Platinum Database. Retrieved 30 July 2014.
3. ^RIAA Gold and Platinum Database. Retrieved 07 February 2019.
4. ^Feldman, Brian (13 February 2019). 'How the 60-Year-Old Country Song 'Big Iron' Became an Enduring Meme'. Intelligencer; New York. Vox Media, Inc. Retrieved June 7, 2020.
5. ^Eder, Bruce. Gunfighter Ballads and Trail Songs at AllMusic. Retrieved December 22, 2017.
6. ^Dubro, Alec (20 September 1969). 'Records'. Rolling Stone. San Francisco: Straight Arrow Publishers, Inc. Retrieved 2 February 2016.
7. ^Eder, Bruce. 'Gunfighter Ballads and Trail Songs review'. AllMusic. Retrieved 18 February 2012.
8. ^'1001 Series'. 1001 Series. Archived from the original on 10 January 2014. Retrieved 18 February 2012.
9. ^Western Writers of America (2010). 'The Top 100 Western Songs'. American Cowboy. Archived from the original on 10 August 2014. Retrieved 5 February 2015.