Edward L. Crain’s World
-From the liner notes of the re-issue of the Anthology we learn that Edward L. Crain was a texan who played guitar, fiddle and mandolin (on his recordings he apparently used only the guitar), worked on ranches and cattle drives and performed for various radio stations in the Forth Worth-Dallas area. He was part of a few performers of “cowboy songs” in the 1930’s who were really “cowboys” or were advertised as such by record companies. —By doing a research on the web, i stumbled across an interview on the Old-time Herald website with Mark Wilson, an old-time music researcher who met Edward L. Crain and talks about him:”Of course, I got The Anthology of American Folk Music and on it there was this fellow, Edward L. Crain, singing “Cowboy Cole Younger,” and I realized he was the same fellow I used to watch a few years before on afternoon television. For a while Eddie ran a 15-minute show to advertise his cleaning business and would sing “There’s an Empty Cot in the Bunkhouse Tonight,” “Preacher and the Bear,” Milton Brown’s “My Mary” and other material like that. My father knew Eddie slightly so I called him up, borrowed a malfunctioning tape recorder and went over to Ashland where he lived. I was nervous as hell but Eddie was a very gentle man. He had been raised on a ranch outside Longview, Texas (he learned “Cole Younger” from an elderly ranch hand there) and had made hats until asthma forced him to move to Oregon. Jimmie Rodgers recommended that he try his hand in the music business and Eddie said he was in the studio when Rodgers recorded “TB Blues.” He said it was very sad because Jimmie was so short of breath that he would collapse onto a sofa for a half hour after every number. By the time I met him, Eddie had developed a bad case of emphysema himself and was never able to sing much when I visited in later years. Eddie also knew Goebel Reeves, whom he remembered visiting [when he was] in jail on some Mann act charge. In any event, Eddie went off to New York where he stayed in the YMCA and played at places like The Little Red Schoolhouse in the Village dressed up in full ranch regalia. Somehow he even got booked on a tour with Jean Harlow and Bing Crosby. He liked Harlow but claimed that Crosby was “stuck-up.” He said he tried to modernize his fare but Harlow told him to stick to the cowboy stuff. All of this, of course, gave me a rather different picture of the ways of folksong than found in those somewhat romanticized books I was reading! Ever since, I’ve always found that the real life of folk musicians is so much more fascinating than the scripts that Jean Thomas and her modern equivalents devise. That is why, whenever possible, I try to get full autobiographical statements into the records I edit. I might mention that when I played “Cowboy Cole Younger” for Eddie, he commented that it was running too fast, which was apparently a rather common problem on 78s. Eddie’s voice was somewhat nasal, I suppose, but rather sweeter than is apparent on those records, great as they are. His own favorite was “Little Blossom.” To this day the picture of Jean Harlow and Eddie Crain appearing on the same show still astonishes me and demonstrates how drastically standards of cultural acceptance have shifted in this country.”
-I only have 5 tracks by Edward L. Crain in my collection, but as usual, i may post more in the future if i find out more somewhere… The song ” Staving to death on a government clain” shows that he didn’t performed only cowboy-related types of songs. It was later recorded by The New Lost City Ramblers on their “Songs of the Depression” lp and also by Norman Blake.
TRACK LIST:
1.Bandit Cole Younger
2.Starving To Death On A Government Claim
3.Old Chisolm Trail
4.Little Joe The Wrangler
5.Cowboy’s Home Sweet Home
The Cole Younger Variations
Published as a “Broadside” in the late 1870’s, this song tells some of the moments in the life of the real outlaw Cole Younger who was part of the legendary Jesse James’s gang with his two brothers. The song was made as if Cole Younger himself was singing it and like in the old english ballads, focus on some details and shift from one action to another in an almost cinematograhic fashion.
-Go to this page to read about the song’s background and the lyrics of the Edward L. Crain’s version
-There’s a wikipedia page about Cole Younger here
-Here are 14 performances selected from commerciald and field recordings. The melodies used for the song varies a bit depending on the performers, some like Dock Boggs used the same melody as the “Roving Gambler” song.
TRACK LIST:
(Unless indicated the title is always “Cole Younger”)
1. Mr. and Mrs. Berry Sutterfield, from Ozark Folksongs
2.Bunkhouse Orchestra Deseret String Band, from “The Round-Up”
3.Bandit Cole Younger,Lee Alexander, from “Gunfighters & Trail Riders”
4.Cole Younger Killed My Brother, Rita Hosking, from “Silver Stream”
5.Oscar Gilbert, from “Southern Journey Vol. 5: Bad Man Ballads – Songs of Outlaws and Desperadoes”
6.Dock Boggs, from “His Folkways Years 1963-1968″
7.William Edens, from The Max Hunter Folksong Collection
8.Cole Younger Polka, Ry Cooder, from “The Long Riders (Original Motion Picture Soundtrack)”
9.Virgil Lance , from The Max Hunter Folksong Collection
10.Robert B.Stark, from Ozark Folksongs
11.R.W. Hampton, from “Troubadour”
12.Mrs Ben Daugherty, from Ozark Folksongs
13.Roger Welsch, from “Sweet Nebraska Land”
14.Ballad of Cole Younger, Troublesome Creek String Band, from “Fast as Time Can Take Me”
