Album artwork by Mylinda Farr
“The American cowboy of the 1800s experienced loneliness, danger, weariness, and job anxiety; it was hard work driving thousands of cattle up the trail for months. Today, we all experience similar challenges and obstacles in life, and we must look to Jesus as our only answer during those difficult times. I sincerely pray that these updated cowboy ballads restore your soul as well as help you lift up praises to your Creator.” – Mylinda Farr
Mylinda’s music is as soothing as it is addicting -it is not for the ‘hurry-up’ moments in life. Her heartfelt vocals, carried by her clear, sweet soprano voice, take the listener to a surprising place of ‘join up’, where western history walks with unshakeable faith. I just want to keep listening to those songs and their beautiful melodies!
-Devon Dawson
Mylinda Farr has the voice of an angel. When she sings it really ministers to your soul. Vocally she has a smooth and soft sound with the southern feel of country music. Get ready to be taken away to a peaceful place.
-The Wolfe Family
Old cowboy ballads become new songs of faith!
Dear Listener,
I fell in love with many cowboy songs, stories, and nostalgia when my children were young. Soon, I began to hum the tunes of many famous cowboy songs along with my kids while working around the house. These old melodies eventually gave way to words that came pouring out from my heart as God led me, and new verses with Christian themes were created. I truly wanted to sing to my Lord and Creator, and I simply used these cowboy folk tunes to accompany my own feelings and thoughts.
During that time, I pondered over the original and traditional lyrics, thinking about what the cowboy who wrote the words was actually going through in his life. For example, in the song “I Ride an Old Paint,” the writer complains that the only reward he receives from his work is the muscle in his arms, blisters on his feet, and callouses on his hands. He is definitely not feeling appreciated while working with the cows and horses, and he sees a move to Montana as the way to improve his life.
The Christian verses that I have added speak of relying on God and giving Him your burdens, even when you cannot see where you are supposed to be and what you are supposed to be doing. I also mention in the final verse crying out to God with a plea to be used by Him. I have felt that the cowboy in this song focused too much on himself, just like all of us tend to do at times, and needed to reach out to the Lord instead of making his own plans for his life.
On “Doney Gal,” I have often thought about the dangerous travels the cowboy experienced while leading his longhorn cattle through the weather of “rain or shine, sleet or snow.” This song mentions right away that the cowboy’s trusty horse, Doney Gal, pushes him on through blinding storms. Many times I have pictured this determined cowboy, “riding night herd all night long, singing softly a cowboy song,” enduring treacherous cattle drives only by singing out loud to his trustworthy God.
Like King David, the cowboy sings to the Lord throughout numerous tough situations. A storm breaks out and causes a stampede, but the cowboy continues, settling the cows down for the night, singing softly and calmly to the herd. The third verse anticipates an early start to a new day filled with hope for the long cattle drive ahead, despite a tired horse. Finally, the last verse, which I wrote, points to the Lord who gives us strength to mount up like eagles.
Just like the cowboy in my version of the song, who acknowledges that the Lord is with him day and night offering great supernatural strength, we also can call out to the Lord for renewed strength during the storms that seem to take over our own lives. We can find a great calm in knowing that, “In the day and night, the Lord is with me. I feel His strength; He’s all I need.” Psalm 121 reiterates that our Great God will keep us and will neither slumber nor sleep.
Historical notes as well as personal reflections accompany each song’s lyrics on this album found under my Blog entitled Cowboy Songs on Heaven’s Trail History & Stories. The stories of cowboys, and how they endured many difficulties while out under God’s skies, have always intrigued me. And so, I want to pass on some interesting nuggets of history with each song in tribute to America’s cowboy.
Photos: Mylinda’s three children and father-in-law
Folk Songs and The Cowboy
Folk songs often have an unknown composer, and the lyrics of most have been changed countless times over the years as they were passed around from singer to singer. In this same spirit, I have made minor changes, adding spiritual verses to several old cowboy folk songs on this CD.
Throughout the centuries, people have added sacred or Christian words to existing melodies as an easy, accessible way to share the gospel. Many beloved hymns were formed from popular, secular tunes. For example, “He’s the Lily of the Valley” is set to the tune for “The Little Old Log Cabin in the Lane;” “At the Cross” originates from the popular Confederate tune “Take Me Home;” “The Battle Hymn of the Republic” uses the music from the song “John Brown’s Body;” “Be Thou My Vision” comes from an old Irish folk tune associated with the ballad “With My Love Come on the Road;” and the tune for “O Sacred Head Now Wounded” originally appeared as a secular love song in 1601 entitled “My Heart Is Distracted by a Gentle Maid.”
After the Civil War, many men and boys from America’s southern states came looking for work with cattle in Texas, bringing their favorite traditional tunes and songs along with them. They then added their own lyrics about life on the range to these tunes. Some cowboy folk songs can trace their tunes back to old melodies, such as the famous cowboy ballad “The Streets of Laredo,” which is derived from the English folk song “The Unfortunate Rake” and the bluesy “Poor Lonesome Cowboy,” which evokes an African-American Spiritual. Singing these songs made the cowboys’ work a little more pleasurable and quieted the herds down in the evenings as well.
