The Old Chisholm Trail

Background information: This ballad was a favorite sung by cowboys in the 1870s. The tune is based off of an English melody dating back to around 1640. One of its first publications came in 1910 from the songbook, Cowboy Songs and Other Frontier Ballads, by John Lomax (Writer, 2022).

This ballad is about an important trail that was frequently used by Texas cowboys to lead their herds longhorn cattle to the new railroad lines that would take the cows to the East Coast (Ballads of America, 2019).

Click the button below to download the sheet music

Video recording

Lesson Plans

Idea #1

-Sing the first verse of the ballad. Ask the student what they know about cowboys. Explain the difference between how cowboys are shown in movies and TV shows, and what they did in real life.

-Explain that cowboys often sang while working and that there are many songs that we know today that come from this tradition.

-Teach the chorus by rote and have students sing it while you sing the rest of the verses.

-The tone set of this song is s, drm s. Students could learn the chorus, the verses, or both using solfege. This can be done by showing the notation and having students fill in the solfege syllables, or by breaking the song down into short phrases that students could decode (the teacher sings the phrase using the words, students are given time to think the answer in their heads, then students sing back the answer using solfege syllables).

Idea #2

-Students will first pat the beat while listening or singing the ballad.

-Change the pattern to: clap, right hand out, clap, left hand out, both hands out.

-Put students in groups of two and have them use that pattern together.

-Have students come up with other ideas for hand clapping patterns to keep the steady beat.

Idea #3

-A rhythmic ostinato of a quarter note followed by two sixteenth notes and an eighth note can be played on wood blocks, wood sticks, or tempo blocks in order to make a clip-clop-like sound.

-A melodic part can be played on barred instruments. Playing straight quarter notes , Eb G F Bb three times, followed by Bb Bb Eb.