Cowboys and Indians, Fiddlers and Tejanos

preview / By Bob Doran

(Feb. 16, 2012) “Oh, give me land, lots of land under starry skies above; don’t fence me in.

Let me ride through the wide-open country that I love; don’t fence me in.

Wylie Gustafson PHOTO BY ROSS HECOX

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Let me be by myself in the evenin’ breeze,

and listen to the murmur of the cottonwood trees,

send me off forever but I ask you please; don’t fence me in.”

— from “Don’t Fence Me In,” by Cole Porter and Bob Fletcher.

Cole Porter wrote those lyrics back in 1934, borrowing the last four words, which became the song title, from a poem by Bob Fletcher, an engineer who worked for the Department of Highways in Montana’s big sky country. Singers ranging from Bing Crosby to David Byrne covered it, and now it gives a title to a National Council for the Traditional Arts package tour, Don‘t Fence Me In: Songs, Music and Poetry of the American West.

Since the days of Buffalo Bill’s Wild West vaudeville shows, Americans have held a fascination with the myth of the frontier: unfenced, wide-open spaces and cowboys and Indians. While there’s no horseback riding involved, the NCTA review follows in the tradition.

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