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Margaret Larkin included the song in her own collection The Singing Cowboy (1931). She cites Sandburg’s high praise for it (it’s a “darb”), but provides no information about the source or age of the song. In her introduction to the songbook, Larkin includes “I Ride an Old Paint” among a few “so-called work songs,” suggesting that she believed it to be of cowboy culture and not just about it. She adds, however, that it is unclear whether these songs indeed functioned as work songs among cowboys.

“Cowboys disagree as to how much the so-called work songs…were actually used in working cattle. Some old timers scorn the notion. They whistled and yelped at their cattle to keep them on the move, or at most employed the eerie, wailing Texas yodel. If they sang, they declare prosaically, it was to keep themselves awake. Others say that they sang to the restless little dogies as they circled the herd at night, and sang and yipped as they drove them forward during the day. The only generalization that one can make is that some cowboys sang to their cattle and others did not.”

Whether cowboys sang this song while circling their herds at night is just one point of debate. The folkies at Mudcat and elsewhere appear to disagree as to the meanings of “throw the hoolian” (or “hoolihan”) and “the fiery and the snuffy.” While some allege that a “hoolihan” is a raucus celebration or a metaphor for death, it is the name of a lasso technique. (It could still be a metaphor for death.) Less settled, it appears, is whether “fiery and the snuffy” refers to horses, dogies/cattle, or a train. In the 19th century, a “poolroom” was a betting parlor for horse racing. Billiard tables were set up for diversion between races. Billiard enthusiasts will explain that the ill-repute attached to poolrooms was because of the race betting, not because of billiards. As we’ll see next, some singers thought it appropriate to remove Mrs. Jones from such a setting.

Muscle in my arm

Guy Logsdon and Jeff Place write in the liner notes to Woody Guthrie’s Asch Recordings, Vol. 4 that Stuart Hamblin first recorded the song as “Riding Old Paint, Leading Old Bald” for Decca Records in Los Angeles in March of 1934. Guthrie recorded the Asch track in 1944, subsequent to an earlier version with Pete Seeger in 1941. Guthrie’s version includes verses that differ from Sandburg’s, and adds a new verse. Logsdon explains that Guthrie learned the song from Alan Lomax, who also learned it from Margaret Larkin.

Instead of Old Bill Jones having “two daughters and a song,” Guthrie sings that Bill had “a daughter and a son. The son went to college and the daughter went wrong.” Guthrie keeps Mrs. Jones out of the pool room, but she dies in a “free-for-all fight” nonetheless; He preserves her virtue, perhaps, without diminishing the tragedy. Guthrie adds one verse in the recording:

I’ve worked in your town, I’ve worked on your farm,
All I’ve got to show is this muscle in my arm,
Blisters on my feet and callous on my hand,
Goin’ to Montana to throw the hoolihan.

Logsdon and Place explain that Guthrie added the above verse because he “wanted it to sound more like a worker’s song than a lyrical cowboy song.” The first three lines do that well, although the fourth line weakly just repeats a line from the first verse. Others in Guthrie’s orbit, like Cisco Houston and Pete Seeger, employ some of the same changes.

The liner notes also mention that Guthrie wrote other, unrecorded verses to this tune onto a manuscript. Some of these lines took “Old Paint’s” themes across other frontiers.

You fair skin women ought to come to the sun
Cause my dark skin woman is prettiest of you all
Her breast is the sweetest that I ever did press
And her skin is the warmest that ever I felt.

Scholars generally agree that 20^th century cowboy myth-making effectively white-washed cowboy reality. Perhaps Guthrie’s written verse was too far afield of the song’s themes to record. Perhaps it was the start of another song built on the meter. It does it gesture at a more accurate vision of ethnic diversity on the frontier. As it stands, though, very little within the song or its performance history counteracts the white-washing. On the other hand, I’ve seen no evidence that the song actively perpetrates it, either.

The “buckaroo”

Carl Sandburg (photo from Carl Sandburg Home National Historic Site)

While on the subject of evidence, I have none to contradict the basic story that Larkin and Sandburg provide for the song’s origin. It may well be that a southbound “buckaroo” passing through Santa Fe shared it with Larkin, probably in the late 1910s or 1920s. She was born in 1899. If it is a song that originated in the 19th century, it surprises me that eluded publication (especially by John Lomax and Thorp) until 1927, and recording until 1934. If that cowboy was just passing the song along, and didn’t claim to have made it up, Larkin and Sandburg would have no reason to attribute it to him.

Some songs created by African American cowboys did have their authorship obscured, temporarily or permanently. This is part of the story of “Goodbye Old Paint (Leaving Cheyenne),” which is a distinct song from our subject today. I have no grounds to think that Larkin or Sandburg would have done this. I have some grounds to think that they would have not. They leave the ethnicity of the “buckaroo” unmentioned.

Given the song’s themes and history, I was led to wonder whether Larkin might have written the song herself. I thought perhaps that she hid her authorship in order to avoid compromising the song’s perceived authenticity. This theory is purely speculative, however, and several compelling counterarguments challenge its viability. (My friend, Stephen Winick, was helpful in providing said counterarguments.) Hiding her authorship would have involved at least Larkin and probably Sandburg in levels of deception inconsistent with their other work. I would, however, not be at all surprised to learn that the song originated in the 20th century. It may be younger than even Larkin or Sandburg thought.

Promotional Image from the American Ballet Theatre’s 2015 production of Rodeo
(photo by Rosalie O’Connor)

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