El Paso (song)
1959 Marty Robbins country-western song
"El Paso" is a western ballad written and originally recorded by Marty Robbins, and first released on Gunfighter Ballads and Trail Songs in September 1959. It was released as a single the following month, and became a major hit on both the country and pop music charts, becoming the first No. 1 hit of the 1960s on both. It won the Grammy Award for Best Country & Western Recording in 1961. It is widely considered a genre classic for its gripping narrative which ends in the death of its protagonist, its shift from past to present tense, haunting harmonies by vocalists Bobby Sykes and Jim Glaser (of the Glaser Brothers) and the eloquent and varied Spanish guitar accompaniment by Grady Martin that lends the recording a distinctive Tex-Mex feel. The name of the character Feleena was based upon a schoolmate of Robbins in the fifth grade, Fidelina Martinez.
Members of the Western Writers of America chose "El Paso" as one of the Top 100 Western songs of all time.
In 1998, the 1959 recording of "El Paso" on Columbia Records by Marty Robbins was inducted into the Grammy Hall of Fame.
Storyline
The song is a first-person narrative told by a cowboy in El Paso, Texas, in the days of the Wild West. The singer recalls how he frequented "Rosa's Cantina", where he became smitten with a young Mexican dancer named Feleena.
The public source identifies “El Paso (song)” as 1959 Marty Robbins country-western song. This brief keeps that definition visible, then builds a research path around Paso, song and Marty.
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Attribution, date and provenance are strongest when supported by the original work, a catalogue record and documented transmission. The source revision retrieved here is dated Jul 2, 2026. The linked authority identifier is Q5351760. 1 of 1 selected statements include explicit references; 0 carry qualifiers and 0 use preferred rank. The first chronological checks are 1959, 1961 and 1998.
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This entry incorporates text from “El Paso (song)” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.