Glenn Ohrlin (1926-2015) fell in love with cowboy music at the age of five and began singing songs himself. “In Minnesota, where I was born,” Ohrlin said, “everyone sang cowboy songs, even my aunts and uncles. My father was musical; my mother wasn’t, particularly. I used to listen to the radio a lot. When I was growing up in the 1930s, every reasonably big radio station had its own singing cowboy. In those days, it wasn’t too hard to find one. If a station wanted a cowboy singer, they’d go out and find a working cowboy who knew a few songs.” Ohrlin left home at 16 and was living in California at the time. From there, he headed to Nevada to become a buckaroo. Glenn Ohrlin is recognized as a genuine cowboy who lived at the heart of tradition, and was named a NEA Heritage Fellow in 1985.
Citing art.gov, “most of his repertoire stems from the period 1875 to 1925 and includes traditional British ballads carried west, sentimental melodies, journalistic poetry, bawdy songs, hobo ditties, and border Spanish tunes he learned as a working cowboy. He also performs a number of folk songs that he learned while in the Army during World War II, as well as many popular country and western songs.” Ohrlin published both a book and album titled “The Hell-Bound Train“, published by the University of Illinois Press. The book and album consist of cowboy lore, songs and poems. All photos in the archive are of contributing artists on this tape. The Cowboy Tour conglomerate featured cowboys from Louisiana, Texas, and more, ranging all the way out to Hawaii.
From 1983-1984 Ohrlin was the host and performer for The Cowboy Tour (link, paragraph three), a group of both working and retired cowboys that traveled the western United States, crossing over 30,000 miles by road bringing cowboy songs and stories to small traditional ranching towns. Ohrlin travelled by pick-up truck and lived by his highway rule: if there was more than one road to a place, he always went by the one he had never traveled, even if the distances were longer and the road narrower. He lived his latter years in a stone home he built in MTN. View, Arkansas, which is where he passed away. George Ohrlin also paired with the Cowboy Poetry Gathering in Elko, Nevada, in 1985.
This specific tape was manufactured in 1983 and was produced by the National Council For Traditional Arts, which is the oldest folk arts organization in the nation. Pictured on the album (left to right) are as follows: Everett Brisendine, Duff Severe, Ken Trowbridge, Brownie Ford, Glenn Ohrlin, Junior Daugherty. The folks seated are listed: Johnny Whelan, & Karin Haleamau. The photo was taken at Judge Roy Bean’s Jersey Lilly Saloon in Langtry, Texas. This album was sold at the 1986 Festival of American Folk Life in Washington, D.C. Howard Sacks and Joe Wilson were tour directors for the cowboy troupe. Major support for the tour and album production came from the National Endowment for the Arts, Folk Arts Program. Additional tour support came from the State Art Councils of Montana, Nevada, North Dakota, Texas, Utah.
An alternate version of this tape was released by Rounder on CD in the year 2000. A considerable bit of material from the original tape did not make it to the CD. Listen below in our archive, or online on Youtube.