"El Paso" is a country and western ballad written and
originally recorded by Marty Robbins, and first released on
Gunfighter Ballads and Trail Songsin 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, haunting harmonies by
Tompall and the Glaser Brothers and the eloquent Spanish guitar
accompaniment by Grady Martin that lends the recording a
distinctive Tex-Mex feel.
"El Paso" was, at some four minutes and forty-five seconds
in duration, far longer than most contemporary singles at the
time. Robbins' record company was unsure if radio stations
would play such a long song, and so released two versions of
the song: 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.
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 falls in
love with Feleena, at
Rosa's Cantina dancing. When another man makes advances on
"wicked Feleena", the narrator guns down the challenger, then
flees El Paso for fear of being hanged for murder or killed in
revenge by his victim's friends. He hides out in the "badlands
of New Mexico".
The narrator switches from the past tense to the present
tense for the remainder of the song, describing the yearning
that drives him to return to El Paso in the face of almost
certain death: "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, but the cowboy is found by Feleena, and he dies in her
arms.
In the late 1980s "El Paso" became known as the Official
Fight song of the University of Texas at El Paso Miners.
"El Paso" was covered by the Grateful Dead. They started
performing the song in 1969. When performed, it was sung by
rhythm guitarist Bob Weir with Jerry Garcia contributing
harmony vocals on the chorus. The last time they performed the
song as The Grateful Dead was on July 5, 1995, 4 days prior to
their final show. On the album
Ladies and Gentlemen... The Grateful DeadBob Weir
introduces the song as the Dead's "most requested number." In
all, they performed it 386 times.
El Paso has become extremely popular in the American West
with many crediting Robbins with capturing the spirit of the
West.
Plotting the hints from Marty Robbins’ “El Paso” trilogy of
songs, one can determine approximately where to find Rosa’s
Cantina. At a juncture near where Texas, Chihuahua, and New
Mexico converge, at the bottom of a hill, with a back door from
which the narrator can run, there is an actual neighborhood bar
called Rosa’s Cantina. Its address is 3454 Doniphan, El
Paso,TX, and its ambience lends itself to the lyrics of the
three songs.
In 1962, Robbins released the album
More Gunfighter Ballads and Trail Songs. This included
"San Angelo", similar to "El Paso" in both story and
arrangement, and five-and-a-half minutes long. The narrator is
an outlaw who crosses the border from "Old Mexico" to San
Angelo, Texas for a rendezvous with his Mexican sweetheart
Secora. It turns out to be a trap: Secora runs to warn him, but
is shot dead. The outlaw shoots her killer, but is shot by
other ambushers, kissing Secora's dead lips at the last. The
story of the song was loosely adapted into a 1964 movie called
Ballad of a Gunfighter, starring Robbins as the outlaw
(also named "Marty Robbins") and Joyce Redd as Secora.
"Robbins" is a Robin Hood figure, who falls out with a comrade
also in love with Secora. The soundtrack features no music or
performance by Robbins; it does include a version of "The
Ballad of Hopalong Cassidy" performed by Johnny Rivers.
In 1966, Robbins recorded "Feleena (From El Paso)", telling
the life story of Feleena, 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, Feleena 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 the other man with
whom she was flirting through "insane jealousy." Her lover's
return to El Paso comes only a day after his flight;
immediately after his dying kiss, Feleena 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 Feleena the
town".
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.