Here is this week’s playlist – tunes picked by a reader from your suggestions after last week’s callout. Thanks for them all. Read more about how our weekly readers recommend series works at the end of the piece.
What “the west” is depends on where you’re standing. For America’s original colonisers, the west was the east: they were said to have came from Siberia around 20,000 years ago and surprisingly quickly took over the entire land mass. Over the next few centuries, stuff happened ... eventually the smallpox European explorers brought with them travelled faster than they could, and their explorations uncovered mostly empty towns and villages.
But we begin with Louie Gonnie, an artist who, in memory of those Native Americans who survived, describes his descendancy as from the Zuni people, and his 4 Peyote Songs.
The prairie in western folk song Home on the Range has become an almost mythical place, defined by a song which has shifted its relevance with each singer who has recorded it (this version is by Neil Young, but there are dozens). But its lyrics seem to encapsulate a dream, and maybe each singer is describing their own dream, their imagination of a perfect America, a perfectly possible one in which nature lives peacefully alongside prosperous man.
After the mythology, the fantasy; a myth within a myth. Here is a Wild West that never existed then any more than Roy Rodgers’ dude ranch outfits. However, a hyper-energetic, thigh-slapping, buckskin-clad tomboy Doris Day is a perfectly acceptable image. Unconsciously sexy – yeah right – she sings and dances brilliantly, with a level of comedic timing and naughty posturing that few could aspire to in The Deadwood Stage, from Calamity Jane.
In Jimmie Rodgers’ Blue Yodel No. 1, up next, we have one of the most influential figures in western music. Between the late 1920s and early 1930s he recorded incessantly, literally dozens of songs. Tuberculosis won in the end, at the young age of 35, which is a kind of irony considering he relied on a powerful vocal style that could project over some strongarm guitar playing
Shenandoah is a river in the eastern states of Virginia and West Virginia, but in this Paul Robeson song the protagonist is working on the Missouri river, west of the Mississippi, while dreaming of home. The song has a long and profound history, apparently most likely referring to early fur trappers using the river road to bring their collections back to what passed for civilisation. They were often away for years – in this case, seven.
Whilst on the subject of trappers, they weren’t all as pretty as Robert Redford in Jeremiah Johnson. The one in the Edgar Broughton Band’s Old Gopher, from Kansas, had “Blood on the table and skins on the door / and last week’s hunting all over the floor.” He was “Crazy as a stallion choking on a lariat line.” Though seemingly happy enough drinking raw red rum and making raw red wine.
Most likely based on traditional European songs such as The Wild Hunt, Ghost Riders in the Sky (Johnny Cash) is a song that America, if not the world, has taken to its heart. We think of the cowboy as simply herding cattle, or sitting by his campfire, doing a fairly straightforward job. But there must have been some frightening times; the vagaries of the weather, wild animals, and the dark lonely nights when the shifting shadows conjured up images a man doesn’t want to think about.
Bobby Troup wanted to be a songwriter, so he drove across America to California to stake his claim. Once there he checked off on a map all of the towns he and his wife had driven through on their 10-day journey. Before he knew it, he’d written a standard – Route 66. Though originally recorded by the King Cole Trio, that version wasn’t nominated, so we’re going to have to settle for Chuck Berry.
Lee Van Cleef’s snake eyes, Eli Wallach’s toothy, grinning trickster, and Clint Eastwood looking like he’s gripping a pineapple in the wrong place. What more could you ask? A great soundtrack, perhaps? You got it. Somehow melding western, Mexican and native musical elements into a cohesive whole, Ennio Morricone’s theme to The Good, The Bad and the Ugly is a memorable, original piece of music that is, once heard, never forgotten.
In their various incarnations I’ve counted 53 band members so far, but the original Flying Burrito Brothers lineup were among those who invented country rock. Check the album cover with Gram Parsons in his Nudie suit. That’s class. And so is this song – Sin City – about climbing high above Las Vegas, but getting nearer to Satan than God. Redemption does not arrive in a green mohair suit. Unfortunately for Parsons, the Nudie suit didn’t count for much either.
In Vegas there are no clocks, no windows; we’re stuck here. We’ll miss our train. Home doesn’t exist any more. Only the spinning wheel, the blackjack shoe, the Blackpool lights, the grifters, the whores and the doors to the hotel rooms up in the clouds where room service has more than one meaning. This is the flash of the desert city, in sound and word, happily evocative of a new and singular experience, giving the sense of soaring above it all, looking down and smiling sympathetically at human folly. This is Heaven or Las Vegas, by the Cocteau Twins.
Where have we ended up? Environmental disasters, ecological breakdown. Anything of any value ripped out of the ground at any expense as long as there is profit to be made by people who don’t have to live in the waste, detritus and pollution. A farmer looks upon his land knowing he could prosper and feed his children as long as the corporations leave him be. This is My Prairie (Corb Lund)? Fat chance.
Note: not all songs appear on the Spotify playlist because some are unavailable on the service. One song (Doris Day) has now been restored after initially being omitted due to an editing error.
New theme: how to join in
The new theme will be announced at 8pm (GMT) on Thursday 3 November. You have until 11pm on 7 November to submit nominations.
Here’s a reminder of some of the guidelines for RR:
- If you have a good theme idea, or if you’d like to volunteer to compile a playlist from readers’ suggestions and write a blog about it, please email matthew.holmes@theguardian.com.
- There is a wealth of data on RR, including the songs that are “zedded”, at the Marconium. It also tells you the meaning of “zedded”, “donds” and other strange words used by RR regulars.
- Many RR regulars also congregate at the ’Spill blog.
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