0477. Marty Robbins
Gunfighter Ballads And Trail Songs
I hope Marty Robbins was a good guy, cause when I hear him sing I feel very
safe. He's got that old-timey voice of the nuclear family man with pipe in
mouth, spark in the eye, wife with an apron and kids with freckles. There's
not a problem in the world that can't be solved by just saying "hold on there
just one minute, sonny, that's not fair" and explaining why.
[fact check: apparently he was just as honest as he sounds as he once cheated
in a Talladega speedway race and refused to accept the prize, saying he just
wanted to "
see what it was like to run up front for once"]
Whether he's telling the legend about the ranger with the Big Iron on his hip taking out gunslingers like there's no tomorrow or about waiting to be hanged in the morning it's in such a comforting and almost cheery tone I can't help but smile the whole album through. (the re-release on CD's got a couple of bonustracks with the same feel, by the way, but I won't take them into consideration for this review)
But the question is: does this make it an album you've got to hear?
No, probably not, but here's a couple of reasons why you should:
- the song El Paso was the first #1 on the pop charts in 1960
- this album influenced people like the Grateful Dead
- songs off of this album can still be heard on mainstream radio [also in the video game Fallout: New Vegas, apparently]
- Gunfighter Ballads And Trail Songs won the first Grammy ever presented to a country album
