El Paso (song)

Infobox Single
Name = El Paso


Caption = "El Paso" by Marty Robbins
Artist = Marty Robbins
from Album = Gunfighter Ballads and Trail Songs
A-side =
B-side =
Released = October 1959
Format = 7"
Recorded = April 1959
Genre = country, pop
Length = 4:44
Label =
Writer = Marty Robbins
Producer =
Certification =
Chart position =

• #1 (Billboard Hot C&W Sides)
  
• #1 (Billboard Hot 100)

Last single =
This single =
Next single =
Misc =Audiosample
Upper caption = Audio sample
Audio file = El Paso by Marty Robbins.ogg

"El Paso" is a country and western ballad written and originally recorded by Marty Robbins, and first released on "Gunfighter Ballads and Trail Songs" in September 1959. It was released as a single the following month, and became a major hit on both the country and pop music charts, reaching Number One in both at the start of 1960. It won the Grammy Award for Best Country & Western Recording in 1961, and remains Robbins' best-known song. It is widely considered a genre classic for its gripping narrative, haunting harmonies by Tompall and the Glaser Brothers and the eloquent Spanish guitar accompaniment by Grady Martin that lends the recording a distinctive Tex-Mex feel.

The song

"El Paso" was, at some four minutes and forty-five seconds in duration, far longer than most contemporary singles. Robbins' record company was unsure if radio stations would play such a long song, and so released two versions of the song: the full-length version on one side, and an edited version on the other which was nearer to the three-minute mark. The full-length version was overwhelmingly preferred.

:"Out in the west Texas town of El Paso, I fell in love with a Mexican girl..."

The song is a first-person narrative told by a cowboy who is in El Paso, Texas, in the days of the Wild West. He falls in love with Feleena [The spelling "Feleena", rather than "Felina" as in Spanish, appears in the title of "Feleena (from El Paso)" on the tracklist of Robbins' 1966 album "The Drifter".] , a Mexican cantina dancer. When another man makes advances on "wicked Feleena", the narrator guns down the challenger, then flees El Paso for fear of being hanged for murder or killed in revenge by his victim's friends. He hides out in the "badlands of New Mexico".

The narrator switches from the past tense to the present tense for the remainder of the song, describing the yearning that drives him to return to El Paso in the face of almost certain death: "It's been so long since I've seen the young maiden / My love is stronger than my fear of death". Upon entering the town, he is attacked and fatally wounded by a posse, but the cowboy is found by Feleena, and he dies in her arms.

Plotting the hints from Marty’s Robbins’ “El Paso” trilogy, one can determine approximately where to find Rosa’s Cantina, and at a juncture near where Texas, Chihuahua, and New Mexico converge, at the bottom of a hill, with a back door from which the narrator can run, there is an actual neighborhood bar called Rosa’s Cantina whose ambience lends itself to the lyrics of the three songs. [Miller, Tom. On the Border: Portraits of America’s Southwestern Frontier, p. 118-124 and Jack Ruby’s Kitchen Sink: Offbeat Travels Through America’s Southwest, pp. 101-109.]

Legacy

In the late 1980s "El Paso" became known as the Official Fight song of the University of Texas at El Paso Miners.

"El Paso" was covered by the Grateful Dead. They started performing the song in 1969. When performed, it was sung by rhythm guitarist Bob Weir with Jerry Garcia contributing harmony vocals on the chorus. The last time they performed the song as The Grateful Dead was on July 5, 1995, 4 days prior to their final show. On the album "Ladies and Gentlemen... The Grateful Dead" Bob Weir introduces the song as the Dead's "most requested number." In all, they performed it 386 times. [http://setlists.net/]

El Paso has become extremely popular in the American West with many crediting Robbins with capturing the spirit of the West.Fact|date=October 2008

equels

an Angelo

In 1962, Robbins released the album "More Gunfighter Ballads and Trail Songs". This included "San Angelo", similar to "El Paso" in both story and arrangement, and five-and-a-half minutes long. The narrator is an outlaw who crosses the border from "Old Mexico" to San Angelo, Texas for a rendezvous with his Mexican sweetheart Secora. It turns out to be a tr
Robin Hood figure, who falls out with a comrade also in love with Secora. The soundtrack features no music or performance by Robbins; it does include a version of "The Ballad of Hopalong Cassidy" performed by Johnny Rivers.

Feleena (From El Paso)

In 1966, Robbins recorded "Feleena (From El Paso)", telling the life story of Feleena, the "Mexican girl" from "El Paso", in a third-person narrative. This track was over eight minutes long. Robbins wrote most of it in Phoenix, Arizona, but went to El Paso seeking inspiration for the conclusion.

Born in a desert shack in New Mexico, Feleena runs away from home at 17, living off her charms for a year in Santa Fe, before moving to the brighter lights of El Paso to become a paid dancer. After another year, the narrator of "El Paso" arrives, the first man she did not have contempt for. He spends six weeks romancing her, before shooting the other man with whom she was flirting through "insane jealousy." Her lover's return to El Paso comes only a day after his flight; immediately after his dying kiss, Feleena shoots herself with his gun. Their ghosts are heard to this day in the wind blowing around El Paso: "It's only the young cowboy showing Feleena the town".

El Paso City

In 1976 Robbins released another reworking, "El Paso City", in which the narrator is on an airplane over El Paso and remembers a song he had heard "long ago", proceeding to summarize the original "El Paso" story. "I don't recall who sang the song", he sings, but he feels a supernatural connection to the story: "could it be that I could be the cowboy in this mystery", he asks, suggesting a past life. This song was a country number one. The arrangement includes riffs and themes from the previous two El Paso songs. Robbins wrote it while himself flying over El Paso.

Red Velvet Slippers

In 2000 [http://www.junifisher.com Juni Fisher] released her "Tumbleweed Letters" album. The first song on the album is "Red Velvet Slippers" in which Feleena explains how the first young cowboy who was shot was actually her brother Roberto. The key character in Marty Robbins' original song was jealous of Feleena's brother, thinking she was flirting with yet another man. After her brother dies, she takes his gun and goes after the killer cowboy but the streets are too dark to see. The sheriff comes to her and says the posse will hunt the cowboy down and kill him. They shoot him behind Rosa's Cantina and she kisses him before he dies, and leaves her red velvet slippers and El Paso behind.

uccession

References

* Liner notes by Rich Keinzle, July 1991, to "The Essential Marty Robbins: 1951-1982" Columbia Records 468909-2

Notes

External links

*imdb title|id=0057868|title=Ballad of a Gunfighter