Carl T. Sprague Biography 1925
The success of Carl T. Sprague's August 1925 recording of “When The Work's All Done This Fall” (with “Bad Companions” on the B side) helped establish the image of the singing cowboy in Country Music. As a young man Sprague learned cowboy songs on trail drives in the early part of the 20th Century from an uncle who had worked as a cowboy from the late 1880s. Sprague's renditions are a direct link to a time when the poems and ballads, some of them centuries old, were first sung by the drovers who moved the great cattle herds out of Texas to the rail heads in Kansas.
America’s fascination with the cowboy began sometime after the Civil War and by the 1880’s vaudeville trupes like Buffalo Bill’s Wild West Show were at the height of their popularity. In 1883 Buffalo Bill's Cowboy Band was organized and directed by William Sweeney. A cornet player, William Sweeney was the leader of the Cowboy Band from 1883 until 1913. This band and later Billy McGinty’s troupe and Otto Gray and His Oklahoma Band (1918) paved the way for Western bands and the jazz sounds of Western swing that would emerge in the early 1930s. Like Carl Sprague, Gray and McGinty also recorded in the 1920s. Powder River Jack and Kitty Lee performed “cowboy songs” on Buffalo Bill’s Wild West Show in 1885. They were also recorded in the 1920s.
In 1889 Cowboy poet and balladeer D. J. O’Malley went to work as horse wrangler in Montana in 1882. His songs (lyrics only to be sung with the melody of other popular songs) were first published using the name R. J. Stovall in the Stock Growers' Journal. O’Malley’s 1893 ballad, “After the Roundup” is now known as “When the Works All Done This Fall” or “The Dixie Cowboy.” The tune was supposed to be “After the Ball” but changed through time. It was also collected by John Lomax and published in 1910 in his “Cowboy Songs and Other Frontier Ballads.”
“When the Works All Done This Fall” was a smash hit for Carl “Doc” Sprague after his version in 1925 sold over 900,000 copies; a successful recording was 5,000 copies. Curiously, it recorded the year before by Fiddlin’ John Carson as “The Dixie Cowboy,” and also recorded by Charlie Prescott by that title on Challenge 335 (issued May 1927). Whether Sprague knew of Carson’s recording or John Lomax’s book is open to speculation. It is clear that Sprague’s song opened the floodgate for future Western singers like Gene Autry, Roy Rodgers and Tex Ritter. Within a dozen years Country Music was called Country and Western.
Early Life
Carl T. "Doc" Sprague (1895–1979), one of America's first singing cowboy stars, the son of William T., Jr., and Libby Sprague, was born on May 10, 1895, near Manvel, Texas, in Brazoria County. As a youth, he worked in the family cattle business and, from his uncles, learned many of the old cowboy songs while sitting by the roundup campfires.
“My Uncles and I,” he said, “Used to sit around the campfires at night and sing the very same songs the cowboys used to sing many years before. I used to go on cattle drives with them, we’d make camp on the open prairie where there wasn’t anything but cattle, horses and stars. That’s where I learned my songs from real cowboys.”
College- U.S. Army Signal Corps
Sprague went to College Station to study agriculture at Texas A&M in 1915. College was interrupted by a two-year stint in the aviation division of the U.S. Army Signal Corps. During World War I he served was stationed in France. He returned to A&M in 1920 and graduated in 1922 with a degree in animal husbandry. Intending to be a rancher, he instead was hired by D. X. Bible as an athletic trainer at A&M where he worked from 1922 to 1937. Shortly after 1922 he began being called "Doc."
First Authentic Singing Cowboy
In 1925, backed by a group of student musicians, he formed a group called the “Campus Cats” composed of violins, guitars, banjos, trumpet, sax and trombone. Sprague, impressed by the success of fellow Texan Vernon Dalhart's hillbilly recording of “The Prisoner’s Song,” wrote to Victor Records and suggested that they record his cowboy songs. Between August 3rd and 5th, 1925 at the Victor Talking Machine Company in Camden, New Jersey, he recorded ten cowboy songs learned from his uncles on those cattle drives in South Texas. One song, "When the Work's All Done This Fall," about a cowboy killed during a night stampede, became the first cowboy song to achieve hit status.
As a result, the image of the singing cowboy was established in Country Music. In 1926 Sprague married Lura Bess Mayo and brought his new bride and two fiddlers with him to the next Victor session. His wife, a pianist and music teacher, assisted Sprague in arranging music for his recording sessions and was an important musical influence. In later years, they led singing at the Bryan Lions Club and Businessmen's Bible Class of the First Baptist Church of Bryan.
He recorded eighteen more songs at three other Victor sessions in Camden and New York, in 1927 in Savannah, Georgia, and in 1929 in Dallas until the Depression ended his recording career. He was the first artist to market himself in the image of a singing cowboy complete with chaps, hat, and National guitar, which earned him the title, "The Original Singing Cowboy."
Later Years
Sprague never opted to pursue a serious musical career but looked upon his singing as a hobby. In 1937 he left the employ of Texas A&M and began operating a filling station and grocery store and also worked as an insurance salesman. He returned to the army during World War II and achieved the rank of major working as a recruiter in Houston and Dallas. He then returned to the insurance industry until the early 1960s.
During the 1960s and 1970s he experienced a resurgence in his musical career. He was honored at several folklife seminars, notably at the University of California at Los Angeles and the University of Illinois, where he performed in western outfits and spoke about the life of the American cowboy. Sprague returned to recording in 1972 and 1974 and made two long-playing albums for Bear Family Records of Germany.
Carl Sprague lived in Bryan, Texas, from 1920 until his death on February 21, 1979, in Bryan. In 2003 a collection of his twenty-four songs, including his favorite songs "When the Work's All Done This Fall," "Rounded Up in Glory," "Last Great Round Up," and "Utah Carrol," was released in an anthology titled Cowtrails, Longhorns, and Tight Saddles: Cowboy Songs 1925–1929.
Complete Recorded Songs by Sprague before 1942: Bad Companions; Boston Burglar; Club Meeting; Cowboy, The; Cowboy At Church; Cowboy's Dream, The; Cowboy's Meditation; Cowboy Love Song; Cowman's Prayer; Following The Cow Trail; Gambler, The; Here's To The Texas Ranger; If Your Saddle Is Good And Tight; Kisses; Last Great Round Up; Last Longhorn; Mormon Cowboy; O Bury Me Not On The Lone Prairie (The Dying Cowboy); Prisoner’s Meditation; Rounded Up In Glory; Two Soldiers; Utah Carrol; Wayward Daughter; When The Work's All Done This Fall;