Cattle Trails and Songs of the West

On August 4 at 2:00 PM Joan Wells and Kris Simon will bring to the Betty Strong Encounter Center an entertaining living history performance about the Great Western Cattle Trail and the origin of western music through their “Cattle Trails and Songs of The West.”

The duo sings the songs of the early day cowboys. In 1874 cattle drives brought hundreds of thousands of cattle to Nebraska by way of the “Great Western Cattle Trail.”  Herds were gathered near San Antonio, Texas and driven up to a rail head in Ogallala, Nebraska.  There, many of them were loaded onto trains and taken east to Chicago and St. Louis.  During these four-month drives, cowboys would sing to the cattle to calm them and prevent stampedes.

They will talk about how the silver screen cowboys popularized many western songs such as The Streets Of Laredo, Home On The Range, Sioux City Sue, Back In The Saddle Again, Tumbling Tumbleweeds, Ride Em’ Cowboy, Cowtown, and San Antonio Rose. Western theme music continues to be written and sung today.  Some of the present western bands influenced by the cowboy songs include Riders In The Sky, Sons Of The Pioneers, Texas Playboys, Asleep At the Wheel, and the Texas Trail Hands.