El Paso (song)
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El Paso is a country and western ballad written and originally recorded by Marty Robbins, and first released on Gunfighter Ballads and Trail Songs in September 1959. It was released as a single the following month, and became a major hit on both the country and pop music charts, reaching Number One in both at the start of 1960. It won the Grammy Award for Best Country & Western Recording in 1961, and remains Robbins' best-known song.
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[edit] The song
El Paso was, at some four-and-a-half minutes long, far longer than most contemporary songs at the time. Robbins' record company was unsure if radio stations would play such a long song, and so released two versions on the single: the full-length version on one side, and an edited version on the other which was nearer to the three-minute mark. The full-length version was overwhelmingly preferred. Several years later, Bob Dylan's epochal Like a Rolling Stone helped make longer songs more acceptable on the radio.
- "Out in the west Texas town of El Paso, I fell in love with a Mexican girl..."
The song is a first-person narrative told by a cowboy who is in El Paso, Texas, in the days of the Wild West. He falls in love with Feleena[1], a Mexican cantina dancer. When another man makes advances on "wicked Feleena", the narrator guns down the challenger, then flees El Paso for fear of being hanged for murder. He goes to the badlands of New Mexico.
The narrator switches from the past tense to the present tense for the remainder of the song: "It's been so long since I've seen the young maiden / My love is stronger than my fear of death". He risks returning to El Paso out of love for Feleena. Upon entering the town, a posse finds him and shoots him off his horse, but the cowboy is found by Feleena, and he dies in her arms.
[edit] Legacy
In the late 1980's El Paso became known as the Official Fight song of the University of Texas at El Paso Miners.
El Paso was covered most famously by The Grateful Dead. They started performing the song in 1969. When performed, it was sung by rhythm guitarist Bob Weir with Jerry Garcia contributing harmony vocals on the chorus. The last time they performed the song as The Grateful Dead was on July 5, 1995, 3 days prior to their final show. In all, it was performed 386 times. [1]
| Preceded by: Why by Frankie Avalon |
Billboard Hot 100 number one single January 4, 1960 |
Succeeded by: Running Bear by Johnny Preston |
[edit] Sequels
[edit] San Angelo
In 1962, Robbins released the album More Gunfighter Ballads and Trail Songs. This included San Angelo, similar to El Paso in both story and arrangement, and five-and-a-half minutes long.
The narrator is an outlaw who crosses the border from "Old Mexico" to San Angelo, Texas for a rendezvous with his Mexican sweetheart Secora. It turns out to be a trap: Secora runs to warn him, but is shot dead. The outlaw shoots her killer, but is shot by other ambushers, kissing Secora's dead lips at the last.
The story of the song was loosely adapted into a 1964 movie called Ballad of a Gunfighter, starring Robbins as the outlaw (also named "Marty Robbins") and Joyce Redd as Secora[2]. "Robbins" is a Robin Hood figure, who falls out with a comrade also in love with Secora. The soundtrack features no music or performance by Robbins; it does include a version of The Ballad of Hopalong Cassidy performed by Johnny Rivers.
[edit] Feleena (From El Paso)
In 1966, Robbins recorded Feleena (From El Paso), telling the life story of Feleena, the "Mexican girl" from El Paso, in a third-person narrative. This track was over eight minutes long. Robbins wrote most of it in Phoenix, Arizona, but went to El Paso seeking inspiration for the conclusion.
Born in a desert shack in New Mexico, Feleena runs away from home at 17, living off her charms for a year in Santa Fe, before moving to the brighter lights of El Paso to become a paid dancer. After another year, the narrator of El Paso arrives, the first man she did not have contempt for. He spends six weeks romancing her, before shooting the other man with whom she was flirting through "insane jealousy". Her lover's return to El Paso comes only a day after his flight; immediately after his dying kiss, Feleena shoots herself with his gun. Their ghosts are heard to this day in the wind blowing around El Paso: "It's only the young cowboy showing Feleena the town".
[edit] El Paso City
In 1976 Robbins released another reworking, El Paso City, in which the narrator is on an airplane over El Paso and remembers a song he had heard "long ago", proceeding to summarise the original El Paso story. "I don't recall who sang the song", he sings, but he feels a supernatural connection to the story: "could it be that I could be the cowboy in this mystery", he asks, suggesting a past life. This song was a country number one. The arrangement includes riffs and themes from the previous two El Paso songs. Robbins wrote it while himself flying over El Paso.
[edit] Links
[edit] References
- Liner notes by Rich Keinzle, July 1991, to The Essential Marty Robbins: 1951-1982 Columbia Records 468909-2
[edit] Notes
- ^ The spelling Feleena, rather than Felina as in Spanish, appears in the title of Feleena (from El Paso) on the tracklist of Robbins' 1966 album The Drifter.
- ^ Ballad of a Gunfighter at the Internet Movie Database
