[This is the third post this week on Marty Robbins’s “El Paso.”  Read the first here, and the second here.]

In today’s post, let’s give a listen to some of the Western material that Robbins created both at the time of “El Paso’s” initial release and after its enormous success  We’ll see some hints of what may make this signature hit of Robbins’s so powerful.  It’s not just love.  It’s probably some justice.  It’s definitely some sacrifice, and it may be just a little hint of Jesus.

Singing Cowboy

Many sources on Robbins note his childhood interest in the Singing Cowboy figure in American film and the Western style of music typified by Gene Autry.  Autry was an icon of the Western genre and built a very successful music and film career within it.  A song such as “Mexicali Rose” would likely be a tune that Robbins heard in his youth.  In it, it’s not too difficult to hear the precursors of “El Paso’s” borderland romantic fixation.



“Mexicali Rose” by Gene Autry (Spotify) (Lyrics)

Robbins’s musical career started off with songs in a number of different genres.  That “El Paso” is more his signature piece than songs such as “A White Sport Coat and a Pink Carnation,” or “The Story of My Life” is not an accident, but Robbins for a while was operating in the same musical territory as Elvis Presley.  But, as we noted before, Robbins had a great affinity for old Western songs, developing his own new ones as he traveled from town to town as a touring musician.

Gunfighter Ballads and Trail Songs

One of Robbins’s first hits in the Western cowboy genre is “The Hanging Tree,” which appeared on the same album, Gunfighter Ballads and Trail Songs, as “El Paso.”  It’s a good point for us to start in looking at the context of songs from which “El Paso” emerges–particularly as far as love, death, and salvation are concerned.  Give a close listen to the song, and think about James Miller’s line from the previous post about how “death seems almost a form of deliverance.”

Here’s a clip of the song from the “Town Hall” program, also featuring Tompall and the Glaser Brothers on backup.


(The audio in this clip is a little distorted.)  

“The Hanging Tree” by Marty Robbins (Spotify)  (Lyrics)

There’s actually very little in the song that’s explicitly Western, but the image of the hanging tree, and the implication of frontier justice, I suppose, provides enough of a suggestion of it.  What’s most interesting to me about the song is the open ironic intent of the lyrics–they imply something other than what they say.  

We’ve talked before about how Jesus shows up in the murder ballad, including in murder ballads set in the American West.  We’ve even discussed violent Jesus figures, not entirely uncommon in the American Western (e.g. Pale Rider and The Quick and the Dead).  Within that context, and perhaps even without it, it’s not too hard to see in the song’s claims that “to really live, you must almost die,”and the reference to the hanging tree as a “tree of life,” an echo of this theme of salvation through death.  Although it’s a little clearer in “Hanging Tree,” this theme is also present, I think, in “El Paso” and its sequel “San Angelo.”

The Ballad of a Gunfighter–“San Angelo,” or Felina Lives!

We noted last time that there appears to have been at least a little ambivalence on Robbins’s part as to whether Felina lives or dies.  A few years after the release of “El Paso,” Marty Robbins appeared in The Ballad of a Gunfighter, a B-movie Western in which he stars as a Robin Hood-like gunfighter named, you guessed it, Marty Robbins.  “Robbins” stays one step ahead of the town’s real crooks and robs trains and stages in order to distribute the wealth to the poor townspeople of San Angelo.  Amidst his adventures, he falls in love with Secora, a cantina girl held captive by her shame, her past, and the controlling love of the town’s real villain, McCord.  The doubt-filled Secora tries to make a new, respectable life for herself, and in her deliberations about how to respond to “Robbins’s” love, she’s advised by an older and wiser Felina (played by Laurette Luez, pictured in the previous post), who tells her own story of falling in love with a jealous cowboy.

The full film is available on Hulu.  You can watch it here, if you’re curious.  It’s about 83 minutes long, and remember what I said about it being a “B-movie Western.”  I have watched it so you don’t have to–one small service we aim to provide for our readers here at Murder Ballad Monday.  There will be spoilers ahead, although I don’t know that the story really takes any crucial turns you wouldn’t predict. 



