Old Crow Medicine Show Archives

When a Cowboy Trades His Spurs for Wings

During repeated viewings of the Coen Brothers’ The Ballad of Buster Scruggs (2018), I began to fall in love with the duet at the end of the first segment of the Netflix movie. This first chapter that provides the title for the film ends with a funny duet on the song, “When a Cowboy Trades His Spurs for Wings,” which I later discovered was written by two artists I admire.

Well, it is funny on first viewing, but in subsequent viewings I found the song to be deeper and sadder, even as the tune is presented with humorous visuals. [Spoilers ahead.] In the tale, we meet Buster Scruggs (wonderfully played by Tim Blake Nelson), a quirky, funny, singing, and deadly cowboy. As in old Westerns, the character is the fastest gun until someone else comes along and kills him. Then, The Kid (played by Old Crow Medicine Show‘s Willie Watson) and Buster’s spirit engage in a duet about dying.

Let me tell you, buddy,
And it win’t be long,
Till you find yourself singing
Your last cowboy song.

Yippee-ki-yi-yay;
When the roundup ends;
Yippee-ki-yi-yay;
And the campfire dims.

Yippee-ki-yi-yay;
He shalt be saved,
When a cowboy trades
His spurs for wings.

The wonderful musicians Gillian Welch and David Rawlings wrote “When a Cowboy Trades His Spurs for Wings.” Once I found out who wrote the song, it did not surprise me that I would fall in love with the song. It also did not surprise me that the song received an Oscar nomination for Best Original Song.

Welch and Rawlings recorded their own version of the song. Their version takes a sweeter, more mournful approach than the humorous visuals in the Coen Brothers movie. Without Buster Scruggs, “When a Cowboy Trades His Spurs for Wings” becomes a more realistic dying cowboy’s lament. Check it out.

What is your favorite cowboy movie song? Leave your two cents in the comments.

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What Song Did Jennifer Jason Leigh Sing in “The Hateful Eight”?

Jennifer Jason Leigh Jim Jones Song In one of the rare touching moments in Quentin Tarantino’s film The Hateful Eight (2015), the captured fugitive Daisy Domergue (Jennifer Jason Leigh) picks up a guitar and sings a song about a prisoner on a ship. Although Domergue eventually adds a few lines of her own about getting revenge upon her captor John “The Hangman” Ruth (Kurt Russell) and escaping to Mexico, the song itself is a traditional Australian folk song called “Jim Jones at Botany Bay,” or sometimes simply “Jim Jones.”

“Jim Jones at Botany Bay”

The song refers to the first Australian penal colony, Botany Bay, where England sent convicts beginning in 1788. Star Trek fans may recognize the name because the ship that carried Khan Noonien Singh and his comrades was named the S.S. Botany Bay after the penal colony.

In “Jim Jones at Botany Bay,” the singer Jim Jones is an English convict who has been sentenced to ride the ship to the penal colony, although the judge first threatened to hang him. On the trip, the men on the ship repel a group of pirates, but Jones thinks, “I’d rather joined that pirate ship than come to New South Wales.”

Jones dreams of escaping and joining “the bold bushrangers there Jack Donahue and Company.”

And some dark night when everything is silent in this town,
I’ll kill the tyrants one by one and shoot the floggers down;
I’ll give the law a little shock, remember what I say;
They’ll yet regret they sent Jim Jones in chains to Botany Bay.

The song was first published in 1907, although The Oxford Companion to Australian Literature notes that scholars speculate that the song was written around 1830 because of the reference to the bushranger Jack Donahue (sometimes spelled “John Donohoe”). Donahue was an Irishman sentenced to Australia in 1825. But he later escaped, forming gangs that stole from wealthy land owners. He eventually was killed in a shootout in New South Wales.

So, the song would have been around during the years after the Civil War, which is the setting for The Hateful Eight. And it might not be unusual for someone like Daisy Domergue to be fond of a ballad about another outlaw.

