History hasn’t known too many Jewish cowboys, but David Berman was one of them. He crooned with a drawl and a twang, strumming a mere handful of chords in varying order, at once celebrating and mourning all that America had to offer. His verses, whether on the pages of his 1999 poetry collection Actual Air or in the grooves of his half-dozen-ish records, resonated because they were understated — here was a real poet, in possession of enormous verbal talent, who had no interest in showing off.