KTWU Sunflower Journeys 1601A - Home on the Range
Produced by Amanda Shaw
Narrator: “Home on the Range” began its life as a poem written by a bachelor doctor near Smith Center, Kansas. It would eventually spread like wildfire across the plains, ingraining itself into our culture. This anthem of the west is arguably the most recognizable song in America, perhaps even the world, and it all began around 1872, when Dr. Brewster Higley sat down in his dugout and penned a poem called “Western Home.” Kelly Werts: Brewster Higley was a doctor, who retired from his practice in Indiana. He just wanted to get away from it all, so he came to Kansas. He was typical—sort a typical—bachelor homesteader. There were a lot of those who came out here. Tom: So he came out to Smith Center, Kansas. He was one of these what they used to call writing doctors. They had writing lawyers and they had writing professionals—people who were just attracted to or obsessed by poetry. Often times, they would get it published in the local newspaper or they would send it to friends or they would show it to people. Evidently, Dr. Brewster Higley, when he was working on a couple of guys, showed them the poem called "Western Home," and they loved it and they said "you really ought to get this set to music. And so, he took it into town, and there was a local guy named Dan Kelley who was a construction person kind of entrepreneur in Smith Center. He was also a musician and part of this band, I guess it was called, the Harlan Brothers Orchestra. He set it to music, and it started being sung around and it was first published in 1873 in the Smith County Pioneer. Kelly: When it was originally written, the way they sang it was a little bit different. They used to sing, "A home, a home, where the deer and antelope play." Very different. In fact it didn't even have the words "home on the range." Then, as the years when by, cowboys learned this song, and they were traveling all across the west. Tom: One of the very first corruptions, if you will, of the original poem was to call it "Home on the Range," and to turn the word "range" into a noun instead of as it is in "Western Home" where it is a verb. Kelly: (singing) "I would not exchange my home here to range." That's how it originally went. So, the word "range" was a verb, to range, to go out, you know, traveling away from my home. Well, some cowboy somewhere who was feeling at home on the range, the noun, the range, just switched those words around a little bit, and he sang, "I would not exchange my home on the range," and the rest is history. Narrator: Around 1910, a folklorist named John Lomax printed a version of “Home on the Range” he’d heard in Texas, setting the standard for the words and melody we know today. Kelly: When John Lomax printed that song in a book, it was kind of set in stone. That song hasn't changed appreciably since that time. Then, on the night he was first elected President, Franklin D. Roosevelt heard a group of reporters singing “Home on the Range”, and mentioned to them it was his favorite song. Radios across the country began playing it, and soon “Home on the Range” was a hit. Tom: It became nationally popular. Once radio started, it became popular on the radio, and that's when money got into it. That's when "Home on the Range" really became discovered, and Dr. Brewster Higley became discovered. In 1934, a lawsuit brought by William and Mary Goodwin of Tempe, Arizona, claimed copyright of the song, they said they’d written in 1905 as “An Arizona Home.” Kelly: So they brought out a lawyer who started sniffing around. He went through the whole west interviewing people and he finally ended up in Smith County, where he tracked that song down. And they figured it was written around 1872. At that point, the song really became a product of Kansas. Once the true origin of the song was uncovered, many Kansans began to lobby to make “Home on the Range” the official state song—an idea not without controversy. Kelly: Not everybody liked the idea of "Home on the Range" being the state song. They thought it was too slow, or sort of sad sounding. Tom: There were some legislators who objected to the sort of prairie bucolic nature of the song. They wanted to paint a more economically thriving or modern image of the state at that time. By that time, "Home on the Range" was so affectionately planted in the hearts of Kansans, that legislators who didn't like it were instantly voted against. Narrator: So it was in fact made the state song in 1947. Dr. Brewster Higley's "Western Home" is really about home, at the same time it's about the openness and the range. In other words, it's about the natural landscape, but it's also about a home there and building a home there. Which is part of what people wanted when they came to Kansas, but at the same time, they sort of wanted the openness as well. That's been one of the ambivalences of pioneering, that to make a life you have to destroy, in some ways, the natural beauty of the place. Tom: Here's what Kirke Mechem, writing in the Kansas State Historical Society's Kansas Historical Quarterly in 1949, just after it had become the state song, he wrote: "Somehow, out on the lonely prairie, an obscure poet and an unknown singer created an artistic paradox: A perfect blending of man's nostalgia for home, and his dreams of some far-away and fairer land. This ambivalent masterpiece has turned out to be the ideal expression of the love which Kansans feel for their unpredictable state.
This transcript is from KTWU's Sunflower Journeys 2003 season. A production of: |
