(upbeat country music) (audience applauding and cheering) - Well this first song I'm gonna play for you in this portion of the program back in 1908 when Jack Thorpe published a, self-published his very first book on cowboys, "Songs of the Cowboys," He featured this original number entitled, "Little Joe the Wrangler," that he wrote about an incident that he saw on the range and it goes a little something like this.

(somber guitar music) ♪ Little Joe, the wrangler, will never wrangle more ♪ ♪ His days with the remuda, they are done ♪ ♪ 'Twas a year ago last April he joined the outfit here ♪ ♪ The little Texas stray and all alone ♪ ♪ 'Twas long late in the evening he rode up to the herd ♪ ♪ On a little old brown pony he called Chaw ♪ ♪ With his brogan shoes and overalls a harder-looking kid ♪ ♪ You never in your life had seen before ♪ ♪ His saddle was a Southern kack built many years ago ♪ ♪ An O.K.

spur on one foot lightly hung ♪ ♪ And his hot roll in a cotton sack so loosely tied behind ♪ ♪ And a canteen from his saddle horn he'd slung ♪ ♪ He said he had to leave his home ♪ ♪ His daddy'd married twice ♪ ♪ And his new ma beat him every day or two ♪ ♪ So he saddled up old Chaw one night ♪ ♪ And lit a shuck this way ♪ ♪ Thought he'd try and paddle his own canoe ♪ ♪ Said he'd try and do the best he could ♪ ♪ If we'd only give 'em work ♪ ♪ But he didn't know straight up about a cow ♪ ♪ So the boss he cut him out a mount and kindly put him on ♪ ♪ For he sorta liked this little stray somehow ♪ ♪ Taught him how to herd the horses ♪ ♪ Learned to know them all ♪ ♪ To round 'em up by daylight if he could ♪ ♪ To follow the chuck-wagon and to always hitch the team ♪ ♪ And help the cosinero rustle wood ♪ ♪ We'd ridden to Red River and the weather had been fine ♪ ♪ We were camped down on the south side in a bend ♪ ♪ When a norther commenced blowing ♪ ♪ And we doubled up our guards ♪ ♪ For it took all hands to hold the cattle then ♪ ♪ Little Joe the wrangler was called out with the rest ♪ ♪ And scarcely had the kid got to the herd ♪ ♪ When the cattle they stampeded ♪ ♪ Like a hailstorm on they flew ♪ ♪ And all of us was riding for the lead ♪ ♪ Between the streaks of lightning ♪ ♪ You could see a horse ahead ♪ ♪ 'Twas was little Joe the wrangler in the lead ♪ ♪ He was riding Old Blue Rocket ♪ ♪ With his slicker above his head ♪ ♪ Trying to catch the leaders in their speed ♪ ♪ At last we got 'em millin' and kind of quietened down ♪ ♪ The double guards back to the camp did go ♪ ♪ But one of them was missing ♪ ♪ And we all knew at a glance ♪ ♪ Was our little Texas stray poor Wrangler Joe ♪ ♪ Next morning just at sun up, we found where Rocket fell ♪ ♪ Out in a washout twenty feet below ♪ ♪ Beneath his horse, smashed to a pulp ♪ ♪ His horse had ran the knell ♪ ♪ On our little Texas stray, poor Wrangler Joe ♪ (audience applauding) (lightly strumming guitar) An another larger than life character of the West is a fellow that's depicted on the walls over here.

This wonderful black cowboy by the name of Nat Love, and he was one of the few black cowboys to write his own autobiography.

And I had a chance to read it.

And he was born in Davidson County, Tennessee and born into slavery.

And after emancipation he moved out west to become a cowboy working in Holbrook, Arizona, which is a place where my grandfather started a church in the 1950s.

And then after doing his cowboy work for a while like the old song says, "don't fence me in."

He didn't wanna be fenced in as they began to finally tamed the west.

And so we began to become a Pullman porter working on the railroad line.

So he traveled from Denver all the way up to Chicago and all the way around this country.

And I just thought that sort of transition of life with one person going from a, working from, uh, working with a horse and buggy all the way into being a Pullman porter, working on the the train line, the modern marvel of American society.

I felt like that deserved a song.

And so I decided to write this little one called, "Steel pony blues."

I caught my steel pony and boys, I'm going a ride.

