The World’s Best Yodeling Cowboy Rides into Rice for Lecture

Contact: Philip Montgomery
Phone: (713) 831-4792

The World’s Best Yodeling Cowboy Rides into Rice for Lecture

The world’s best yodeling cowboy Don Edwards
will pull off the trail drive to sing and lecture about the "cowboy
way" at Rice University.

His lecture and performance, entitled "Words and Music in Songs
of the West," will be held on Thursday, March 2, at 4 p.m. in 309
Sewall Hall. This will be the second in the lecture and music series
Language and Music, presented by the Center for the Study of
Cultures and the Rice’s Department of Linguistics.

"He (Edwards) may be the world’s best interpreter of cowboy
music," said Sydney Lamb, a professor of linguistics at Rice and a
folk musician who regularly performs in Houston, "and he’s
definitely the world’s best yodeler."

Edwards told the Chicago Sun-Times, in a 1992 interview, that"yodeling came from listening to coyotes and hearing Indians
holler"you mix it up with the Swiss yodels and you have a lot of
variations."

Edwards is a singer, guitarist and performer of cowboy music,
who records for Warner Western Records, a subsidiary of Warner Bros.
Records. Western Records was formed in 1992 in response to increased
interest in cowboys and the music of the Old West.

The Library of Congress included some of Edwards’ recordings in
its folklore archives, and the National Cowboy Hall of Fame awarded
him the Wrangler Award for Outstanding Traditional Western Music.

Although originally from rural New Jersey, Edwards headed for
Texas while in his teens, drawn by the mystique of the cowboy life.
He did a few rodeos as well as some ranch work, but, "it didn’t take
me long to find out that guitar-playing was my thing," Edwards told
Texas Highways in 1991. At 10-years-old, he started playing guitar.
He recorded his first record in 1964.

He has recorded three albums for Western Records alone. Lamb
said Western Records imposed some restrictions on the first two
albums regarding song arrangements, stylistic elements and backup
instrumentation. But Edwards’ first two records for Western Records
did so well that the company gave him free rein for his third one.

Edwards pursues an active touring and performing schedule in
addition to running a ranch near Weatherford, Texas. While he and
his wife are on the road, his mother-in-law, Mary Davis, holds down
the fort, taking care of the cattle and horses.

"They’re all spoiled," she said of the animals, "and they all
have names."

So when Edwards is out singing about the cowboy way, whether at
the White Elephant Saloon in Fort Worth or in Sewall Hall, he can
rest assured that the livestock are in good hands.

Rice University is an independent, coeducational, nonsectarian
private university dedicated to undergraduate teaching and graduate
studies, research and professional training in selected disciplines.
It has an undergraduate student population of 2,584, a graduate and
professional student population of 1,489 and a full-time faculty of
448.

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