Eddy Arnold - Cattle Call

Roy Roger's six shooters are being auctioned, and so cowboys everywhere are sitting up. When you think cowboy music you think of Roy, and Gene Autry, but also Eddy Arnold.

The son of a sharecropper, the "Tennessee Plowboy" dropped out of High School to help on the farm. Good with a guitar and blessed with a good singing voice, he started playing on the radio as a teenager, and was ultimately discovered by Col. Tom Parker, the same manager who discovered Elvis. Arnold "only" sold 85 million records in a career that spanned over sixty years.

His sound was a "pure" country one until the 1950s, when the newfangled Rock 'n Roll cut into sales. With Jim Reeves, Arnold reworked his sound to appeal to a wider audience. The resulting "Nashville Sound" was the precursor of Patsy Cline's "Countrypolitan".

It was pretty controversial - some folks didn't think it was "real country". But it sure sold records. His 1965 "Make the World Go Away" was an international hit.

Cattle Call is from the early days, with a purer country sound. Something that Roy certainly knew.



Cattle Call (Songwriter: Tex Owens)

The cattle are prowlin',
The coyotes are howlin'
Way out where the doggies roam
Where spurs are a jinglin'
And the cowboy is singing
His lonesome cattle call

He rides in the sun
'Til his days work is done
And he rounds up the cattle each fall
Singing his cattle call

For hours he would ride
On the range far and wide
When the night wind blows up and slow
His heart is a feather
In all kinds of weather
He sings his cattle call

He's browned as a fairy
From ridin' the prairie
And he sings with an western drawl
Singing his cattle call

The Nashville Sound was very different indeed. Here's Eddy with Dean Martin in 1965:



Pretty fun, although not particularly country. Eddy Arnold died only a couple years ago, two months after the death of his wife of 66 years. Quite a run there, too.