Who sang "The Yellow Rose of Texas"?

[tooldummy]

A friend at work asked who sang the latest version of " The Yellow Rose of Texas" yesterday and I can not remember. I tried calling the local CW radio station, but they didn't know either. I remember a man and a woman sang a duo of it, but that's it. Oh, it wasn't Ernest Tubb either. Anybody remember?

[Valigator]

NOTE: The tune was first published in 1853 by an author identified only as "J.K.". It was a popular Confederate marching song during the Civil War and with the U.S. Cavalry on western outposts and along the cattle trails following the Civil War. In 1955 the tune was a hit record. Still lookin for singer...

[fishdoggydog]

Is that the tune Paul Newman sang in the Life and Times of Judge Roy Bean movie?

[BILLY D.]

THE BEST RENDITION OF THAT SONG I EVER HEARD WAS BY MICHAEL MARTIN MURPHY.

IT IS ON HIS ALBUM "COWBOY SONGS". THE LADY THE SONG WAS WRITEN ABOUT WAS EMILY WEST A MULATTO WHO WAS SUPPOSEDLY SUCH A GREAT DISTRACTION TO SANTA ANNA THAT HE LOST THE WAR OVER HER. FROM WHAT I UNDERSTAND SHE IS STILL CONSIDERED A HEROINE IN TEXAS.

THE TV SONG "YELLOW ROSE OF TEXAS" WAS SUNG BY JOHNNY LEE AND LAINE BRODY. IT WAS WRITEN FOR THE TV SHOW OF THE SAME NAME AND I THOUGHT IT SUCKED. IT DOES NOT PAY HOMAGE TO "THE YELLOW ROSE OF TEXAS". EMILY WEST.

IF YOU EVER GET TO HEAR MURPHY'S RENDITION LISTEN TO THE WORDS VEEERY CAREFULLY. THERE IS A LOT REVEALED IN THEM.

GOD BLESS AND HAPPY TRAILS.

[BILLY D.]

VAL

IF I REMEMBER CORRECTLY YOU ARE GOING TO BE LOOKING A LONG TIME FOR THE SINGER OF THE YELLOW ROSE OF TEXAS CIRCA 1955. THAT WAS THE YEAR I GRADUATED FROM HIGH SCHOOL AND I DRANK A LOT OF BEER SO MY MEMORY MIGHT NOT BE UP TO SNUFF. CHASING SKIRTS DIDN'T HELP EITHER.

THAT SONG AND RENDITION WAS BY MITCH MILLER AND HIS ORCHESTRA. SO FINDIN' A SINGER MIGHT BE A TAD DIFFICULT. ANY COWPOKE IN HIS RIGHT MIND HAS RECORDED THAT SONG DURING THEIR CAREERS. IT IS A STANDBY.

HAVE YOU EVER HEARD THE SONG RED RIVER VALLEY? ONE OF MY ALL TIME FAVORITES. HAVE YOU EVER PONDERED ABOUT THE WORDS, FEW FOLKS KNOW THAT IT WAS WRITEN ABOUT THE RED RIVER OF THE NORTH, CANADA, SPECIFICALLY. IT BECAME A LOVE SONG ALONG THE TEXAS, OKLAHOMA BORDER SIMPLY BY INSERTING THE WORD COWBOY INTO THE CANADIAN VERSION, BUT THE SONG WAS ACTUALLY WRITEN ABOUT THE RED RIVER REBELION IN CANADA IN 1869.

I LOVE COWBOY SONGS AND THE LIFESTYLE, YES I'M THE REAL DEAL.

COWBOY LOGIC:

AN OLD COWHAND AND A YOUNG BUCKAROO WERE WORKING ONE DAY, RIDIN' FENCE

THE OLD COWHAND DECIDED TO TEST THE KID ON HIS SKILLS AND COMMON SENSE

SO HE ASKED THE YOUNG BUCKAROO, "KID IF YA SAW THREE MEN IN A PICKUP DRESSED ALIKE FROM BOOTS TO HAT, COULD YA TELL WHICH ONE WAS THE REAL COWBOY FROM JUST BY WHERE THEY SAT?"

WELL THE THE YOUNG BUCKARRO SCRATCHED HIS HEAD AND SAID "GEE THERE JUST AIN'T NO WAY OF KNOWIN'"

THE OLD COWHAND SMILED AND SAID " SON YOU STILL GOT A WAYS TO GO."

"THE REAL COWBOY IS THE ONE IN THE MIDDLE. HE AIN'T THERE JUST BY FATE, FIRST HE DON'T HAVE TO DRIVE AND NEXT HE DON'T HAVE TO MESS WITH THE GATE."

WRITEN BY CHICK RAINS, DON COOK

IFF'N YA HAVE ANY MORE MUSICAL TRIVIA QUESTIONS LET ME KNOW. I'LL BORE YA TO DEATH, LOL.

