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Walnut Valley Festival ::
Don Edwards -- Western Magic
By Rex Flottman
RockKansas guest columnist
Riding in from the west for this year’s Walnut Valley Festival will be cowboy balladeer, Don Edwards. Don has built a legacy that enriches our vision of the American West. With tales of the day-to-day lives and emotions of those who have lived it, his ballads paint a sweeping landscape of both mind and heart, keeping alive the sights, sounds and feelings of this most American contribution to culture and art.
The quality of this cowboy balladeer's music stems from the fact that he is so much more than a singer. Bobby Weaver of the National Cowboy Hall of Fame in Oklahoma City, summed up Don Edwards' importance as "... the best purveyor of cowboy music in America today."
Author, actor, historian and musicologist, Don Edwards is exceptionally well versed in cowboy lore and musical traditions. Mostly though, there is the soul of a poet; a man who has never succumbed to the temptations of presenting a glamorized or romanticized version of the West.
The son of a vaudeville magician, Don Edwards was aware as a child of a vast cross-section of music from classical to jazz, and blues to western-swing. Many of those influences enter his own music as they did the music of the West. Don Edwards was drawn to the cowboy life by the books of Will James and the 'B' Westerns of the silver screen, particularly those featuring "sure'nuff cowboys" like Tom Mix and Ken Maynard. He taught himself guitar at age ten, and chased the rodeo and worked ranches in Texas and New Mexico during his teens. In 1961, he got a job as an actor/singer/stuntman at Six Flags Over Texas and he was to stay with music from then on. In 1964, he made his first record.
Don began playing throughout Oklahoma and Texas, and with the birth of the Cowboy Poetry Gathering in Elko, Nevada, he achieved widespread recognition. He has now entertained throughout the United States, Canada, Great Britain, Ireland, New Zealand, Europe and the Far East.
Don Edwards has two albums, Guitars & Saddle Songs and Songs of the Cowboy, included in the Folklore Archives of the Library of Congress. These anthologies have been re-recorded and expanded as the 32-song double CD/cassette called Saddle Songs. This project took first place as the Best Folk/Traditional Album of the year at the annual INDIE Awards Ceremony held in May of 1998, and continues to garner strong sales in stores and on television. The collection is on Western Jubilee Recording Company's label.
He has twice received the National Cowboy Hall of Fame's "Wrangler Award" for Outstanding Traditional Western Music, once for his recording Chant of the Wanderer in 1992 and for the second time in 1996 for West of Yesterday. Other projects include: a book Classic Cowboy Songs; performance on Nanci Griffith's Grammy-winning video and recording, Other Voices, Other Rooms; co-presenter along with Waddie Mitchell on the network-televised Academy of Country Music Awards and featured performer for the prestigious "Golden Boot Awards."
Don Edwards has presented seminars at Yale, Rice, Texas Christian and other universities. His recordings under the Warner Bros. Western label, Goin' Back to Texas, Songs of the Trail, The Bard & The Balladeer and West of Yesterday have spawned a new audience for his craft. The summer of 1997 found Don Edwards in Livingston, Montana portraying the role of "Smokey" in Robert Redford's film The Horse Whisperer.
In addition to this acting/singing role, Don Edwards is featured on the MCA soundtrack. In May of 1998, to coincide with The Horse Whisperer theater release, Warner's compiled and released The Best of Don Edwards while Western Jubilee offered Edwards' My Hero Gene Autry recorded live at Mr. Autry's 90th Birthday. Almost one year later, to the day, Don Edwards' performance was requested by the Autry family to sing for Mr. Autry's memorial service. In 1999, Don received his fourth consecutive "Male Vocalist of the Year" award from the Western Music Association, recorded a new album, A Prairie Portrait - Don Edwards, Waddle Mitchell and the Fort Worth Symphony Orchestra and toured continuously to include visits to Switzerland and Ireland.
In April 2000, having received almost every honor in the Western world, Don Edwards, along with Western legends Richard Farnsworth and Dale Evans, received his plaque on California's Western Walk of Stars, a significant honor joining the company of Gene Autry, Roy Rogers, Tom Mix, John Wayne, W.S. Hart and other great Hollywood Heroes.
The richness of his voice coupled with an unforgettable stage presentation makes Don Edwards America's number one Western singer and concert attraction. The accolades have been added bonuses for Don Edwards who sings what he does out of love and respect for the genre.
Don Edwards, along with saddle pals, Roz Brown, Bill Barwick, and The Sons of The San Joaquin, will be bringing to Winfield their special brand of entertainment, the songs of the great American west.
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