The Trail to Mexico
Channel: Stephen Griffith
Date: 2020-09-08

First published by John A. Lomax in Cowboy songs and other frontier ballads (1910).

The singer is hired by A.J. Stinson to drive a herd to Mexico. While away, his sweetheart has left him for a richer man. Though she asks him to remain at home and safe, he sets out for the trail again and swears to spend the rest of his life on the trail.

Sandburg writes: "We have this mixture of plain facts and romantic language from an informal gathering of newspaper workers in Fort Worth, Texas, when tune and text were made known by Jake Zeitlin, Frank Wolfe, and an oil driller. It is a cow trail classic, to be delivered earnestly like a witness who knows his names and dates and as though everybody knows who A. J. Stinson is. . . . "Get the hang of the tune and all the lines are easy to pucker in."