Peter Lafarge Songs Of The Cowboys - Iron Mountain And Other Songs (CD)

One of many ironies surrounding Peter La Farge is that he could legitimately claim to be both Indian and cowboy. On his 1964 Folkways album of cowboy songs, La Farge delivers Western chestnuts like The Strawberry Roan with evident affection and recites a piece of original 'beat' cowboy verse, The Rodeo Hand. The 13 1962 Folkways recordings which flesh out this 29-track collection show La Farge's topical eye scanning discrimination (Alaska, 49th State), drug use (Marijuana Blues), and the passing of a mentor in Cisco Houston.

SONGS OF THE COWBOYS
Peter La Farge comes from Fountain, Colorado, where he was raised as a cowboy on the Kane Ranch. His second home is SantaFe New Mexico, where his father Oliver La Farge resides. The thirty-two year old folk musician whose tribe, the Nargasets were wiped out was adopted, with his sister Povy, by the Tewa Tribe of the Hopi Nation, whose reservation is near Santa Fe.
Peter left school when he was sixteen, to sing and rodeo.

He had his own radio program when he was fourteen. Peter was dancing the Hopi eagle dance with his father playing drums before he was ten, on his first ap-pearance in New York. In 1946 Josh White came through Pete' s country, and stopped off to work with him. This was the beginning of his appren-ticeship to the greats of folk music. Much work with Josh, Big Bill Broonzy and a close friendship with Cisco Houston followed with the years.

Peter went to Korea and returned to sing and rodeo, collecting the cowboy songs which are his birthright, collecting a broken nose in the ring as a professional boxer, collecting the USA. He took his eyes off a Brahma Bull at a rodeo in '56, and saw that the resulting inj ury, (through which he almost lost a leg) spelled the beginning of the end of his athletic career. He then took himself to the Goodman School of Theatre in Chicago. After appearing in New York City in the highly successful revival of 'Darkness of the Moon,' he made a comeback on the Rodeo circuit. In '59 he found himself riding at Madison Square Garden with his right foot in a cast, and a spur set into the cast; at the same time he was cast in the Shakespearwrites New York produc-tion of 'King Lear.' Pete has had a broken wrist, a mangled, surgically saved knee, a broken (but healed) leg, a crushed ankle and other injuries from rodeo. He retired.

Working closely from this time on with Cisdo, who believed Peter could con-tribute much as a performer, writer, composer, he began to concentrate en-tirely on the folk field. This album, the answer to a long dream, and the other Folkways releases are the result.