Tex Owens born 15 June 1892

Tex Owens (June 15, 1892 – September 9, 1962) was an American country music singer and songwriter, best remembered today for writing the Eddy Arnold hit Cattle Call. 

Tex Owens was born Doie Hensley Owens in Killeen, Texas. He was the son of Curcley Sly and Susan (Frances) Owens. The youngest of thirteen children, he came from a large and musically talented family who moved to Cushing, Oklahoma while he was still a boy. The name "Tex" logically seemed to stick after the move to Oklahoma. Beginning when he was 15 years old, he worked lots of jobs, especially on ranches in the surrounding area, and even spent a stint as a chuck wagon cook. He did gravitate a little toward singing as he could play guitar well enough to accompany himself, and as a lanky 6'3" vocalist, he looked natural enough as the center of attention. He made his first foray into music at a traveling tent show as a blackface singer, doubling as a hired hand, and spent up to a year with one such tent show. The life didn't appeal to him enough to stay with music, however, and by his late teens Owens was back to working more conventional and reliable jobs. 

Owens worked oil fields in Texas, and then jobs in Missouri and Kansas, and after marrying Maude Neal in1916, he spent his early years as a cowboy and oilfield worker in Texas. He later held a series of jobs in the Midwest, until his friends urged him to take his musical talents to radio in 1931. For the next ten years he co-hosted the popular Brush Creek Follies, on KMBC in Kansas City, featuring his group, the Original Texas Rangers, and his two daughters Dolpha (Jane) and Laura Lee (Joy). In the summer of 1934, Owens was signed, along with the Texas Rangers, to the newly founded Decca label. (Curiously, Decca had also signed another "Tex," with the last name of Ritter, around the same time). In 1935 Owens penned his biggest hit song, "Cattle Call," which he recorded for Decca Records. 

                                   

According to his wife, he'd written it ahead of a show during a snowstorm when they were stuck at the hotel where the radio station was headquartered, borrowing the melody from "The St. Paul Waltz." The song, one of four he recorded in Chicago that day wasn't a success at the time, and Owens' relationship with Decca ended after that session. He next recorded ten songs for RCA in September of 1936, none of which including another version of "Cattle Call" was issued and all of which are lost today. The song later became a hit recording for singer Eddy Arnold. Owens was popular enough that in 1939 the governor of Texas declared him and the Texas Rangers honorary Texas Rangers. Owens also hosted the Boone County Jamboree on WLW in Cincinnati and appeared on several other radio shows. Most of Owens' career was spent not in the recording studio, but rather on the radio, performing with either the Texas Rangers or the Prairie Pioneers; he also made personal appearances and, on rare occasions, performed in movies. 

Though Owens went back to the oilfields during World War II, he later returned to entertainment as a movie cowboy, but most of Owens' career was spent not in the recording studio, but rather on the radio, performing with either the Texas Rangers or the Prairie Pioneers; he also made personal appearances and, on rare occasions, performed in movies. His postwar career was cut short, however, when a horse fell on him and broke his back during the filming of Red River, with John Wayne, in 1950. Owens spent a year recovering and never fully got over the injuries. He returned to performing with a new backing group, the Prairie Pirates, and cut a pair of sessions with them in 1953 and 1954. The four songs from these sessions were released on the Wrightman label but failed to excite any major public interest, despite the presence of such gorgeous songs as Alice Canterbury's "Give Me the Plains at Night" as well as the Tex and Chuck Owens-authored instrumental "Porcupine Serenade." 

Owens wrote more than 100 songs, but "Cattle Call" was far and away the biggest success he ever had. Unfortunately, he never achieved a fraction of the success as a recording artist that Arnold did during those decades, and by the time Arnold's second version was topping the charts, the author was past 60 and partly forgotten; most listeners assumed Arnold had written it. 

By the end of the 1950s, Owens was retired from Hollywood. Now past 60, he'd seen his oldest daughter, Laura Lee, embark on a successful career as the first female vocalist ever hired by Wills. He and his wife moved to Baden, Texas in 1960, and it was there that Owens died of a heart attack in 1962 at the age of 70. He was buried in Franklin Cemetery in Robertson County. Nine years later, in 1971, Owens was posthumously inducted into the Nashville Songwriters' Hall of Fame in recognition of his work as a composer.

(Edited from AllMusic & Wikipedia)