PrintCatching up with cowboy troubador Don Edwards
Photo by Sam Franks
"Campfire intimate.” Of the countless published accolades showered on Don Edwards over the years, that one is not only the most fitting, but is also the one that the humble cowboy balladeer is most comfortable with. As responsible as anyone for the contemporary resurgence and preservation of the defiantly cowboy genre — “Country and Western music, neither is either,” he says indignantly — Edwards is rightly regarded as the Western bard of embers and starlight.“I’m a songster,” Edwards explains. “That term is not used anymore, but it [once] described a solo artist. It was not about their songwriting, but their voice and how many songs they knew. It used to be very common, when the guitar was an equal partner with the voice. That’s what my style is.”
Now 70, Edwards, who’s still adding tunes to his seemingly bottomless repertoire of cowboy standards and obscurities, will be marking 50 years in the entertainment business in 2010. To get a head start on the anniversary — same as ever, he’ll be touring throughout the year — we caught up with Edwards on his 210-acre Singin’ Hills Ranch just south of Hico, Texas, to talk cowboys, horses, Western history, and the music that binds it all.
Cowboys & Indians: You’ve called the American cowboy “the greatest folk hero the world has ever known.” Care to defend that position to fans of Japanese samurai, Knights of the Realm, and lumberjacks of the American frontier?
Don Edwards: The reason the cowboy became the greatest hero America has ever produced is because he was on horseback. And this is what made him the hero. The cowboy was also an itinerant worker, a hired hand. They used to say he lived close to nature and even closer to poverty. He didn’t make much money, but he loved the lifestyle. The word cowboy translates throughout the world. Regardless of the language you speak, cowboy is still cowboy. It is amazing.
C&I: Your latest CD, Heaven on Horseback, is a compilation of “cowboy spirituals.” Were cowboys a religious lot?
Edwards: In the sense of organized religion, a cowboy wasn’t so much a part of that. But he was very spiritual. He believed there was a god and a higher being than man. He knew how insignificant he was because he dealt with the elements all day. When you live outdoors all the time, you have that close proximity with God and nature. A lot of those old songs talk about that.
C&I: Before you recorded it for this CD, you’d been performing Marty Robbins’ “Master’s Call” for years, right?
Edwards: “Master’s Call” has become very popular and quite synonymous with me. But if there is one song I’m most associated with, that’s “Coyotes.”
C&I: Is that because “Coyotes” exploded from the Grizzly Man soundtrack in 2005?
Edwards: The Grizzly Man soundtrack was its second coming. I recorded it in 1992 or 1993. That song is amazing in the sense that there is a song I relate to. I am that old guy in the song. I heard it just one time and I said, “That is me, right there.”
It was written by Bob McDill, a famous Nashville songwriter. He’s written some huge hits. [“Amanda” for Waylon Jennings, “Gone Country” for Alan Jackson, among others.] He wrote that song in 1984 or ’85 and put it in a drawer in his office and forgot about it till we started recording at Warner Brothers.
C&I: So that song could still be sitting in a drawer?
Edwards: Exactly. What he said was he wrote the song but couldn’t pitch it to anybody. It’s really amazing because I just love that song. I can’t sing a song I don’t believe in. If I don’t relate to them, I can’t get the feel. And if you don’t feel it, you can’t sing it.
C&I: Onstage you act as though the yodeling part of your act is obligatory, something to be endured. Yet, you do it so well.
Edwards: I’m being a little tongue-in-cheek there. The thing is, you go to these Western festivals and nine out of 10 acts it’s a yodeling act. Some people really do it well, but a lot of times it’s, “When in doubt, yodel.” So, I try to stay away from it a little bit. But I will do a yodeling song. I think it’s a lot of fun.
Photo by Sam Franks
C&I: Let me force you into a few tough choices. Montana or Arizona?
Edwards: Arizona. And I love them both. I spent 14 weeks in Montana making The Horse Whisperer [Edwards played a ranch hand in the Robert Redford film], and it was a pleasure to wake up every day for 14 weeks in that beautiful country. But I’m more of a Southern guy. If there were any place other than Texas that I would live, it’s Arizona.
C&I: Death by snakebite or gunshot?
Edwards: Oh, my goodness. I’ll go for the gunshots. Just kill me there and then. It might be the way I would go. Even growing up, I was the kid who was bucking the power and finding something wrong with authority. I’ll fight ’em to the end.
C&I: A shot of whiskey or a Willie Nelson song?
Edwards: A little of each of that. I guess it takes one to do the other. I love Willie. One of my favorite deals he did is that Red Headed Stranger record.
C&I: Barbed wire or the automobile?
Edwards: I’ll take the automobile. They say heaven is a free rangeland. Barbed-wire fences are the devil’s hatband and the blanket down in hell. When barbed wire came it cut off the cowboy’s freedom and put a Spanish bit on free enterprise.
C&I: Spanish bit?
Edwards: A Spanish bit is what they call a spade bit. For a real horseman with a light touch it’s a good bit. But it’s very severe, and in the wrong hands it can do a lot of damage to a horse’s mouth.
photo by Donald Kallaus
C&I: Is it fair to say you’re living in the past — that you’re hostile toward modern society?