Versions of the Song

“Jim Jones at Botany Bay” has been performed and recorded by a number of singers. Bob Dylan recorded “Jim Jones” for his Good As I Been To You (1992) album. You may hear a clip of Bob Dylan’s version on his website.

The video below features Old Crow Medicine Show performing the song at Byron Bay Bluesfest in 2010. Check it out.

For a complete recording of “Jim Jones at Botany Bay,” below is a version by Australian singer-songwriter Gary Shearston.

In modern decades, the song has been used as a song of defiance as it was in The Hateful Eight. For example, English folksinger A.L. “Bert” Lloyd sang ““Jim Jones at Botany Bay”” at London’s Westminster Hall during a rally in support of releasing political activist Angela Davis in the 1970s. So, whenever you are feeling a bit rebellious, crank up “Jim Jones at Botany Bay.”

And that is the Story Behind the Song.

Photo via YouTube. Leave your two cents in the comments.

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Darius Rucker’s “Wagon Wheel”: How Broonzy, Crudup, Dylan, OCMS and a School Band Made a Hit Song

Darius Rucker recently had a hit with “Wagon Wheel,” a song is so catchy that when you hear it you believe that you have heard it all your life. Although the song has not been around forever, it has been around for quite some time, going back through an unfinished Bob Dylan recording to an even earlier time.

When Bob Dylan was recording music for the soundtrack to Pat Garrett & Billy the Kid (1973) (an underrated Western gem), he put together what he later called a “sketch” of a song that came to be known as “Rock Me Mama.” He never finished the draft of the song, but you may hear it below.

Reportedly, Dylan credited the title phrase in the song to Arthur “Big Boy” Crudup (1905-1974), who in turn apparently developed it from Big Bill Broonzy‘s “Rock Me Baby.” Broonzy claimed he got the idea for the song from an older source, but Broonzy’s is the earliest version we know about.

Crudup’s version of “Rock Me Mama” does not have much similarity to Dylan’s version beyond the title. Yet, Crudup’s song is important for not only influencing Dylan, but it also influenced Elvis Presley. When Presley showed up at Sun Studios, the young man impressed Sam Phillips by knowing Crudup’s “Rock Me Mama.”

Although Dylan never released his version of “Rock Me Mama,” it was passed around as a bootleg, eventually catching the attention of Ketch Secor of Old Crow Medicine Show. Secor liked the music and some of the words that he could make out in Dylan’s mumbled version. So, he decided to finish the song.

At the time he worked on the song, Secor was going to school in the Northeast, so he incorporated his homesickness for the South in a song about a someone hitchhiking from the North to the South to see his lover. The song, now entitled “Wagon Wheel,” then appeared on Old Crow Medicine Show’s 2001 EP Troubles Up and Down the Road and then on 2004’s O.C.M.S.

“Wagon Wheel” became a bluegrass staple, and country artists and others took notice too. In 2012, Irish singer Nathan Carter recorded a version of “Wagon Wheel” for an album of the same name.

Eventually, the song came to the attention of Darius Rucker in the midst of his post-Hootie & the Blowfish successful career in country music. Darius Rucker has reported that while he is a fan of Old Crow Medicine Show, he did not think much about “Wagon Wheel” until he heard a faculty band at his daughter’s school perform the song. Inspired by the performance, Darius Rucker decided to record the song himself in 2012.

Rucker put “Wagon Wheel” on his 2013 album, True Believers. Then, his version became a big hit, and he won the Grammy Award for Best Country Solo Performance at the Annual Grammy Awards held in 2014 for his version of the song.

So, forty years after Bob Dylan recorded some ideas from Arthur Crudup and Big Bill Broonzy, the recording evolved into a song heard by millions of listeners. Secor reports that while he has not had an extensive conversation with Dylan about the song, his sense is that Dylan is pleased with the results. So are a lot of people.

And that’s the story behind the song.

Photo via public domain. Which is your favorite version of “Wagon Wheel”? Leave your two cents in the comments.