Song of the Day 6/4: Roy Rogers, “Don’t Fence Me In”

Our Big Quivering President is furthering his image as an incompetent banana Republican dictator by installing more fencing around the House Painted White Because It’s Been Torched Before. The optics are terrible for him — the open plains such a foundational part of the American myth that even Cole Porter himself could write a classic cowboy song. No American hero would ever sing “Fence Me In.”

Though originally credited to Porter alone, the lyrics are based on a poem by Montana cowboy poet Bob Fletcher that Porter bought the rights to for $250. Porter wrote it in 1934 for a 20th Century Fox musical, “Adios, Argentina,” that never got made. It exploded into popularity ten years later. It started after Kate Smith sang it on her radio show. In short order it was recorded by everyone from Bing Crosby to Frank Sinatra, and Roy Rogers gave it a long overdue movie premiere in “Hollywood Canteen.”

Just by-the-by, one can see why “Adios, Argentina” never got made, given its harebrained plot. According to Robert Kimball in “The Complete Lyrics of Cole Porter,”

The plot concerned the decision of an orphan girl who had inherited a big cattle spread in Texas to ship her four polo-playing cowboy tutors East to challenge the winner of a polo match between teams from the United States and Argentina. At one point the cowhands, unable to find anyone to accept their challenge, were supposed to burst into song to express their loneliness for the life back on the ranch.

Hired presumably for his exceptional talent at writing songs with a distinct Latin flavor, Porter was also expected to write the cowboy song required by producer Lou Brock for this nostalgic moment in the film.

Brock was the connection with Fletcher, his friend who at the time an engineer employed by the state of Montana. Fletcher sent Brock his book of cowboy poems; Brock wrote back about his desire to have a song entitled “Don’t Fence Me In” in “Adios, Argentina.”

Fletcher promptly wrote a song, which Brock passed along to Porter, telling Fletcher that Porter is “one of our very best composers, who is rated as high as anyone on Broadway at the present time. Unlike most of the others, he also writes his own lyrics and does not as a rule have anyone collaborating with him. However, he was very much interested in your stuff, and what kind of a deal I can work out with him I do not know as these are matters to press somewhat delicately with a man of his standing.”