Swinging Texans and That Yellow Rose...

Back in the early sixties, one of the more weirdly popular shows was “Sing Along With Mitch”, featuring the soothing blandness of Mitch Miller’s arrangements of folk and light pop tunes, scored for the entire viewing audience. Mitch even had a hit or two, and the one I remember best was “The Yellow Rose of Texas”. I never much wondered about why the rose was yellow; I figured it was some kind of a Texas thing – maybe that was the color they came in down there.

So I recently acquired a 4 disc set of Western Swing music from the 30’s and 40’s (Doughboys, Playboys and Cowboys), and while listening to the likes of Bob Wills & His Texas Playboys, Spade Cooley, and the Tune Wranglers (fine swingers all, and Wills plays the fiddle like a soul inspired, wisecracking all the while – but that’s a subject for another time), I heard a version of “The Yellow Rose of Texas” performed by Milton Brown & His Musical Brownies – and the scales fell from my eyes. She’s “yellow” because she’s a light-skinned black woman, as the song’s original verses make clear – and which were not what I sang along with Mitch. The Rose is a song to a real woman, perhaps a heroine of the War for Texas Independence (remember the Alamo?), named Emily West Morgan. Gives the song a whole other feel, knowing that. I wonder if Mitch knew? Probably.

p.s. As usual, the Emily West legend is more aesthetically pleasing than the truth.