A song that can calm a herd of cattle or an infant

The little guy was sucking on a bottle when I got to the house.

Texas Parks and Wildlife Department photo tpwd.texas.gov

“Thank you for taking care of him tonight, Daddy,” my daughter said as she handed the baby over to me. “I’ll be back in about two hours. Just burp him and rock him and he should sleep the whole time.”

My little girl, Lisa, took off, leaving me alone with my first grandson, Joseph Michael, who my Texas wife had immediately “bubbafied” to Joe Mike.

Lisa was working as a teller in a local bank, and she had a training class to attend. Her husband, Frank, was working on his still-new heating, ventilation and air-conditioning business, trying hard to build it into a thriving enterprise.

My wife was sick, so it fell to me to take care of Joe Mike, something I didn’t mind doing at all.

Joe Mike finished his bottle and then whimpered. I put the cloth on my shoulder and burped the boy. Then I cradled him in my arms.

And Joe Mike immediately started crying.

I rocked him.

He still cried.

I gently bounced him as he lay in my arms.

He still cried.

I put him back on my shoulder and patted him on the back again.

He wailed.

So I cradled him again, and I began to sing.

“Oh, give me a home, where the buffalo roam, where the deer and the antelope play,” I crooned softly. “Where seldom is heard, a discouraging word, and the skies are not cloudy all day.”

Joe Mike was silent.

“Home,home on the range,” I continued. “Where the deer and the antelope play. Where seldom is heard, a discouraging word, and the skies are not cloudy all day.”

Joe Mike was asleep.

I kept on humming, and I imagined that I was a night-riding cowboy, calming the herd.

My herd of one was asleep as a I sang and hummed quietly.

“Home on the Range” is one of my favorite songs. It was originally a poem, written in 1872 by Dr. Brewster M. Higley, of Smith County, Kansas. In 1947, Kansans made it their state song. It is one of the top 100 Western songs, as chosen by the Western Writers of America.

Dr. Higley moved to Kansas from Indiana, loved the place so much that he wrote a poem titled “My Western Home,” in praise of his new home in a cabin near a creek. It was published in 1872 in the Smith County Pioneer newspaper.

Higley’s friend, Daniel E. Kelley, later set the poem to music.

The song has a most interesting history, and I encourage you to read about it on the Library of Congress website, where you will learn that President Franklin D. Roosevelt said it was his favorite song.

You’ll also find out that other people have claimed to be the author, but Dr. Higley’s authorship has been verified.

“How did this song spread so far, become associated with so many locations, generate so many variations, and have claims of authorship by so many people?” the Library of Congress website asks and then answers this way: “Part of the answer lies in the Chisholm Trail, a route taken by cattle drives from southwestern ranching states and territories to the railhead in Abeline, Kansas, from 1867 through the 1880s. A song sung in saloons in Kansas could be picked up and sung by cowboys departing for home, quickly spreading it far from its point of origin. The song itself, which praises the virtues of the west and is sung to a melancholy tune, fits well into the repertoire of cowboy work songs.”

It's a wonderful song. I recall hearing years ago on The History Channel that President Roosevelt wanted to make it the national anthem.

Grandson Joe Mike found so much comfort in the song that he fell asleep while I sang it. When he was sound asleep, I stopped singing and continued rocking in the chair.

He immediately woke up and started wailing again.

“Oh, give me a home, where the buffalo roam,” I sang, and Joe Mike fell asleep again,

I stopped singing, and he woke and started crying.

I resumed singing and he went back to sleep.

For two hours, I sang “Home on the Range” over and over and over.

When his Mama got home, I handed him over to her. He woke up and was quiet.

Joe Mike loved his Mama, and still does, and he also loved “Home on the Range.” I’ll have to ask him if he still likes that song now that he’s in seventh grade.

