“Hills of Mexico” is a traditional song from the family of Western range ballads, closely related to the well-known “Buffalo Skinners.” That song was set down in John Lomax’s landmark 1910 collection “Cowboy Songs and Other Frontier Ballads,” and it traces back further still, to older work songs of the lumber camps and the sea.
The lyric tells of a young man hired to ride out and skin buffalo on the open range — a hard season of bad water, rough weather, and a boss who will not pay the wages he promised. “Hills of Mexico” is the Southeastern strand of that story; how it reached the Appalachian South is unclear, but it was most likely carried back by someone who had traveled west and returned.
The song is closely tied to the Kentucky singer Roscoe Holcomb, whose stark 1962 recording is regarded as a high point of recorded old-time music.
