Song of the Week 06: They Call The Wind Mariah

Ranked in the Top 20 of the Top 100 Western songs of all time, “They Call The Wind Mariah,” with lyrics written by Alan Jay Lerner and music by Frederick Loewe, was featured in their 1951 Broadway musical Paint Your Wagon. The story, set in the mid-19th century period of the California Gold Rush, explores the loneliness of members of a predominately male mining camp.

The roots of the song derive from Storm, a popular 1941 novel by George Rippey Stewart, in which he named the protagonist tempest Maria (with the middle syllable pronounced “rye.”) The success of Stewart's novel was one factor that motivated U.S. military meteorologists to start the early 1940’s practice of giving women's names to storms in the Pacific and in 1953 a similar system of using women's names adopted for North Atlantic storms. (Men's names were incorporated in 1979,) The novel and its impact on meteorology inspired Lerner and Lowe to write the song for their play, and like Stewart, they too gave a wind storm the name (and pronunciation) of Maria.

The cowboy/folk feel of the song made it an immediate hit, primarily through Vaughn Monroe’s recorded version in 1951. Numerous recordings appeared throughout the 1950’s, with the most notable being The Kingston Trio’s 1959 rendition on their first album. In 1969 the Hollywood motion picture of Paint Your Wagon was released starring Lee Marvin, Clint Eastwood, and Jean Seberg (with Harve Presnell singing the iconic song.)

A Little Farther West’s version is primarily “no frills” with the exception of the addition of lead guitar and an ending featuring a major seventh chord. Grammy-winning vocalist Mariah Carey was named after the song.