Home On The Range

Home On The Range originally wrote as a poem called "My Western Home" by Dr. Brewster. M. Higley in the early 1870 in Smith Country, Kansas, without intending it for an audience. 

A local man named Trube Reese found the poem while visiting Higley's cabin and convinced him to turn it into a song. Higley got fiddler Daniel .E. Kelley to help him set the poem to music. Higley's original words are similar to those of the song today but not identical. The song was picked up by settlers, cowboys, and others and spread across the nation in various forms. When Texas singer Vernon Dalhardt made the first commercial recording of the song, it was a hit, and several other singers recorded the tune over the yeas. President Franklin Roosevelt even declared it his favorite song in 1932. By 1935, "Home on the Range" was everywhere. Different version of this song was sing by many great singers such as Frank Sinatra, Gene Autry, Neil Young and also made its way to the nursery rhymes, sing by Noelle and John. Home On The Range is often used in a concert, plays and film. Mr. Blanding Builds His Dream House (1948), You Are Good Man, Charlie Brown (1967), Where The Buffalo Roam (1980).

People identified with the personalized versions the same way they felt attached to their own homesteads. Some of the modifications stuck, and changed the song forever. Truth is, the words, "home on the range" never appear in Higley's original lyrics.

Dr. Brewster Higley (1876)
Oh, give me a home where the Buffalo roam Where the deer and the antelope play; Where seldom is heard a discouraging word, And the sky is not cloudy all day. Chorus A home! A home! Where the Deer and the Antelope play, Where seldom is heard a discouraging word, And the sky is not clouded all day. Oh! give me a land where the bright diamond sand Throws its light from the glittering streams, Where glideth along the graceful white swan, Like the maid in her heavenly dreams. Chorus Oh! give me a gale of the Solomon vale, Where the life streams with buoyancy flow; On the banks of the Beaver, where seldom if ever, Any poisonous herbage doth grow. Chorus How often at night, when the heavens were bright, With the light of the twinkling stars Have I stood here amazed, and asked as I gazed, If their glory exceed that of ours. Chorus 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. Chorus The air is so pure and the breezes so fine, The zephyrs so balmy and light, That I would not exchange my home here to range Forever in azures so bright. Chorus