Customer Reviews

Gunfighter Ballads And Trail Songs

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First I'd like to say I absolutely despise most of the swabby, commercial garbage played on most so-called Country and Western stations today. Have a singer whine and sing through his nose, throw in a little fiddle and some stupid lyrics and presto: instant country music which is rarely more than pop music with a twang.Those who want to hear what real country/western is all about have only a few contemporary artists like Junior Brown or Dwight Yoakam to listen to or they have to go back to the old masters.Marty Robbins is a western native who put the "western" in C&W music and his album "Gunfighter Ballads and Trail Songs" is the vehicle with which he accomplishes that.Any one who loves the west can't help being moved by the collection of timeless classics on this album. Frankly, though its a great song, I am tired of El Paso.There are many equally good songs here. The listener will conjure images of the frontier days with the fantastic Big Iron, His Master's Call and the Hanging Tree. Anyone who has experienced the wide expanses of the intermountain west will appreciate A Hundred and Sixty Acres, Little Green Valley and Cool Water. That those are my favorites doesn't diminish the others.There is little quite like the smooth, rich, manly vocal style of Robbins or the tight play of his band. In the general style, only Gordon Lightfoot is his vocal equal.If you buy only one C&W album in your life, this should be the one for it is the standard against which all others should be measured.

My dad loved Marty Robbins. I have so many memories of summer nights listening to the stereo playing "Big Iron" or "El Paso" and dad singing along, or actually, talking along, announcing each verse before it came up, sitting in the front yard under a blanket of stars.

Both dad and Marty Robbins are gone now. I never thought of collecting Robbins' albums much until recently, when I became irked at myself for not remembering the lyrics to El Paso. I bought this CD and everything just flooded back. All of these songs are great. "Cool Water", "Billy the Kid"...It was so easy, as a kid, to take Robbins for granted. But now I realize his was a very strong voice. The backup vocals and musicianship, as well as the lonesome-sounding, echoing production, make for a perfect country-western sound.

Believe me, along with selected CDs by Johnny Cash, Jerry Reed, Patsy Cline, Steve Earle, Hank Williams Sr., and Willie Nelson, this perfect album by Marty Robbins belongs in the CD collections of any self-respecting rock fan. I normally listen to death metal, hardcore punk, and that ilk, but I still have to have my fix of Mr. Robbins.

The cowboy ballads included here are sparse, narrative-driven masterpieces. The only place music like this comes from is the soul. If it's true that Robbins recorded this in one afternoon, then that afternoon has got to be one of the most amazing dates in music history.

The cowboy songs on this disc, although not all written by Robbins, denote a singular vision. There is a romantic aspect to the music in its appreciation of nature, individualism, and especially in its heroic idealization of simple little vignettes about horse-riders of all types. This album is 100% cohesive even with the extra tracks tacked-on the end.

I strongly recommend this CD (even more than the 2-CD Essential Marty Robbins, which is also great, but not as focused) for any lover of music or collector of songs. Regardless of your musical leanings, this will find a worthy place in your collection.

Marty is truly an authentic cowboy singer. When you listen to these songs of the old west, you can actually SEE what he's singing about and he makes you feel the emotion of the song. As a born Arizonan, he grew up with stories of the old west that his grandfather, Texas Bob Heckle, would tell him. Can you believe that Columbia Records, at first, was reluctant to have him release a 'cowboy' album, telling him that his 'voice wasn't right for cowboy songs'......wrong! Marty possessed a beautiful voice and was 'at home' in any genre of music, but his western 'stories in song' were just magnificent. Just give a listen to MAN WALKS AMONG US, THIS PEACEFUL SOD, THE RED HILLS OF UTAH, JOHNNY FEDAVO, BILLY VENERO....hear this extraordinary voice take you back to the days of the cowboy. I promise you, you WILL feel the sand in your eyes and smell the smoke of the 45. He makes it that real. If I could recommend any one singer when it comes to cowboy songs, it is MARTY ROBBINS....he brought the cowboy to life. This album is one of his finest and most sought after collections.

This album would not only reconnect Country Music with it's Western Roots, but recreate Marty Robbins' career for many years to come. The majesty of the talented sound of Tompall and the Glaser Brothers, who created the musical imagery with Marty, and the talented acoustic guitar swells that molded the imagery of Marty's music, and symbolism of our Southwestern culture created the perfect stepping stone for Country Music for many years after the release of this album.

