Home on the Range

(Cutting Cattle on Mowroy’s Ranch, Salt River,
Arizona, 1912, by Dane Coolidge, 1873-1940,
American photographer, writer and poet)

“In the United States there is more space where nobody is than where anybody is. That is what makes America what it is,” wrote the poet Gertrude Stein (1874-1946).

From the beginning, the wide-open spaces of the American West have attracted homesteaders, ranchers, cowboys, and assorted freedom-seekers.

Many well-known traditional American songs celebrate their way of life. One of the most popular is a verse with a lilting melody that most believe to be a folk song, somehow created by anonymous composers around a campfire, perhaps.

But that story is not true. The words of Home on the Range were written in 1872 by Dr. Brewster Higley (1823-1911), a Kansas physician, and set to music by Dan Kelley (1845-?), a Kansas fiddler. In Higley’s original version, which he called My Western Home, the singer longed for “Home! A home!” with “zephyrs so balmy and light, / That I would not exchange my home here to range / Forever in azure so bright.”

Very early on, the song quickly passed from farm to ranch to town, from Kansas to Colorado to California. A few words were changed along the way. We now sing of “a home on the range.”

To listen to the classic version by Gene Autrey (1907-1998), click on the link (you may have to cut and paste it):

http://www.npr.org/ramfiles/me/20020429.gautry.home.ram

HOME ON THE RANGE

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

Chorus:
Home, home on the range,
Where the deer and the antelope play;
Where seldom is heard a discouraging word
And the skies are not cloudy all day.

How often at night when the heavens are bright
With the light from the glittering stars
Have I stood there amazed and asked as I gazed
If their glory exceeds that of ours.

Where the air is so pure, the zephyrs so free,
The breezes so balmy and light,
That I would not exchange my home on the range
For all of the cities so bright.