Most people associate cowboy and western music originating with Gene Autry, Roy Rogers and Tex Ritter but the music predates the era of the “Singing Cowboy” by several decades. For example that toe-tapping number, “Ragtime Cowboy Joe” was penned in Brooklyn in 1912 by Tin Pan Alley writers, Maurice Abrahams, Lewis Muir and Grant Clarke.
Ragtime was a uniquely American music, basically African-American that is an ingredient of jazz that became popular in the mid-1890s. The music of Sco

True West May/June 2025
In This Issue:
Features
- Historic Hotels of the American West
- A Journey Through Wyoming’s Outlaw History
- A Journey Through Washington’s Wild Frontier
- Blazing The Oregon Trail
- Journey Through Time
- Did Brigham Young Order a Massacre?
- Mountain Meadows Scapegoat John D. Lee VS. A Firing Squad
- Mormons in the Movies
- An Indigenous Consultant Ensures Accuracy
- The Battle Axe And A Raw Deal
- Showdown: Bridger VS. Brigham
- The Mountain Man and the Mormon Moses
- The Ghosts of Mountain Meadows
- The War Before the War
- Mountain Meadows