{"id":2913,"date":"2017-06-17T07:00:49","date_gmt":"2017-06-17T11:00:49","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.elijahwald.com\/songblog\/?p=2913"},"modified":"2024-03-21T20:36:04","modified_gmt":"2024-03-22T00:36:04","slug":"trusty-lariat","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.elijahwald.com\/songblog\/trusty-lariat\/","title":{"rendered":"The Cowboy Fireman; or, The Trusty Lariat"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><iframe loading=\"lazy\" title=\"The Cowboy Fireman (or, The Trusty Lariat)\" width=\"474\" height=\"267\" src=\"https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/embed\/EZ1UfT9ABGs?feature=oembed\" frameborder=\"0\" allow=\"accelerometer; autoplay; clipboard-write; encrypted-media; gyroscope; picture-in-picture; web-share\" referrerpolicy=\"strict-origin-when-cross-origin\" allowfullscreen><\/iframe><\/p>\n<p>Originally recorded in 1929 by Harry &#8220;Haywire Mac&#8221; McClintock, this is a mock-heroic shaggy dog response to the incursion of steel rails on the open range.<\/p>\n<p>In her book, <em>Ten Thousand Goddam Cattle<\/em>, Katie Lee recalls that Mac had been a cowboy, railroad man, hard-rock miner, and hobo before becoming a recording artist and radio star on San Francisco&#8217;s KFRC station. Best known as composer of &#8220;<a href=\"http:\/\/www.elijahwald.com\/songblog\/hallelujah-im-bum\/\">Hallelujah, I&#8217;m a Bum<\/a>&#8221; and &#8220;<a href=\"http:\/\/www.elijahwald.com\/songblog\/big-rock-candy\/\">Big Rock Candy Mountain<\/a>&#8221; (featured in an earlier post with attention to its expurgation), <img data-recalc-dims=\"1\" loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"alignright wp-image-2916 size-full\" src=\"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/www.elijahwald.com\/songblog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2018\/06\/Macs-songs.jpg?resize=200%2C275&#038;ssl=1\" alt=\"\" width=\"200\" height=\"275\" \/>he sang a varied repertoire of cowboy, hobo, and IWW union songs, as well as oddities like &#8220;Circus Days,&#8221; &#8220;When It&#8217;s Time to Shear the Sheep (I&#8217;m Coming Ba-a-a-ack to You),&#8221; and this little masterpiece.<\/p>\n<p>Lee prints a considerably longer lyric for &#8220;The Trusty Lariat,&#8221; apparently copied from <em>Mac&#8217;s Songs of the Road and Range<\/em>, a song folio published in 1932, but I sing it roughly as he did it on that earlier record.<\/p>\n<p>Like another favorite cowboy singer, Glen Ohrlin, Haywire Mac enjoyed the romance of the cowboy legend but also understood that it was a romantic myth &#8212; as an IWW man, he was well aware of the lousy working conditions on most ranches. Like &#8220;<a href=\"http:\/\/www.elijahwald.com\/songblog\/pat-works-on-the-railway\/\">Pat Works on the Railway<\/a>,&#8221; this is an example of the kind of wry humor that often spiced western folklore, and working class folklore in general.<\/p>\n<p>Incidentally, for the young folks (myself included) a &#8220;fireman&#8221; was the guy who shoveled coal into the firebox of a steam engine to heat the water, making the steam that powered the damn thing. It was the worst job on the railroad, and often done by African Americans &#8212; so if anyone wants to think of this as a song about black cowboys, there&#8217;s some evidence to support that reading.<\/p>\n<p>Even more incidentally, &#8220;lariat&#8221; is an English corruption of <em>la reata<\/em>, Spanish for the lasso. &#8220;Lasso,&#8221; in turn is an English corruption of <em>lazo<\/em>, a Spanish cognate of &#8220;lace&#8221; &#8212; as in shoelace, not lace doily.