Carl T. "Doc" Sprague: The Original Cowboy Singer
Carl T. “Doc” Sprague (May 10, 1895 ~ Feb. 21, 1979) was one of the first cowboys on record, paving the way for such fine rangeland singers as Jules Allen, the Cartwright Brothers and Harry McClintock. Carl was often dubbed The Original Singing Cowboy. Sprague was one of the first country musicians on record, recording in the early 1920s.
Carl T. Sprague was born near Manvel Texas. He worked the family cattle business and learned many old songs from fellow workers while seated around the campfires. Carl attended Texas A & M, where he studied agriculture. He took a hiatus from college and went into the aviation division of the U.S. Army Signal Corps. Sprague was stationed in France during World War I. In 1920 he went back to A&M to finish his studies and later was hired by the college as an athletic trainer. Carl also found time to conduct a weekly radio program on campus.
Sprague formed a band called Campus Cats with violins, guitars, banjos, trumpet, sax and trombone. Impressed by Vernon Dalhart’s hillbilly recording of the Prisoner’s Song, he wrote to the Victor Talking Machine Company and asked to record his cowboy songs. In 1925, he recorded ten songs for Victor and set the image of the singing cowboy.
America became fascinated with the cowboy after the Civil War and by the 1880’s they were becoming part of show business. Buffalo Bill Cody had his Wild West Show. In 1883 Buffalo Bill’s Cowboy Band, Billy McGinty’s troupe and Otto Gray and his Oklahoma band paved the way for western bands and the addition of Jazz led to Western Swing by the 1930’s. Cowboy poet D.J. O’Malley worked as a wrangler in Montana. O’Malley’s 1893 ballad, After the Roundup became, When the Works All Done This Fall. John Lomax in Cowboy Songs and Other Frontier Ballads adapted it.
In 1925 the song became a smash hit for Carl Sprague after his version sold over 900,000 copies. At that time, five thousand would have been successful. The song was about a cowboy killed during a night stampede. Although the song was known and recorded before, it was Sprague’s song that opened things up for Gene Autry, Roy Rogers and Tex Ritter, among others. Sprague was a much cruder singer then later cowboys like Gene Autry and Jimmy Wakely, but it’s precisely that quality that gives his voice an authenticity that Hollywood cowboys could never touch.
The image of the singing cowboy was thereafter set in country music. Sprague was the first artist to market himself in the image of the singing cowboy with chaps, hat and guitar. He was given the title of The Original Singing Cowboy. Sprague didn’t record that much, four sessions in four years and none of his other songs sold very well, but he was a significant pioneer. Other successful recordings were The Boston Burglar and The Two Soldiers. Sprague recorded with Victor until 1929, releasing 33 songs, before the Depression ended his musical career.
Carl helped establish a segment of country music and its image. Although crooners like Gene Autry have contributed to the cowboy song Sprague’s authentic sound gives listeners a taste of what it was like on the cattle drive. Many singers, such as Michael Martin Murphy, Marty Robbins and Ed McCurdy have recorded Sprague’s first cowboy hit. In the 1930s Carl moved to Bryan, Texas and ceased recording, though he would return to play folk festivals during the genre's resurgence in the 1950s and 1960s. Carl died in 1979 and was laid to rest at the Rest-Ever Memorial Park in Bryan, Texas.
