Westerns and Jazz is now Mostly Westerns

My Westerns and Jazz blog is now called Mostly Westerns: http://www.mostlywesterns.blogspot.com. If you link to me, you'll need to update the link.

Westerns and Jazz is up

Hi all. Westerns and Jazz is up. If I'm on your blog roll for the LL Project, would love to be on it for my new one as well! Thanks for checking it out.

Here's the link: http://www.westernsandjazz.com.

A New Leaf

Hi all. Been doing some thinking about this blog and have decided to give it a rest for awhile and start up a new one. I started this blog on a whim to see what would happen if I read a bunch of Louis L'Amour. What I found out is that I really like Westerns and want to read more than just L'Amour. And more than that, I might even like to try my hand at writing my own someday. There is definitely a burgeoning renewed interest in the Western genre, and a lot of that groundswell has been happening in the blogosphere. While Louis L'Amour will be part of my new blog, to a degree, he won't be the entire focus. Some of you—heck, probably most of you—might've seen this coming, but I feel good about moving on and trying out something new.

I'll be keeping this blog up for posterity and because I might get back in the mood to add to it again someday. If you're on my blog roll, count on an e-mail soon where I bug you about my new blog and how you should add me to your blog roll. :)

Speaking of my new blog, I'm thinking it will be a combination of my interest in Westerns and jazz. I will probably call it "Westerns and Jazz." I think that's a cool concept (more promising than my short-lived "Westerns and Stuff" blog) and look forward to posting soon. I just have to make a logo and decide on a color scheme, really.

So, to be clear, this is not a goodbye from The Louis L'Amour Project. It's just me recognizing that writing about any one author over and over again is confining. I'll let all of you know when the new blog is up!

Are there any Supernatural Westerns?

Does anyone know of any books that, for lack of a better term, might be referred to as "Supernatural Westerns"? The only one I can think of that even comes close is Louis L'Amour's The Haunted Mesa. Can anyone name any other titles? I don't care if they're good or bad—just looking to see what's available. Even a Western with a hint of a supernatural element will do. Thinking outside the box is okay. I'm just looking to build a reading list around that theme.

Comment away!

The Outlaws of Poplar Creek

I've read 15 Chick Bowdrie stories so far, and I can't remember any where he gets in as tight of a spot as he does in this one. Usually, "trouble" for Bowdrie consists of cracking tough mysteries and occasionally being shot at. In "The Outlaws of Poplar Creek," he gets hog-tied and is threatened with being skinned alive and left for the buzzards. That officially makes Shad Tucker—the guy responsible for the hog-tying and violent threats—the most evil L'Amour character I've encountered yet. It also makes this story a pretty darned interesting one.

Bowdrie has been chasing Tucker's gang—responsible for recent malfeasance in Mexico—and locates their hideout near Poplar Creek. The gang has drawn the attention of the son of a local store owner and nearly taken him in as one of their own. Bowdrie's task in this story is to take care of the gang and see if he can't get the son to avoid the criminal path. There's lots of excitement along the way, and the end takes place in a cave—an unusal setting for a L'Amour finale!

I wasn't sure how invested I was in this story until the last few pages. The beginning has a bunch of description of the story's physical setting, which I found kind of boring. The pace really picks up, though, and by the last few pages I couldn't put it down. Kudos to L'Amour, especially, for drawing up such a reprehensible lot of bad guys within the confines of a short story. And also, his use of the cave is way better than it was in this story.

Of note:

• Bowdrie hasn't gotten any better with the ladies. When asked "Don't you have a girl?" by the story's attractive young female lead, Bowdrie responds:
  

  No, ma'am. I've knowed a few here an' there, but there's not been many where I was. I don't even have one to dream about. There was a girl out in Tascosa, she was married to an Irish gambler, and many's the cowpuncher rode miles just to look at her, she was that beautfiul. I never rode that way when she was around.

  Flirting FAIL.
  
• "The Outlaws of Poplar Creek" originally appeared in the August 1947 issue of Popular Western.
  
  

In other news, I'm only a couple of stories away from finishing the Chick Bowdrie series. Honestly, it's going to be nice to start reading stories where the main character varies from entry to entry. At the same time, Chick Bowdrie's pretty much always a good read.

Rating: 4 out of 5 spurs

South of Deadwood

I know the title has "Deadwood" in it, but don't get too excited. Very little of it takes place in the now-iconic South Dakota town—Chick Bowdrie just has to travel there to pick up a prisoner and return him to Texas where he's awaiting trial. So, indeed, most of this story does take place south of Deadwood, in that Texas is, well, south of Deadwood, and that's where Bowdrie has to take his man.

Before that, though, there's a minor complication. On the stage into Deadwood, Bowdrie meets a young woman whose brother supposedly rode with the aforementioned prisoner in a recent hold-up that turned ugly. The woman is convinced her brother wasn't involved and is traveling to Deadwood to plead her case to the ringleader, hoping the man will tell her what she wants to hear. Bowdrie, ever sympathetic to the common criminal (he himself almost went that route), takes great interest in the woman's plan—if the guy he's supposed to haul back to Texas exonerates a man falsely implicated in a crime, then he might receive a more favorable sentence at trial.

The suspense in the story occurs on two fronts: 1) Will the prisoner admit the woman's brother wasn't involved? (Assuming he truly wasn't, that is.) And 2) How in the world is Bowdrie going to get this guy from South Dakota to Texas when the guy's got tons of friends who know where he's headed and will 100% certain be waiting to ambush the Ranger at some point? These questions linger until the last few pages of the story, and up to that point Bowdrie and his detainee develop a decent Midnight Run-style rapport—one, albeit, that is mitigated by the fact that the prisoner freely admits he'll kill Bowdrie any legitimate chance he gets. Bowdrie understands this and negotiates the line between friendly repartee and "When it comes down to it, I will mow you down!" with expert skill.

Bowdrie is increasingly evoking images of a sort of idealized version of Charles Bronson's Death Wish character. In the first Death Wish, Bronson transforms from a gentle white-guilt liberal to a chillingly self-assured vigilante—a process that reached ridiculously cartoonish heights by the third installment in that series. Bowdrie, on the other hand, keeps his more aggressive instincts in check, balancing them with an ever-present notion that, in many cases, a man who chooses the criminal life might just as easily have chosen the straighter alternative had things been slightly different. The Ranger also recognizes, though, that just because you might have committed one crime doesn't mean you're obligated to continue that behavior. Choice is always a part of the equation, and if you continue to choose poorly, Bowdrie will balance you out.

Of note:

• In the 50+ short stories I've read for this blog, L'Amour doesn't often go for too much pathos, but this story has some genuinely emotional moments toward the end. You'll have to read it to see what I'm talking about.
• Back to the Bowdrie/Bronson comparison, I realized they kind of look like each other. Spooky!
  
  
• Bowdrie has to take a pretty circuitous route from Wyoming to Texas to avoid his prisoner's friends along the trail. Here's a rough approximation of that route:
  
  
• "South of Deadwood" originally appeared in the October 1948 issue of Popular Western.
  
  

Rating: 3.5 spurs out of 5

Genesis's "Los Endos": BEST SONG EVER!!

Here's a clip of Genesis playing "Los Endos" from their recent tour. The song originally appeared on the album A Trick of the Tail, the first to feature Phil Collins as lead vocalist. I get chills every time I hear this song, multiple times during the song. If I ever got to see them do this live, I think I'd melt.

Anyone have an opinion on this song?