Читать книгу The Mojo Collection - Various Mojo Magazine - Страница 24

Record label: Columbia

Produced: Don Law

Recorded: Bradley Film and Recording, Nashville; April 7, 1959

Released: June 1959

Chart peaks: 20 (UK) 6 (US)

Personnel: Marty Robbins (v, g); Thomas Grady Martin (g); Jack H Pruett (g); Bob L Moore (b); Louis Dunn (d); The Glaser Brothers (bv)

Track listing: Big Iron (S); A Hundred And Sixty Acres; They’re Hanging Me Tonight; Cool Water; Billy The Kid; Utah Carol; The Strawberry Roan; The Master’s Call; Running Gun; El Paso (S); In The Valley; The Little Green Valley

Running time: 44.42

Current CD: Sony 4952472 adds: The Hanging Tree (S); Saddle Tramp; El Paso (S)

Further listening: Marty’s Greatest Hits (1958), his first hits collection, released before Gunfighter Ballads And Trail Songs and containing all the early smashes

Further reading: The Encyclopedia Of Country Music (OUP, 1998); www.martyrobbins.com

Download: Not currently legally available

Glendale, Arizona’s Marty Robbins was already successful with smash hits such as Singing The Blues (1956) and A White Sport Coat (And A Pink Carnation) a year later, though nothing could have prepared him for the reaction an album full of Zane Gray/Louis L’Amour-like gunslinger tales would bring him. Marty’s grandfather was ‘Texas Bob’ Heckle, a one-time Texas ranger who told his grandson spellbinding tales of the Old West. Robbins grew up a Gene Autry fan, seldom if ever missing a movie by The Singing Cowboy, and had bit parts in two Hollywood horse operas.

When his theme from a Gary Cooper western, The Hanging Tree, climbed the charts in early 1959, it put Robbins in a position where he could lobby his label for an entire album of cowboy ditties. They agreed and Robbins compiled a list of his favourite Old West songs including the Sons Of The Pioneers’ Cool Water, his friends the Glasers’ Running Gun, three traditional cowboy ballads and four of his own songs. And what songs they were; Big Iron, which became a hit C&W single; The Master’s Call, an almost Biblical tale of a cowpoke’s redemption; In The Valley; and El Paso, the Number 1 pop hit which earned the first Grammy ever awarded to a country song and fast became Robbins’ signature tune. A tale of a foolish young cowboy’s love for a forbidden maiden, El Paso remains one of the greatest C&W songs, and has been covered by everyone from Johnny Cash to The Grateful Dead. Produced with a cinematic viewpoint by Englishman Don Law (who had recorded blues legend Robert Johnson a quarter of a century earlier) and propelled by Grady Martin’s bittersweet Mexican guitar flourishes, it was the album’s centrepiece, becoming one of the most played songs on country radio and propelling the album to platinum sales.

Robbins would have many more country – and crossover – hits in his career, and he would win a second Grammy a decade later, but nothing could eclipse the bright burning lights of this album just as nothing could stop that foolish cowboy from returning to his love at Rosa’s Cantina in El Paso.