Wild West History Association Salute to Classic Cowboy Music. Part One Featuring Marty Robbins. Cowboy music is not Western or Country music, it is a genre all its own. Some of the songs were originally from poetry and were set to tunes familiar to the cowboys. Many tunes were from their homelands in Europe or Mexico, others from Appalachia and similar rural areas. Traditional cowboy music can be traced back to about the 1870’s when cattle were being driven up the trail from Texas. Some of the tunes were from much earlier. Cowboys wrote about what they were familiar with, cattle, horses, camaraderie, violence, loneliness and death…almost forgot—Rosa.
