You can hear the original version of Asi Es Nuevo Mexico as sung by the composer, Amadeo Lucerno here at the University of New Mexico Libraries' Digital Collection.
Surprisingly, no digital audio or video files of Mares' Mi Lindo Nuevo Mexico have been found although there is a melody score with lyrics to be found here.
Jay Ungar, the composer of one of the most recognized and performed waltzes of the twentieth century, Ashokan Farewell, wrote a waltz in the year 2000 for a fellow fiddler who was a frequent instructor at his Ashokan Fiddle and Dance Camp. The fellow fiddler was Junior Daugherty from La Luz, New Mexico. It was in honor of Junior's 70th birthday and he initially called it Junior's Senior Moment but later decided that a better title for the long run would be New Mexico Waltz. In 2003, Junior recorded it on his Lights of Pinon album with its proper title, New Mexico Waltz. You can find a score in Ungar's tune book, Catskill Mountain Waltzes and Airs. There are other recordings of Ungar's New Mexico Waltz on YouTube, but Daugherty's is the original:
There are at least four other tunes titled New Mexico Waltz on YouTube.
One of those four is special. Written by a special person - Gair Linhart, a poet, a musician, a novelist, an artist and an organizer. Linart is one of 82 people living in the village of La Joya, New Mexico, a place he first visited in1973 from his native Cleveland, Ohio to visit a friend. According to a profile published in Albuquerque The Magazine, he "lived the life of a troubadour" until 1984 when he moved permanently to La Joya and purchased an old adobe ruins (a 100 year old winery) which he restored. In 1989, he found his special calling when he went to work for Los Lunos Hospital and Training School for people with developmental disabilities. Inspired by the people he met there he developed a technique for tuning instruments in open C so all could play without hitting a wrong note. Los Lunos is no longer but Linhart took his tuning technique and in 1999, he organized and founded the non-profit Special Orchestra, open to all. They meet "whenever they can" in Albuquerque and Belen, New Mexico and have performed at many folk festivals. Others have followed Linhart's lead and organized their own Special Orchestras. You can find everything you need to know to start one in your area at the Special Orchestra website. Like most such non-profits, they operate on a shoestring budget. You can help with a direct donation through their website or by buying some of Linhart's books or CD's or art.
You can hear and see Linhart and his Special Orchestra perform New Mexico Waltz at the 2017 Albuquerque Folk festival in the video below.
Here's what is known about Cotton Harp. His birth name was Clyde Melvin Harp but everyone called him Cotton. He was born in 1930, served in the Navy on the U.S.S. Sproston which was built in Orange, Texas. Cotton was married to Marlene (not sure when) and died in 2011. He started playing in bands while in the Navy and never stopped - his last band was called Cimarron. He lived in Red Bluff, California at the time of his death. He wrote and sang country music. In 1982, he recorded an album titled My Kind of Country (Frog label, LRP-401). That album contained the song New Mexico Waltz and you can hear it below.
Elliott's Ramblers played their first concert in the historic KiMo Theater in Albuquerque, New Mexico in 1984. The Ramblers at the point consisted of Elliott Rogers on guitar and lead vocals, his wife, Janice, on bass, Wayne Shrubsall on banjo (Shrubsall has a PhD in banjos - no joke) and Gerald Larribas on mandolin. Larrisbas was later replaced by Claude Stephenson (another PhD - this one in Matachines music) to form the Ramblers that are heard in the video below. Janice and Elliot's move to Texas broke up the band as a regularly performing unit but they still come together and perform at festivals in New Mexico, the most recent one being at the 2017 Sante Fe Traditional Music Festival. The Ramblers put together two albums - the 1996, 'Til Love Comes Around and the 2003, "Live" Gospel Music Show which are still available from many sources. Rogers' New Mexico Waltz appears on that first album is as close to a classic state waltz as can be found for the state of New Mexico.
The fourth of this set of songs titled New Mexico Waltz was written by German composer Kurt Adametz who is best known for scoring television documentaries. His New Mexico Waltz was written for the 2008 documentary, Flucht ins Ungewisse. Three versions of it (guitar, piano and ensemble) were made available in a record of the sound track for that documentary on the ORF label. Listen to the guitar version below.
While Maryland will surely retain the title for the first state waltz as protest song (it was a protest against President Lincoln and the Union Army), The New Mexico Nuclear Waltz by Peter Neils is surely the most recent. Listen well to the words. Mr. Neils knows of what he sings - he is the former president of the Los Alamos Study Group, an important advocacy group on the topic of nuclear disarmament. You can read the full story behind the song here. Neils is from the state of Maine and returned there to record the album, Desert Dreams, which contains The New Mexico Nuclear Waltz. You can understand why he returned to Maine to make the recording if you read about Hearstudios - it sounds like an extraordinary place. Listen below.
The title of Joe Hunt's Waltz Across New Mexico Too clearly references Ernest Tubb's famous state waltz, Waltz Across Texas, but the resemblance ends at the title. Joe's full name was Joel Timothy Hunt but for most of his career he was known as "Little Joe" Hunt. His career took from a job as the "America's fastest banjo player" on Eddie Arnold's TV show to appearances on the Grand Old Opry and the Louisiana Hayride. In 2009 he was added to the Arkansas's Walk of Fame (he called Arkadelphia home). He wrote many songs including Waltz Across New Mexico Too which is one of fourteen songs on Hunt's Easy Country album issued in 2006. The songs are not classic country but they sound like it with a few exceptions where a synthesizer set to "senior citizen mode" is added to Hunt's usual western combo - sadly one of those exceptions is Waltz Across New Mexico Too.
