Home On The Range: A Song History

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"Home on the Range" began as a poem by Brewster M. Higley, a physician originally from Ohio who took up a homestead in Smith County, Kansas, in 1871.[1][2] Sources disagree about exactly when he wrote it, with dates from 1871 to 1873 in circulation, but the verses, titled "My Western Home," celebrated the open country along Beaver Creek, and a neighbor, the Civil War veteran Daniel E. Kelley, gave them a melody.[1][2] The Harlan family orchestra, with which Kelley's wife performed, played the new song around the district.[2][3] The words ran in the Smith County Pioneer (accounts give different years) and in the Kirwin Chief on March 21, 1874.[1][2]

Painting of a shaggy American bison bull grazing on open green prairie

George Catlin, Buffalo Bull, Grazing on the Prairie, oil on canvas, 1832–33. Smithsonian American Art Museum. Public domain (CC0).

Over the following decades the song drifted west and south with its authors' names left behind. John A. Lomax recorded it in San Antonio in 1908 from an African American saloon owner who had once worked cattle, and printed it in Cowboy Songs and Other Frontier Ballads in 1910, by which time both Higley and Kelley were dead.[4][1] Vernon Dalhart cut "A Home on the Range" for Brunswick in New York on April 2, 1927, though the discography notes that his tune is not the one most people now know.[5] Its real leap came when Franklin D. Roosevelt named it a favorite after his election, after which entertainers took it up and radio played it constantly.[4]

That fame drew a challenge. In 1934 William and Mary Goodwin of Tempe, Arizona, said they had written the song years earlier about Arizona and sued for $500,000.[4][2] Samuel Moanfeldt, an attorney working for the Music Publishers Protective Association, dug into the song's past, and his 1935 report traced it to Higley and Kelley; the Goodwins dropped their suit.[4][1] On June 30, 1947, Kansas made it the official state song, and a marker now stands by Higley's cabin near West Beaver Creek, northwest of Smith Center.[2][3]

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Sources

  1. Kansas Historical Society, Kansapedia: "Brewster Higley".
  2. Kansas Historical Society, Kansapedia: "Home on the Range".
  3. Historical Marker Database: "'My Western Home' or 'Home on the Range' Historical Marker".
  4. Library of Congress, Performing Arts Encyclopedia: "Home on the Range".
  5. Discography of American Historical Recordings (UC Santa Barbara): "Brunswick matrix E22231-E22232. A home on the range / Vernon Dalhart".