The Evolution of Western Music

Here's a little gem from the memory of Alan Lomax that he recounted to an audience asking him about his early days collecting folk music. It came from, in his memory, an old "cow puncher" who'd traded in his pony for a bicycle and was traveling through Austin selling ice cream with this a capella cattle-driving tune-turned jingle:

I've been to the north and I've been to the south,
In times of flood and times of drought.
I've traveled aallll over Europe
And I'a never had the like of the sorghum syrup.
Bye-an-Bye, before I die, marry me a girl with a right blue eye!

I don't know of any field recordings of this uniquely western style of advertising (perhaps the cowboy was presaging green marketing when he took to his bike; he probably moved to Portland), but I think Alan Lomax does a pretty convincing rendition.