Red River Valley (song)

"Red River Valley" is a folk song and cowboy music standard of uncertain origins that has gone by different names—e.g., "Cowboy Love Song", "Bright Sherman Valley", "Bright Laurel Valley", "In the Bright Mohawk Valley", and "Bright Little Valley"—depending on where it has been sung. It is listed as Roud Folk Song Index 756, and by Edith Fowke as FO 13. It is recognizable by its chorus (with several variations):

From this valley they say you are going.
We will miss your bright eyes and sweet smile,
For they say you are taking the sunshine
That has brightened our pathway a while.

So come sit by my side if you love me.
Do not hasten to bid me adieu.
Just remember the Red River Valley,
And the cowboy that has loved you so true.

Members of the Western Writers of America chose it as one of the Top 100 Western songs of all time.^[1]

Origins

Edith Fowke offers anecdotal evidence that the song was known in at least five Canadian provinces before 1896.^[2] This finding led to speculation that the song was composed at the time of the 1870 Wolseley Expedition to Manitoba's northern Red River Valley. It expresses the sorrow of a local woman (possibly a Métis) as her soldier lover prepares to return to the east.^[3]

The earliest known written manuscript of the lyrics, titled "The Red River Valley",^[4] bears the notations "Nemaha 1879" and "Harlan 1885."^[5] Nemaha and Harlan are the names of counties in Nebraska, and are also the names of towns in Iowa.

The song appears in sheet music, titled "In the Bright Mohawk Valley", printed in New York in 1896 with James J. Kerrigan as the writer.^[6] The tune and lyrics were collected and published in Carl Sandburg's 1927 American Songbag.^[7]

In 1925, Carl T. Sprague, an early singing cowboy from Texas, recorded it as "Cowboy Love Song" (Victor 20067, August 5, 1925), but it was fellow Texan Jules Verne Allen's 1929 "Cowboy's Love Song" (Victor 40167, March 28, 1929), that gave the song its greatest popularity. Allen himself thought the song was from Pennsylvania, perhaps brought over from Europe.^[8]

Recordings

• 1926 Kelly Harrell "Bright Sherman Valley" (Victor 20527 9 June 1926).
• 1944 Woody Guthrie for Asch Recordings 19 April 1944. Guthrie also recorded for Asch the Spanish Civil War version, "Jarama Valley".
• 1947-50 Bill Haley and the Four Aces of Western Swing - vocal by Tex King.
• 1948 Jo Stafford and the Starlighters recorded August 28, 1948 for Capitol Records (catalogue No. 742)^[9]
• 1950s Jack Arthur for Peter Pan Records (453B).^[10]
• 1955 Norman Luboff Choir - the song was featured in their album Songs of the West.^[11]
• 1959 Bing Crosby recorded the song for his album How the West Was Won.
• 1961 Connie Francis recorded "Red River Valley" for her 1961 album release Connie Francis Sings Folk Song Favorites.
• 1963 The Ventures released a version on their 1963 Dolton album The Ventures Play Telstar and the Lonely Bull, BST 8019.
• 1977 Slim Whitman's version was included on his 1977 #1 UK album Red River Valley.

"Red River Valley" has also been recorded by Roy Acuff, Arlo Guthrie, Lynn Anderson, the Andrews Sisters, Eddy Arnold, Moe Bandy, Suzy Bogguss, Johnny Bond, Boxcar Willie, Elton Britt, John Darnielle, Foster & Allen, Larry Groce, the McGuire Sisters, the Mills Brothers, Michael Martin Murphey, Johnnie Ray, Riders in the Sky, Riders of the Purple Sage, Tex Ritter, Marty Robbins, Jimmie Rodgers, Roy Rogers, Pete Seeger, the Sons of the Pioneers, Tex Morton, Billy Walker, Roger Whittaker, Cassandra Wilson and Glenn Yarbrough.

