Cattle Call
by Tex Owens
"My late husband was a real cowboy, he really rode the
range, and at one time he worked for the King Ranch.
This is the way I remember him telling how he wrote the
song 'Cattle Call': 'I was sitting in the office
building on the eleventh floor of the Pickwick Hotel in
Kansas City, Missouri, waiting to do a broadcast on KMBC.
Snow began falling. Small flakes at first, then big
ones, so big they blotted out my view of the buildings
through the window. Now, I grew up on a ranch and I used
to do a lot of cattle feeding and in winter I could
never help feeling sorry for the dumb animals out in the
wet and cold. Sitting there in the hotel, watching the
snow, my sympathy went out to the cattle everywhere, and
I just wished I could call them all around me and break
some corn over a wagon wheel and feed them. That's when
the words , 'cattle call,' came to my mind. I picked up
my guitar and in thirty minutes I had wrote the music
and four verses to the song."
—Maude J. (Mrs. Tex) Owens
Cattle Call
The cattle are prowlin' and the coyotes are howlin'
Way out where the dogies bawl
Where spurs are a-jinglin' a cowboy is singin'
This lonesome cattle call
Woo-hoo woo-hoo hoo hoo
Woo-hoo woo-hoo hoo hoo
Woo-hoo woo-hoo hoo hoo hoo
Woo-hoo woo-hoo hoo
He rides in the sun, till his day's work is done
And he rounds up the cattle each fall
Woo-hoo woo-hoo hoo hoo
Singin' his cattle call.
For hours he will ride on the range far and wide
When the night wind blows up a squall
His heart is a feather in all kinds of weather
He sings his cattle call
Woo-hoo woo-hoo hoo hoo
Woo-hoo woo-hoo hoo hoo
Woo-hoo woo-hoo hoo hoo hoo
Woo-hoo woo-hoo hoo
He's brown as a berry from ridin' the prairie
And sings with an ol' western drawl
Woo-hoo woo-hoo hoo hoo
Singin' his cattle call.
