(00:00) [1] I`ve Been Working on the Railroad opus 558 (2015)
(36:50) [2] Eatin` Goober Peas opus 552 (2015)
(55:50) [3] Old Paint opus 557 (2015)
Catalog No: FLX23
Title: The Cowboy Book
Sound Art: Frank Rothkamm
Visual Art: Holger Rothkamm
Label: Flux Records
Length: 1:16:43
Composed: 2015
Location: Los Angeles
Instruments: E. Gabler & Bros. baby grand piano
Release Date: 8/8/2015
Format: Digital
File Under: Americana
Frank Rothkamm [ The Cowboy Book ]
VI
Cowboys didn’t make this book.
It was up to the Belwin Company of Rockville Centre, Long Island to do it. Seemingly removed from the Wild West and the center of the publishing world in New York City, Belwin published John W. Schaum’s The Cowboy Book in 1955, a “solo piano album for the young student”. Apparently there were others, like the “Gay Nineties Book” and the “Girl’s Book”.
Not to judge a book by its cover, but these were publications of public domain melodies by forgotten or unknown composers and lyricists. As a matter of fact, only 2 of the 16 scores in my edition of The Cowboy Book mention an author at all. If we can trust the publisher, these are the songs of yore, when the West was wild and shrouded in the mists of our collective memory. So, this is open source music before there were copyrights and attributions.
Like most song melodies, these are very similar to each other, so each newly “invented” song sounded at once familiar and true. Indeed nothing is new here, no individual author brands any kind of ownership on them. Each song seems a imperfectly recollected or randomly mutated variation of some Urgestalt, something that expresses a true emotion. At least as far as cowboys are concerned.
I acquired my copy of The Cowboy Book at a thrift store near Denver, Colorado, which makes this not more authentic but my copy has handwritten dates throughout. Guessing from the mature script, these were probably written by the piano teacher to mark the exact date a young student started to practice each piece. They all date from 1967.
I started composing the 3 pieces of “The Cowboy Book” just 1 month before my 50th birthday in 2015 and published them just 1 month after. This is unusually swift because it’s common to have years or decades pass between composing and releasing an album. The urgency is not without reason. The Cowboy Book represents yet another stylistic novelty or method of composition which I broadly term Americana: endless randomly-mutated Iterations of collective or common material.
This is a quest for the illustrious, first, original, primordial substance or archetype of human music which seems important to release now during these times of divisiveness.