BY THE WAY, ERNEST TUBB DID RECORD THE SONG ALSO. COULDN'T FIND A YEAR THOUGH.

IF YOUR EVER DOWN OKLAHOMA WAY STOP TO SEE THE COWBOY HALL OF FAME IN OK. CITY. YOU WON'T REGRET IT. IT IS SUPER.

GOD BLESS

[Hawkeye6]

http://www.tsha.utexas.edu/handbook/.../WW/fwe41.html
WEST, EMILY D. (?-?). Emily D. West, erroneously called Emily Morgan by those who presumed her a slave of James Morganqv and the "Yellow Rose of Texas" by twentieth-century myth-makers, was born a free black in New Haven, Connecticut. She signed a contract with agent James Morgan in New York City on October 25, 1835, to work a year as housekeeper at the New Washington Association'sqv hotel, Morgan's Point, Texas. Morgan was to pay her $100 a year and provide her transportation to Galveston Bay on board the company's schooner, scheduled to leave with thirteen artisans and laborers in November. She arrived in Texas in December on board the same vessel as Emily de Zavalaqv and her children. On April 16, 1836, while James Morgan was absent in Galveston in command of Fort Travis, Mexican cavalrymen under command of Col. Juan N. Almonteqv arrived at New Washington to seize President David G. Burnet,qv who was embarking on a schooner for Galveston Island. As the president and his family sailed away, the troops seized Emily and other black servants at Morgan's warehouse, along with a number of white residents and workmen. Gen. Antonio López de Santa Annaqv arrived at New Washington the following day, and after three days of resting and looting the warehouses, he ordered the buildings set afire and departed to challenge Sam Houston'sqv army, which was encamped about ten miles away on Buffalo Bayou. Emily was forced to accompany the Mexican army, doubtless already a rape victim. With regard to the Yellow Rose legend, she may have been in Santa Anna's tent when the Texans charged the Mexican camp on April 21, but it was not by choice. She could not have known Houston's plans, nor could she have intentionally delayed Santa Anna. Moreover, in their official reports after returning to Mexico, none of his disaffected officers mentioned the presence of a woman or even that el presidente was in a state of undress. After the battle Emily found refuge with Isaac N. Moreland,qv an artillery officer, who later made his home in Houston and served as county judge. Strangers assumed Emily was James Morgan's slave because she was black.
A story was told around campfires and in barrooms that Emily had helped defeat the Mexican army by a dalliance with Santa Anna. The only discovered documentation for this in the nineteenth century was a chance conversation in 1842 between a visiting Englishman and a veteran on board a steamer from Galveston to Houston. William Bollaertqv recorded in his journal, "The battle of San Jacinto was probably lost to the Mexicans, owing to the influence of a Mulatta Girl (Emily) belonging to Col. Morgan who was closeted in the tent with G'l Santana." Bollaert does not identify the veteran or say Emily was Morgan's slave. The edited diary, published in 1956, included that notation as a footnote with Bollaert's name attached, a fact that led readers to believe the note was a footnote in the original manuscript. The editor's 1956 footnote launched prurient interest on the part of two amateur historians who concocted the modern fiction. Francis X. Tolbert,qv a prolific journalist, says in his The Day of San Jacinto (1959) that Emily was a "decorative long-haired mulatto girl...Latin looking woman of about twenty." No footnote documents this description or the author's statement that she was in Santa Anna's tent. Tolbert also presumptively identified Morgan as the informant. Henderson Shuffler,qv also a journalist, became a publicist for Texas A&M University in the 1950s, wrote historical articles for the Southwestern Historical Quarterly,qv and made speeches while working at the Harry Ransom Humanities Research Centerqv at the University of Texas in the 1960s. On one occasion he said Emily was "the M'latta Houri" of the Texas Revolution,qv a "winsome, light-skinned...slave of James Morgan." He added that she was a fitting candidate for the identity of the girl in the then-popular Mitch Miller version of "The Yellow Rose of Texas." Shuffler credited Tolbert for bringing Emily's story out into the open and then manufactured more fantasies, including the whim that "her deliberately provocative amble down the street [in New Washington was] the most exciting event in town." He added that her story was "widely known and often retold...in the 1840s." In closing, he suggested that a stone might be placed at the San Jacinto battleground "In Honor of Emily Who Gave Her All for Texas Piece by Piece." In 1976 a professor of English at Sam Houston State University, Martha Anne Turner, published a small book, The Yellow Rose of Texas: Her Saga and Her Song, an outgrowth of a paper she delivered in 1969 at the American Studies Association of Texas. She credits Shuffler's speech and adds even more undocumented details before tracing the roots of the song. Thus the story was full-blown for the journalistic frenzy of the Texas Sesquicentennial in 1986.
The real Emily D. West remained in Texas until early 1837, when she asked for and received a passport allowing her to return home. Isaac Moreland wrote a note to the secretary of state saying that he had met Emily in April 1836, that she was a thirty-six-year-old free woman who had lost her "free" papers at the battleground. She stated that she came from New York in September 1835 with Colonel Morgan and was anxious to return home. Although there is no date on the application housed in the Texas State Archives, Mrs. Lorenzo de Zavala, by then a widow, was planning to return to New York on board Morgan's schooner in March, and it seems possible that Morgan arranged passage aboard for Emily.
BIBLIOGRAPHY: James M. Day, comp., Texas Almanac, 1857-1873: A Compendium of Texas History (Waco: Texian Press, 1967). W. Eugene Hollon and Ruth L. Butler, eds., William Bollaert's Texas (Norman: University of Oklahoma Press, 1956). Antonio López de Santa Anna et al., The Mexican Side of the Texan Revolution, trans. Carlos E. Castañeda (Dallas: Turner, 1928; 2d ed., Austin: Graphic Ideas, 1970). Frank X. Tolbert, The Day of San Jacinto (New York: McGraw-Hill, 1959; 2d ed., Austin: Pemberton Press, 1969). Martha Anne Turner, The Yellow Rose of Texas: Her Saga and Her Song (Austin: Shoal Creek Publishers, 1976).
Margaret Swett Henson
The following, adapted from the Chicago Manual of Style, 15th edition, is the preferred citation for this article.
Handbook of Texas Online, s.v. "WEST, EMILY D," http://www.tsha.utexas.edu/handbook/.../WW/fwe41.html (accessed February 8, 2005).

