Want to visit a place from classic country music lore?<\/p>\n
Chances are you\u2019ve heard Marty Robbins\u2019 1959 hit song \u201cEl Paso.\u201d Even if you think you haven\u2019t, I\u2019d be willing to bet that you have. It\u2019s from Robbins\u2019 Gunfighter Ballads and Trail Songs album, and for my money, it\u2019s one of the best storytelling songs in all of country music.<\/p>\n
And the main setting of the song \u2013 Rosa\u2019s Cantina \u2013 is a real place that you can actually visit.<\/p>\n
If you are in need of a refresher, the tune tells the story of a gunslinger who falls in love with a woman named Feleena while he\u2019s in the town of El Paso, Texas. Specifically, the main character of the story wanders into a establishment called \u201cRosa\u2019s Cantina,\u201d which sounds like quite the vibe:<\/p>\n
\u201cOut in the West Texas town of El Paso
I fell in love with a Mexican girl
Nighttime would find me in Rosa\u2019s Cantina
Music would play and Feleena would whirl.\u201d<\/p>\n
Fans of the song know that the narrator becomes so enamored with Feleena that he shoots another man who wished to be with her dead. The aftermath of that is explained later in the song, when the main character flees Rosa\u2019s Cantina:<\/p>\n
\u201cOut through the back door of Rosa\u2019s I ran
Out where the horses were tied
I caught a good one, it looked like it could run
Up on its back, and away I did ride
Just as fast as I could from the West Texas town of El Paso
Out to the badlands of New Mexico.\u201d<\/p>\n
That\u2019s when the story really gets good.<\/p>\n
Because his love for Feleena is so strong, he returns to Rosa\u2019s Cantina, knowing that he\u2019ll lose his life if he steps back inside the establishment. But as he says, his love has grown stronger than his \u201cfear of death,\u201d and he rides back down into El Paso to see her:<\/p>\n
\u201cAnd at last here I am on the hill overlooking El Paso
I can see Rosa\u2019s Cantina below
My love is strong and it pushes me onward
Down off the hill to Feleena I go<\/p>\n
Off to my right, I see five mounted cowboys
Off to my left ride a dozen or more
Shouting and shooting, I can\u2019t let them catch me
I have to make it to Rosa\u2019s back door.\u201d<\/p>\n
I won\u2019t spoil the ending for you in case you haven\u2019t heard it, but I will say that if you\u2019ve always loved the song \u2013 or just became a big fan of it \u2013 you can visit the very place where Feleena may or may not have actually stole the heart of a gunslinger.<\/p>\n
There\u2019s actually a lot of debate about which Rosa\u2019s Cantina is the real, original one. Considering Robbins often played in Nashville (he was from Phoenix, Arizona), he was probably passing through El Paso when he came up with the idea of the song in the late \u201950s. And that would make sense, considering Rosa\u2019s Cantina\u2019s has been established since 1957. And there\u2019s also debate about whether or not the song was named after the place, or the place was named after the song.<\/p>\n
Their website explains it like this:<\/p>\n
\u201cA bar was opened post-prohibition in the early 1940\u2019s under a different name. In 1957, ownership changed as well as the name, to \u201cRosa\u2019s Cantina.\u201d Some people would argue that city directories show another business located at 3454 Doniphan Drive until 1961. According to the owner at the time, business was done on a handshake and city documents were not legally changed to \u201cRosa\u2019s Cantina\u201d until 1961. It has been called Rosa\u2019s Cantina since 1957. Some believe that Marty Robbins named the song after the Rosa\u2019s Cantina here in El Paso, and others believe that this Rosa\u2019s Cantina was named after the song.\u201d<\/p>\n
But regardless, a Rosa\u2019s Cantina stands in El Paso, Texas, and has for nearly 70 years. It\u2019s located at\u00a03454 Doniphan Drive on El Paso\u2019s outskirts, and describes itself as a \u201crustic, compact Mexican joint serving tacos, burritos and other typical eats, plus margaritas and beer.\u201d<\/p>\n
Sounds to me like a place where you could certainly meet the love of your life:<\/p>\n
Many who have heard the song again and again over the years may have just assumed that the cantina included in the song was made up by the mind of Marty Robbins. At the very least, it was likely exaggerated, but it\u2019s pretty cool to think that a song that will go down as one of the best in country music history has a physical, real-life location attached to it.<\/p>\n
While I plan a road trip to El Paso to visit Rosa\u2019s Cantina, you can press play on the Grammy-award-winning song below:<\/p>\n
\u201cEl Paso\u201d by Marty Robbins<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Want to visit a place from classic country music lore? Chances are you\u2019ve heard Marty Robbins\u2019 1959 hit…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":73197,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[12],"tags":[138,140,139],"class_list":["post-73196","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-el-paso","tag-el-paso","tag-el-paso-headlines","tag-el-paso-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/73196","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=73196"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/73196\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/73197"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=73196"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=73196"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=73196"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}