Day 25: Santa Fe Trail
Song Information
Well, we have reached the end of the calendar, and since it's Christmas I thought that it was best fitting that we finished with a Santa song! If I was less of a coward, we'd have recorded this with “Ho ho” instead of “Yo ho”.
You'll have also noticed that this time I'm joined by my fellow bandmates from Bellamira, Josie, Robyn and Mina - it's Christmas after all, I couldn't leave them out in the cold. I discussed in On Board A '98 that I like taking songs apart and putting them back together wrong. In this case, I took the somewhat sedate version everyone else did and decided to speed it up a lot. I have a half memory of Ollie King playing this using this sort of style in one of the first gigs that we did together for Sheffield Libraries in 2011/2012, but then when I went back to listen to his recording of it on his debut album Gambit it wasn't this aggressive. Oh well.
The words were written by the Colarado lawyer James Grafton Rogers in 1911 with music by John H. Gower who was a Denver church organist but it's apparently one of the most copyrighted songs and stolen songs in America.
Bellamy first learned this from Lisa Null who sang it on American Primitive. Bellamy provided chorus vocals on 2 of the songs on that album, and apparently liked this song enough to record it on Fair Annie 3 years later. In the review of Wake The Vaulted Echoes from RootsWorld, Brian Peters uses it as an example to sum up what Bellamy could do:
Bellamy's powers as a singer are amply demonstrated: the voice isn't pretty or mellow, but it has tremendous edge, can hit impossibly high notes to spine-tingling effect, and is bent and bullied into all sorts of inspirational twists and turns. The styles of traditional singers from his native Norfolk are to be heard, but so too are Appalachian balladeers and Southern Baptist gospel shouters. Sometimes he's austere, almost didactic, sometimes deeply emotional, other times he seems to throw his voice around for the sheer hell of it, like an improvising jazz musician. In the last chorus of “Santa Fe Trail” he loved to take an already impossibly high note and screw it up another notch so remorselessly that you could feel your testicles contract (well, if you were male, anyway).
To me, that sums up the joy of Bellamy's performance style and why so many people come back to listen to his material over and over again.
Listen to the Song
Lyrics
Tell me friend, have you sighted a schooner
Alongside of the Santa Fe Trail?
And it may got here Monday or sooner,
Had a water keg tied to the tail.
There was a Pa and a Ma on the mule-seat,
But somewheres along on the way
Was a tow-headed gal on a pinto
Just a-jangling for old Santa Fe,
Yo-ho! Yo-ho!
Just a-jangling for old Santa Fe.
But I seen them come down the arroyo
As we crossed on them Arkansas sand,
She had smiles like acres of sunflowers,
Held a quirt in her little brown hand.
And she mounted her pinto so airy
And she rode like she carried the mail,
And her eyes near set fire to the prairie
Alongside of the Santa Fe Trail,
Yo-ho! Yo-ho!
Alongside of the Santa Fe Trail
Well, I once knew a gal on the border
Who I’d ride to El Paso to sight;
I have danced in some high-steppin’ order,
And I’ve sometimes kissed some girls goodnight;
But Lord, they’re all ruffles and beading
And they drink fancy tea by the pail,
I’m not used to that kind of stampeding
Alongside of the Santa Fe Trail,
Yo-ho! Yo-ho!
Alongside of the Santa Fe Trail
Well, I don’t know her name on the prairie,
When you are hunting one girl it’s so wide,
And it’s shorter from hell to hilary
Than it is on that Santa Fe ride.
But I’ll try and reach Plummers by sundown
Where a camp can be made in the swale,
Then I’ll come on that gal with her pinto
Alongside of the Santa Fe Trail,
Yo-ho! Yo-ho!
Alongside of the Santa Fe Trail