He Was Singin’ This Song: A Collection of Forty-eight Traditional Songs of the American Cowboy, with Words, Music, Pictures, and Stories. Forewords by Gene Autry and S. Omar Barker.
signed
[1981] · Orlando
by Tinsely, Jim Bob.
Orlando: University Presses of Florida, A University of Central Florida Book, [1981]. Signed and Inscribed by the Author. Folio, brown cloth (hardcover), gilt letters and decoration to upper cover, xiv, 255 pp. Near-Fine, with former-owner stamps, in a Near-Fine dust jacket with slight age darkening. “This book is a musical historical narrative of the Old West. These 48 annotated songs are authentic examples of the popular music of the era, handed down from one cowpoke to another as they roamed the range, sometimes changing or adding lyrics as the song was passed along. Because the songs were not often written down, the author has had to do his homework, studying transcriptions made in the saloons and around the campfires of the early 1900s, researching tune and lyrics and story. The result is much more than a songbook. It is a true-to-life history of the frontier and of the real cowboys who lived on it...In this book Jim Bob Tinsley shows the cowboys’ songs to be an essential metaphor of their lives and times. He follows the image of the cowboy from the cow-keeper of colonial America, through the CivilWar, the war for Texas’s independence, the banditry of the Old West. He follows the image along the trai of the cattle drive, fighting Indians and rustlers, and into the saloons and dance halls with the gunfigher and gambler, and arrives finally at the hero we know from films and television. Yet, through it all, Tinsley is always able to penetrate the image and show us the real people who lived in the Old West and who sand these songs.” (Inventory #: 00473scs)