“I’ve Got No Use for the Woman,” from Marty Robbins’ 1960 album More Gunfighter Ballads and Trail Songs simultaneously bucks two different stereotypes—first, that a sequel album will never be as good as the original, and second that filler is never as good as a hit.  The song is ironic folk storytelling of the highest order, displaying songwriting of a class seldom seen today.

“I’ve got no use for the women,” Robbins the narrator croons over a classic early 60’s Spanish waltz with jangling acoustic guitar leads, “A true one may seldom be found/they’ll use a man for his money/when it’s gone they’ll turn him down.”  The song’s hardly begun and we’re already disgusted by the faithlessness of womankind’s entire sex.  “They’re all alike at the bottom/selfish and grasping for all,” Robbins continues, “they’ll stay by a man when he’s winnin’/and laugh in his face when he falls.”  It’s tough to defend such behavior—but what’s the evidence that supports such a dire reading of womankind?

Robbins quickly launches into a story about his pal—a standup cowboy who suddenly turns into a “gun-shooting gambler on account of a girl named Lou.”  When another gambler insults Lou’s picture, her man fills the gambler full of lead.  Naturally, Robbins’ friend flees the scene but is shot down by rangers.  Robbins editorializes “I couldn’t help think of that woman/as I saw him pitch and fall,” blaming her for his fall from grace.  At this point, it starts to dawn on us that perhaps our narrator isn’t quite as reliable as we might have originally thought—despite all that’s been explicitly stated about Lou’s evil nature, there’s no real evidence that she forced the narrator into his lifestyle.  Rather, it would appear that he so acted in complete freedom and might have just made some bad decisions on his own.

No matter, though—Robbins’ narrative builds in drama.  “Where they were putting his body was all that worried him/he lifted his head on his elbow/the blood from his wound flowed red/he gazed at his friends gathered round him/he looked up at them and he said/bury me out on the prairie/where the coyotes can howl o’er my grave….wrap me up in a blanket/bury me deep in the ground/cover me over with boulders of granite big and round.”  As the dying puncher’s wish is so passionately communicated, we come to the song’s primary moral—“His soul is now a-resting from the unkind cut she gave/And many another young puncher/as he rides past the pile of stones/recalls some similar woman/and thinks of his moldering bones.”

Without listening too closely, it’s easy to take the song at face value—stay away from women, they’ll corrupt your morals and you’ll end up dying because of them!  The subtext, though, is delightfully tongue-in-cheek—Robbins’ narrator and his pals are merely passing the buck for their life choices, and what appears to be a blatantly misogynistic ballad really pokes fun at men’s lack of moral fortitude and willingness to scapegoat women for their foibles.  Add to the mix the decidedly jolly waltz of the music and Robbins’ earnest delivery (including a couple laugh-out-loud morbid images sung oh-so jubilantly) and the song is a masterpiece of subtle wit that subverts a traditionally patriarchal genre on its ear without even changing the subject matter.