{"id":150,"date":"2021-09-22T18:56:57","date_gmt":"2021-09-22T22:56:57","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/unewhavendh.org\/music-of-texas-fall-2021\/?p=150"},"modified":"2021-12-25T17:14:16","modified_gmt":"2021-12-25T21:14:16","slug":"old-chisholm-trail-by-frank-goodwyn","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/unewhavendh.org\/music-of-texas-fall-2021\/2021\/09\/22\/old-chisholm-trail-by-frank-goodwyn\/","title":{"rendered":"“Old Chisholm Trail” by Frank Goodwyn"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

A classic American folk song associated with the cowboy culture of the post-Civil War Reconstruction era; \u201cOld Chisholm Trail\u201d is based on an English lyrical song from the 1670s. No singular person is credited as the songwriter, but it\u2019s said to date back to the 1870s. It was first officially published in 1910 in Cowboy Songs and Other Frontier Ballads<\/em> by John Avery Lomax, an ethnomusicologist who traveled around America in the early 1900s capturing field recordings of traditional music. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

“Old Chisholm Trail” has a characteristic that\u2019s unique to folk music \u2013 its lyrics evolved through time and as more people heard it. Music like this that\u2019s passed down through many different people contributes to the oral history of early American (and in the case of \u201cOld Chisholm Trail,\u201d more specifically Texan and Southwestern) cultures and customs.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The lyrics of the song are based around a major source of post-war income for Texas, the Chisholm Trail. Used from 1867 to 1884, it was a route out of Texas for cowboys to drive longhorn cattle up into Kansas, Missouri, and Wyoming, as well as to railroad lines that could carry the meat from the livestock to the East Coast. Longhorns were too plentiful to be a source of income in Texas, but booming cities that were popping up all over the East Coast led to more than five million cattle and a million mustangs being moved along the trail, the greatest migration of livestock in world history.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

As cowboys herded thousands of cattle up the trail, they added lyrics to \u201cOld Chisholm Trail.\u201d Songs like this were often used to pass the time, and strong gospel and blues influences also had another function, according to longtime Dallas journalist and historian Wayne Gard. He wrote that Methodist hymns often were deployed to arrest a stampede, and this musical influence from Black culture had a calming effect on the cattle. The transcription below is an example of some of the lyrics of “Old Chisholm Trail,” but it is not inclusive of the many different versions of the song. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

\"Traditional
Credit to the Traditional Music Library.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

 As noted by the Texas State Historical Association, folk music is unique because of its nature of being passed down from generation to generation, and \u201cTexas folk music is “Texas” only because it passed through the state during the course of its transmission. Its traditional nature means that it was played or sung long before being brought to Texas.\u201d Frank Goodwyn, who recorded the version of \u201cOld Chisholm Trail\u201d below, was a Historian in the early to mid-1900s who wrote a lot about early cowboy culture and the music that was born out of it. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

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