Cool Water: Number 3 of the Top 100 Western Songs of All Time

Cool Water

Written: 1936 
Recorded by: The Sons of the Pioneers
Recording date: March 27, 1941
Genre: Western standard
Songwriter: Bob Nolan

"Cool Water" is a gospel-folk song about a man, his mule and a mirage in the desert. Written and recorded by Bob Nolan and The Sons of the Pioneers, it won a Grammy Award in 1941. It's listed number 3 of the Top 100 Western Songs of all time as chosen by the Members of the Western Writers of America. 

In 1979 the Smithsonian’s Division of Performing Arts designated the Sons of the Pioneers a “National Treasure” for their contribution to American music and culture. In 1986 the National Academy of Recording Arts & Sciences of Los Angeles choose the Pioneers’ recording of “Cool Water" for their Grammy Hall of Fame.

The Sons of the Pioneers (1934)

"Yodeler for old-time act. 

To travel. Tenor preferred."
Ad in Los Angeles Herald-Examiner

In 1931, Ohio native Leonard Slye - who became Roy Rogers - moved to California. He worked as a truck driver and later as a fruit picker for Del Monte. When a Los Angeles radio show held an amateur singing contest, Slye entered it. A few days later he got an invitation to join a band known as the Rocky Mountaineers. Before long Canadian born Bob Nolan answered a classified ad placed by the Rocky Mountaineers in the Los Angeles Herald-Examiner: 

"Yodeler for old-time act, to travel. Tenor preferred." 

He auditioned and the group hired Nolan on the spot. His time with them was brief but he stayed in touch with Slye. In the spring of 1932, Slye also left the Rocky Mountaineers with another member of the group, Tim Spencer. Slye, Nolan, and Spencer formed an act called the Pioneer Trio. Success eluded them 

The Sons of the Pioneers

In 1934, the group consisted of Leonard Slye, Bob Nolan, and Tim Spencer on vocals, with Nolan playing string bass and Slye playing rhythm guitar. During that time, fiddle player Hugh Farr joined the group, adding a bass voice to the group's vocal arrangements. The Pioneer Trio became the Sons of the Pioneers. 

Along the Navajo Trail (1941)

In 1935 the Sons of the Pioneers signed with Columbia Pictures to supply the music for the studio's Charles Starrett westerns. Two years later Leonard Slye left the group, became an actor with rival Republic Pictures, and changed his name to Roy Rogers. Nonetheless, he and the Sons of the Pioneers remained close. 

When the Starrett unit disbanded at the end of the 1941 season, the Pioneers - billed now as "Bob Nolan and the Sons of the Pioneers" - rejoined Rogers at Republic. That year they recorded "Cool Water" as the B side to "Drifting Along in the Tumbling Tumbleweed." It was .used in the film "Along the Navajo Trail" and peaked at number 25 on the music chart.

Cool Water 
Sons of the Pioneers

Hank Williams (1948-9)

Hank Williams recorded a version of "Cool Water" in 1948 or 1949 for the Johnny Fair Syrup Company radio show on KWKH in Shreveport, Louisiana.

Cool Water
Hank Williams

Rango (2011)

"Rango" is a 2011 computer-animated Western comedy. The title character, voiced by Johnny Depp, is a pet chameleon. His owners' car is in an accident and his terrarium is ejected. Stranded in the Mojave Desert, he goes looking for water, narrowly avoids being eaten by a hawk, and ends up in a town called "Dirt." The inhabitant's of this outpost desperately need a new sheriff. Their water comes in through a mysterious rite at noon on Wednesdays. Hank Williams' version of "Cool Water" is used in this scene. 

Cool Water

Rango

Tim Blake Nelson (2000)

Tim Blake Nelson is an American actor who played Delmar O'Donnell in the 2000 Coen brothers' movie "O Brother, Where Art Thou?." The film is a loose adaption of  Homer's "Odyssey" set in the American South.  Co-starring with George Clooney and John Turturro, who play Ulysses Everett McGill and Pete respectively, the three main characters break out of jail and form the fictional music group the "Soggy Bottom Boys." The name pays homage to the Foggy Mountain Boys, a bluegrass band led by Lester Flatt and Earl Scruggs.

The soundtrack to the movie won the Grammy Award for Album of the Year in 2002 and for Best Country Collaboration with Vocals for singer Dan Tyminski, whose voice overdubbed George Clooney in the film on "I Am a Man of Constant Sorrow." All the songs credited to the "Soggy Bottom Boys" are lip-synched by the actors except Tim Blake Nelson's vocals on "In the Jailhouse Now." 

In the Jailhouse Now

Soggy Bottom Boys

Ballad of Buster Scruggs (2018)

In 2018, the Coen brothers made the movie  The Ballad of Buster Scruggs. An anthology of six short stories set on the American frontier, it stars Tim Blake Nelson as the title character. Nelson, as Buster Scruggs,on horseback and singing "Cool Water," opens with the first tale.

Ballad of Buster Scruggs

Cool Clear Water