A Middle of the Night Music Post: Flight of the Silverbird - Two Steps From Hell

I came across this song by Two Steps From Hell and absolutely love it. I've heard it said of their music that it inspires you to create movies in your head, and that's certainly the case here. This is perfect for the opening credits sequence of an epic Western movie. I'm not a big one for playing music while I'm writing, but I have a hunch I may be listening to this one some while pounding the keyboard.

A Middle of the Night Music Post: Are You Gonna Be My Girl - Jet

I heard this song on the radio and was reminded of how much I like it, especially the intro. I had to look it up and was a little surprised to see that it came out in 2003. Seems like I've heard it around for longer than that. But I'm always glad to listen to it again.

A Middle of the Night Music Post: Thanks for the Memory - Bob Hope and Shirley Ross

This clip always gets me right in the feels, as they say, every time I see it. I don't know if any scene in the movies better captures a sense of melancholy nostalgia and bittersweet love. By the way, I've never seen the movie it's from, THE BIG BROADCAST OF 1938. The whole thing is on YouTube, as well. Maybe I ought to watch it.

A Middle of the Night Music Post: End of the Line - The Traveling Wilburys

They played some snippets from this song on a recent episode of THE SIMPSONS. Yes, I still watch THE SIMPSONS. I liked it, didn't recognize it at all, and so I had to look it up. I'd heard of The Traveling Wilburys, of course, but I'm not sure I ever heard any of their music. But after listening to this one all the way through, I love it. Some of the lyrics speak to me, as they say. The ones about being old, of course, but how you should keep going to the end of the line. That's my plan.

A Middle of the Night Music Post: Mirage - Steve Cole

I like this song because parts of it sound like it could be the theme song from a 1960s British TV show produced by ITV, full of international intrigue and adventure. When I listen to it, I can see the opening credits quick-cut montage featuring picturesque scenery, beautiful women, and ugly guys with guns.

Saturday Morning Western Pulp: All Western Magazine, August 1936

This is a pulp that I own and read recently. That’s my copy in the scan, with a cover by Arthur Mitchell, an almost forgotten but consistently pretty good artist who did most of the covers for ALL WESTERN MAGAZINE. This was Dell’s flagship Western pulp (maybe its only Western pulp, I don’t really know), and although I haven’t read many issues, they’ve all been good so far.

This issue leads off with the novella “Deuce of Diamonds”, the second in a short-lived series by Charles M. Martin about a drifting cowboy and troubleshooter known as Roaming Reynolds. There are three stories in the series. I don’t have the first one, but I do have the third one in addition to this one and will be getting to it soon, I expect. In this one, Reynolds and his sidekick, a 16-year-old cowpoke called Texas Joe, drift their way into a range war when they interrupt a setup by two hardcases intended to result in the death of a rancher’s son. This leads to a bunch of action in the next twenty-four-hour span, including ambushes, fistfights, the discovery of a rustled herd, and a stampede.

Martin, who also wrote a lot for the pulps as Chuck Martin, has a distinctive style that I enjoy, although he does get pretty heavy-handed with the “Yuh mangy polecat” dialect. And his plots are very traditional, nothing that Western pulp readers haven’t encountered many times before. But he spins his yarns with such enthusiasm that I can’t help but enjoy them. Martin was a colorful character who supposedly made little grave markers for the villains he killed off in his stories and planted them in his backyard. I like his work, but reading it is always a slightly bittersweet experience for me because, like Walt Coburn, he eventually committed suicide. Making a living in the pulps definitely took a toll on some writers.

Sam H. Nickels was another Western pulp author who turned out hundreds of stories, many of them in a long-running series in WILD WEST WEEKLY about a couple of cowboys nicknamed Hungry and Rusty. He also wrote many stand-alone stories under the house-names common in that pulp. Now and then he published a story under his own name in a different pulp, such as “Mud in Mooney’s Eye” in this issue of ALL WESTERN MAGAZINE. The protagonist is known as Mournful Mooney because of his sad disposition, which is caused by his habit of running afoul of the law. Mooney, despite not looking like much, is hell on wheels when it comes to shooting and fighting. He seems like he ought to be a series character, too, but as far as I know, this is his only appearance. In it, he’s hired as a lawman to tame a wild town. The results are entertaining, if not particularly memorable. Nickels was a decent writer.

