OK, so even though I don’t spend a lot of time sitting out on the range by the campfire with my harmonica, I am a sucker for some good cowboy songs. And here are some of my favorites. A few are classics that you probably already know and some are a little more obscure. Feel free to sing along as you read the lyrics for these cowboy songs.
Oh give me a home, where the buffalo roam
And the deer and the antelope play
Where seldom is heard a discouraging word
And the skies are not cloudy all day.
(chorus)
Home, home on the range
Where the deer and the antelope play
Where seldom is heard a discouraging word
And the skies are not cloudy all day
How often at night, when the heavens are bright
With the light of the glimmering stars
I have stood there amazed, and asked as I gazed
If their glory exceeds that of ours.
The red man was pressed from this part of the west
He is likely no more to return
To the banks of Red River, where seldom if ever
His flickering campfires will burn.
I love the wild flowers in this bright land of ours,
I love the wild curlew’s shrill scream;
The bluffs and white rocks, and antelope flocks
That graze on the mountains so green.
The range’s filled up with farmers and there’s fences ev’rywhere
A painted house ‘most ev’ry quarter mile
They’re raisin’ blooded cattle and plantin’ sorted seed
And puttin’ on a painful lot o’ style
There hain’t no grass to speak of and the water holes are gone
The wire of the farmer holds ’em tight
There’s little use to law ’em and little use to kick
And mighty sight less use there is to fight
There’s them coughin’ separaters and their dirty, dusty crews
And wagons runnin’ over with the grain
With smoke a-driftin’ upward and writin’ on the air
A story that to me is mighty plain
The wolves have left the country and the long-horns are no more
And all the game worth shootin’ at is gone
And it’s time for me to foller, ’cause I’m only in the way
And I’ve got to be a-movin’ — movin’ on
Deep within my heart lies a melody,
A song of old San Antone.
Where in dreams I live with a memory,
Beneath the stars all alone.
It was there I found beside the Alamo,
Enchantment strange as the blue up above.
A moonlit pass only she would know,
Still hears my broken song of love.
Moon in all your splendor, know only my heart.
Call back my Rose, Rose of San Antone.
Lips so sweet and tender like petals falling apart.
Speak once again of my love, my own.
Broken song, empty words I know,
Still live in my heart all alone,
For that moonlit pass by the Alamo,
And Rose, my Rose of San Antone.
I’m a roaming cowboy riding all day long,
Tumbleweeds around me sing their lonely song.
Nights underneath the prairie moon,
I ride along and sing this tune.
See them tumbling down
Pledging their love to the ground
Lonely but free I’ll be found
Drifting along with the tumbling tumbleweeds.
Cares of the past are behind
Nowhere to go but I’ll find
Just where the trail will wind
Drifting along with the tumbling tumbleweeds.
I know when night has gone
That a new world’s born at dawn.
I’ll keep rolling along
Deep in my heart is a song
Here on the range I belong
Drifting along with the tumbling tumbleweeds.