Cowboy Songs (Bing Crosby album)


Cowboy Songs is a compilation album of phonograph records by Bing Crosby released in 1939 featuring Western songs.

Background

Crosby had recorded cowboy songs for the first time in 1933 and he had a huge hit with "The Last Round-Up" that year on the Brunswick label. He recorded Home on the Range for the first time then also. Commenting on these early recordings, the writer Gary Giddins said "…it anticipated the golden age of gentle-voiced singing cowboys and the Irish sentiment of John Ford westerns that followed on their heels."
Moving on to the Decca label, Crosby had huge hits with "I’m an Old Cowhand", "Empty Saddles" and "Mexicali Rose". He also charted with "My Little Buckaroo" and "There’s a Gold Mine in the Sky". Giddins considered Bing's recordings in his book saying: "The most impressive of his new cowboy songs was "Twilight on the Trail," a lament introduced that year by Fuzzy Knight in The Trail of the Lonesome Pine and sung by Bing as though it were an old western hymn. That’s how it may have sounded to President Roosevelt, who declared it his favorite song after "Home on the Range"; Mrs. Roosevelt requested Bing’s record for the Roosevelt Library."

Original track listing

These previously issued songs were featured on a 6-disc, 78 rpm album set, Decca Album No. 69.
Disc 1:
Disc 2:
Disc 3:
Disc 4:
Disc 5:
Disc 6: