"Home on the Range" is a classic cowboy song, sometimes called the "unofficial anthem" of the American West.
It is generally believed that Dr. Brewster Higley (also spelled Highley) of Smith County, Kansas, wrote the lyrics as the poem "Western Home" in 1872 or 1873.
Shotly afterwards, Daniel E. Kelley (1808–1905), a friend of Higley and member of the Harlan Brothers Orchestra, developed a melody for the song on his guitar. Higley's original lyrics are similar to those of the modern version of the song, but not identical. For instance, the original poem did not contain the words "on the range".
In 1934 William and Mary Goodwin filed a $500,000 lawsuit claimed infringement of their "My Arizona Home", which had been copyrighted in 1905.
An Arizona Home. Ballad | Library of Congress
The Museum Publishers Protective Association (MPPA) conducted an extensive investigation on the claim. They hired Samuel Moanfeldt, a New York lawyer, to investigate the Goodwins’ claims. Moanfeldt started searching for the song’s origins. All trails led to a version that John Lomax had collected.
A transcription of the song was published in Lomax's book "Cowboy Songs and Other Frontier Ballads", in 1910. Lomax had recorded a black saloonkeeper singing "Home on the Range" in 1908. The saloonkeeper had previously driven cattle on the Chisholm Trail to Kansas.
From the record Lomax made that day, Henry Lebermann, a blind teacher of music at the State School for the Blind in Austin, a few weeks afterwards set down the music. Lebermann used earphones and played the record over and over again until he felt sure that he had captured the music as the black saloonkeeper had rendered it. This music, printed in the 1910 edition of Cowboy Songs, makes up the core of the tune that has become popular (and the first version containing the words "on the range")
A transcription of the song and the story of its collection were also published The John & Alan Lomax book "Best Loved American Folk Songs" (1947)
This version had essentially the same lyrics, but with the "diamond sand" verse omitted.
The notes, however, are quite interesting:
62. HOME ON THE RANGE One day in 1908 I walked into the Buckhorn Saloon in San Antonio lugging a heavy Edison recording machine. It was the earliest, crudest type of dictaphone, requiring for its operation earphones and a large five-foot horn. The amazed German proprietor stared at my strange equipment and hastily put his hand under the counter where he was supposed to keep his arsenal of democracy. When I told him I was looking for cowboy songs, his face relaxed. He seemed to feel safe, though not entirely satisfied. He kept looking furtively at the unwieldly big-mouthed horn as though he feared it might be a gun. My friend, the proprietor, had two fads: it was said that festooned on the walls of his saloon hung the world’s largest collection of horns; he was likewise interested in ballads. I had come to the right place. He told me of a Negro singer who ran a beer saloon out beyond the Southern Pacific depot, in a scrubby mesquite grove. This Negro had been a chuck-wagon cook for years and had made the trip up the Chisholm Trail half a dozen times. He sang many cowboy songs. I found my man behind his saloon shack with his hat drawn down over his eyes, his head tilted back against a mesquite tree. When I shook him awake and told him what I wanted, he muttered as he looked at me with bloodshot eyes, "I'se drunk, I’se drunk, come back tomorrow and I’ll sing for you." I spent all the next day under the mesquite with this Negro. Among the songs he sang for me was "Home on the Range." From the record- ing I made that day down in the redlight district (they used stolen switch-lanterns to advertise the trade), Henry Leberman, a blind teacher of music, a few weeks afterward set down the music. This version, printed in the 1910 edition of Cowboy Songs, makes up the core of the tune that has become popular in this country and is sung throughout the English-speaking world. Mr. Leberman used earphones and played the old-fashioned cylinder records over and over again until he felt sure that he had captured the music as the Negro saloon-keeper had rendered it. In 1925, Oscar J. Fox of San Antonio put the song into sheet-music form. Five years afterward, David Guion of Dallas followed with a slightly different arrangement. During the next six years eight other publishers of music issued the song with some variations. In 1933 the radio people took it up. For two or three years afterwards, “Home on the Range” was broadcast nightly by all of the big networks. It became known that it was President Franklin Delano Roosevelt’s favorite song. Suddenly radio stations in the United States were warned not to include “Home on the Range” on their programs. A suit for infringement of copyright had been filed in the courts of New York against thirty-five individuals and corporations