(light guitar music) ♪ When you get down to Holbrook ♪ ♪ You won't find me there, Good Lord ♪ ♪ I caught the first thing smokin' down the road somewhere ♪ ♪ I caught the first thing smokin' down the road somewhere ♪ ♪ 'Cause caught my steel pony and boys I'm going to ride ♪ ♪ I'm gettin' far too old to follow this here herd ♪ ♪ I caught the first thing smokin' down the road somewhere ♪ ♪ 'Cause caught my steel pony and boys I'm going to ride ♪ ♪ I'm gettin' far too old to follow this here herd ♪ ♪ Good Lord ♪ ♪ I caught the first thing smokin' down the road somewhere ♪ ♪ I caught the first thing smokin' down the road somewhere ♪ ♪ 'Cause caught my steel pony and boys I'm going to ride ♪ Picking it, one time, Six.

(light guitar music continues) ♪ Now, they call me Mister Flemons ♪ ♪ 'Cause I'm a Pullman Porter now, Good Lord ♪ ♪ I caught the first thing smokin' down the road somewhere ♪ ♪ I caught the first thing smokin' down the road somewhere ♪ ♪ 'Cause I caught my steel pony and boys I'm going to ride ♪ (light guitar music continues) (light guitar music continues) (light guitar music continues) ♪ Now, they call me Mister Flemons ♪ ♪ 'Cause I done told that guitar down, Good Lord ♪ ♪ I caught the first thing smokin' down the road somewhere ♪ ♪ Now when you get over there, you won't find me ♪ ♪ 'Cause I caught my steel pony and boys I'm gonna ride.

♪ Go ahead, get it one more time, Six.

Take 'em on down to the trail.

(light guitar music continues) (light guitar music continues) (audience applauding) Thank you so much everybody.

Well, I guess the best way to start the conversation is to kind of get an impression of how everybody got into the cowboy culture.

So what was your introduction to cowboy and horse culture?

I guess we'll start with Andy Hedges, starting on my far left.

- Well, I grew up in a little community called Tokyo, Texas about 60 miles southwest of Lubbock, Texas.

And my dad had been a bull rider before I was born.

He rode bulls and college rodeos and you know, all around Texas.

And by the time I came along, my dad had changed careers and had become a primitive Baptist pastor.

But I grew up with my dad's rodeo stories.

We lived out in the country, always had a couple of horses and looked after some cattle.

And I really got my love for all things cowboy and Western from my dad.

And he also introduced me to Western music.

This was back in the 1980s and he would pick up cassettes of people like "Sons of the Pioneers" and "Tex Ritter," "Marty Robbin's Gunfighter Ballads," and "Jimmy Rogers."

And so I grew up listening to that music and watching a lot of westerns with my dad.

Hearing his rodeo stories and also had the opportunity to work on a ranch or two, you know, go on some sure enough brandings and roundups and things.

And so I had a nice introduction to the real working cowboy culture as a kid as well.

- Wonderful.

Well, Ranger Doug?

- Okay, well two different sources.

My mother's families were Finnish immigrants.

They lived way up in the northern Michigan on the banks of Lake Superior.

They didn't get the Grand Ole Opry up there.

They had the National Barn Dance.

And so two of my uncles, my mother was an excellent singer too, but my two of my uncles played guitar.

And so when we'd go up there on vacations in the summer, they'd gather around and sing the old Western songs, the old country songs.

And then in the middle 1950s, my dad was in the Navy, he served in Korea and we moved to California.

Well, in the fifties in California, cowboys were everywhere.

The town hall party, western varieties.

I mean, just, there was a show of Spade Cooley.

There was, and my hero Sheriff John, I had the fun brigade and I'd race home from school to watch Sheriff John.

And it just something about the music, the imagery, I, you know, eventually learned to ride and became a very mediocre horseman.

But I didn't grow up in the cowboy culture, but I grew up in the cowboy music culture and loved it from the time I was a kid.

- Wonderful, and Dr. Fleming?

- Well maybe you guessed it by the way, I'm dressed but I didn't grow up in the cowboy culture.

(all laughing) I was born and raised in Detroit, Michigan.

However, even though originally I was contacted because I'm a scholar of the African-American experience to kind of put all this in context, what they didn't realize is I started riding horses when I was seven, started showing when I was 10.

But the kind of riding I did was very different, it was English.

And the man who trained me originally was a man named Henry Jennings who had trained horses for Joe Lewis the Boxer.

A lot of people don't realize that there was a thriving African American equestrian culture in the Midwest.

And in the 1930s and 1940s there was an all black horse show circuit that was financed largely with Joe Lewis' money.

And ever since then I've been crazy about horses.

And so I can put all this in perspective because I'm a scholar, but I'm also a practitioner.

In fact, when I leave here tomorrow, I'm gonna go ride my horse.

(all laughing) - Wonderful, wonderful.

And Manuel?

- Well, the cowboy culture was something I grew up with.

Actually having cattle and goats and sheep, and live somewhere else up there in Mexico.

You know, I was born in '33, so I'm just 90 years old.

But my heroes became cowboys that I had never seen because movies was starting to, at the age of six, five, I had to walk like five miles to go to the little theater that will show all movies.

And I remember that the episodes were incredible.

They were the most beautiful thing.

That's when I met a person that would be my hero for the rest of my life.

And that was the Lone Ranger.

(audience applauds) And that's my story.

- Well, thank you so much for that.

I guess that leads me to, I guess, kind of break down a couple of parts of cowboy culture that I'd love for each of you to discuss.

Like with Andy, I know you do a lot of cowboy poetry along with music as well.

And how has cowboy literature played a role in creating a unique form of American literature?

And then how does that apply to a lot of the places that you play?

- Well, the cowboy poetry tradition it's an oral tradition that really goes back to the beginnings of what we think of as cowboy culture.

You know, the origins go even deeper but we kind of think of the beginning of that being the trail driving era.

When there was a need to take large herds of Longhorn cattle from places like South Texas to the Railheads up north and the group of men doing that job, this job that had never been done before, were coming from all these different cultural backgrounds and were bringing their stories and their musical traditions with them and started writing down poems and reciting them.

And it's kind of intertwined with the cowboy song tradition.

Often a song would be recited or a poem would be set to music.

So it's hard to separate those two out.

- Amazing, wonderful.

And well, I guess we'll go to you Ranger Doug and maybe speak a little bit about what's in your book and how cowboy culture and fashion were a part of country music and how did those things come together and what's some of the ways that you represent that tradition of music?

- Well, when westerns were hugely popular in the twenties and when sound came to film in 1929, it was logical to have music.

And they had somebody got the idea and it was tried two or three times to have a singing cowboy because cowboys have always been associated with a guitar or a fiddle, sometimes a banjo.

And oh, I guess Bob Steele sang in a movie and John Wayne had his voice dubbed in a singing cowboy movie.

And they tried it two or three times, but this kid from, well, he was from Texas originally, but he came out of the Chicago Barn Dance called Gene Autry, got the chance to make a movie and the public loved him.

And so this whole, as Andy was saying, this whole romantic tradition came alive at that point.

And two guys, especially Bob Nolan and Tim Spencer began writing these beautiful poetic sometimes majestic, sometimes silly songs of the west.

Like Tumbling Tumbleweeds and Cool Water, and Everlasting Hills of Oklahoma and the Timber Trail.

And you could go on and on and suddenly every movie studio had to have a singing cowboy.

And so Tex Ritter moved to Hollywood and Ray Whitley moved to Hollywood and Jimmy Wakeley moved to Hollywood, and eventually Rex Allen and of course, someone who you may touch on Herbert Jeffries.

From Detroit, (chuckles) moved to Hollywood and made singing cowboy westerns.

And like Manuel, I grew up watching those things and just loved the music.

It just was so inspiring to me.

- Wonderful.

Well, Dr. Fleming, now in your experience as a horse rider, now, what parts of the history have informed you as you've gone along?

Of course, there was a love of wanting to ride a horse that began with your interest, but of course there's history that you found that has been a part of the black experience in horsemanship.

Could you maybe talk a little bit about that?

- Yes, lemme try to put this in a broader perspective for everyone.

But first before I say anything else, I have to say, I used to watch The Lone Ranger all the time.

(audience chatters) - (chuckles) Me Too.

- And the first televised show of, it was on the radio first, but when it came out on television, the first show was shown in a Detroit studio September 15th, 1949 three days after I was born.

Of course I wasn't watching it then.

(all laughing) But I want you to put this in the broader 19th century perspective when all this was going on.

Civil Wars ends in 1865 and African Americans didn't wanna stay anywhere near the plantation because they were still being treated like slaves, even though they weren't enslaved.

So at this point, there was a great migration out of the south, and a lot of African Americans went west.

And in fact, one of the biggest leaders of that internal migration was a man named Benjamin, nicknamed Pat Singleton, who's from Nashville.

He had been, actually, he'd been enslaved on a plantation in Davidson County.

He kept running away, they kept recapturing him.

And he finally, the last time he went all the way to Detroit, threatened to cross the bridge into Canada, decided not to, waited it up there till the Civil War ends.

He comes back and as soon as the war is over, he comes back, starts leading people to Kansas.

And it was at this point that you get African Americans who become involved with this beginnings of cowboy culture.

- Wonderful.

Well, thank you so much Dr. Fleming for that wonderful information there.

Now we'll pivot to sort of a different part of the cowboy culture as you were, we were talking about the singing cowboys.

One of the things that's so distinctive about what we think about with modern country music are some of the amazing garbs that you've created, Manuel, over the years.

And of course Ranger Doug has a Manuel right now he's wearing a wonderful suit from you.

When you are creating a suit or a style for a country singer, where do you start?

Where does the process begin for creating that magical suit that they're gonna have on stage?

'Cause of course, the audience, when we see it, it looks like magic, you know, 'cause of course we see, think of Porter Wagoner in his very distinctive looks and all the wonderful rhinestone cowboys.

Where does it begin for you?

- I started when I was seven.

Sewing and learning and you know, by the time I was 12 I decided to be somebody I never dreamt of being, you know?

It all started really, one time visiting from some special school in Mexico, my family and seeing my brother sewing pants.

And I said, "how you doing-" I was like this in front of him and how you doing (indistinct) pants making stuff?

He says, "I'll be doing so much better if you idiot "will come and sit down on the sewing machine to help me."

And we were in competition from day one since we met, my family and me.

(Dom chuckling) Okay, why don't I?

And I go and sit down at the sewing machine and I'm still sewing there.

So that's how everything really starts.

(audience cheering and applauding) - Thank you to our wonderful panelist Andy Hedges, Ranger Doug Green, Dr. Cynthia Fleming and Manuel.

(upbeat guitar music) ♪ Now he's a US marshall ♪ ♪ And a long ranger ♪ ♪ He's a US marshall ♪ ♪ And a lone ranger ♪ ♪ He is a lone ranger ♪ ♪ Bass Reeves is his name ♪ ♪ There was a man way out west ♪ ♪ Rode around this country with the star on his breast ♪ ♪ Every white man and a Indian tribe ♪ ♪ He was the baddest man there ever was alive ♪ ♪ He's a US marshall ♪ ♪ And a lone ranger ♪ ♪ He's a lone ranger ♪ ♪ Bass Reeves is his name ♪ ♪ Broad-Shouldered and six feet tall ♪ ♪ Rode a sorrel that could out run 'em all ♪ ♪ Master of the pistol, master of disguise ♪ ♪ He looked every man he caught now dead in the eye ♪ ♪ 'Cause he's a US marshall ♪ ♪ And a lone ranger ♪ ♪ He is a lone ranger ♪ ♪ Bass Reeves is his name ♪ ♪ Born a slave down in Arkansas ♪ ♪ Live with his master and his dear old mom ♪ ♪ Mama said, son, you ain't free ♪ ♪ But you can do anything you want ♪ ♪ Though if the mister don't see ♪ ♪ Now he's a US marshall ♪ ♪ And Long Ranger ♪ ♪ He is a long ranger ♪ ♪ Bass Reeves' name ♪ ♪ Now I'll tell you another thing ♪ ♪ Master called Bass Reeves to a gambling game ♪ ♪ Bass's freedom was the stake that he made ♪ ♪ Now master cheated ♪ ♪ You oughta heard the sound ♪ ♪ Of Bass's hoof beats as master hit the ground ♪ ♪ Now he's a US marshall ♪ ♪ And a lone ranger ♪ ♪ He is a lone ranger ♪ ♪ Bass Reeves is his name ♪ ♪ Oh ♪ (upbeat guitar music continues) (upbeat guitar music continues) ♪ You hear Bass Reeves break into song ♪ ♪ Getting down the business ♪ ♪ And it won't be long ♪ ♪ Whether in Muskoka ♪ ♪ A hundred miles around ♪ ♪ They call him Bass Reeves ♪ ♪ He's bound to track you down ♪ ♪ 'Cause he's a US marshall ♪ ♪ And a lone ranger ♪ ♪ He's a lone ranger ♪ ♪ Bass Reeves is his name ♪ (light music)