Pardner Of The Wind

"A' sure-enough cowhand' and cattleman, from the grassroots under his boots to the top of his wide brimmed hat" - so Neil M. Clark describes N. Howard (Jack) Thorp (1867-1940) in his affectionate introduction to Pardner Of The Wind. The son of a wealthy lawyer, Thorp's early years were spent in New York, Newport, and St. Paul's School in New Hampshire; but in the 1890s he headed West and from then on it was his real home. The first person to attempt a systematic study of cowboy songs and range ballads, he made trips of hundreds of miles through half a dozen cow-country states, picking up a song here or a fragment of one there, and writing songs himself (the most famous is "Little Joe The Wrangler). But Jack was primarily a man of action and, in his collaborator's words, "for fifty years and more, he rode the range, lived the life, made his living out of cattle, and was an integral part of the cowboy scene" From the back cover.