Wake Me in Wyoming

Wyoming Music. Beaches Of Cheyenne (Live)

Another Cheyenne themed song, this one centered on a tragedy at Frontier Days.

Get Along Little Doggies (Whoopie Ti Yi Yo).

Whoopie Ti Yi Yo is a classic genuine Cowboy song. The song is an old one and like a lot of genuine Western music, it is a European folk ballad that was reset in a Western location.  The original song was an Irish ballad about an old man being rocked in a rocking chair.

The first reference to this song of any kind was in Owen Wister's The Virginian.  He'd no doubt heard it in Wyoming when he'd toured it prior to writing his novel which was published in 1893.  The song was referenced by musicologist John Lomax in his 1910 work Cowboy Song and Other Frontier Ballads.  It was first recorded in 1929.

In putting this up here, I had a variety of recordings I could have chosen, but I yielded to popular pressure and put up the Chris Ledoux variant as Ledoux remains very popular with Wyomingites.  I'm the odd man out on that as I find Ledoux's voice rough and I'm generally not a fan.

University of Wyoming Marching Band Performs Ragtime Cowboy Joe

Ragtime Cowboy Joe

Ragtime Cowboy Joe has long been used by the University of Wyoming as its fight song.  The use isn't exclusive, as the University of Arizona also does, and many of the commercially recorded variants of the song make reference to Arizona, not Wyoming.

The tune was, of course, a popular song before being adopted by the University, which likely happened soon after it was recorded in 1912.

Wyoming Music. Johnny Cash - I've Been Everywhere

This Johnny Cash song is more debatable.  The lyrics reference a "Glen Rock" or Glenrock".  It is Glenrock Wyoming?  Well, Glenrock Wyoming is the only Glenrock that I know of, but I probably don't know every place that might be called that.

As Cash did reference Cheyenne, Wyoming in the other city song we referenced yesterday, Wanted Man, we'll assume some knowledge of Wyoming's geography and include this one in the list.

Wyoming Music. Johnny Cash - Wanted Man - Live at San Quentin

Johnny Cash's Wanted Man, which has also been effectively covered by Bob Dylan, mentions Cheyenne in the lyrics, so we're doing a second Cheyenne reference song in two days.

Wyoming Music and Mid Week At Work: Lights of Cheyenne

This song is, to put it bluntly, grim, but it captures a real slice of Wyoming.  It's nearly the flipside of Crossland's Bosler.

The characters in this song are so familiar to me from legal work that it isn't funny.  It's accordingly hard to believe that McMurtry, the son of the famous novelist, isn't a Wyomingite.  The central placement of the Interstate Highway (Cheyenne is at the junction of two of them), the truck stop as a place of employment, the line about antelope, are all right on.  Even the the surprising line at the end that reveals the protagonists feelings about Cheyenne are something that you'd expect from a native.

I recently sent a link to this performance to a friend from back East who was somewhat mystified by the lyrics, including the one "She's got a cowboy problem".  This again, shows how accurate this song is, as that lyric makes perfect sense to a local.

Wyoming Music: Jalan Crossland - Bosler

Jalan Crossland is a local artist whom a lot of people follow.  Bosler is a small town north of Laramie, or at least it was.

When I was an undergraduate at the University of Wyoming a few people still lived there, and a second hand appliance store did a pretty good business with students.  By law school that was already changing, although somebody had taken up residence in the old, probably 1920s vintage, school that was there, having converted it pretty clear to coal fired heat. 

Now it's really past even that state of decline.  I'm not sure if anyone lives there any longer, although my guess is that the answer is probably yes.  

Bosler once figured fairly significantly as an Albany County town. In the early 20th Century it was a going concern, and also nearly lawless.

Crossland, in this song, works in multiple layers of satire.  The town is satirized, but so is the person who dreams of it as a refuge.  Urbanites dreaming of Wyoming that way are not uncommon, and indeed land just outside of the windswept Bosler was marketed to out of states at one time who no doubt didn't realize that its 7,000 feet in elevation, exposed to the wind, and cold in the winter.

Wyoming Music: Belle of Natrona County

I'm completely clueless about how this folk song titled after Natrona County, or rather a Natrona County beauty came about, but given as I've been married to a Natrona County beauty for over a quarter century, I like the tune.

This is the category of "Folk Music", and of the type that gave rise to "Country" music before it was categorized as Country & Western by music companies.  While I do not like Country & Western music as a rule, I do like this sort of folk music.

Wyoming Music: Song of Wyoming

I'll be frank that I'm not a John Denver fan, but being a fan of the music isn't required to appear in this series.

Wyoming Music and Friday Farming: Leavin' Cheyenne (Goodbye Old Paint).

This old cowboy ballad is a classic, and this is my favorite version of it.  It was written by black cowboy Charlie Willis, and was first included in musical indices in 1921.  It's regarded as one of the top 100 Western songs of all times.

Concerning the song, it's a true example of a "Western" song, a genera that's all but disappeared, having been absorbed by Country & Western music.

Wyoming songs: State Anthem.

This is the one I had to learn in grade school.  It's still the state anthem, but you never hear it anymore.  When my kids went through grade school they weren't taught it.

The song was written by Judge Charles E. Winter, whom one of my aunts had worked for when she was a teenager. He'd had quite a career, having been Wyoming's Congressman and later Governor of Puerto Rico.  He returned to practicing law in Casper and was therefore one of those examples of lawyers who seemingly never retire.

He was also multi talented.  In addition to being a songwriter, he was a novelist, with one of his novels having been made into a movie several times.  His son, Warren, was still practicing when I was first a lawyer, and was nearly 100 when he died.  He also never retired.

Wyoming Songs: Wyoming Where I Belong

One of two office state songs for the state, this one having been made official in 2018.