El Paso (song)



"El Paso" is a country and western ballad written and originally recorded by Marty Robbins, and first released on Gunfighter Ballads and Trail Songs in September 1959. It was released as a single the following month, and became a major hit on both the country and pop music charts, reaching number one in both at the start of 1960. It won the Grammy Award for Best Country & Western Recording in 1961, and remains Robbins' best-known song. It is widely considered a genre classic for its gripping narrative which ends in the death of its protagonist, its shift from past to present tense, haunting harmonies by vocalists Bobby Sykes and Jim Glaser (of the Glaser Brothers) and the eloquent and varied Spanish guitar accompaniment by Grady Martin that lends the recording a distinctive Tex-Mex feel. The name of the character Faleena was based upon a schoolmate of Robbins in the fifth grade—Fidelina Martinez.

Members of the Western Writers of America chose El Paso as one of the Top 100 Western songs of all time.

The song
"El Paso" was, at 4 minutes and 38 seconds in duration, far longer than most contemporary singles at the time. Robbins' record company was unsure whether radio stations would play such a long song, and so released two versions of the song on a promo 45: the full-length version on one side, and an edited version on the other which was nearer to the three-minute mark. The full-length version was overwhelmingly preferred.


 * "Out in the west Texas town of El Paso, I fell in love with a Mexican girl..."

The song is a first-person narrative told by a cowboy who is in El Paso, Texas, in the days of the Wild West. He recalls how he fell in love with a young Mexican woman, Faleena, a dancer at "Rosa's Cantina". When the narrator sees another cowboy sharing a drink with "wicked Faleena" he challenges the newcomer to a gunfight. He kills the challenger, then flees El Paso for fear of being hanged for murder or killed in revenge by his victim's friends. (The truncated version of the song, often found on compilations, omits a verse in which the narrator expresses shock and remorse over the "foul evil deed I had done" before realizing he has to flee.) In the act of fleeing, he commits the additional and potentially hanging offense of horse theft ("I caught a good one, it looked like it could run"), further sealing his fate in El Paso. Exiting El Paso, he hides out in the "badlands of New Mexico".

The narrator switches from the past to the present for the remainder of the song, describing the yearning that drives him to return to El Paso: "It's been so long since I've seen the young maiden / My love is stronger than my fear of death." Upon entering the town, he is attacked and fatally wounded by a posse. At the end of the song, the cowboy recounts that Faleena has "found me,"and he dies in her arms.

Chart performance
Coincidentally, "El Paso" was followed in the Hot 100 No. 1 position by Johnny Preston's "Running Bear", another song in which the protagonist of the song dies although the story of Running Bear is not told in the first person.

Other versions
"El Paso" was frequently performed by the Grateful Dead in concert. The song entered the band's repertoire in 1969, and remained there until the band's demise in 1995; in total, it was performed 389 times. It was sung by rhythm guitarist Bob Weir, with Jerry Garcia contributing harmony vocals. On the album Ladies and Gentlemen... The Grateful Dead, Bob Weir introduces the song as the Dead's "most requested number".

The alternative country band Old 97's have also covered this song but instead of in the traditional 3/4 time, they hammered it out in 4/4. Their cover appears on Hit by a Train: The Best of Old 97's as well as the King of the Hill original TV soundtrack.

Grady Martin released an instrumental version in 1965 on his Instrumentally Yours album.

El Paso has also been recorded by Max Stalling, Michael Martin Murphey, Tom Russell, The Mills Brothers, and Jason and the Scorchers.

After Lolita along with her Western Trio had a hit in the US with Seemann (Deine Heimat ist das Meer) she reciprocated by recording a German version of the song which became a hit in the German world and contributed to a long series of bi-national songs such as Wenn der Sommer Kommt and two songs which would top the U.S. country charts thirteen years later as performed by Marie Osmond Lieber Jonny, Komm doch Wieder and Das einsame Haus in Waikiki.

A parody version, "El Pizza" by H. B. Barnum, was a radio hit in 1960. It moved the action to Azusa, California, where Rosa's Cantina became a pizza place where Faleena worked as a waitress.

