Gunfighter Ballads and Trail Songs

Yeah, it's good, but it's an artifact. Good to listen to once, go "yeah all right so that's what was big back then" and then move on.

Big Iron is played in some tv shows and I see why. It's a banger.

I don’t do Country. This actually isn’t as awful as a lot of it. But that’s not saying much.

Weird uncanny valley album art aside, this record feels like the cliche album you would get if you said "I would like one country music, please" any time in the last sixty years.

the singing is pretty impressive, and the recording even more so. but it's so dated and repetitive.

Look, I get the kitsch- but how this is rated so so much higher than Jack Elliot makes zero sense to me.

First listen. How many times does the narrator die? This dude has been shot and killed (or hanged) in almost every song. Like bro, give it up.

The songs pretty much all sound the same, but they are FANTASTIC! I love these old western stories. Every song is a full fledged tale and they had me absolutely gripped. Really enjoyed this listen.

Big Iron is great. Country music can be really good and this is as country as it gets.

Is it just this album cover or did Marty Robbins always look like Nick Cage?
I'm surprised at all the five star reviews of this album. I mean it's fine and certainly better than the pop country garbage that comes out now but it's still just like campfire sing-a-longs for an hour. Fun fact - one of the first songs I learned to play on guitar was El Paso. So there's that. If someone was browsing though my record collection and found this I wouldn't be embarrassed, but if someone walked in the front door and this was playing I'd have to do some explaining. But I can't imagine a time when I would play this even if I did have it in the collection. At least it's tolerable and good for one listen. 2.5/5

makes me feel like a cowboy

I can see there being an audience for this, but it damn sholl ain’t me

I’ve heard the Grateful Dead play El Paso on about sixty different recordings and I knew Big Iron, but every other song here was new to me. Just a delightful set of western songs about cowboys. He paints a great picture for all these stories. One of the best country albums I have ever listened to.

Pretty fun album. You still hear these in movie a TV soundtracks.

Well, this is a pretty old country album. Certainly, it's older than any country album I've had on this list. It's probably the best produced of any 50s album I've had on the list, so it gets points for that. It doesn't necessarily confirm to what the modern listener thinks of as country, instead being a kind of folky, Western-themed crooner pop. Robbins has an excellent voice, and the album's sonic backgrounds are excellently produced, but it doesn't really inspire as much feeling as the likes of Johnny Cash. Still, it's an objectively good album with strong storytelling lyrics and excellent production, and it definitely should be on this list(well, for an American, it should be).

This album is the lowest ranked of 5 1959 albums globally. Other 1959 albums rated by me:
Kind of Blue(1/5)-5
Time Out(2/5)-3
The Genius of Ray Charles(3/5)-3

Ended up enjoying it more than I thought I would. Nice to have some musical variety as well.

1) A Hundred And Sixty Acres
2) Little Green Valley
3) El Paso

Least Favourite: Strawberry Roan

Pretty unmoved by this collection of tunes. Mythologising of the Wild West is generally a bit uninteresting, but maybe it's different if you're American.

The first 50s album I've had that's somewhat tolerable, Big Iron is doing some heavy lifting though

Goddamn it now I just want to play Red Dead Redemption again.