Bobby Bridger Interview

As I've written before, and as it says on the banner above, the whole purpose of this blog is to read a bunch of Louis L'Amour and see what happens. One thing I've recently become interested in is hearing from some other voices--specifically, authors who write about the West and/or have something to say about L'Amour. The Western Writers of America website has contact information for all kinds of, well, Western writers of America, so I took a shot in the dark and e-mailed a few with whom I was familiar.

That has translated into today's post, an interview with the multi-talented Bobby Bridger. I first became aware of Bridger's work when I was a teacher and was working on some History lessons involving the interactions between white men and American Indians. His book, Buffalo Bill and Sitting Bull: Inventing The Wild West, was an excellent resource, and it has been recognized as such by scholars in the field.

Bridger does more than just write. As I learned in an e-mail interview I conducted with him a couple of days ago, he paints, sings, plays guitar, and lectures, among many other things--including being interviewed for and appearing on a recent PBS special.

CJ: Tell me about your recent appearance on the PBS special American Experience.

BB: To begin with, it was an honor to be invited to participate. American Experience is the premiere history program on PBS and I had to pinch myself when I realized I would be on the program. But I was also flattered to be invited to participate in a discussion about William F. “Buffalo Bill” Cody with scholars I consider to be the living body of authorities on the man and his times. Dr. Paul Fees, Louis Warren, George Moses, Guy Dull Knife and the other people that the producers of American Experience gathered to discuss Cody’s life and times are scholars whose work I greatly admire. As much of my book Buffalo Bill and Sitting Bull: Inventing the Wild West focuses on Cody’s relationship with Plains Indians, and I have a career in music and theater, the producers wanted me to discuss that aspect of Cody’s life.

CJ: When and why did you become interested in William F. Cody?

BB: Of course everyone in America grows up with some perfunctory awareness of Buffalo Bill. But I first became interested in Cody as a subject for my work in 1968. After several years of research I had written the first songs and verse of what would at its completion in three years become “Seekers of the Fleece” - Part One of my epic trilogy, A Ballad of the West. Seekers of the Fleece is the story of Jim Bridger and the men of the Ashley-Henry Fur Expeditions of 1822-23 –men who would become known as the “mountain men”. As I was creating the form of the “epic ballad” to sing Jim Bridger’s tale, it occurred to me that of those first hundred men to ascend the Missouri River and venture into the American west, Jim Bridger was the only one who lived to be an old man. Because of this, Jim was an eye-witness –and more often than not- a participant in pivotal events in the history of the American west; after his career as a mountain man, Jim became the very first of the mountain men to begin to guide immigrants across the Rockies en route to Oregon and California, and he was also the very first scout for the military in the west. It occurred to me that if I could find two other men who, like Bridger, were eye-witness participants in pivotal historical events that I could also create ballads based on their accounts that would chronicle the American west in original songs and verse from the first men to venture into the “unknown territory” through modern times.

CJ: How has Cody's "invention" of the West affected our current understanding of it?

BB: Cody’s impact on modern culture is vast and deep. I’ll just say that every time you read or watch a western, or sing the “Star-Spangled Banner” at a public gathering, watch “Entertainment Tonight”, or a host of other things a thread could be pulled from that point that would lead you back in time and straight to Cody or one of his publicists like Major John Burke. For example the “King of the Cowboys”, Roy Rogers, changed his name from Leonard Slye to honor his hero, Will Rogers, who was inspired as a child to learn rope tricks after seeing Vincente Orapesa in Cody’s Wild West. The mythology that was being created as our nation discovered itself in the American west, was manifested in the person of William F. Cody. He took that manifestation into the arena and imprinted the world with it.

CJ: Did you grow up reading Western fiction or watching Western movies?

BB: Of course. I just mentioned Roy Rogers and as I’m 63, I was imprinted in the late 1940s and throughout the 1950s with singing cowboys in horse operas. Of course that period was also the golden age for western dramas on the silver screen as well as on television. As everyone, I was a fan of John Ford/John Wayne films. My personal favorites of theirs were The Man Who Shot Liberty Valance, and The Searchers. I also never missed Gunsmoke, Have Gun Will Travel, or many of the numerous television dramas during this period. But the 1960s brought Peckinpah and grittier, “psychological” westerns and I became more of a fan of that “realistic” approach to visual storytelling.

CJ: Your book on Cody showcases your meticulous research. Is there any one moment you can point to where you thought "Okay, I need to write this book"? In other words, what was your inspiration?

BB: You have to understand that when I was a mere lad of 18 I stumbled on this path purely by accident. Upon entering college in 1963 I happened to meet a ballad collector and naively asked if he had any idea where one might find a period folk song about Jim Bridger. The question intrigued him and he helped me begin a search that failed to reveal any songs that survived the fur trade era in American history. That intrigued ME. Next, my professor friend suggested that I expand my research into literature and that led me to Neihardt by 1965. As I mentioned earlier, discovering Neihardt’s masterpiece, A Cycle of the West, inspired me to create a new form of ballad to sing about the mountain men and Jim Bridger. After I completed Seekers of the Fleece, however, many people thought I was making these stories up. So I decided I had to write vignettes, or short historical chapters to accompany my songs and verse with footnotes in order to inform my audience that the verse and songs were based on REAL events. Over time the vignettes expanded and grew into books.

CJ: You recently participated in The Longest Walk 2, described on its website as "An 8,200 mile Native American prayer walk for Indigenous People's rights." Other participants included actors Danny Glover and Daryl Hannah. What stood out to you about participating in the Walk?

BB: Well I’ve been involved with Indian rights issues and causes since the early 1970s. At the time of his death in November, 2005, Vine Deloria Jr. had been my best friend for over 30 years. I was close friends with many of the men like Floyd Red Crow Westerman who created the original Longest Walk in 1978 and honored to be invited to be part of the Longest Walk 2 this past July when walkers arrived in Washington DC.

Indian rights are important to me because I think Indian rights are important to all Americans. Our experiment with democracy is the most important in the history of the world and yet we have never gotten it right concerning indigenous people. Vine once said “it would have been better if the white man had asked what we wanted to ‘be’ rather than what we wanted.” Our “experiment” with human rights begins there –before issues with African Americans, Asian Americans or any others. We have yet to ask American Indians what they want to “BE”. Instead, we have wanted their property and taken it. And, as the recent judgment of our government embezzling billions of dollars from the American Indian Trust over four generations reflects, we aren’t any closer now than we were 125 years ago to making things right in this area of “human rights.”

CJ: You are also a musician. How long, and why?

BB: I am also a first and foremost a painter. One might say that music “hijacked” my career as a painter. I still paint, but I was blessed with a singing voice and I’ve recorded for major record labels and have made my way around the world a couple of times behind a guitar and singing my original songs. I made my first records in Nashville in the late 1960s and continued that career in Hollywood and Austin in the early 1970s. By the mid-1970s, however, I took my epic ballads into the theater and have been working in that realm primarily ever since. I still perform as a “singer/songwriter” at folk festivals and at various venues, but most of my musical performances are in the theater now.

Visit Bobby Bridger at www.bobbybridger.com or www.myspace.com/bobbybridger.

Check out his autobiography, too, due March 2009 from University of Texas Press.