Harry F. Olmsted is one of my favorite Western pulp writers. He’s almost completely forgotten because he never wrote any novels, but he turned out more than 1200 pieces of shorter fiction. His story in this issue, “Empty Shells”, is about a sinister gunfighter who turns up in a frontier town looking for the son of a local rancher who has just taken over the spread after his father passed away. Clearly, the gunman is there to settle a score with the young man, who was something of a shady character himself, running with outlaws, before coming home and trying to settle down. Of course, Olmsted is too good a writer not to put a twist on what seems apparent. The prose is spare and clean, the dialogue isn’t overloaded with dialect (although there is a little), and the suspense builds steadily throughout this one. “Empty Shells” is an excellent story and a good example of why I enjoy Olmsted’s work so much.

Carson Mowre is better remembered as a pulp editor rather than a writer, but he turned his hand to fiction, too, now and then, and published several dozen stories, most of them Westerns. He contributes a novelette, “One Night in Ten Sleep”, to this issue. As the title indicates, all the action takes place in one night in the frontier settlement of Ten Sleep, where a stranger called Tennessee Parker rides into town and finds himself in the middle of a war between a crooked judge on one side and a crooked sheriff and deputy on the other. Parker plays the two sides against each other (I was reminded a little of Hammett’s RED HARVEST) because he has an agenda of his own that doesn’t become clear until the end of the story. This one features some of the most brutal and graphic violence I’ve encountered in a Western pulp yarn. It has interesting characters, the pace is swift and never really lets up, and I really enjoyed it. I’ll have to keep an eye out for more of Mowre’s fiction.

I normally don’t read the non-fiction features in Western pulps, but one in this issue caught my attention. It’s “The Blond Cossack” by Ed Earl Repp, whose work I usually enjoy. This is an interesting article about an outlaw known as Russian Bill, who was part of the Cowboy faction in Tombstone along with the Clantons and Johnny Ringo. Russian Bill claimed to be the son of a princess and told people he was forced to flee from Russia for political reasons after being a Cossack there. Whether there was any truth to that story remains unknown, but Repp’s recounting of it is vivid and interesting. Repp was known to use ghostwriters and the prose in this is a little toned down from his fiction, so another writer may have had a hand in it, but the Cossack parts of it read like Repp’s work to me.

I love S. Omar Barker’s cowboy poetry and the non-fiction columns he wrote for RANCH ROMANCES and TEXAS RANGERS, but his fiction usually isn’t to my taste. For ALL WESTERN MAGAZINE, he wrote a series of humorous stories about a yarn-spinning old cowboy named Boosty Peckleberry. In this issue’s “All Ears”, Boosty is telling his bunkhouse mates about an alcoholic mule named Napolean. I’m sorry to say that I didn’t make it all the way through this one. This sort of stuff just doesn’t resonate with me, but I’m sure plenty of readers found it funny and charming because Barker was very popular for a long time.

Like Charles M. Martin, J.E. Grinstead was an actual cowboy at one time in his life, and his stories have a ring of authenticity. “Six-Gun Music” begins with a violent encounter in a saloon between a down-on-his-luck stranger and a local gunman/bully, and that leads to rustling and ambushes. I’ve enjoyed what I’ve read by Grinstead in the past, and this is one of his best stories.

Galen C. Colin is another very prolific pulpster who’s mostly forgotten today. His story “Death Takes the Trail” is actually a dying message mystery, although not a very complicated or clever one. It leads to a good action scene, though. While I’ve read better by Colin, this is an okay yarn.

Overall, this issue of ALL WESTERN MAGAZINE is a solidly entertaining Western pulp. The stories by Olmsted, Mowre, and Grinstead are the best, and the others are all enjoyable with the exception of the S. Omar Barker tall tale, and other readers might like that a lot better than I did. I have several more issues of ALL WESTERN on hand and will be getting to them soon, I hope.

A Middle of the Night Music Post: Golden Dawn - Carlos Dengler

 

Sometimes on a dark night of the soul, you need music that's soothing. Or at least I do.

A Middle of the Night Music Post: The Last Pale Light in the West - Ben Nichols

 

I love raspy-voiced singers and world-weary songs like this. They resonate pretty strongly with me.

A Middle of the Night Music Post: Oooh-Ahh (Catalina) - Mindi Abair

 

I really like Mindi Abair's music, and this one is perfect for the middle of the night when a guy's spirits need a little lift.

