Cowboy Songs (Warner Bros. 9 26308-2) was released on 21 August 1990 and was Michael Martin Murphey’s sixteenth album. Steve Gibson produced it, with sessions at Omni Sound Studio in Nashville. The program mixes songs from the western tradition, among them “Home on the Range,” “Red River Valley,” “The Streets of Laredo,” “The Yellow Rose of Texas” and “O Bury Me Not on the Lone Prairie,” with newer songs such as “Cowboy Logic,” by Don Cook and Chick Rains, and “Let the Cowboy Dance,” which Murphey wrote with Cook and Rains. The last track is “Happy Trails.”
John McEuen of the Nitty Gritty Dirt Band plays banjo, mandolin and fiddle, and Mark O’Connor plays fiddle. Biff Watson and Mark Casstevens are on guitar, Paul Franklin and Sonny Garrish on steel guitar, Michael Rhodes and Craig Nelson on bass, and Eddie Bayers and Jerry Kroon on drums. The background singers include Tammy Wynette, Suzy Bogguss, Paulette Carlson, Red Steagall and Don Edwards. The album reached number twenty-five on Billboard’s Top Country Albums chart. Murphey followed it with Cowboy Christmas: Cowboy Songs II in 1991 and Cowboy Songs III: Rhymes of the Renegades in 1993.
Tracklist
- 1 Cowboy Logic 3:35
- 2 I Ride an Old Paint / Whoopee Ti-Yi-Yo, Git Along Little Doggies 3:01
- 3 Tumbling Tumbleweeds 2:21
- 4 Tying Knots in the Devil's Tail 3:07
- 5 The Old Chisholm Trail 4:47
- 6 Home on the Range 3:31
- 7 What Am I Doing Here 3:03
- 8 Wild Ripplin' Waters 1:48
- 9 The Yellow Rose of Texas 3:00
- 10 Spanish Is the Lovin' Tongue 5:41
- 11 Cowboy Pride 2:51
- 12 Red River Valley alt version 2:47
- 13 Let the Cowboy Dance 3:01
- 14 Jack of Diamonds 1:13
- 15 Texas Rangers 3:21
- 16 When the Work's All Done This Fall 3:18
- 17 The Streets of Laredo 4:07
- 18 O Bury Me Not on the Lone Prairie alt version 3:02
- 19 Where Do Cowboys Go When They Die / Reincarnation 3:43
- 20 Goodbye Old Paint 2:13
- 21 Happy Trails 2:17
