From: rbrown@ncsa.uiuc.edu (Rich Brown -- Neither)
Newsgroups: rec.music.gdead
Subject: Re: Idiots
Summary: Cowpoke sought in theft of horse.
Date: 13 Oct 92 22:27:37 GMT
Organization: Nat'l Ctr for Supercomp App (NCSA) @ University of Illinois
Originator: rbrown@troon.ncsa.uiuc.edu

Mostly I agree with Jim "Beam" Anderson in his analysis of the narrator's
persona in "El Paso", penned by the late Marty Robbins.

In article <Bw2u7t.Buu@inews.Intel.COM> janderso@smdvx1.intel.com (Jim Anderson) writes:
>
>Thanks for bringing this important topic up.  I've always thought that
>the narator of El Paso was the biggest idiot I've ever heard about.
>Well, maybe not, but he's a pretty big idiot as far as idiots go.
>
>Here is a guy that is in love with a whore.  Nothing wrong with that but...
>She doesn't love him.  He spends his free time hanging out in the
>bar that she works in watching her.  One night he gets so jealous 
>of one of Fellina's "johns" that he shoots the guy.  
>
>The moment after he shoots the "john" he has his *single solitary
>reasonable idea* GET THE HELL OUT OF THERE!
>

Here, I have to disagree.  His idea to run is actually his biggest mistake.
Yes, he killed a man, but it had been a fair fight, not murder: "My challenge
was answered in less than a heartbeat; down went his hand for the gun that he
wore."  The other guy had gone for his gun!  So, if our cowboy had just "stood
there in silence" a little longer than "just for a moment", the law probably
would have been satisified with a plea of self-defense.  But, no!  He does the
stupidest thing he probably could have done in 19th century El Paso:  He steals
a horse!!

It's well known that "hangin's too good fer the likes of a hoss thief", and
there is no doubt that the crime for which the cowpoke was being pursued was
not murder, but grand theft, equine.

>So he's gone for a little while, but then he decides to *GO BACK*.
>What an *IDIOT*!  He knows that the folks there want to kill
>him.  He knows that this woman doesn't want him, yet...too much man.
>

Yes, they want to kill him, not for shooting another guy, but for horse theft!
Still, as Jim says, "What an *IDIOT*!"

>So you know the rest of the story.  He goes back.  Gets shot once but
>keeps on going.  Gets shot again and has the pleasure of dieing
>while halucinating that Fellina is holding and kissing him.
>

Hmmm, I always got the impression that Felina really was touching his cheek as
she knelt by his side, and that he did get that "one little kiss, then
Fe-li-i-i-na good-by-y-y-ye."  But the hallucination theory is intriguing.

>Can you say *LOOSER*? What other idiots are floating around in
>them songs we know so well?
>

Me and my uncle?  But then this could be the same idiot, instead of some other
idiot:  I always think of the nephew going to Rosa's Cantina right
after he killed the uncle and "left his dead ass there by the side of the
road."

Maybe he is also the "Loser" who could arm a town the size of Abeliene, if
he had a gun for every ace he's drawn.

On a related note (A natural), I do a little pickin' and singin', and I usually
do Loser->Me and My Uncle->El Paso as a trilogy of songs, since they are all
first-person narratives set in the old west.  So I have come to think of this
nephew-loser-cowpoke guy as the same guy in all three songs.  Note that while
I can sometimes do a Me and My Uncle->Loser->El Paso, El Paso must still come
third in the trilogy, since the guy dies at the end, and I like to preserve
narrative continuity.  (I'd be happy to contribute one or all to the
"neticated" project...  who should I talk to?)

>Jim "Beam" Anderson
>janderso@smdvx1.intel.com
>janderso@smdvx1.intel.com
>
>"With out love in the dream it will never come true."

Rich
"Don'cha push me, baby, 'cause I'm moanin' low,
And you know I'm only in it for the gold."

-- 
++++++++++++++++++++
Rich Brown (Neither)
rbrown@ncsa.uiuc.edu
Newsgroups: rec.music.gdead