Fine collection of Country & Western for your saddle pack

In celebration of the National Finals Rodeo’s fiftieth anniversary, Sony BMG Nashville/Legacy’s gathered together fifty songs of cowboys, their Western lives and the frontier landscapes they roam. Spread across three discs are artists closely associated with cowboy music, including Gene Autry, The Sons of the Pioneers, Roy Rogers, Red Steagall, Don Walser, Chris LeDoux, Don Edwards, Riders in the Sky, and Michael Martin Murphy, as well as dozens of country artists who reach back to a time before Country & Western split into two genres. Much like rodeo’s sometimes tenuous relationship to the working life of a cowboy, the characters depicted in these songs are often romanticized images of a cinematic West. That’s not particularly surprising given that most of these songs are songs about cowboys rather than by cowboys, written in retrospect decades after the closing of the frontier. Many served as nostalgic soundtracks to baby boomer films and television programs of the 1950s, and some as modern day odes from subsequent generations of misfits and outlaws.

Cowboy and western themes – independence, the fulfillment of work, tranquility and loneliness on the range, the human bond with horses, dangers on the trail, and the rough lives of nomadic societal misfits – have remained remarkably consistent across increasing distance from the mythologized source and seven decades of changing musical tastes. Circling back from Brooks & Dunn’s electric “Cowboy Town” to Gene Autry’s acoustic “Back in the Saddle Again” one finds little instrumental similarity, but the fresh air of hard work and personal freedom creates a link between them. The independence and orneriness of cowboys proved a natural draw for both the original outlaw movement and its revivals, with songs from Waylon Jennings, Guy Clark, Willie Nelson, Billy Joe Shaver, and Jessi Colter ranging from reflections of fellow travelers to hero worship.

The call of the West stretched beyond country artists to the Irish flutist James Galway, who waxed an early-80s cover of “The Wayward Wind” with vocalist Sylvia, and Canadian folk singer Ian Tyson, who recorded the traditional “Leavin’ Cheyenne.” Tyson’s original “Someday Soon,” memorably recorded by Judy Collins in 1969 is featured here in Suzy Bogguss’ superb 1991 hit cover. Most important to the survival of cowboy music over the decades is the enduring nostalgia for Western archetypes and the music itself, with missionary artists Don Walser, Don Edwards, and Riders in the Sky building careers expressly to keep old songs alive. Contemporary country artists borrow the nostalgia for an occasional remake, such as the Outlaws rock-reworking of “Ghost Riders in the Sky” or for an opportunistic pairing, such as Clint Black and Roy Rogers’ duet, “Hold on Partner.”

Though the bulk of this set is collected from the 1960s and 1970s, disc three is peppered with some some hard-charging modern country. As the program moves through tracks by Tracy Byrd, George Strait, Lonestar and Brooks & Dunn, it becomes evident that this collection is both a document of songs about the west and the soundtrack to modern-day rodeo events. Montgomery Gentry’s cover of “Wanted Dead or Alive” probably fires up the crowds, but as an historical document it harkens back more to Bon Jovi’s 1986 original than the Old West. Given the set’s dual identity, one can note that the omission of works by Tex Ritter and Jimmy Wakely (not to mention Glen Campbell’s “Rhinestone Cowboy,” though perhaps it was too ironic or simply not available for cross-licensing), but there are plenty of rodeo-themed songs here, including works from actual cowboys Rod Steagall and Chris LeDoux. In contrast to compilations that cover cowboy music as a cherished historical artifact, Legacy’s set shows the music still earning its daily keep at the rodeo. [©2008 hyperbolium dot com]