The two primary musical themes that flow through The Ballad of a Gunfighter are “El Paso,” and “San Angelo.”  This latter song tells the essential part of the story in less than a tenth of the time of the movie. There are a number of curious elements in the movie, including a very Anglo “Secora.” (The movie presumably had less latitude when it came to that particular kind of border crossing than the song did.) “San Angelo” provides the soundtrack for the concluding death scene in the movie.  In fact, it effectively narrates the action you see.

“San Angelo” by Marty Robbins (Spotify)  (Lyrics)

“San Angelo” clearly attempts to mine the same territory as “El Paso.”  With the possible exception of Jim Croce’s “Bad, Bad Leroy Brown” and “You Don’t Mess Around with Jim,” I think you’d be hard pressed to find two more similar murder ballads (loosely defined) from a single artist.    Both the movie and the song were an opportunity for Robbins to capitalize on the enormous popularity of the earlier song.  

There are some differences in the narrative between the two songs.  In “San Angelo,” the protagonist does not kill a romantic rival out of jealousy, but takes revenge on the ranger who killed his beloved.  Also, both of the lovers die.  In the movie, they do so with most of the townspeople looking on, including the poor parish priest who has turned something of a blind eye to “Robbins’s” banditry for the benefit of the poor whom he supports. As James Miller describes the concluding scene in The Rose and the Briar, “the religious imagery [in Ballad of a Gunfighter] could not be more explicit.  In the film, the padre smiles beatifically as Secora and Robbins die.  The cowboy is a kind of saint–a martyr, redeemed by his transcendent love, a love stronger than death.” (p. 270)

With the help of “The Hanging Tree” and “San Angelo” we get some perspective on the emotional power for some listeners within “El Paso” and also in “Faleena.”  The themes of sacrifice and love triumphing over death may create more or less explicitly religious overtones.  Whether or not they do for everyone, there is something elemental and compelling underneath–despite the fact that, or perhaps because, the circumstances are set in a mythical West away from most listeners’ everyday lives.  I mentioned that the notion of justice as defined in the American Western genre is inescapable in “El Paso.”  It is in “Faleena” as well.  But what these songs have in their favor is that aspect of redemption through love, which is ultimately, within the world of the songs, more important than justice.

They’re Hanging Me Tonight

I don’t plan to be encyclopedic in reviewing Robbins’s other cowboy material at this point, but Robbins’s “They’re Hanging Me Tonight” presents an interesting contrast in a couple ways to the other Robbins songs we’ve listened to so far, but particularly on this last point.  First, though, its arrangement is stylistically more of a pop hit than a country ballad, however much the lyrics tell a story implicitly set in the West.  In terms of the feel of the piece, you can almost hear something like “Teen Angel” coming through.  A ranchera it is not.  

More importantly, the song also contrasts with “El Paso” in presenting more of a traditional murder ballad, where the killer wallows in remorse after killing not only his rival but his former lover as well.  The protagonist still has remorse over the deed he has done, but the song lacks the romance of “El Paso.”

“They’re Hanging Me Tonight” by Marty Robbins (Spotify)  (The Spotify file for this song has a typo in the title–reading “They’re Changing Me Tonight,” which makes for a rather humorous twist.) 

For my own part, although this last song has more of the feeling of a murder ballad about it, it still doesn’t capture the kind of power we’ve uncovered in “El Paso.”  In some ways this is not surprising, in that we likely identify more closely with the hero of “El Paso” more than we do with the protagonist of “They’re Hanging Me Tonight.”  As I said in the earlier post, what’s most resonant in “El Paso” is not the killing of the rival, but the all-consuming, ardent passion to be united with Felina.  “El Paso” and “They’re Hanging Me Tonight” operate in different emotional spaces.  The key part, I think, is that the latter contains the remorse without the window to redemption.  Love triumphs in “El Paso,” even in death.  In “They’re Hanging Me Tonight,” it is justice that has the final word.  

Next up

In one last post for the week, we’ll take a look at some of the covers of “El Paso,” and how artists fit this iconic song into their own repertoire.  I’ll also add a little fun to the end.  Thanks for reading, and please stay tuned.