Homer and Jethro also parodied the song ("Velvita's Cafe had standing room only; wall-to-wall drunks all the way to the door. I looked around for a place I could sit down; a lady got up, and I grabbed her char . . . ."[not "chair"). "I asked her where have you been all my life; she answered, 'Most of it I wasn't born'."

Blaine L. Reininger, a founding musician of San Francisco band Tuxedomoon, included this song on his 1989 solo album Book of Hours.

In the late 1980s a modified version of "El Paso" (Miners Fight) became known as the Official Fight song of the University of Texas at El Paso Miners.

Sequels
Robbins wrote two songs that are explicit sequels to "El Paso", one in 1966, one in 1976. (He also wrote other songs that told Western stories in a similar vein, but they are not sequels to "El Paso", as they involve none of the same characters.)

Faleena (From El Paso)
In 1966, Robbins recorded "Faleena (From El Paso)", telling the life story of Faleena, the "Mexican girl" from "El Paso", in a third-person narrative. This track was over eight minutes long. Robbins wrote most of it in Phoenix, Arizona, but went to El Paso seeking inspiration for the conclusion.

Born in a desert shack in New Mexico during a thunderstorm, Faleena runs away from home at 17, living off her charms for a year in Santa Fe, before moving to the brighter lights of El Paso to become a paid dancer. After another year, the narrator of "El Paso" arrives, the first man she did not have contempt for. He spends six weeks romancing her, before shooting another man with whom she was flirting through "insane jealousy" in a retelling of the key moment in the original song. Her lover's return to El Paso comes only a day after his flight (the original song suggests a longer timeframe before his return) and as she goes to run to him, the cowboy motions to her to stay out of the line of fire and is shot; immediately after his dying kiss, Faleena shoots herself with his gun. Their ghosts are heard to this day in the wind blowing around El Paso: "It's only the young cowboy showing Faleena the town".

El Paso City
In 1976 Robbins released another reworking, "El Paso City", in which the narrator is on an airplane over El Paso and remembers a song he had heard "long ago", proceeding to summarize the original "El Paso" story. "I don't recall who sang the song", he sings, but he feels a supernatural connection to the story: "could it be that I could be the cowboy in this mystery", he asks, suggesting a past life. This song was a country number one. The arrangement includes riffs and themes from the previous two El Paso songs. Robbins wrote it while flying over El Paso, in - he reported - the same amount of time it takes to sing, four minutes and fourteen seconds. It was only the second time that ever happened to him; the first time was when he composed the original El Paso as fast as he could write it down. Robbins intended to do one more sequel, “The Mystery of Old El Paso,” but he died in late 1982 before he could finish the final song.

In popular culture

 * In 2001 Old El Paso used a version of the song in a Super Bowl TV commercial advertising their latest taco kit.
 * Van Dyke Parks cited the song as a primary influence when he wrote The Beach Boys' song "Heroes and Villains" with Brian Wilson for the legendary abortive sessions for the Smile album in 1966. The song was the centerpiece for the entire project.
 * Fileena Bahris (actress and jewelry designer for film, born 1970) was named after Feleena, the heroine of Marty Robbins song "El Paso" and the later song titled "Feleena (from El Paso)" in his 1966 album The Drifter.
 * For his 1979 TV special Comedy is Not Pretty!, Steve Martin created a music video for the song, in which he plays the cowboy. The rest of the cast are chimpanzees and an orangutan. Martin's first "horse" is a miniature pony; he later rides an elephant to escape the posse.
 * In 2013, the song was featured in "Felina", the series finale of the hit TV series Breaking Bad. As he leaves hiding, protagonist Walter White steals a car in which is a cassette containing the Marty Robbins song, whose narrative reflects Walter's own story. Series creator Vince Gilligan admitted that he had taken some liberties, albeit orthographically plausible ones, with the spelling of Faleena's name in order to make it an anagram for "finale". Gilligan has also discussed Feleena as a symbol for the Blue Meth that Walter White devises.
 * In 2014, the song was featured in the film Dumb and Dumber To.
 * The US Navy Amphibious ship, the USS El Paso LKA-117(1970-1994), used the song as their 'break-away' salute to all ships once refueling or other transfer activities were complete and the ships parted ways.