Listening to the Opry, just like Grandpa

For years, we had a great public radio station here in town. The broadcast studios for the station, formerly KUMR and then later KMST to reflect the university’s name, were located in the basement of the campus library. The station played a range of music, folk, blues, classical, big band and bluegrass.
I especially liked the bluegrass programs, Bluegrass for a Saturday Night from 7-10 p.m., Sunday Morning Sounds from 7-9 a.m.
Five hours of bluegrass every weekend from the public radio station were joined with five or six hours on Saturday morning on a commercial station. The host of that show was named Ray Hicks, and when his station sold, he was quickly snatched up by another commercial station, although his program was cut to three hours every Saturday morning. Sadly, Ray had a stroke and was unable to continue; he passed away a couple of years ago.
The public radio host was Wayne Bledsoe, a history professor who had a long involvement with bluegrass going back to his North Carolina childhood. He played a good mix of traditional and contemporary bluegrass tunes on Saturday night and good bluegrass gospel with a dab of Southern gospel on Sunday morning.
I said once or twice or more in my newspaper column that Wayne’s Sunday morning bluegrass show was better than a sermon when it came to sharing the gospel of Jesus Christ.
Well, the university got tired of running the station after many decades, I reckon, and they sold it to St. Louis Public Radio, who immediately killed the gospel program, let go all the local folks who worked there and eliminated the local programming, such as the Backyard Birder feature. If Rolla people are interested in what’s going on in St. Louis, though, KMST is the station to turn to.
Before much time elapsed, Wayne announced his retirement and he played his last bluegrass tunes a couple of months ago. Sad time for us bluegrass fans who for years and years had listened on most Saturday nights and Sunday mornings.
Now there is plenty to listen to on the radio these days, especially if you have a Smartphone, I have discovered. I bought one of those Tracfone pay as you go Androids, and I hook iinto our home internet service so I don’t use any minutes. I can listen to just about any radio station in the country, I guess, thanks to apps like Tune-in and I Heart Radio. Plus, I have some Pandora channels that I have created.
So I have plenty to listen to. My favorite stations are KFWR-FM out of Fort Worth, which plays Texas and “Red Dirt” artists; KTXR-FM out of Springfield, which has changed its easy listening format to outlaw country, and several bluegrass outlets, like WAMU, I think, which is from somewhere east. On Pandora, I listen to my Flatt and Scruggs channel and my Don Edwards cowboy music channel.
On Saturday nights, I like to use one of the apps to pick up the Grand Ole Opry on WSM, the legendary station from Nashville.
I heard the Grand Ole Opry quite a bit when I was a kid, for we didn’t have television, and you could hear it well on an AM radio back then because there wasn’t near the clutter on the airwaves there is today. Also, we would drive three hours to central Missouri every 4-6 weeks to see my grandparents, and that is what we usually listened to on the Saturday night drives after my dad closed his barbershop and came home and got us. That was where I got my love of Bill Monroe and Flatt and Scruggs.
When we got to Grandma and Grandpa’s house, they’d have the Opry on, too, until they finally got TV some years later.
So on Saturday night, listening to the Grand Ole Opry, I figure I’m turning into my grandpa.

A battle, a song and an Ozarks connection

Today is the Eighth of January, and that brings to mind a battle with a bit of an Ozarks connection.
The battle is the Battle of New Orleans that started on Jan. 8, 1815, and brought an end to the War of 1812. The Ozarks connection is a song titled "The Battle of New Orleans," written by an Ozarks schoolteacher to an old fiddle tyne played by Ozarks fiddlers, titled "Eighth of January."
Here's Jimmy Driftwood singing:





Jimmy Driftwood's real name was James Corbitt Morris, according to the Encyclopedia of Arkansas, and he claimed to have written the song in 1936 while he was a teacher. The song was a way to get students interested in history and to teach them the difference between the American Revolution and the War of 1812.
Driftwood recorded his original version in 1958, according to the Encyclopedia of Arkansas, but it did not achieve much airplay, owing to the use of the words "hell" and "damn." He must have been a real Ozarks character to sing a song like that to Arkansas schoolchildren back in the 1930s and 1940s.
Driftwood took an existing fiddle tune, "Eighth of January," that had been written sometime after the battle and was also known as "Jackson's Victory," referring to Gen. Andrew Jackson.
The Library of Congress reports that a couple of ethnographers recorded versions of the fiddle tune played by Oklahoma dust bowl migrant workers in California. It was a popular tune at square dances.

Driftwood, who continued to collect and write songs, eventually became a performer on the Grand Ole Opry, the Ozark Jubilee and the Louisiana Hayride. It was at the Hayride in Shreveport that he met Johnny Horton in 1959. Driftwood toned down the lyrics for Horton who recorded it that year and put it atop the country music chart for over 10 weeks and the pop music chart for six weeks.
It is one of the top 100 Western songs of all time, according to the Western Writers of America.
Jimmy Driftwood led in the founding of the Arkansas Folk Festival and the Ozark Folk Center. He died in 1998.