Tracks: Big Iron//Cool Water//Billy the Kid//A Hundred and Sixty Acres//They're Hanging Me Tonight//Strawberry Roan//El Paso//In the Valley//The Master's Call//Running Gun//Down in the Little Green Valley//Utah Carol
Review:
The last country album we had was Ramblin’ Jack Elliot, and a very stripped-back and rootsy affair it was. Here on the opposite end of the spectrum, Marty Robbins presents us with a very slick, polished effort – from the cover art to the ooh-oohing backing vocals to the sweeping, cinematic storytelling of the lyrics, this is Hollywood all the way.
But then, there’s nothing wrong with that is there? This is a slick album, but it’s also a damned good one. Marty Robbins may not be a technically dazzling lyricist, but he tells straightforward stories with great power and clarity. “Big Iron” and “El Paso” are entire little films unto themselves, with amazing sweeping narratives and striking imagery. Robbins’ tendency to uncritically accept that the girl is always to blame may make songs like “El Paso” and “They’re Hanging Me Tonight” a little irksome to anyone who tends to think to much about these sorts of things, but that doesn’t change the fact that they’re masterpieces of narrative music. “Cool Water” is honest to goodness desperation distilled. These are fine songs. The fact that they’re about cowboys shooting each other is just the icing on the cake.
I have to admit I have a soft spot for this album. When I was younger my dad used to always have the radio on Magic 693 AM, where Marty Robbins was a perennial favourite. Thankfully, a song like “The Master’s Call” is all the defense I need against any pundits or wags who might feel the need to mock me. Yes, it’s an overly earnest song about finding Christian redemption after almost being struck by lightning, but it’s also got some dazzling imagery and one of the most astonishing hooks to come along so far.
Although, speaking of those hooks does tend to lead me around to the melodic construction of a lot of these songs. There’s actually a fair bit of stylistic variation here, with Robbins throwing-in everything from Hawaiian guitars to Irish folk music and what sounds like nothing so much as laika on one track. “They’re Hanging Me Tonight” even manages to step right out of country and western and become an honest to god pop song! It could have been by damned near anyone. But be that as it may, he does tend to rehash his vocal delivery. That’s at least in part a hang-over from the material, but the fact that Robbins’ vocals are up front and centre for the entire album does mean that things can get a little samey at times. Thankfully, however, this was 1959, when people knew how to keep their albums short and sweet. The fact that I listened to this on vinyl, and had to get up and turn the thing over halfway through, didn’t hurt either.
There are a number of important aspects to this album, I suppose. Firstly, the massive chart success of both the album and its singles point very clearly towards the future of country music. Big, glossy songs by the likes of Glen Campbell, that’s what. I like Glen Campbell, but you can’t help but get a little teary eyed for depressing murder songs that sound like they were recorded through a soup tin. Oddly, however, this album also points forward to the sort of outlaw country that would get popular in the late 60s and early 70s, and is comprised mostly of the very same murder songs I was just lamenting. It’s a nice glimpse of a time when the two traditions hadn’t entirely splintered yet.
Another interesting thing about all this is that Marty Robbins wrote most of the songs here. That wasn’t an entirely novel occurrence by 1959 (a lot of the rock acts so far did likewise), but you do have to remember that this was still a period when, in pop music, many acts performed songs which had been written for them by stables of song-writers (usually Neil Diamond, for some reason). The most important initial contribution of the Beatles, after all, was the idea that a band should play its own songs. Robbins may not be spearheading anything, but this album does point to a growing trend.
In the end, though, all that really matters is the music. As I’ve said, it’s pretty solid. There’s some filler here, unfortunately – I have no real fondness for “Strawberry Roan”, and the second half of the second side just sort of blends together after a while. But the good stuff is just so amazingly good that it doesn’t really matter.
8/10
Download: Marty Robbins - El Paso Mp3
And here are the Beasts of Bourbon lamenting the death of a great man:
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