A Middle of the Night Music Post: Winged Hussars - Sabaton

You know it's a weird night when I'm listening to Sabaton at two in the morning, but hey, sometimes that's the way it goes.

A Middle of the Night Music Post: I'll Love You - Joe Sample

Man, this is really a restful, relaxing song. Just what I need on a night like this. 

A Middle of the Night Music Post: Come As You Are - Mindi Abair

Mindi Abair is one of my favorite musicians, and I really like the easy-going vibe of this song. Sometimes, especially in the middle of the night, you want to wallow in melancholy, but sometimes you want something to lift your spirits. This song does that for me.

Saturday Morning Western Pulp: Wild West Weekly, August 27, 1938

I own a couple dozen issues of WILD WEST WEEKLY, but the August 27, 1938 issue isn’t among them. It’s available on the Internet Archive, though, and I picked it to read for a reason which I’ll get around to. The cover is by the legendary Norman Saunders, and it’s a good one illustrating the lead novella, “The Cougar’s Claws”.

That novella features Pete Rice, and that’s the reason I read this one. A little background for those of you unfamiliar with the character: Inspired by the success of THE SHADOW and DOC SAVAGE, in 1933 the good folks at Street & Smith decided to launch a Western hero pulp. The result was PETE RICE MAGAZINE. The title character is the two-fisted, fast-shootin’ sheriff of Trinchera County, Arizona, who's assisted by two deputies, scrawny little Misery Hicks (who does double duty as the barber of Buffalo Gap, the county seat) and Teeny Butler, who, in keeping with the nicknaming tradition of pulp characters, is well over six feet tall and weighs 300 pounds. The gimmick of the series, if you can call it that, is that while it has all the Western trappings, it’s set in the modern day, putting it in firmly in the same camp as the Western B-movies of the times starring Gene Autry and others. These Pete Rice novels, and they were full-length novels, were written by veteran pulpster Ben Conlon under the pseudonym Austin Gridley.

Well, PETE RICE MAGAZINE was not a raging success. It ran for 31 issues, approximately two and a half years. I read one of the novels years ago and don’t remember much about it except that I wasn’t impressed and didn’t seek out any more of the series. But . . . after Pete’s own magazine was cancelled, the character moved to WILD WEST WEEKLY, where he starred in 21 more novellas and novelettes. Or did he? You see, the stories in WILD WEST WEEKLY are no longer set in the modern day but take place in the Old West, which prompted a recent discussion between me and a friend about the idea that the Pete Rice in the WILD WEST WEEKLY stories is actually the father or grandfather of the Pete Rice who starred in his own magazine. That seems feasible, other than the fact that in WILD WEST WEEKLY, Misery and Teeny are still Pete’s deputies, and claiming that those characters are also an earlier generation seems like quite a stretch to me. I suspect that in real life, nobody at Street & Smith ever gave the change in time period a second thought other than maybe instructing Conlon to make the stories actual Westerns in hopes that they would help sell WILD WEST WEEKLY. It’s a safe bet that none of the pulp writers and editors dreamed anybody would still be talking about this stuff nearly a century down the road!

Anyway, another difference in the characters in PETE RICE MAGAZINE and WILD WEST WEEKLY is that in the later incarnation, Austin Gridley became a house-name. Ben Conlon continued to write some of the stories, but other authors contributed Pete Rice yarns, too, including Paul S. Powers, who teamed Pete with his popular character Sonny Tabor, leading to a joint byline of Austin Gridley and Ward Stevens (Powers’ pseudonym); Ronald Oliphant, who penned a crossover between Pete and Billy West of the Circle J, under the names Austin Gridley and Cleve Endicott (the house-name on the Circle J series); Lee Bond; and the extremely prolific Laurence Donovan, who also ghosted some Doc Savage novels for Street & Smith. The Pete Rice story in this issue of WILD WEST WEEKLY I just read, “The Cougar’s Claws”, is Donovan’s first Pete Rice story.

And after my lukewarm at best reaction to the other Pete Rice yarn I read, I was pleasantly surprised to discover that I really enjoyed this one. The Cougar is the leader of an outlaw gang plaguing Trinchera County and has come up with a really grisly way of disposing of his enemies: he wraps them in green bullhide and then lets the sun dry it out so that it shrinks and crushes the victims to death. Pete and his deputies clash several times with the Cougar and his gang, escape from some death traps, and finally expose the real mastermind behind all the villainy. There are some clever twists and Donovan was always really good with action, of which there is plenty. I found Pete and his deputies likable and had a fine time reading this novella. I’ll be on the lookout for more of the Pete Rice issues of WILD WEST WEEKLY.

