Texas Cowboy (I), The

DESCRIPTION: "Come all you Texas cowboys and warning take by me, Don't go out to Montana for wealth or liberty." The cowboy has worked in all sorts of places, but Montana is colder, you can only work (and so get paid) for six months a year, the food is bad, etc.
AUTHOR: unknown
EARLIEST DATE: 1888 (The Glendive Independent)
KEYWORDS: cowboy work hardtimes warning
FOUND IN: US(MW,Ro,So)
REFERENCES (10 citations):
Larkin-SingingCowboy, pp. 65-67, "The Texas Cowboy" (1 text, 1 tune)
Thorp/Fife-SongsOfTheCowboys VIII, pp. 97-103 (21-22), "The Texas Cowboy" (4 texts, 1 tune); Thorp/Logsdon-SongsOfTheCowboys, pp. 148-151, "The Texas Cowboy" (1 text)
Fife/Fife-CowboyAndWesternSongs 31, "The Texas Cowboy" (3 texts, 1 tune)
Tinsley-HeWasSinginThisSong, pp. 50-53, "The Texas Cowboy" (1 text, 1 tune)
Welsch-NebraskaPioneerLore, pp. 28-30, "The Texas Cowboy" (1 text)
ArkansasWoodchopper, pp. 42-43, "The Texas Cowboy" (1 text, 1 tune)
Greenway-FolkloreOfTheGreatWest, pp. 204-205, "The Texas Cowboy" (1 text)
Lingenfelter/Dwyer/Cohen-SongsOfAmericanWest, pp. 329-330, "The Texas Cowboy" (1 text, 1 tune)
DT, TXASCWBY*
ADDITIONAL: Powder River Jack and Kitty Lee's _Songs of the Range: Cowboy Wails of Cattle Trails_, Chart Music, 1937, p. 36, "I Am a Texas Cowboy" (1 text, 1 tune)
Roud #4632
RECORDINGS:
Arkansas Woodchopper [pseud. for Luther Ossenbrink], "I'm a Texas Cowboy" (Conqueror 7883, 1931)
NOTES [90 words]: ArkansasWoodchopper credits its text to Nick Manoloff, but Manoloff was not born until 1898, so he can hardly have written the original! The ArkansasWoodchopper version is significantly different from the others, however; perhaps Manoloff rewrote it.
I'm none too confident that all the other versions belong here, either -- e.g. Greenway's version never mentions Montana; much of it is about the girl the cowboy lost. But Roud lumps them, and I'm doing the same because untangling things would probably just make things more confusing! - RBW
Last updated in version 6.6
File: TF08

Go to the Ballad Search form
Go to the Ballad Index Song List

Go to the Ballad Index Instructions
Go to the Ballad Index Bibliography or Discography