Ian Tyson – All the Good ‘Uns

Keats once said of Shakespeare, “He lived a life of allegory.” So it is with Ian Tyson. As a young songwriter, he left his native Canada to follow Dylan’s lead during the folk revival but returned to build a fascinating mythology of the West. His chronicles, for all their photographic detail of outlaws and hired hands, envision an ageless drama of human spirit and conscience. For three decades, his art has rarely failed; he still sings and writes with resolve and ambition. This collection corrals 19 songs from five recent records, plus two new songs.

Steve Earle sometimes covers Tyson’s “Summer Wages”; others have recorded his folk classics “Four Strong Winds” and “Someday Soon”. But Old Eon’s roots are country. His first band bore the name Pistol Packin’ Rhythm; with Ian and Sylvia, he released the back-to-the-country Nashville; and in 1969, he created the wonderful, Parsons-esque Great Speckled Bird.

In the ’80s, Tyson found his musical purpose. With royalties from Neil Young’s version of “Four Strong Winds”, he bought land along the High River in Alberta, established a ranch, and set to writing the best cowboy songs since Wilf Carter. Perhaps cowboy is too narrow. Tyson takes themes that could become cardboard stock and lays bare ample poetry, sometimes approaching metaphysical wonder. In “Alberta’s Child” he sings, “Ride with me Jesus, help me pull this heavy load/Don’t let her slip, don’t let her slide/You answer all our questions further down this muddy road/Old cowboys cross the Great Divide.” In “Jaquima to Freno”, he acknowledges his debt to Mexican culture (“Teach me the mystery,” he intones) and to film. He even injects doubt into his romanticism: “Did they find true love? Was it all a bunch of lies? Quien sabe? Maybe it was paradise.”

The cowboy genre was sweetened by Gene Autry and others in the ’30s and ’40s, as the quixotic and dreamy cowboy singer drifted from his roots in the hard, heart-torn range. Later, Marty Robbins offered a greater stylistic spectrum, not to mention a sometimes sappy, sometimes gorgeous countrypolitan sound. Ironically, spare and lonely themes led the cowboys to lush production. Tyson pursues and outstrips that polish, experimenting with layered harmony, diverse percussion, pedal steel and fiddles. The results are always rootsy. The full arrangements suit Tyson’s smooth voice; he can yodel, dig Cash-deep, and croon with a hale, hard edge.

Some anthologies suffer from lack of coherence and fail to satisfy like a standard album, but not this one. All The Good ‘Uns is a myth as significant and enduring as Robbins’ “El Paso” triptych and the westerns of John Ford. Its author should be regarded, along with Haggard and Parton, as one of the finest and most prolific country songwriters to come of age in the ’60s. Like the land and life he mirrors, Ian Tyson’s songs are glorious and indispensable.