I think the novelette “Gunsmoke Tornado” is the earliest story I’ve ever read by Dudley Dean McGaughey, the real name of Dean Owen, who gets the credit for this one. I’ve read quite a few of McGaughey’s pulp novels from the Forties and a bunch of paperbacks from the Fifties and Sixties, but “Gunsmoke Tornado” was only his ninth published story. It’s a good one, too, about a drifting young cowhand who signs on with a ranch crew where he faces some hazing. That might have been a story in itself, but there’s more going on than that, and before you know it, our young hero finds himself in danger up to his neck because of a feud between rival ranches. McGaughey’s work has a nice hardboiled tone to it and this story is no exception.  Plenty of tough action makes this one a winner.

I’m familiar with Lee Bond mostly from the long-running Long Sam Littlejohn series he wrote as backup stories in TEXAS RANGERS, but he did several series for WILD WEST WEEKLY, including one featuring drifting cowpokes Calamity Boggs and Shorty Stevens. Shorty is, well, short and feisty, just as you’d expect. Calamity is tall and husky and full of doom and gloom, an extreme pessimist who always believes the worst is about to happen, which is, I’m sure, how he got his nickname. Bond doesn’t explain that in “Calamity Hubs a Frame-Up” in this issue, but it doesn’t really matter. It’s easy enough to just jump right into this yarn in which our two rambling heroes find a recently abandoned line shack, decide to spend the night there, and wake up the next morning to find themselves the prisoners of a posse out to hang them for murder and rustling. As you might suppose, eventually they sort things out and everything gets resolved in a big gunfight, as things usually do in a Lee Bond story. Bond moves things along well and was always excellent when it comes to the action scenes. This is the third very good story in a row in this issue.

I’ve written here before about how Elmer Kelton and I enjoyed talking about Western pulps whenever we’d get together. I think I may have been the only one of his friends who was a pulp fan. He told me several times that WILD WEST WEEKLY was his favorite pulp when he was a kid growing up on a ranch in West Texas, and Sonny Tabor was his favorite character. Paul S. Powers wrote the Sonny Tabor series under the pseudonym Ward M. Stevens. More than 130 novelettes and novellas between 1930 and 1943 is quite a run. Some of those stories were crossovers featuring Sonny Tabor meeting up with other series characters from WILD WEST WEEKLY, including Kid Wolf (also a Paul S. Powers creation), Pete Rice, and Billy West and the Circle J outfit.

But who was Sonny Tabor? He was a good-guy outlaw, falsely accused of some crime (I don’t know the details) and on the run from the law, blamed for every bit of outlawry that occurs any time he’s around, and sometimes even when he’s not. The novelette in this issue, “A Murder Brand for Sonny Tabor”, is actually the first one I’ve read. The youngest of three brothers who own a ranch together is gunned down, shot in the back, and the name Tabor is carved into his forehead. The dead man’s brothers and the local law blame Sonny, of course, and he has to uncover the real killer to clear his name of this charge, anyway, although he’ll still be wanted for dozens of others. This is a really well-written story and I found myself liking Sonny and rooting for him right away. I have quite a few more issues with Sonny Tabor stories in them and I’m glad of that because I really enjoyed this one.

I was familiar with Allan R. Bosworth as the author of several excellent Western novels, but I’ve discovered in recent years that he also wrote scores of stories in WILD WEST WEEKLY under house-names, as well as contributing to the magazine under his own name. He used it on his long-running series about freight wagon driver Shorty Masters and his sidekick Willie Wetherbee, also known as the gunfightin’ Sonora Kid. In “A Hangin’ on Live Oak Creek”, all Shorty and Willie want to do is run a trotline and catch themselves a mess of catfish for fryin’ up. Instead, they find a fella who’s been lynched, but luckily they come across him before he’s choked to death. Rescuing him puts our heroes smack-dab in the middle of a fight between ranchers and rustlers. There’s a nice twist in this one. I saw it coming, but that didn’t make it any less satisfying. Also, I like the way Shorty names the mules in his team after classical music composers. That’s a nice touch I wasn’t expecting. Another really good story.