Film appearances

• 1936, Gene Autry recorded the song for the film Red River Valley. He re-recorded the song with the Cass County Boys for the 1946 film Sioux City Sue. Autry's recording later appeared on various Autry compilations, including Gene Autry's Western Classics and The Essential Gene Autry 1933-1946.
• 1940, It was particularly memorable in John Ford's The Grapes of Wrath, whose tale of displaced Oklahomans associated it with the southern Red River.
• 1943, An instrumental version appeared in the film The Ox-Bow Incident.
• 1971, Another film in which it had important - but more subtle - usage in was The Last Picture Show a film about the internal decay of small town Texas in the early 1950s.
• 1979, Carol Connors sang it in the X-rated Movie Sweet Savage.
• 1981, Lorraine De Selle and Zora Ulla Keslerová sing the song in video nasty Cannibal Ferox.^[12]
• 1987, An electronic rendition of "Red River Rock" was recorded by Silicon Teens, and featured in the movie Planes, Trains and Automobiles.^[13]
• 1993, Dana Delany sang it in the film Tombstone, though not in its entirety.
• 2014, A part of the song was sung in the film Wild by child actor Evan O'Toole during a scene with Reese Witherspoon.
• 2017, Harry Dean Stanton sang it in Part 10 of Twin Peaks (2017 TV series).

Other cultural references

• "Red River Valley" was the theme song of Our Gal Sunday, a soap opera broadcast on CBS radio from 1937 to 1959.^[14]

• "Jarama Valley", a song about the Battle of Jarama of the Spanish Civil War, used the tune to "Red River Valley". It was recorded by Woody Guthrie and The Almanac Singers, featuring Pete Seeger.

• The tune to "Red River Valley", set to new lyrics and entitled "Can I Sleep In Your Arms", was used on Willie Nelson's 1975 album Red Headed Stranger. This version was based on the song "Can I Sleep in your Barn Tonight Mister."

• Johnny Cash wrote and performed a humorous song entitled "Please Don't Play Red River Valley" for his 1966 album Everybody Loves a Nut

• The Kidsongs Kids parodied this song on their 1995 Let's Put on a Show video as "We'll Put on a Show".

• Johnny and the Hurricanes recorded a rock and roll instrumental version in 1959 of the song entitled "Red River Rock" which became a hit in both the U.S. (#5) and in the UK (#3).

• The tune of "Red River Valley" was used for the verses of the 1963 Connie Francis hit "Drownin' My Sorrows" (#36).^[15]

• "Drownin' My Sorrows" was covered in German as "Ich tausche mit keinem auf der Welt" in 1964 by Margot Eskens and in Croatian as "Uz Tebe Sam Sretna" in 1968 by Ana Štefok.

• The premier Czech vocalist Helena Vondráčková made her recording debut in September 1964 with "Červená řeka", a rendering of "Red River Valley".

• A fatalistic chorus can be found in some sources related to F-105 pilots in Vietnam:^[16]

Come and sit by my side at the briefing,
We will sit there and tickle the beads,
Then we'll head for the Red River Valley,
And today I'll be flying Teak lead,

To the valley he said we are flying,
With a Thud of the plane to the earth,
Many jockeys have flown to the valley,
And a number have never returned

• In its soundtrack, the 2010 video game Fallout: New Vegas adapted the lyrics and tune of "Red River Valley" as "New Vegas Valley."

See also

• David McEnery (1914-2002), singer-songwriter otherwise known as Red River Dave

Bibliography

• Edith Fowke and Keith MacMillan. (1973). The Penguin Book of Canadian Folk Songs. Harmondsworth, Middlesex: Penguin.
• Allen, Jules Verne. "Singing Along" (reprinted from New Mexico Magazine, 1935). Roundup of Western Literature: An Anthology for Young Readers pp. 82–85, edited by Oren Arnold.
• Kerrigan, James J. "In The Bright Mohawk Valley". New York: Howley, Haviland & Co. (1896).
• Fowke, Edith "The Red River Valley Re-examined." Western Folklore 23 (July 1964) 1630-71.
• Fuld, James J. The Book of World-Famous Music: Classical, Popular, and Folk. Dover Publications (2000).
• Waltz, Robert B; David G. Engle. "The Red River Valley". The Traditional Ballad Index: An Annotated Bibliography of the Folk Songs of the English-Speaking World. Hosted by California State University, Fresno, Folklore, 2007.

References

External links

• Lyrics and MIDI file from the National Institutes of Health
• The free score on 8notes.com
• free-scores.com
• "Mitnoe'a Ha-Sappan" at Zemereshet - early Hebrew version set to this melody