for a cool half a million dollars. The claimants brought forth a copyright version of “Home on the Range,” dated 1905, the music of which was similar to the current tune. A clever New York attorney, however, managed to locate in Smith Center, Kansas, eighty-six year old Clarence Harlan and his wife who made affidavit that in 1874 they had learned the song under the title of “The Western Home.” The old couple recorded their early version of “Home on the Range” on phonograph records. The lawyer exhibited his new evidence to the plaintiff’s attorney. The suit was dropped and the song was established in the public domain. Homer Croy has gone further into the Kansas origin of “Home on the Range” in his book, “Corn Country.” He tells of his visit to Smith Center, where old timers reminisced about Bruce Higley, the “writing doctor,” who came out to Kansas from Indiana to escape a termagant wife and homesteaded in a little cabin on the banks of Beaver Creek. Higley farmed a little, doctored his sod-buster neighbors and wrote a lot of verse. One evening, as he waited for a deer to stick its head up along the breaks of the Beaver, an idea for a poem came to him and he scribbled down the first rough version of “Home on the Range.” O give me the gale of the Solomon Vale, Where light streams with buoyancy flow; On the banks of the Beaver, where seldom if ever, Any poisonous herbage doth grow. Time has dealt kindly with this crude poem. The folk have rubbed off its rough edges and improved the poesy. Time has turned the Higley cabin into a henhouse and filled the once-clear Beaver with sand and gravel. Higley, himself, moved to Shawnee, Oklahoma, where he died in 1911, a year after I published the Texas version of “Home on the Range” in my first book of cowboy songs. When I read Mr. Croy’s story, I turned to my files. A folklorist learns to be skeptical of any story of “ultimate origins.” There I found a letter which stated that “Home on the Range” was sung in Texas in 1867. Where will the trail end? My guess is that it goes far back beyond Kansas and Texas, as well, into the big songbag which the folk have held in common for centuries.
In 1925 Oscar J. Fox made a new arrangement of the 1910 Lomax version.
This version of "Home on the Range" was published by Carl Fischer Inc.
The MPPA also found a mining song, "Colorado Home", with similar music and lyrics, that had been sung as early as 1885, and "written" by Crawford O. "Bob" Swartz.
A letter with the music and lyrics was published in 1932 by Paull-Pioneer Music Corporation in the songbook "The Cowboy Sings - Songs of the Ranch and Range"
In Dodge City, Moanfeldt collected statements from former cowboys, stagecoach drivers, buffalo hunters, and others who agreed that the "Home on the Range" was well-known in the area before 1890.
And the 86-year-old Clarence B. "Cal" Harlan, living in Smith County, recalled singing the tune 60 years earlier in the Harlan Brothers Orchestra. The Harlan Brothers Orchestra consisted of : Clarence, Marcus and Lulu Harlan and Lulu's husband Dan Kelley.
Clarence Harlan told Moanfeldt, that the lyrics of "Western Home" had been written by Brewster M. Higley and the music, shortly afterwards, by his brother-in-law Dan Kelley.
As a proof, Moanfeldt made a recording of Clarence Harlan and Mary Eulalia "Lulu" Harlan (Dan Kelley's widow) singing "Western Home". This, together with the testimony of 40 of their neighbors, convinced Moanfeldt, he had found the conclusive evidence. After this the Goodwins' claim was rejected.
On top of that, almost 60 years earlier, the song had already been the subject of plagiarism.
According to the next link a poem with the lyrics of "Western Home" was first published in the fall of 1873 in the Smith County Pioneer.
But the Smith County Pioneer newspaper lost all of that edition’s copies. The Kirwin Chief published them on March 21, 1874, in a now-lost edition.
On February 6, 1876, the Kirwin Chief published the lyrics again, under the headline “Plagiarism!”, in response to the February 3, 1876 edition of The Stockton News, who had published a poem "My Home In The West", purporting to have been written by Mrs. Emma Race, of Raceburgh in Rook County.
Here below a transcription of the article in the February 6, 1876 edition of the Kirwin Chief
"PLAGIARISM"
The editor of the Stockton News has allowed himself to become the victim of an ambitious aspirant for political fame. In his issue of Febr 3rd, 1876 he publishes under the head of "My Home In the West" a poem, purporting to have been written by Mrs. Emma Race, of Raceburgh, Rooks County, Kansas. The poem in question, with the exception of two words, was written by Dr. B. Higley of Beaver Creek, Smith County, Kansas, and first published in the Kirwin Chief March, 21st, 1874.
We re-publish the article as written by Dr. Higley, and ask our readers to compare it with the stolen article from Raceburgh.
