“Montana Cowboy” appears on Hazel Dickens and Alice Gerrard’s 1976 Rounder album Hazel and Alice. The Dickens-Gerrard recordings of the 1960s and 1970s were among the most consequential of the early-bluegrass-revival era, with both singers carrying mountain and traditional material into a newly self-aware bluegrass and old-time-revival audience.
The song was written by Ray Park and Jack Sutton — the same Ray Park who performed as “Vern” in the duo Vern and Ray — and was closely associated with the mid-century West Coast country and old-time scene. The song is a Western-cowboy narrative in the older country mould: the narrator recalling a Montana cowboy she knew, the lonesome life of cattle and trail, the quiet weight of someone who couldn’t be held. Hazel Dickens’s hard-edged lead vocal and Alice Gerrard’s harmony — together one of the most distinctive female-duo sounds in bluegrass — give the recording its emotional centre.
The song’s authorship is not consistently documented in the publicly available discographic sources for this particular track. The Dickens/Gerrard catalogue mixed Hazel’s originals (her own writing was substantial), traditional material, and contributions from singer-friends in the early-revival circle; the Rounder CD liner notes are the firmest reference for the actual writer attribution.
