I Ride an Old Paint

[1][2] Traveling the American Southwest, Sandburg found the song through western poets Margaret Larkin and Linn Riggs.

He wrote that the song came to them in Santa Fe from a cowboy who was last heard of as heading for the Mexican border with friends.

[3] The song is interpolated in Aaron Copland's ballet Rodeo, in William Grant Still's Miniatures and in Virgil Thomson's film score for The Plow that Broke the Plains.

Loudon Wainwright III has a particularly plaintive version he titled simply "Old Paint" on his 1971 Album II.

Canadian singer Colter Wall recorded a version on his 2020 album Western Swing & Waltzes and Other Punchy Songs.