HAL CANNON – Cowboy Sutra (own label)

Cowboy SutraA solo album by the 3 Hat Trio’s banjo player, Cowboy Sutra is, save for one track, a collection of covers of old and traditional songs from three obscure old West cowboy singers, ‘Dick’ Devoll, Kenneth Ward Atwood and Charlie (Charley) Willis. To give a little background, Willis was an African-American   from just outside Texas who worked the Chisolm Trail as a drover in 1871 and is credited with the classic cowboy song ‘Good-bye Old Paint’. Also from Texas and another drover, Walter Mayes Devoll made two recordings for Victor in 1929, credited as Dick Devell while, never a working cowboy, hailing from Utah, Atwood was a cowboy poet who features in The Skaggs Foundation Cowboy Poetry Collection, and known to Cannon personally, but I can find no trace of any published recordings.

The eight traditionals come from the singing of the three cowboys, although in some cases Cannon has revised the lyrics and/or melodies, he playing banjo. harmonium, mandola, guitar and a not entirely period appropriate synth with contributions from Deborah Robins on bass clarinet, Devon Lèger on hurdy-gurdy, Jon Neufeld on guitar and fellow trio member Greg Istock on piano. It opens with ‘Long, Come ‘Long’, a song far better known as ‘The Old Chisholm Trail’ with its “ti-yi,yippie-yippie-yah” refrain, and, unaccompanied save for harmonium drone and some sparse banjo notes, grounded in a version (which doesn’t mention the trail) adapted from Alan Lomax’s 1949  recording of Devoll.

‘Frosted Horses’ is the aforementioned Cannon original, an evocation of a cold winter’s night on the high desert of Nevada sung in echoey baritone to an icy banjo and distant harmonica, the lyrics conjuring the sight of the horses haiku-style.

Returning to public domain, the slow waltzing ‘Old Paint, Old Pain’ is a retitling of ‘Goodbye Old Paint’, a song of unknown origin that Willis (who is reputed to have had a horse named Old Paint) taught Jess Morris, the seven-year-old son of the ranch owner for whom he worked, and collected  by John Lomax in 1947, Robins’ bass clarinet adapting the fiddle theme from that recording with Neufeldt on guitar and Cannon improvising on mandola for the close.

Leger contributing the titular instrument while Cannon plays harmonium and English concertina, the five-minute ‘Hurdy Gurdy Girl’ is an American variant on ‘The Unfortunate Rake’, better known over there in the form of ‘Streets Of Laredo’ or ‘Tom Sherman’s Barroom’ (Dance Hall in the lyrics here), the lament of a wronged fair lady forced into whoring, Duvall’s 78 recording of which provides the template here. Again from Duvall’s recording, set in 1881 and referencing real-life trail boss Ab Blocker (the great-grand-uncle of Dan Blocker who played Hoss on   Bonanza), the doomy, spooked ‘Left Texas’ with Cannon on fretted oud is sung in the voice of a rookie cowhand as they follow the north star.

Willis is the source of the harmonium and synth droned ‘Old Charlie’, a revised and retitled take on ‘The Night Herding Song’, written in 1909 by Harry Stephens when he was wrangling horses at Yellowstone Park, the title character here being the old hand who recounted his stories of driving the dogies (a young calf) along the trail to the song’s narrator.

Taken from the singing of Atwood , ‘Two Dot’ is named for a town in Montana but  was originally titled ‘The Old-time Trapper’, Attwood learning it from a  couple of trappers who wrote it when they were stranded in the mountains for the winter imaging how much better life would be when they returned home, Cannon arranging it for percussive beat , banjo and Japanese koto-like synthesiser sound.

Anchored by drone, first recorded in 1925 by Karl T. Sprague, ‘Year Of ‘83’, another to reference a real cattle boss, A.J. Stinson, is a rewrite of ‘Trail To Mexico’, again with Devoll as its source, a my brother’s keeper number that Cannon has reworked from 1883 to 1983 as about   a cowboy stuck in the wilds of Mexico while his brother is dying of AIDS in San Francisco.

It ends with the empty night desert soundscape of ‘Fast Horses’,  revised with an extra verse and different melody and chorus from Attwood’s singing of ‘Dryland Farmer’, he learning it while working on the Uintah Ouray Indian reservation in eastern Utah, a lament  about how dryland farmers, “come-a creeping from the east” displacing the rearing of cattle with agriculture (“Right on that same old spot where we used to brand the steers/They’re growing big potatoes and them little roasting ears…We are the sons of pioneers, our birthright is for sale/It’s to the highest bidder and who’s left will tell the tale”), the incipient passing of a way of life.

While very much an album for those with an interest in the old cowboy traditions, Cannon’s interpretations should certainly attract a wider range of listeners, 3 Hat Trio fans among then, and those wishing to know more should check out his website and his many books on the subject.

Mike Davies

Artist’s website: www.halcannon.com

‘Fast Horses’ – official video:

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