Bro. Newell must look to his laurels, as he will find plenty of people who are willing to profit by the brain work of others.
Following is the poem as republished on The Kirwin Chief's front page on February 26, 1876.
Note that Higley's words do not include the nowadays familiar phrase "home on the range".
Western Home
Oh! Give me a home where the buffalo roam
Where the deer and the antelope play
Where never is heard a discouraging word
And the sky is not clouded all day
A home! A home!
Where the deer and the antelope play
Where seldom is heard a discouraging word
And the sky is not clouded all day
Oh! Give me a land where the bright diamond sand
Throws its light from the glittering streams
Where glideth along the graceful white swan
Like the maid to her heavenly dreams
Oh! Give me a gale of the Solomon vale
Where the lifestreams with buoyancy flow
On the banks of the Beaver, where seldom if ever
Any poisonous herbage doth grow
How often at night, when the heavens were bright
With the light of the twinkling stars
Have I stood here amazed and asked as I gazed
If their glory exceed that of ours
I love the wild flowers in this bright land of ours
I love the wild curlew's shrill screen
The bluffs and white rocks and antelope flocks
That graze on the mountain so green
The air is so pure and the breezes so free
The zephyrs so balmy and light
That I would not exchange my home here to range
Forever in azures so bright
The fascinating story of how a supposed folk song was tracked down to its lyricist, composer, date of composition and date of first publication is best described in Kirke Mechem, "Home on the Range," in the Kansas Historical Quarterly (Nov 1949).
Although 'Home on the Range" had been written around 1873, the song was not recorded until 1927.
(o) Vernon Dalhart (1927) (as "Home On The Range")
Vernon Dalhart, vocal and harmonica
acc. prob. Murray Kellner, fiddle; Carson Robison, guitar.
Recorded April 2, 1927 in New York
Released on Brunswick 137 and Supertone S 2009
(c) Jules Allen (1928) (as "Home On The Range")
Recorded April 24, 1928 in El Paso, TX
Released on Victor 21627
Or here:
(c) The Arkansas Woodchopper (=Luther W. Ossenbrink) (1929) (as "Home On The Range")
Recorded October 17, 1929 in Richmond, IND
Released on Gennett 7065 and on Supertone 9571
Listen here:
Another important person in spreading the success of "Home On The Range" was David Guion, who published his arrangement in 1930.
Within four months of publication in 1930, the Roxy Theatre featured Guion's "Home On The Range" in a cowboy production, with it's composer David W. Guion, appearing in person.
The Guion arrangement was recorded by John Charles Thomas for the Victor-label.
(c) John Charles Thomas (1931) (as "Home on the Range")
Recorded May 26, 1931 in New York
Released on Victor 1525
Listen here: Home on the Range - John Charles Thomas.mp3
Or here:
Bing Crosby's version was a top 20 hit in the USA
(c) Bing Crosby (1933) (as "Home on the Range")
Recorded September 27, 1933 in Los Angeles, CA
Released on Brunswick 6663
Or here:
(c) Willy Derby (1938) (as "Werkende Handen")
Arrangement by Willem Ciere / Dutch lyrics by Ferry (van Delden)
Recorded December 1937 in Berlin
Released on Parlophone B 73016 and Odeon A 164488
Listen here:
(c) Tex Ritter (1938) (as "Home On The Range")
In the movie "Where The Buffalo Roam"
Here's the complete movie:
(c) Harry Brandelius (1938) (as "Hem")
Swedish lyrics by Sven Loke (=Sven-Olof Sandberg)
Recorded September 29, 1938 in Stockholm
Released December 1938 on His Master's Voice X.6140
Listen here:
In 1940 the uncredited King's Men sang "Home On The Range" in a cute cartoon of the same name.
Directed by Rudolf Ising.
(c) King's Men (1940) (as "Home On The Range")
Watch it here:
In 1980 Neil Young sang "Home On The Range" and a few variotions on this song, in the movie "Where The Buffalo Roam".
The film was scored by Neil Young, who sings the opening theme, "Home on the Range" (from which the film derives its title), accompanied by a harmonica. Variations on "Home on the Range" are played by Young on electric guitar as "Ode to Wild Bill" and by an orchestra with arrangements by David Blumberg on "Buffalo Stomp".
(c) Neil Young (1980) (as "Home On The Range")
Listen here:
(c) John Denver & The Muppets (1983) (as "Home On The Range")
Listen here:
More versions here:
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