[Hawkeye6]

The Yellow Rose of Texas

There's a yellow rose in Texas
That I am going to see
No other darky knows her
No one only me
She cried so when I left her
It like to broke my heart
And if I ever more find her
We nevermore will part.

Chorus:
She's the sweetest rose of color
This darky ever knew
Her eyes are bright as diamonds
They sparkle like the dew
You may talk about dearest May
And sing of Rosa Lee
But the yellow rose of Texas
Beats the belles of Tennessee.

Where the Rio Grande is flowing
And the starry skies are bright
She walks along the river
In the quiet summer night

She thinks if I remember
When we parted long ago
I promised to come back again
And not to leave her so.
Oh now I am agoing to find her
For my heart is full of woe
And we will sing the song together
We sung so long ago
We will play the banjo gaily
And will sing the song of yore
And the yellow rose of Texas
Shall be mine forevermore.
-J.K.

[BILLY D.]

hawkeye6

I DON'T EVEN KNOW YOU BUT I LOVE YOU ANYWAY. THANK YOU SOOOOO MUCH FOR THAT INFO ON EMILY D. WEST. IT MEANS SO MUCH TO ME.

THE ONLY INFORMATION I HAD IS WHAT I HAD MEMORIZED FROM EXCERPTS THAT I HAD READ WHEN I WENT TO THE COWBOY HALL OF FAME.

ANYWAY WAY YOU LOOK AT IT SHE MUST HAVE BEEN ONE HELL OF A LADY. FOR A YOUNG PERSON OF THAT ERA TO PACK UP AND MOVE FOR A JOB? THE WAY SHE DID IS EXEMPLARY. THE FACT THAT SHE WAS A NEGRO AND A WOMAN MAKES IT EVEN MORE SO.

AS I SAID PREVIOUSLY, THANK YOU SO MUCH FOR THE INFORMATION ABOUT HER. I AM ETERNALLY INDEBTED TO YOU.

GOD BLESS

[Hawkeye6]

BILLY:

T'werent' nothing. Just ran a google search on TYROT and out she popped. Lyrics, too. Gut the thanks are appreciated.

H.

[earschplitinloudenboomer]

It was popular by Tex Ritter when I was growing up.

[Valigator]

You know a real cowboy when you have been kissed by one...


its the best

[gspsonny03]

Val, I'll have to take your word for that, the last wannabe cowboy that tried that with me, I smucked him. And that's a true story.

[BILLY D.]

GSPSONNY

IF A COWBOY TRIED THAT WITH ME I'D PUNCH HIS LIGHTS OUT ALSO.

[tooldummy]

Thanks for taking the time helping me out everyone.

[BILLY D.]

TOOLDDUMMY

IT WAS MY PLEASURE. I HAVE ALWAYS BEEN A MUSIC FAN, I GO BACK TO THE DAYS OF JO STAFFORD, PATTI PAGE, COMO AND CROSBY. DON'T FORGET AN ALL TIME FAVORITE, KATE SMITH. SHE ONLY HAD ONE BIG HIT, A LITTLE DITTY CALLED "GOD BLESS AMERICA", THAT WAS GOOD ENOUGH FOR ME.

AS FAR AS I CAN REMEMBER THOUGH MICHAEL MARTIN MURPHY WAS THE LAST ONE TO HAVE A HIT WITH THE SONG, CIRCA THE 80'S.

OH, TWO OTHER FAVORITES COME TO MIND, LENA HORNE AND KITTY KALLEN.

HAVE A GOOD ONE. GOD BLESS.