On 17 July 1939 Alan Lomax, of the American Folklife Center, Library of Congress, wrote to Myra E. Hull, the mild-mannered ballad collector from Kansas, “My dear Miss Hull:
I just received the issue of the publications of the Kansas Historical Society and read your article on cowboy songs with great interest. It is a real contribution to original studies in the field.”
The two correspondents were acquainted — in a general way, in that Lomax surely knew something of Louise Pound in Nebraska, Franz Fickaby in North Dakota, and other prairie songcatchers who labored far from eastern seats of learning, but also in a more specific way, in that two years earlier Myra, while on a research visit to the library, had sung her repertoire of Great Plains folksong into Alan’s reel-ro-reel recorder, for the library’s collections. There to rest, until I came to the folklife center, received friendly greetings and professional assistance from archival staff, and put on the earphones.
Then the magic commenced. I had read Myra’s writings and researched her prairie girlhood, her modest academic career, and her spinsterly life with her mother, an intriguing veneer for a secret life as a connoisseur of cowboy balladry. Her voice, though, provided a far more fascinating entry into her life and songs, which she gathered from her family and neighbors.
I arrived at the library especially interested in one of the cowboy ballads Myra had written up for the Kansas Historical Quarterly issue she mailed to Alan Lomax. It’s a well-known folksong: “Whoopee Ti-Yi-O, Git Along Little Dogies,” sung throughout the cattle country of the Great Plains. The earliest known text was reported by Owen Wister in Texas in 1893.
As I was walkin’ one morning for pleasure
I saw a cowpuncher a-ridin’ along
His hat was throwed back and his spurs was a-jinglin’
And as he approached he was singin’ this song
Myra’s version, however, is like no other. Like the ballad I talked about in another essay, “Night Herding Song,” she got “Git Along Little Dogies” from a relative, Dr. Hull Alden Cook, a physician well-traveled in cow country and later author of the memoir, Fifty Years a Country Doctor. Dr. Cook, and Myra, impart a wonderfully bluesy flair to the traditional chorus.
Whoopee ti-yi-o, git along little dogies
It’s your misfortune and none of my own
Whoopee ti-yi-o, git along little dogies
For you know that Wyoming will be your new home
And then, most remarkable, a second chorus, deliciously and devilishly basso.
Whoopee ti-yi-o, git along little dogies
It’s your misfortune and none of my own
Whoopee ti-yi-o, git along little dogies
For you know that Wyoming will be your new home
Myra seems off her game singing this ballad; was it was just a little too devilish for her? Or perhaps it was a case of nerves. To record, Lomax took her not into a secluded studio, but into the library’s impressive Coolidge Auditorium. A kind archivist got me into the room. Suppose “Git Along Little Dogies” were the first ballad she recorded! That stage would have been daunting. Myra was not in Kansas anymore. But she sang her songs.
