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Circulation, P.O. Box 8559, Big Sandy, Texas 75755-8559.and I wrote a song called “Here We Go
Again,” and we got Ray Charles to record
it. That was in ’66, and by 1969, I had 60
of my songs recorded by other people,
and I started recording myself. My first
chart record was “Party Dolls and Wine,”
which was released in December of 1968.
It got into the Top 10, and that kicked my
career off.
Q: You like to sing about rodeos. Did you
ever participate in any?
A: When I was at school in West Texas
[A&M, in Canyon] a group of my friends
built a bucking barrel, a suspended bar-
rel. And I learned to ride that thing, and
they entered me in an intramural rodeo,
and I won it, but I had to tie my left arm
down to my chest so I wouldn’t slap
the bull and get disqualified. For about
three years I entered amateur rodeos in
the Panhandle and eastern New Mex-
ico—and then realized I could make a lot
more money playing the dances.
Q: You’re credited with discovering Reba
McEntire. How did that happen?
A: I saw her sing the national anthem at
the National Finals Rodeo in Oklahoma
City [in 1974], and I was really over-
whelmed with her ability to control her
voice, both from a tone standpoint and
an emotional standpoint. I was living in
Nashville at the time, and I needed a fe-
male singer to do two songs. So I invited
Reba and her mother to come to Nash-
ville, and we cut a demo on those two
songs. We pitched that demo and finally
got some interest from Mercury Records.
And so we signed Reba to Mercury, and it
just built from there.
Q: When did cowboy poetry become
part of your career?
A: I like to say that 1985 was the year that
sad songs and waltzes quit selling. What
I was doing was no longer competitive in
the radio world. That same year the first
Cowboy Poetry Gathering was held in
Elko, Nevada. I went out there and fell in
love with the art form and realized that’s
where my heart had been all of my life.
So for five years I didn’t write one song. I
wrote nothing but poetry, and as a result,
I created a whole new market for what I
do as far as performance goes.Q: What are some of your favorite ven-
ues to play?
A: I really like to perform for people who
understand what I’m talking about, and
that is primarily at functions for people
who are in the livestock industry—the
American Quarter Horse Association,
the Angus Association. I have performed
at the Fort Worth Stock Show five times,
and some of those years will always be
the highlight of my career.Q: Where do you like to take visitors in
this area?
A: I have a lot of friends who are inter-
ested in history, and there are a lot of his-
torical places like Isaac Parker’s cabin
[at Fort Worth’s Log Cabin Village] and
Greenwood Cemetery where Oliver Lov-
ing and Bose Ikard are buried in Weath-
erford. Everybody likes to go to Fort
Worth, to Cowtown, which is changing,
but they like to feel like they’re going
back a hundred years.Q: You travel a lot. What distinguishes
Texas from the rest of the nation?
A: Texas is its own country. And the rea-
son for that is we have so much pride
in who we are and what we’ve accom-
plished, and we have a feeling of be-
longing. It doesn’t make any difference
where I go in the world, if I wear a hat,
they’ll say, “Hey, cowboy.” Texas is iden-
tified with the trail drives that went north
to the railheads after the Civil War. And
so the cattle business made the image of
Texas, but it all started with those people
who did not give in to tyranny and devel-
oped their own way of life on their own
piece of ground.Q: How do you explain the
enduring appeal of cowboy poetry and
Western heritage?
A: The cowboy way of life that I like
to talk about extends from an agrar-
ian society where we had to depend on
our neighbors, not only for help but forsurvival. As we moved to the cities, we
forgot some of that. We didn’t have to re-
ally depend on each other anymore. So
life changed for all of America. But the
thing that remained is a respect for yes-
teryear and the ability to look forward
to tomorrow. So the traditions and val-
ues of an agrarian way of life make us
a harmonious society, and that lifestyle
is what America stands for—it’s honesty
and integrity, loyalty, work ethic, dedica-
tion to family, conviction about their be-
lief in God, and practicing common de-
cency and respect for their fellow man
every day.Q: Which of your poems are you most
proud of?
A: The main one is “The Fence that Me
and Shorty Built.” That was about les-
sons I learned from my uncle on his farm
in northwestern Iowa, when he indicated
to me that I’m in charge of my destina-
tion, and if I don’t choose to be the right
kind of person, then I wasn’t going to be
happy because nobody’s gonna be happy
with me.The Red Steagall Cowboy
Gathering and Western Swing
Festival is Oct. 25-27 at the Fort
Worth Stockyards. Catch Steagall
weekly on Cowboy Corner, which
airs on radio stations around the
country and on SiriusXM; and
on Red Steagall Is Somewhere
West of Wall Street, which airs
on RFD-TV and The Cowboy
Channel. Steagall’s latest album,
Hats Off to the Cowboy, is
planned for release this October.
redsteagall.com