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“Diamond Joe” is a wry cowboy song that entered the folk repertoire through Cisco Houston. It was written by Baldwin “Butch” Hawes of the Almanac Singers for one of Alan Lomax’s radio programs in 1944, set to the tune of the older ballad “The State of Arkansas.”
Houston sang it on the air and then kept it in his act, recording it for Folkways; nearly every later version traces back to him. The lyric is a ranch hand’s sour complaint about working for a stingy, hard-driving trail boss named Diamond Joe — humor with a real edge of grievance under it.
The mandolinist Sam Bush recorded “Diamond Joe” on his 2010 album Circles Around Me. It is one of several distinct songs that share the name, and the one that has traveled most widely through folk and bluegrass.
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