The Indianapolis times. [volume] (Indianapolis [Ind.]) 1922-1965, 1931-12-31
Learn Songs
for Book of
Folk Music
BY JULIA BLANSHARD
NEA Service Writer

N AOAeAA, A@CC. ol.--OOIlc III
trepid folk go stalking big game fol
excitement.
Others dig among ruins for pre-
historic relics.
But II you want a hobby that tries
your patience and calls out all your
ingenuity, try collecting folk songs
Ask Margaret LarKin and Helen
Black. Their new song book. Sing
ing Cowboy" with its forty-two COL
orful, plaintive songs of the range
its unusual reproductions of old pic
lures of the old west, and its CLOS
sary, which is itself a real contri-
button to folklore, took them on
real adventure before they pub
lished it.
When Margaret Larkin, who is
western born and western bred, had
serious thoughts of publishing her
cowboy songs, she and Helen, whom
she asked to write the music for
Singing Cowboy started west
again to scour the COW country for
new songs to add to hers.
opcHu CuAuIkleE on Range
They spent two whole summers
on the ranges, in New Mexico, Ari-
iona, Texas, and other western
states.
BY auto, foot and horseback they
trailed rumors here and there of
a song they had never heard, usu-
ally to find it one Margaret had
known from childhood!
When we were in Las Vegas
there was always some mighty fine
singers over to Cimarron.' some
cowboy there would tell u.s." Miss
Black explained the elusive quality
these folk songs have.
when we'd get to Cimarron, we'd
find some one who told us that the
singer we had in mind must be a
man in TaosI
THE few we did get that Mar
garet didn't know always we're ad-
ventures. We spent two whole
days hanging around headquarters
at the cowboys reunion in Las We
gas without getting a single song.
Just as we we're leaving the last
night, an old man came up who
apparently had been waiting two
whole days to talk with us.
Hear Two Songs
"Have you ever heard California
Joe'?" he asked. We hadn't, so we
sat down on the running board of
the car, and by the dim street light,
Margaret and / outdid each other
taking down twenty-four verses
of it.
Worn out, we we're just thank
ing him and getting ready to go
when he said, DO you know the
Blacktail Ranger The boys made
1t up in a camp was in back IN
1908.
Everybody who didn't make up
a verse had to cook SO he sang
1t for us and we sat down again
and took all of it."
They visited wide-open gambling
dens where roulette, faro and other
games were in full force, with sill
yer dollars piled high, in quest of
a cowboy singer with marvellous
songs. He didn't know a thing they
didn't knowl
Found Perspective in East
Most of the forty-two songs in
Singing Cowboy" are songs Mar
garet grew up with. OF her appre-
citation now of the full meaning Of
this type OF folk song, she says:
T,,ek erv-oxry, r,YN IN a CtNo Y1icf1
speaking country without learning
Spanish, I grew up in the middle
of the COW country obvious to the
significance of things so immediate.
"I had to go away to college and
come back before realized that
some of my experience had been
unique"
AS a matter OF fact, Margaret
Larkin not only went to college be-
fore taking the folk songs of her
native ranges seriously, but she
wrote a one-act play that won the
Samuel French award and the
Belasco cup in the Little theater
competition, 1926.
Learned Mournful Tune
She had several poems and many
articles published in national mag
azines, was a political reporter in
New Mexico, a sob sister on the
Denver Post, labor reporter In
New York and elsewhere, press
agent for the Pullman porterS, art
galleries and textile strikes and
toured the country in Green Grow
the Lilacs," singing her cowboy
songs to the tune of her own gui-
tar.
She studied singing in college
and with Sergei Radamsky in New
York.
She sings her cowboy songs with
the same mournf,ll zest that cow
boys sing them.
That is why they have made such
a tremendous impression every
where.