How the West Was Sung: Music in the Westerns of John Ford

Introduction

Huw Morgan in John Ford’s How Green Was My Valley (1941) describes his Welsh village as ringing “with the sound of many voices, for singing is in my people as sight is in the eye.” Something very similar might be written about all the films of John Ford (1894–1973). Ford is unique among directors in the Hollywood studio system in his insistence on song, both vocal and instrumental, diegetic (i.e., heard by the characters and often with a source visible on screen) and nondiegetic (i.e., heard by the audience but inaudible to the film’s characters), in war films, social and political dramas, historical epics, comedies, and literary adaptations , genres not accustomed to accommodating such performances. This book focuses on music in the western, a genre that Ford both de- fined and dominated. In fact, the preponderance of song is one of the most distinctive features of Ford’s imprint on the genre. Perhaps this is why so many memories of Ford westerns hinge on their production numbers : “The Girl I Left Behind Me” and “She Wore a Yellow Ribbon,” sung by soldiers in Fort Apache (1948) and She Wore a Yellow Ribbon (1949); “All Praise to St. Patrick,” played for the Grande Marche, and “Garry Owen,” played by the regimental band in Fort Apache; “The Streets of Laredo,” sung as a lullaby in 3 Godfathers (1948); “Drill, Ye Terriers, Drill,” sung by the railroad workers in The Iron Horse (1924), and “Sweet Genevieve,” sung by the protagonists of Hellbent (1918) (two of Ford’s “silent” westerns); “I’ll Take You Home Again, Kathleen ,” heard on a music box in Rio Grande (1950); “Shall We Gather at 1 Introduction 2 Introduction the River?” in just about everything. And this is just the beginning of a list of songs performed, in one way or another, in Ford westerns. No wonder one of Ford’s biographers, Tag Gallagher, observes: “Ford’s cinema can, without too much exaggeration, at times be likened to a trailer for a musical.”1 Song crosses the diegesis in Ford westerns, too. If these moments are less immediately audible than the diegetic performances, they are no less characteristic of music’s operation in Ford westerns: “Jeanie with the Light Brown Hair,” as a leitmotif for Hatfield in Stagecoach (1939); “Lorena,” as a leitmotif for Martha in The Searchers (1956); “Oh, Bury Me Not on the Lone Prairie,” as an aural marker for the stagecoach in Stagecoach, Fort Apache, She Wore a Yellow Ribbon, and 3 Godfathers; “Battle Hymn of the Republic,” underscoring Captain York’s last speech in Fort Apache; “The Battle-cry of Freedom” as the cavalry charges to the rescue in Stagecoach. Ford’s predilection for American folk song, hymnody, and period music is more than a stylistic gesture. Songs authenticate historical era and geographic place and contribute to narrative trajectory, character development, and thematic exposition. In Ford, song also carries the ideological payload. Ford westerns focus on the settling of the American West and the function of community in that enterprise. Given this agenda, it is not surprising that the films engage with the relationship between history and myth, the definitions of nation and nationality, and matters of class, ethnicity, race, and gender. Song plays a vital role in creation of such ideologically loaded concepts, tapping into emotionally laden and culturally determined responses powerfully and, for most spectators, subconsciously. In fact, one can chart the ideological terrain of a Ford western through its songs. Song has been mentioned as a feature of Ford’s work by most critics and scholars, from the initial wave of auteurist analysis in the 1960s to recent reevaluation in the 1990s and beyond.2 But few have addressed the music in Ford westerns in detail. Claudia Gorbman writes about the musical representation of Indians in “Drums along the L.A. River: Scoring the Indian” and includes some analysis of Stagecoach; K. J. Donnelly writes about the construction of ethnicity in the film score and references several Ford westerns in The Spectre of Sound: Music in Film and Television ; William Darby analyzes the musical confluences among three Ford films in “Musical Links in Young Mr. Lincoln, My Darling Clementine and The Man Who Shot Liberty Valance”; Lane Roth discusses implications of some folk songs in selected Ford westerns in “Folk Song Introduction 3 Lyrics as Communication in John Ford’s Films”; and...