One of WILD WEST WEEKLY’s specialties was the series of linked novellas that could then be combined and published as a fix-up novel. Walker A. Tompkins was the master of this format, writing many of them for the pulp. His story in this issue published under the house-name Philip F. Deere, “Death Rides Tombstone Trail”, is the third of six to feature a Wyoming cowboy named Lon Cole who is in Texas working as a trail boss and also getting mixed up in various adventures. In this one, he’s between trail drives and takes a job as a special guard for a stagecoach carrying a shipment of gold. Of course, the stagecoach is held up. Lon is grazed by an outlaw bullet and knocked out so they think he’s dead and ride off leaving him there. He goes after the varmints, of course, and discovers they’re a gang known as the Secret Six and are led by a mysterious mastermind known as The Chief. This is nothing we haven’t all seen before, but Tompkins is good at it. Even though the story has a beginning, middle, and end, it’s weakened slightly by being part of a bigger whole, but I had a good time reading it anyway. The six Lon Cole stories were combined into the novel THUNDERGUST TRAIL, published under Tompkins' real name by Phoenix Press in 1942. I own a copy of that book but haven't read it. When I get around to it, I'll have already read a chunk out of the middle of it, but I don't think that'll bother me too much.

Overall, this is one of the best Western pulps I’ve read in a long time. Every story in this issue is very good to excellent, and several of them really make me want to read more about the characters. If you’ve never read an issue of WILD WEST WEEKLY, it would make a good introduction to the magazine, I think. If you’re a long-time fan like me, it’s well worth downloading and reading.

A Middle of the Night Music Post: Under the Canopy - David Arkenstone

I don't think I'd ever heard of David Arkenstone, but I heard this song on the radio the other day (the Spa channel on SiriusXM) and immediately liked it. It sounds to me like it ought to be the theme song from a two-fisted, pulpish, jungle adventure movie from the Fifties starring, say, John Payne and Rhonda Fleming. PIRATES OF THE CONGO! I'd watch that.

A Middle of the Night Music Post: Rainy Day Song - David Garfield and Herb Alpert

I've been a Herb Alpert fan for close to 60 years now, and it's great to hear the instantly recognizable sound of his trumpet on this new song. I had all of Alpert's albums with the Tijuana Brass during the Sixties and played them constantly. In more recent times (the past 20 years), I've been a frequent listener to his album SECOND WIND, which includes my all-time favorite song of his, "Fandango". I don't believe I've ever posted that one. Maybe I will the next time I can't sleep. For now, enjoy this one.

A Middle of the Night Music Post: Lujon - Dan Fontaine and His Orchestra

I've posted the original Henry Mancini version of this song before, but it was quite a few years ago. And this is one of those cases where I think the cover is better than the original. Dan Fontaine and His Orchestra do a great job with older music like this. When I'm having trouble sleeping, like tonight, and battling one of those dark nights of the soul as I often do, I find music like this really soothing. If there are any songs those of you reading this find particularly soul-soothing, I can always use some recommendations in the comments.

A Middle of the Night Music Post: Shaker Song - Manhattan Transfer

I love this performance beyond all reason. A while back I posted the original instrumental version of "Shaker Song" by Spyro Gyra and said that I'd post the vocal version by Manhattan Transfer, but I never got around to it. Let's remedy that.

A Middle of the Night Music Post: Something For Cat - Henry Mancini

I came across this video a few months ago and must have played it a hundred times since then. The animation is cute and appeals to my fondness for the Sixties, but I usually just listen to the music, which really resonates with me. It's from the soundtrack of BREAKFAST AT TIFFANY'S, and I've seen that movie so I must have heard the song in it, but I don't recall it from that at all. Instead, to me it sounds like it should have been the theme song from an early Sixties private eye TV series, and I can almost see the opening montage in my head as I listen to the music. I was a huge fan of PETER GUNN and 77 SUNSET STRIP and all the others from that era, and this would have fit right in. One of these days I might just write something like that. It would be a pretty limited market, but it sure would be fun.

A Middle of the Night Music Post: Saloon Showdown - Antti Martikainen

As the saying goes, Spaghetti Western Metal is the musical genre I didn't know I needed . . . until now. Recently I've been listening to this and other songs by Finnish musician Antti Martikainen, and they're all great writing music.

A Middle of the Night Music Post: Grazing in the Grass - Hugh Masekala

They play this song on an insurance commercial (I think) that's running on TV these days. When I listened to it on the radio and liked it more than 50 years ago, I never dreamed I'd still be hearing it all these years later.