Montana icon Charles M. Russell (1864-1926) is rightly celebrated as the finest painter ever to capture the Wild West on canvas. Yet Russell's artistry with words via newspaper columns and short-story collections has seeped into the crevices of obscurity. Now, the ironically titled Last Chance Recordings has resurrected the last Russell stories in a cassette - Charlie Russell's Old Montana Yarns. The effect is no less dramatic than a twilight thunderstorm in Big Sky country.
Brilliantly performed by Montana historian and actor Raphael Cristy, Old Montana Yarns depicts a Western frontier quite different from both the white hat/black hat foolishness of Hollywood's B-movie vision and the belated multicultural fantasy world filmed today. In Russell's on-site observations, this is a land full of real people with real (and often surreal) problems. It's not uncommon for a "cow puncher to fall from his hoss" in the midst of a buffalo stampede and run for his life, nor is it considered unusual when an ex-boxer is hired as a teacher to tame a feral elementary school class. Dreams - both the closed-eye version (a herder slumbers among his cattle and wakes in a very strange place) and the open-eyed version (a range robber goes big city and loses it all) - are frequently dashed, while heroism, like the terrified hunter Dunc McDonald holding a buffalo by the tail, comes as an afterthought.
This was a West where the rules were improvised or jettisoned and, not unlike the besieged Daffy Duck in the classic cartoon Duck Amuck, the inhabitants of this era reacted quickly, shifting indignities and inanities without going loco in the process.
"Bill's Shelby Hotel," perhaps the craziest of the 12 stories, portrays a rail-riding hobo ascending from lawmen's nemesis to hotel entrepreneur, with nary a pause for introspective wonder. "Whiskey," the ultimate wordplay ramble through emotions and changing times, features Russell's sarcastic commentary on the lunatic effect of frontier booze. "The Trail of Reel Foot" finds a band of Oglala Sioux baffled by curious tracks, unaware of the condition of the hunter who left them.
Often hilarious and occasionally bittersweet, Old Montana Yarns is the ultimate sleeper. And at US$10, it's a steal that even a claim jumper would grab.
Charlie Russell's Old Montana Yarns: US$10. Last Chance Recordings: (800) 484 9684 ext. 2884, +1 (406) 442 2884, fax +1 (406) 449 8729.
STREET CRED
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