The Last Cowboy Song

Highwayman (The Highwaymen album)

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Highwayman is the first studio album released by country supergroup The Highwaymen, comprising Kris Kristofferson, Johnny Cash, Waylon Jennings and Willie Nelson. Highwayman, released through Columbia Records in 1985, was the group's first and most successful album.

Highwayman, consisting of ten tracks, was released as a follow-up to the successful single of the same name and the title track of the album itself. "Highwayman", a Jimmy Webb cover, hit the top of the country charts and was followed up by the Top 20 hit "Desperados Waiting for a Train", whose original version was released by Guy Clark. The album was entirely produced by Chips Moman.

The group wasn't named "The Highwaymen" from the beginning. On their first two albums, they are credited as "Nelson, Jennings, Cash, Kristofferson". The official name which came to be widely recognized began to be used only in later years, and their last collaborative effort, The Road Goes on Forever, was already credited to "The Highwaymen".

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Highwayman_(The_Highwaymen_album)

"The Last Cowboy Song"

The second track on the album is, like the other nine, a cover, this time of Ed Bruce's earlier collaboration with Ronald Peterson, which hit No. 12 on the charts in 1980. Bruce had also written "Mamas Don't Let Your Babies Grow Up to Be Cowboys", which became a hit for Nelson and Waylon Jennings. The duo had previously covered "The Last Cowboy Song" on their album WWII (1982).

"The Last Cowboy Song" discusses the disappearance of the American Old West and the values associated with it. All four performers can be heard on the song (Jennings, Kristofferson, Nelson and Cash respectively), though Cash's verse is spoken word. The chorus appears at the beginning of the song, after the second verse and after the third, overlapping with Cash's verse and continuing until the end of the song.

The chorus, performed by all four singers, is an expression of the longing for the old way of life and the loss of the traditional West: "This is the last cowboy song / The end of a hundred-year waltz / The voices sound sad as they're singing along / Another piece of America's lost". The song mentions some classic American tales, including that of the Lewis and Clark Expedition, Wyatt Earp, William B. Travis, George Armstrong Custer and his 7th Cavalry, Louis L'Amour and the Chisholm Trail, among others, as examples of the diminishing value and vanishing of the West in today's reality. The lyrics also feature an anonymous cowboy who represents said values.

Members of the Western Writers of America chose it as one of the Top 100 Western songs of all time.[2]

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Highwayman_(The_Highwaymen_album)

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