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The Big Corral

from Old​-​Time Songs by Martha Burns

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about

---With Bruce Molsky (vocal)

Around 1922, Romaine Lowdermilk, cattle rancher and cowboy entertainer, made up a short nonsense song to the tune of a gospel piece called “Press Along to Glory Land,” and performed it with two friends at a talent show near his Arizona home. The song eventually made its way into songbooks and onto recordings, with and without credit to the author. I first came across an anonymous version with three two-line verses in one of my standbys, Kenneth Jackson’s The Cowboy Sings (1932).

The chorus made the song, as far as I was concerned. So I traded two of Lowdermilk’s couplets for several new ones of my own. The new lines came to me after re-reading Andy Adams’ classic Log of a Cowboy (1903), the writer’s partly fictionalized account of a drive he made on the Western Trail from Texas to Montana in 1882. The third verse, about rocks in the beans, is Lowdermilk’s original.

Bruce Molsky joins me in harmony on this one.

lyrics

It’s early in the morning ’bout half-past four,
Press along to the big corral
It’s rise up boys, you can’t sleep no more.
Press along to the big corral.

Press along cowboy, press along with a cowboy yell – hee haw!
Press along, with a noise, big noise, press along to the big corral.

Our outfit cook is a rough old bear….
With flour in his beard and grease in his hair.

Press along….

Oh, the grub we get ain’t fit to eat;
There’s rocks in the beans and sand in the meat.

Press along….

Oh, the coffee’s full of alkali….
And the cornbread tastes like moose-turd pie.

Press along….

Oh, the ground is level and the grass is thick….
We’ll water our herd at the next big creek.

Press along….

All day in the saddle, ride around and around….
We’ll sit and tell stories when the sun goes down.

Press along….

When we get to Dodge, we’ll have some fun….
Will drink and gamble till our money’s all gone.

Press along….

Oh, the heat of the day is over now.
That’s good for a man and good for a cow.

Press along….

credits

from Old​-​Time Songs, released October 13, 2021

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Martha Burns Washington, D.C.

Old-time American folk songs the old-time way.

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