I Ride an Old Paint is a traditional American cowboy song, collected and published in 1927 by Carl Sandburg in his American Songbag . [1] [2]
Traveling the American Southwest, Sandburg found the song through western poets Margaret Larkin and Lynn Riggs. He wrote that the song came to them in Santa Fe from a cowboy who was last heard of as heading for the Mexican border with friends. He described the song as one of a man in harmony with the values of the American West: "There is rich poetry in the image of the rider so loving a horse he begs when he dies his bones shall be tied to his horse and the two of them sent wandering with their faces turned west." [1]
Members of the Western Writers of America chose it as one of the Top 100 Western songs of all time. [3] The song is interpolated in Aaron Copland 's ballet Rodeo , in William Grant Still 's Miniatures and in Virgil Thomson 's film score for The Plow that Broke the Plains .
There is disagreement among experts about the meanings of some terms in the song, namely: "snuffy", "fiery", "Dan", and "hoolihan". [4] If the word is dam as in Linda Ronstadt's version it is a mother horse. The hoolihan is a backhand loop thrown with a lariat, typically thrown to catch horses.[ citation needed ] Notable recordings of "I Ride an Old Paint" are by the Weavers and Linda Ronstadt. Loudon Wainwright III has a particularly plaintive version he titled simply "Old Paint" on his 1971 Album II. Johnny Cash recorded a version on his 1965 album Johnny Cash Sings the Ballads of the True West . Cowboy Nation [Chip Kinman & Tony Kinman] recorded their arrangement of "Old Paint" on the self-titled album in 1996. Canadian singer Colter Wall recorded a version on his 2020 album Western Swing & Waltzes and Other Punchy Songs .