As a result of this writer's sloth, you have missed the 2018 Big Barn Dance Music Festival in Taos, New Mexico - it was held September 6,7 and 8. You might have heard Michael Hearne and his band, South by Southwest, perform New Mexico Rain, a fine waltz written by Hearne who is also the organizer and prime mover behind this festival. New Mexico Rain was written when he first moved from Texas to Red River, New Mexico (near Taos). Hearne sometimes refers to it his greatest hit. The video below is of a live performance by Hearne with his good friend and fellow New Mexico songwriter, Shake Russell, from a 2006 performance in Plano, Texas. He has also recorded it (twice) with his band: on the CD Honky Tonk Roads and on the Live on Radio CD. It has also been recorded by folk music legends, Bill (who is Michael's uncle) and (the late) Bonnie Hearne and by the Tex-Mex Country star, Johnny Rodriguez, who inexplicably changed the lyrics and title to Mexico Rain when he put it on his You Can Say that Again CD. John Denver never recorded it but he should have. You can see Hearne and Russell sing the song below, you can hear Bill and Bonnie sing it here, and you can hear Johnny Rodriguez sing it here.
Calvin Boles co-wrote a song with R.D. Blankenship called simply New Mexico. In 1964, he recorded it on a long playing record on the Yucca label titled New Mexico - Ballads of the Southwest (LPM-103). The rhythm track suggests that Boles considered the song more of a ballad than a waltz but it is in 3/4 time and is a perfectly good, in fact, quite dance-able waltz. Boles wore many hats. The Dirt City Chronicles blog has an excellent summary of Boles' career. He was an entrepreneur who, in 1958, started his own record label, Yucca, using his garage as a recording studio. He was a song writer who wrote more than 500 songs. He was a singer, guitarist and band leader who eventually moved to Nashville, although without much success. In his spare time, he was an insurance agent in Alamogordo, New Mexico and that is what paid his bills. The waltz/ballad New Mexico almost made it big. After Boles death in 2004, a bill (House Bill 81) was written in the New Mexico state legislature naming New Mexico as the official state cowboy song. It never got the support it needed to become official and eventually another song, Under New Mexico Skies, was selected as the official state cowboy song. Boles wrote a second waltz celebrating New Mexico and named it New Mexico Waltz (there is a 1949 copyright to Boles for that title). It was recorded, again on the Yucca label, on his sixth long playing record, Country Dozen (LPM-106). A digital copy of that waltz has not been found but you can hear the waltz/ballad New Mexico below.
There are two other waltzes celebrating New Mexico available for on-line listening. The first comes from an unlikely source, The English Contra Dance Band (ECDB). A member of the ECDB learned the tune at a 1989 workshop led by Bayou Seco in Sidmouth (England) but the name of the waltz has been forgotten. Bayou Seco is a folk duo based in Silver City, New Mexico so ECDB called the tune New Mexico Waltz. In a private communication with Jeanie McLerie and Ken Keppeler of Bayou Seco, it was learned that they call the tune Waltz Emiliano because they learned it from Cleofes Ortiz of Bernal, NM who, in turn, learned it from his cousin, Emiliano Ortiz. Historians believe that some Sephardic jews escaping the Spanish Inquisition, immigrated to New Mexico via Mexico beginning in the early 16th century. Jeanie and Ken speculate that this waltz might have its roots in that Sephardic jew immigration. Listen here - it is a fine waltz. You can hear Cleofes Ortiz's version here.
You will find a tune titled New Mexico Waltz here on Soundcloud. This version was collected by Alan Musgrove from the playing of Jeff Conroy from Glenquarry, New South Wales, Australia. Musgrove is a well known song collector and performer in Australia but if he has shared the story behind Conroy's New Mexico Waltz, it has not been found. You can find the score here.
There are two additional recorded versions of New Mexico waltz but digital files from them are not yet available:
- New Mexico Waltz, written by Jack (Tex) Williams. Performed (in 1948 or 1949) by Williams and the Hired Hands on a 78 rpm record, Miltone 5230. Note there is a more famous Tex Williams whose birth name was Sollie Paul Williams - he did not make this recording.
- New Mexico Waltz, recorded by Ginger Smith on a 45 rpm record on the Brazos label. Available from Amazon.com. No other information has been found.
New Mexico Waltz, 1949, words and music to Warner Elmer Farver.
The New Mexico Waltz, 1949, music to William Moody
New Mexico Waltz, 1950, words and music to George Emanuel Harris
New Mexico Waltz, 1948, music to Don George and words to Reba Adell Turnbull
New Mexico Waltz, 1951, words and music to Wanda Faye Wolfe
New Mexico Waltz, 1952, words to Jack A. Osbourne and music to Jay Osborne.
New Mexico Waltz, 1953, words and music to Merl Lindsay Salathiel
New Mexico Waltz, 1970, words to Ruby May Reid and music to A. Hosey & H. Gordon
New Mexico Waltz, 1971, words, music and arrangement to Hassel Fred "Nick" Nix
For those who make their own music, a simplified score for New Mexico's official bilingual state song is provide below. Lyrics follow the score.
Lyrics
I'm singing a song of my homeland.
Most wonderful place that I've seen.
My song cannot fully describe it,
I call it land of my dreams.
New Mexico,
Land of the sun where yucca blooms the sunset sighs.
New Mexico,
Your starry nights, your music sweet as daylight dies.
My heart returns.
It ever yearns to hear the desert breezes blow.
Your snow, your rain, your rainbow's blend.
I'm proud of my New Mexico.
Yo canto de un país lindo
Más bello no he visto yo,
Mi canción no puede decirlo,
Como mi corazón.
Nuevo México,
País del sol palmillas floreciendo allí.
Nuevo México,
Tus noches lindas traen recuerdos para mi.
Mi corazón
Llora por ti me dice a mi te quiero yo.
Tus sierras y tus valles
Son mi lindo Nuevo México.
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