Edwards: Oh, sure. Absolutely. I’m not ashamed of that. You know, I shut off my radio in 1953. When Hank Williams died, so did everything else. That’s not totally true, of course, but that’s the way I pretty much feel.
C&I: Do you feel cheated not to have been born 150 years ago?
Edwards: My answer to that is the line in “The Old Cow Man”: “I’m glad I wasn’t born no later than I was.”
C&I: What would an 1880s cowboy think of Texas today?
Edwards: I bet he could be dropped into certain places like where I live at this moment and say, “Not a lot has changed here.” But I couldn’t say that about a lot of the areas and urban sprawl. But there’s a lot of places here and in all our Western states where if you dropped a 19th-century cowboy into the right place he’d say, “Well, this is just like I left it, pretty much.”
C&I: If you were dropped around a campfire in 1880s Texas, what would the cowboys think of you?
Edwards: I think I’d be a quick compadre because of the fact that I respect that lifestyle. Even though I am not a cowboy, I am a very close observer. I don’t say I’m a cowboy because I don’t make my living doing that. But I respect the profession. And I’ve ridden horses and had horses pretty much all my life.
C&I: Have you found a replacement for your beloved Rebel, who died a few years back?
Edwards: Not really. Horse people will understand — if you’ve had one good horse in your lifetime, you’ve really come out ahead. I had him for, gosh, he was only a 6-year-old when I got him, and he died when he was 32. That’s pretty old for a horse. It’s kind of sad when you lose one.
I’ve got six horses out here and I love them all, but Rebel was really special. I took him to all sorts of places and played rodeo appearances, and I did a kind of Gene Autry act with him. If you had a horse that was bulletproof, he was really bulletproof. You could take him into a hotel full of people and never spook him. He was just as calm as he could be. He was one-of-a-kind.
C&I: What is the least cowboy part of your life? Do you do yoga or eat chopped salads?
Edwards: Oh, no! But I drink Starbucks coffee. When I tell people that, they say, “Starbucks! That’s bad for your image.” But you know what? In the 1800s when the chuck wagon had a bean grinder on it, they bought all the coffee in bulk and it probably tasted a lot like Starbucks, not that brown water you get at McDonald’s.
C&I: Have you ever taught a history class? Seems like you’d be good at it.
Edwards: You gotta realize I didn’t even finish high school. I thought I was too smart to finish school, and I went out traveling around the country. You could do it in those days, the 1950s. Later, I [ended up] with all this history of the songs and the stories and books I read. I just started sharing these stories and all of sudden people were listening. Subsequently, I got to go to Yale and Harvard and give lectures on cowboy music.
C&I: Your stories and music express a lot of bitterness and regret, even anger. Yet, as a performer and person you always seem so sunny and happy.
Edwards: You’re right on, man. That’s exactly right. I’m basically a happy-go-lucky guy. Though I am opinionated about things — and that does get you in trouble. But I love what I do. You are right, though — on most of it, it’s on that sad end. The loss and things like that, I relate to that. I kind of live in that era and lament the passing of our culture and our history.
C&I: And your fans really connect with that sentiment, that pain of loss, don’t they?
Edwards: They come up to you with these wonderful stories that show that they really, really listen. There was a guy a couple days ago in Victorville, California. At the show I sang “The Great Speckled Bird.” And I said, “This is from Jeremiah 12:9 in the Bible.” And after the show the guy comes up and opens up his Bible and says, “Would you underline Jeremiah 12:9 and sign your name in the corner? That’s okay to do, isn’t it?” I’m just giving you an idea how dedicated the people who follow this are.
Eight Classic Edwards Tracks
Don Edwards has been collecting and recording cowboy songs for 50 years. Here’s a starter kit of his favorites.
• “The Ballad of Jack Thorp”
“That was a kindred spirit kind of thing,” Edwards says about the song he wrote. “Jack Thorp was the very first guy to systematically collect cowboy songs [Songs of the Cowboys] in the late 19th century. In 1908 he published a book of cowboy songs, which was the first publication of American folk music of any kind.”
• “When the Work’s All Done This Fall”
About a cowpuncher killed in a stampede, Edwards calls this Marty Robbins track “a pure cowboy song.”
• “The Strawberry Roan”
“Any of those old cowboy ballads that pertain to that time are good,” says Edwards. “ ‘Zebra Dun’ is another good one.”
• “Coyotes”
A lament of “the old days, when the country was wild all around.” Edwards would likely be lynched if he tried to do a show without performing his signature song.
• “Cattle Call”
“Eddy Arnold had the hit with it, and it was a very good version,” says Edwards. “But I do it more the way the cows heard it, basically the original version by the guy that wrote it.”
• “Little Joe, the Wrangler”
The Jack Thorp classic has also been recorded by Bob Wills, The Sons of the Pioneers, Red Steagall, and Chris LeDoux. “Even now, people request it,” says Edwards. “That’s one of the very popular ones.”
• “I’d Like to Be in Texas”
“Wherever I go, not a show goes by that I can get away without doing this one,” says Edwards. “That would be right up there with ‘Little Joe, the Wrangler.’ ”
• “Man Walks Among Us”
Another Marty Robbins song Edwards loves singing. “It’s always been one of my favorites,” he says. “I don’t do it all the time, but it’s one I really relate to.”
— C.T.
