Marty Robbins – The Little Green Valley

“The Little Green Valley” is a short western-tinged song recorded by Marty Robbins and released on his landmark album Gunfighter Ballads and Trail Songs in 1959. The song was written by Carson Robison and appears as an album track among Robbins’s mixture of original ballads and older cowboy repertoire. :contentReference[oaicite:0]{index=0}

Robbins recorded the Gunfighter Ballads and Trail Songs sessions in April 1959; the album was issued later that year and is commonly dated to 1959 in discographies. The sessions were produced with an economy of means and musicianship that emphasized storytelling and atmosphere over studio ornamentation. :contentReference[oaicite:1]{index=1}

Lyrically the song is a compact meditation on home and return: the narrator pictures a “little green valley” with a garden gate, babbling brook and a waiting figure, and frames the setting as the place to which he longs to return. The plainspoken, image-driven language—short, evocative lines rather than extended narrative—makes the piece feel like a vignette of frontier or rural longing in the tradition of older cowboy songs. :contentReference[oaicite:2]{index=2}

Musically, Robbins’s arrangement for the track follows the album’s spare, guitar-forward template. Acoustic guitar anchors the performance, with restrained rhythmic support and minimal instrumental embellishment so the vocal and lyric remain central. That sonic simplicity places the song alongside other short, atmospheric pieces on the record rather than among radio-oriented singles. :contentReference[oaicite:3]{index=3}

“The Little Green Valley” was not issued as a major single; its prominence derives from its placement on a highly successful and influential LP that featured Robbins’s best-known narrative work. The album’s commercial and critical success—anchored by the hit “El Paso”—ensured that even non-single tracks like this one reached wide audiences and continued to circulate as part of Robbins’s western legacy. :contentReference[oaicite:4]{index=4}

Robbins’s vocal on the song is measured and storyteller-like: a warm baritone that favors narrative clarity and modest restraint rather than dramatic excess. That delivery suits the lyric’s intimate images and helps the listener accept the valley as both a literal place and a symbolic refuge. The performance is typical of Robbins’s approach to short, character-focused western songs. :contentReference[oaicite:5]{index=5}

Today the recording is available on reissues and streaming editions of Gunfighter Ballads and Trail Songs and appears on anthology collections of Robbins’s work. As an album deep cut, “The Little Green Valley” is often appreciated by listeners who value Robbins’s quieter vignette-style pieces and his role in preserving older cowboy songs alongside his original ballads. :contentReference[oaicite:6]{index=6}