Photo: Mylinda’s parents
Trail Songs
Recently, someone introduced me to a friend and mentioned that I sang “the old trail songs.” A puzzled look came over this new acquaintance, and he paused with a response: “What do you mean trail songs?” I relished this opportunity to talk about how cowboys who desperately needed money, gathered cattle and drove them to markets over new and established routes or ‘trails’ to feed the many beef-hungry Americans in the mid to late 1800s.
“I don’t just know how we managed to control a herd with our voices, but we did. You will just naturally sing or whistle when you are riding herd on a lonesome trail, and cattle are trained to have confidence and obey the human voice just as a wild horse, after he is once broken, will come to you as soon as a rope slips over his head.”
-ALBERT R. BANKS 1937 Interview, Indian-Pioneer Papers, University of Oklahoma
The cowboy, Zachary T. Sutley explains how his comrades would sing ballads and folk songs along the way to calm their herds, to entertain each other, and to ease the monotony of being in the saddle for long hours:
“Then came the long drive north over the old Chisholm Trail, which was well known in those days but is now only a memory, and crossing the Red River, we struck northwest to Ogallala. We started with about fifteen wagons to carry the bed rolls, provisions, and camp equipment, and a hundred head of horses for the thirty riders.It took ten or
twelve men to keep the herd moving and we traveled about ten to fifteen miles a day. The same number of herders were needed to hold the cattle at night, for seven thousand head of longhorns were about as easy to herd as the same number of buffalo would have been. During the day, an old line rider rode ahead and was followed by the loose saddle horses. The cattle followed these along the trail, spreading out into a “V” sometimes a mile wide and running back a mile or more to be pushed along by the herders and wagons, the whole outfit often being more than two miles long.
“The cattle were bunched at night as close together as we could crowd them and the herders rode round and round, but if the herd were restless, as they usually were before a storm, all the men turned out to hold them and as they rode sang monotonous doggerel to soothe the bunch and keep them from milling. Besides quieting the cattle, this singing let each man know how far he was from the other riders and also kept coyotes, wolves, and other wild animals from coming near, which would have caused a stampede.
“As simple as these songs were, they were often amusing and sometimes even pathetic, as they pictured the life the cowboys led, many times with its tragic ending far from their homes and friends, for a cowboy encountered many dangers from bad horses, a stampeding herd, or wild rides in the dark.” (Source: The Last Frontier, by Zachary T. Sutley, 1930)
Many of my songs are traditional cowboy folk songs written by cowboys during their cattle-driving times on the various historical trails. Cowboy songs were composed while working out on the ranches as well. The lyrics for each of my songs are accompanied by personal and historical notes. The quest for western history is an ongoing passion of mine, especially first-hand accounts. Some years back, I began to search out and read cowboy recollections and diaries, and I now want to share many of these stories and reminiscences with you so that you also can enjoy learning about their adventures and challenges, “straight from the horse’s mouth.”
-Mylinda Farr
COWBOY SONGS AND THEIR COLLECTORS
Thankfully, several song collectors worked on preserving America’s rich heritage of cowboy music shortly after the large cattle drives ended in the 1890s. In 1908 N. Howard “Jack” Thorp, pictured below on left, published the first book of Western music entitled Songs of the Cowboys, pictured on the right. Later in 1910, John Lomax published his compilation, Cowboy Songs and Other Frontier Ballads, also pictured on the right, followed by Songs of the Cattle Trail and Cow Camp, published in 1919. Unfortunately, many of their songs included no musical arrangements to accompany their verses and choruses.
John Lomax’s memoir reveals how he showed his English professor at the University of Texas his childhood collection of cowboy songs, only to receive disdain for his “cheap and unworthy” folk songs which he states that he soon burned and destroyed.
Fortunately, the songs were accepted by his mentors and professors when he later studied at Harvard as a graduate student. This encouragement saved a great many of America’s cowboy songs for us to enjoy. Lomax dedicated his first songbook to Teddy Roosevelt.
Roosevelt commended Lomax for his work’s importance: “There is something very curious in the reproduction here on this new continent of essentially the conditions of ballad-growth which obtained in medieval England; including, by the way, sympathy for the outlaw, Jesse James taking the place of Robin Hood. Under modern conditions however, the native ballad is speedily killed by competition with the music hall songs; the cowboy’s becoming ashamed to sing the crude home-spun ballads…” (Source: Cowboy Songs And Other Frontier Ballads, John Lomax, 1910)
In order to satisfy your curiosity about the history of America’s cowboy songs, their traditional lyrics, and the verses that have been added over time throughout the folksong process, I encourage you to refer to these books: Git Along, Little Dogies: Songs and Songmakers of the American West by John I. White, 1989; Tell Me A Story, Sing Me A Song by William A. Owens, 1983; and Singing In The Saddle by Douglas B. Green, 2005 (aka Ranger Doug of the Western singing group, Riders In The Sky).
One of the first published cowboy songs, “The Lone Prairie,” from the 1905 songbook with musical arrangements, Folk-songs of the West and South