These are not merely songs of the old west, but photo-musical imagery created in the fast-moving mind of the author himself. These were video images conjured up by the musical tales created by an extremely talented musician, which the world will long remember and truly miss.

The hero of the piece, "El Paso", is one of the longest single pieces of music ever to become a hit, in any genre, up to the long later intro of Queen, in the genre of rock, many years later. But the length of the piece, not only does not subtract from it's meaning, but helps to add to the imagery created within it's entity.

All of the music in this album contributes to history of Country Music and to the greater history of the Western Genre. No student of Country Music or lover of the same could possibly exist without a copy of this marvelous collection of images and sounds of the old west.

To finish the album by adding, "The Hanging Tree", the theme song from a movie which demonstrated the expansion of our country to the west, was indeed, a measure of divine ingenuity.

No lover of Country Music should be without this album.

Like others who have reviewed this CD, I was first introduced to "Gunfighter Ballads and Trail Songs" by my grandfather and to listen to the songs touches just about every memory I have of him. I have to say that the remastering for CD is nothing short of fantastic. The sounds are all fresh and new, and this is stated by someone who knows every note by heart.

There is a real problem with this CD, in that Sony added some "rare" B-sides. "Saddle Tramp" and "Hanging Tree" are available on other collections. I am sure that Sony could have delved in its vaults and come up with some real gems to add to this collection, such as bits and pieces of the recording session itself (which, in retrospect, seems to be a historic note), alternate takes and the like. Instead, it seems that Sony chose to rehash more of the same material it has used before.

It is a great job on the CD, but a poor choice of "new" material...

I grew up listening to this album on vinyl. Many a night I went to bed with the words to "Big Iron" and "Hanging Tree" running through my mind. Marty Robbins had THE voice for western ballads and this album stands out in my mind as the definitive Western Ballad collection. It makes you close your eyes and imagine yourself on the prairie, sitting around a campfire, and listening to him sing.

I still have this album on vinyl but no longer have a player so I am ordering this CD. I've never gotten tired of his music and I doubt I ever will.

If you only looked at the cover of this disc and were given no information about it's contents, you'd think you would hear the biggest cornball tunes of all time...but you'd be dead wrong. 'Gunfighter Ballads' just happens to be the greatest Western concept album ever recorded.

The liner notes to the disc (which are outstanding) describe America in the late 1950's: Westerns were enormously popular on television. Why? America was well into the Cold War by 1959 (the album's original release year), and people wanted to know who the good guys were. We wanted things to be black and white with no confusion. Television westerns showed us the Old West, good guys vs. bad guys, right vs. wrong with right always coming out on top. Robbins' tribute to the spirit of the Old West was a huge hit in 1959 and beyond. Not only was the music good, but the lyrics were deeper and more meaningful than typical Western fare. The disc includes some great guitar work by Thomas Grady Martin and Jack Pruett. The Glaser Brothers provide wonderful background vocals which make the songs even more alive and colorful. Many great tunes are included, some of them classics, such as "Big Iron," "Cool Water," and of course "El Paso." My only complaint is the inclusion of the short version (only 19 seconds shorter than the full version) of "El Paso." The long version is included too, but why bother listening to the short one when the full version is here? Still, this is classic Western music at a great price.

Disc time 44:42

This upgraded reissue presents potent, early work that is essential to Robbins' catalog. Sony has cleaned up the audio, added new liner notes and augmented the original disc with bonus tracks.

Robbins' 1959 LP is oddly anachronistic, having ridden a wave of Old West nostalgia that is now itself 40 years old. Even so, his highly-romanticized images of cowboys and outlaws are as captivating today as the (single!) day on which this album was recorded. Robbins' singing is breathtaking, backed perfectly by the Glaser Brothers and spiced with Grady Martin's Mexicali-flavored guitar. Classics like "Big Iron" and "El Paso" linger in the air like the smell of sagebrush, resulting in an album whose allure is as strong as its mythological subjects.

My father purchased Marty Robbin's orginal Gunfighter Ballads album in the early 1960s -- and I played it so many times I'm surprised the grooves in the record were not worn through. I still knew the words to over half the songs by heart, even though I hadn't heard any of them played in 30 years (at least). I can't tell you how happy it makes me to have this new CD available -- and hearing it in CD format instead of on my parent's old cabinet hi-fi system makes it even more of a treat!