22. Marty Robbins – Gunfighter Ballads and Trail Songs

I suppose with 1001 albums to get through, there were going to be some odd diversions, and this was certainly one of them. Full of old cowboy songs, reaching back to an older America not of Woody Guthrie and Leadbelly but somewhere in the Billy the Kid genre.

It’s cowboy songs basically, a homage to the old west, and it feels right at home in the age of Rawhide and The Lone Ranger. The opener, “Big Iron” is evocative and layered, so even when you’re rolling your eyes on first listen, thinking that you’ve got a novelty album, it still gets your attention and draws you in. The rest of the album keeps the same feel going, and there are some gentle moments, but none of it quite gets to the same gravitas as the first song. Still, it’s clearly been done with a lot of love, and you can hear it as each track plays.