Inductees | Tex Owens

Tex Owens

Induction Year: 1971

Birth Name: Doie Hensley Owens

Birth Date: 06-15-1892

Place of Birth: Killeen, Texas

Death Date: 09-09-1962

Place of Death: New Baden, Texas

The oldest of a sharecropper’s 13 children, Tex Owens grew up farming and ranching in Texas and Oklahoma. In his early life, he also worked in oil fields, in construction, as a deputy sheriff and as an automobile mechanic. He occasionally performed as a singer and guitarist in minstrel shows.

He began to focus on entertaining when he got his own radio show on KMBC in Kansas City, Missouri, in 1932. His program was picked up for national broadcasting by NBC and lasted on KMBC for 11 years. He was billed as “Radio’s Original Texas Ranger.” Owens was also a cast member of the station’s Brush Creek Follies ensemble show. His recording career began in 1934.

His next radio stop was as the star and co-host of the Boone County Jamboree on WLW in Cincinnati. In the 1940s he moved west to be featured on KOMA in Oklahoma City, then KHJ in Hollywood. He also attempted a film career. While in Los Angeles, he resumed his recording career in 1953-1954.

Owens specialized in writing sentimental, religious and Western material. His greatest contribution was unquestionably the cowboy yodel standard “Cattle Call.”

He described the inspiration for the song: “I was sitting in the office building on the eleventh floor of the Pickwick Hotel in Kansas City, 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 windows...

...Sitting there in the hotel, watching the snow, my sympathy went out to 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 30 minutes I had wrote the music and four verses to the song.”

Tex Owens retired in 1960 and moved back to Texas. He died two years later of a heart attack. His sister became Grand Ole Opry star Texas Ruby (1908-1963). His oldest daughter was Laura Lee McBride (1920-1989), the female vocalist with Bob Wills & His Texas Playboys who later billed herself as “The Queen of Western Swing.”

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Song Catalog Highlights

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"Cattle Call"

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"Love Me Now"

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"On the Banks of a Lonely River"

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"Porcupine Serenade"

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Tex Owens

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Tex Owens