\u00a0 <em>Atar<\/em> is the verb &#8220;to tie,&#8221; <em>reatar<\/em> is to retie, so the reata has been doubly tied. I&#8217;m not sure exactly how, but that&#8217;s the etymology.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Originally recorded in 1929 by Harry &#8220;Haywire Mac&#8221; McClintock, this is a mock-heroic shaggy dog response to the incursion of steel rails on the open range. In her book, Ten Thousand Goddam Cattle, Katie Lee recalls that Mac had been a cowboy, railroad man, hard-rock miner, and hobo before becoming a recording artist and radio &hellip; <a href=\"https:\/\/www.elijahwald.com\/songblog\/trusty-lariat\/\" class=\"more-link\">Continue reading <span class=\"screen-reader-text\">The Cowboy Fireman; or, The Trusty Lariat<\/span> <span class=\"meta-nav\">&rarr;<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-2913","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"yoast_head":"<!-- This site is optimized with the Yoast SEO plugin v27.4 - https:\/\/yoast.com\/product\/yoast-seo-wordpress\/ -->\n<title>The Cowboy Fireman; or, The Trusty Lariat - Old Friends: A Songobiography<\/title>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/www.elijahwald.com\/songblog\/trusty-lariat\/\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"The Cowboy Fireman; or, The Trusty Lariat - Old Friends: A Songobiography\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"Originally recorded in 1929 by Harry &#8220;Haywire Mac&#8221; McClintock, this is a mock-heroic shaggy dog response to the incursion of steel rails on the open range. In her book, Ten Thousand Goddam Cattle, Katie Lee recalls that Mac had been a cowboy, railroad man, hard-rock miner, and hobo before becoming a recording artist and radio &hellip; Continue reading The Cowboy Fireman; or, The Trusty Lariat &rarr;\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:url\" content=\"https:\/\/www.elijahwald.com\/songblog\/trusty-lariat\/\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:site_name\" content=\"Old Friends: A Songobiography\" \/>\n<meta property=\"article:published_time\" content=\"2017-06-17T11:00:49+00:00\" \/>\n<meta property=\"article:modified_time\" content=\"2024-03-22T00:36:04+00:00\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:image\" content=\"https:\/\/www.elijahwald.com\/songblog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2018\/06\/Macs-songs.jpg\" \/>\n<meta name=\"author\" content=\"Elijah Wald\" \/>\n<meta name=\"twitter:card\" content=\"summary_large_image\" \/>\n<meta name=\"twitter:creator\" content=\"@ElijahWald\" \/>\n<meta name=\"twitter:site\" content=\"@ElijahWald\" \/>\n<meta name=\"twitter:label1\" content=\"Written by\" \/>\n\t<meta name=\"twitter:data1\" content=\"Elijah Wald\" \/>\n\t<meta name=\"twitter:label2\" content=\"Est. reading time\" \/>\n\t<meta name=\"twitter:data2\" content=\"2 minutes\" \/>\n<script type=\"application\/ld+json\" class=\"yoast-schema-graph\">{\"@context\":\"https:\\\/\\\/schema.org\",\"@graph\":[{\"@type\":\"Article\",\"@id\":\"https:\\\/\\\/www.elijahwald.com\\\/songblog\\\/trusty-lariat\\\/#article\",\"isPartOf\":{\"@id\":\"https:\\\/\\\/www.elijahwald.com\\\/songblog\\\/trusty-lariat\\\/\"},\"author\":{\"name\":\"Elijah Wald\",\"@id\":\"https:\\\/\\\/www.elijahwald.com\\\/songblog\\\/#\\\/schema\\\/person\\\/20e4f69f2f284ea0ff728a9d1b7720a9\"},\"headline\":\"The Cowboy Fireman; 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When I decided I would grow up to be a rambling musician, my heroes were Woody Guthrie and Cisco Houston, and if I'd had to pick one of them, it would probably have been Cisco. 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