Patsy Montana – I Wanna Be a Cowboy’s Sweetheart, is a country and Western song written and first recorded in 1935 by Ruby Blevins, who performed as Patsy Montana. It was the first country song by a female artist to sell more than one million copies.
Montana wrote the song in 1934 when she was feeling lonely and missing her boyfriend; it was recorded a year later when producer Art Satherley, of ARC Records, needed one more song at a Prairie Ramblers recording session. Montana was the group’s soloist at the time. Her song is based on Stuart Hamblen’s western song Texas Plains: he is therefore credited as a cowriter. Patsy Montana embellished the simpler musical pattern of the original, especially with her yodeling. Patsy also used a lot of the original words: the song is somewhat of a feminine answer to its precursor.
Members of the Western Writers of America chose it as one of the Top 100 Western songs of all time. In 2012 her record was added to the Library of Congress’s National Recording Registry list of “culturally, historically, or aesthetically important” American sound recordings.
Patsy Montana – I Wanna Be a Cowboy’s Sweetheart
B-side “Ridin’ Old Paint”
Written 1934
Released November 1935
Recorded August 16, 1935
Studio ARC Studios, New York City
Genre Country (Hillbilly), Western
Label Melotone 51156
Songwriter(s) Patsy Montana
Producer(s) Art Satherley
TOP 100 COUNTRY SONGS
Patsy Montana – I Wanna Be a Cowboy’s Sweetheart lyrics
[Verse 1]
I want to be a cowboy’s sweetheart
I want to learn to rope and to ride
I want to ride o’er the plains and the desert
Out west of the Great Divide
I want to hear the coyotes howlin’
While the sun sinks in the West
I want to be a cowboy’s sweetheart
The life that I love best
[Verse 2]
I want to ride Old Paint, goin’ at a run
I wanna feel the wind in my face
A thousand miles from all these city lights
Goin’ a cowhand’s pace
I want to pillow my head near the sleeping herd
While the moon shines down from above
I want to strum my guitar and “odo-lay-ee-dee”
Oh, that’s the life that I love
[Verse 3]
Now I have found my cowboy sweetheart
And he taught me to rope and to ride
And we’ve settled down in a California town
Out west of the great divide
Our two little cowgirls have two kids of their own
That makes me a yodelin’ grandma
I’m still ridin’ side-by-side with my cowboy sweetheart
He’s a rootin’-tootin’ cowboy grandpa
GENIUS
