SEMIBEGUN 017: ANYONE CAN BE A COWBOY

 

Air Date: March 29, 2023

In the 1930s, against the backdrop of a crushing Depression and westward migration across the Dust Bowl, a new American Hero occupied the B-movie and country music landscape. Dressed in pristine wrangler costumes and a large white hat, singing cowboys like Gene Autry and Roy Rogers crooned their emotions in a popular country western style while riding across the silver screen in pursuit of villains and gals. Off-screen, many musicians across the country took up themes of the American west, based both in myth and reality, and performed in groups with names like Tex Russell and His Hollywood Cowboys and Girls of the Golden West. A completely American music with strong influences of swing, blues, Tejano, European folk, and hill billy music, these Singing Cowboys, Western Swing Bands, Blues Yodelers, and Mexican-American Songsters of the 1930s to 1950s flesh out the sound of the American West and its characters. Anyone can be a cowboy out here in the everywhere west!

TRACKS

  1. Tex Owens – Cattle Call; 1934

  2. Girls of the Golden West – Will There Be Any Yodelers in Heaven?; 1938

  3. Jimmie Rodgers – Blue Yodel No. 1 (T for Texas); 1928

  4. Bob Wills and his Texas Playboys – San Antonio Rose; 1938

  5. Texas Jim Lewis and his Lone Star Cowboys – Big Bad Bill from the Badlands; 1942

  6. Lydia Mendoza – Mal Hombre; 1934

  7. Patsy Montana – I Want to Be a Cowboy's Sweetheart; 1938

  8. Gene Autry – Listen to the Rhythm of the Range; c 1940s

  9. Johnny Bond and the Red River Boys – Stars of the Midnight Range; 1944

  10. Roy Rogers and The Sons of the Pioneers – Blue Shadows on the Trail; 1948

  11. Tex Ritter – High Noon (Do Not Forsake Me); 1952

  12. Marty Robbins – Saddle Tramp; 1959

  13. Speedy West – West of Samoa; 1955

  14. Pedro Rocha y Lupe Martínez – Contrabandistas Tequileros Pt. 1; c. 1928 - 1937

  15. Roy Rogers and The Sons of the Pioneers – I'm an Old Cowhand; 1936

  16. The Prairie Ramblers/Sweet Violet Boys – Let's All Get Good and Drunk; c. 1935 - 1940

  17. Patsy Montana – Singing in the Saddle; 1939

  18. Gene Autry – Back in the Saddle Again; 1939

  19. Sweet Violet Boys – The Man Who Comes Around; 1937

  20. Tex Russell and His Hollywood Cowboys – Moon Over Montana; 1946

  21. Sons of the Pioneers – Tumbling Tumbleweeds; 1934

  22. Carl T. Sprague – O Bury Me Not on the Lone Prairie; 1926