Buck Ramsey – Hittin’ The Trail
From 1989, when he first went to the annual Cowboy Poetry Gathering in Elko, Nevada, until his death in 1998, a week shy of his 60th birthday, Buck Ramsey of Amarillo was arguably the leading light of the cowboy poetry movement. He was recognized for his ambitious writing, especially the epic poem “Anthem”, which was an artistic and spiritual landmark, as well as for his fiercely humanistic, leftist politics. Paralyzed and confined to a wheelchair since 1962, when he was thrown from his horse while cowboying along the Canadian River breaks in the Texas Panhandle, Ramsey also turned out to be a distinctive, deeply moving western singer.
Though he had two DIY releases while still alive, this double-CD is his first widely distributed effort. Ramsey was blessed with perfect pitch, and rather than the deep, virile voice usually associated with (real) cowboy music, he had a high, thin tenor that was both wispy and grainy and conveyed great longing. Everything he sings verges on nostalgia and sentimentality, but never goes so far in that direction that it becomes syrupy.
Thus, his great reading of “I’d Like To Be In Texas For The Roundup In The Spring” comes across as a celebration of a life well-lived rather than precious or maudlin romanticizing. To Ramsey, cowboy music was work songs, and you’ll find very little in the way of gunplay in these 24 tracks. At the same time, he sings with a lilt that suggests just how vulnerable the cowboy’s life could be. If you were to own just one album of traditional cowboy music, this would be a good one to choose.