Left Texas

Here is a new song from Cowboy Sutra.

I was surprised to find my heavy-set self mounted on the horse on the left in this photo from the 1880s. I guess I really am a time traveler.

It’s 1881 and your job is to coerce a herd of several thousand half-wild cattle through wild and unfamiliar territory from Texas to Wyoming. What could possibly go wrong?

“Left Texas,” from Cowboy Sutra

Ab Blocker, third from left, spinning yarns with cowboy chums

Abner (Ab) Pickens Blocker (1856-1943)

To ground this song, I need to get historical. The first verse references the trail boss Ab Blocker. Until I did some research, I assumed he was some faceless character, maybe fictional, no more real that the names engraved on gravestones in Western movies.

But I found that Ab Blocker was famous in his day and is still remembered as a consummate trail boss, able to muster a crew of cowboys skilled enough to deliver a herd of wild long horns north from Texas to Wyoming and Montana through treacherous terrain, bad weather, Native resistance, and armed rustlers.

Even the folks who received the cattle were wild. Near the end of his life, Ab reminisced about a delivery in 1882 of 3000 head to the Swenson Brothers, near Cheyenne, Wyoming:

“The people in those parts then were a pretty tough lot. All of the men carried pistols and Winchesters and I told the folks when I got back that the women gave their babies cartridge shells to cut teeth on instead of rubber rings.”

(From Hunter’s Frontier Times Magazine, October,1927)

“Left Texas” takes place in 1881, just a year before that delivery to the Swenson Brothers and only six years before my wife’s great-grandfather, J. L. Jordan, arrived in Wyoming and started the ranch north of Cheyenne where Teresa grew up. I like to think of J.L.’s firstborn, Teresa’s grandfather Sonny, as a baby cutting his teeth on cartridge shells. Now I understand why the Jordans have such strong teeth.

In 1885, a ranch syndicate hired Ab Blocker to drive a big herd north and asked him to suggest a good cattle brand for the journey. He drew an “X,” an “I,” and a “T” in the dust with the toe of his boot, and the syndicate liked it so well they not only used it on the cattle, they took it as the name of their ranch. In time, the XIT became the largest ranch in Texas, maybe even in the world. Naming the XIT was not Ab’s only bequest to Western lore. He was also the great-grand-uncle of Dan Blocker, who played Hoss on the TV show Bonanza

If you become a paid subscriber you get a complementary CD or vinyl version of Cowboy Sutra. It’s as good as a nine-course feast served on a platter.

W.M. (Dick) Devoll, (1877-1964)

Dick Devoll is my favorite traditional cowboy singer. He would have been four years old when the fabled cattle drive in the song took place but as a young man he hired on at the XIT, and he would have heard all the stories. I doubt he wrote the song but he was around plenty of older cowboys who could have penned the words.

In 1946, the folklorist John Lomax contacted Dick Devoll to propose they meet at a recording studio in Dallas where Devoll would record songs for the Library of Congress. Devoll drove down from his ranch at Booger Hollow, Oklahoma and sang 19 songs into the microphone that day.

I first encountered “Left Texas” when I listened to those recordings. It had strange and quirky turns of phrase – “You’ll take that bitter pill,” and “He winked that big eye.” It seems as untamed as the unfenced land Ab traveled through. The melody, though, was quite repetitive. I’m of a tidy age where everything is fenced and well delineated so I took the song, hoping to give it a more pleasing melody and some honing of the verses so they would revolve around a single theme, good bosses. I’m not apologizing for my meddling. It happens a lot in the folk process. The fact is, I like both the original version and my own.

Dick Devoll singing Left Texas, 1881

“Left Texas,” is the fifth of nine songs on Cowboy Sutra that I’m releasing one at a time on my weekly Substack Boost. We are at the midpoint. Fearing that this history lesson may have left you a wee bit drowsy, I need to issue a warning. The song begins with a loud clanging designed to keep you awake. As usual, the harmonium is the glue of the song. I also play fretted oud, guitar, mandola and bit of synthesizer. At the end of the song things get a little dark as I attempt to bring you along to Texas, 1881.

Lyrics, “Left Texas”

I left old Texas way back in eighty-one

Four-thousand longhorns, as wild as ever run

Ab Blocker was our trail boss and he knew a good crew

And I was the green horn, just trying to be true blue

Fifteen good cowhands who were better by far

But together, he told us, we’d find that one star

Point those old longhorns right towards the north star

just point that wagon tongue, boys right to that one star

He told the horse wrangler, just throw them horses in

A river to ford boys, so don’t be thin skinned

Deep river to cross, and don’t mind the chill

I’m telling you cowboys you’ll take that bitter pill

It’s the hills of Wyoming, out by the ‘dobe walls

We’ll get back to Texas late in the fall

Back to old Texas, chuck wagons, and all

And he looked over at us, and winked that big eye

My comrades, dear comrades, there is no compare

To a job well done without big fanfare

To the memory of men who could work and have fun

And a boss who knew how to get the job done