Moonlight and Skies, Saddle Songs, High Lonesome Cowboy, Kin to the Wind, A Prairie Portrait, My Hero Gene Autry, A Pair to Draw to.

Performance Schedule
Don's Biography  

Don Edwards
Moonlight and Skies  2006 Wrangler Award for Best Traditional Western Music Album

"Edwards...now considered by many to be the best CowBoy and Western music artist in the world, perhaps ever." - Tucson Citizen

Don Edwards
Saddle Songs II:Last of the Troubadours

Thirty-two cowboy songs both old and new on two CDs. Don's newest gift to us.

Don Edwards Video

Watch this classic TV clip for Don Edwards Saddle Songs II:Last of the Troubadours .This TV special offer is no longer available. You can order Saddle Songs II:Last of the Troubadours at our low website price of $25. Cassettes only 5 bucks while supplies last!

Don Edwards
Saddle Songs - A Cowboy Songbag

Perfect for your saddlebags or coffee table. 8 1/2" x 11" softback, 208 pages,with over 50 photographs, and illustrations by Bob Moline and Walt LaRue. The book includes music transcription and tablature. This is a collection of great western classics.

Don Edwards and Waddie Mitchell alone are truly gifted artists in their own realm. But when put together on stage they bring forth the true meaning of the Western culture in songs and verse.

Don Edwards & Peter Rowan
High Lonesome Cowboy

Grammy Nomination for the Best Traditional Folk Album of 2002!
"Choosing highlights is like picking a favorite among a dozen perfect roses."- Tennesean

Don Edwards
Kin to the Wind
Don Edwards tips his hat to Marty Robbins ...

National Cowboy and Western Heritage Museum (Cowboy Hall of Fame) Wrangler Award winner for Best Traditional Album of the Year 2001.

Don Edwards
Saddle Songs

"Think of Don Edwards as a singing scholar of the old West. We are a little lax about these family heirlooms of ours and ought to be grateful to have such a great caretaker of them."- James Earl Jones An American Moment
1998 INDE Award Winner Traditional Folk Album of the year
Association for Independent Music

Don Edwards
My Hero Gene Autry

"Don, I will always treasure the wonderful gift of music you gave to me on my ninetieth birthday." - Gene Autry

Rex Allen and Don Edwards
A Pair to Draw to

Rex Allen's last recording with Don Edwards made available by special arrangements with Garrett Music Enterprises.

Press Release

Don Edwards…2007 Artists In the News

On April 21, 2007, the National Cowboy and Western Heritage Museum, Oklahoma City, presented cowboy troubadour, Don Edwards, with his 6th Western Heritage Award. Don received the ‘Wrangler’ for his 2006 recording, Moonlight and Skies, which won ‘Outstanding Traditional Western Album of the Year’. Western Jubilee Recording Company of Colorado Springs, received it’s 5th Wrangler Award as the record company for Moonlight and Skies. This, the 46th annual Awards Banquet for this prestigious Western heritage event, was hosted by Sam Elliot. Presenters included Ernest Borgnine, Robert Carradine, Michael Martin Murphey, Red Steagall and Waddie Mitchell. Many thanks to the National Cowboy and Western Heritage Museum for this great honor. Find out more on the Bulletin Board.

Don was featured on the cover of the June, 2007 issue of Western Horseman magazine and written up in the Cowboy Culture article Call of the Cowboy. Click here to view the article as a .pdf file. You need to have Adobe Reader to view the file.

For Bookings, Information and Concert dates contact Scott O'Malley and Associates

Don Edward's Biography

Grammy nominated singer-guitarist Don Edwards continues to build a legacy that enriches our vision of the American West.  In tales of the day-to-day lives and emotions of those who have lived it, his ballads paint a sweeping landscape of both mind and heart, keeping alive the sights, sounds and feelings of this most American contribution to culture and art.  The quality of this cowboy balladeer’s music stems from the fact that he is so much more than a singer.  Bobby Weaver of the National Cowboy Hall of Fame in Oklahoma City, summed up Edwards’ importance as “... the best purveyor of cowboy music in America today.” 

An historian, author, and musicologist, unusually well - versed in cowboy lore and musical traditions, Don brings a rare complement of knowing and loving his craft.  Mostly though, there is the soul of a poet; a man who has never succumbed to the temptations of presenting a glamorized or romanticized version of the West.  Edwards deals with bad weather, petty motivations, sadness, nostalgia and longing, as parts of the landscape like any other.

The son of a vaudeville magician, Don was aware as a child of a vast cross-section of music from classical to jazz, and blues to western-swing.  Many of those influences enter his own music as they did the music of the West.   Edwards was drawn to the cowboy life by the books of Will James and was presented the Will James Society’s “Big Enough Award” which is presented annually to someone who personifies the Western and Cowboy way of life and their achievements.  He also loved the ‘B’ Westerns of the silver screen, particularly those featuring “sure-‘nuff cowboys” like Tom Mix and Ken Maynard.  He taught himself guitar at age ten, and in 1961, he got his first professional job as an actor/singer/stuntman at Six Flags Over Texas.  In 1964, Don released his first recording on REN Records of Dallas.

Don became part owner of The White Elephant Saloon in the Fort Worth Stockyards where ballad hunter and historian, John Lomax collected cowboy songs.  Subsequently, Esquire magazine named The White Elephant one of America’s 100 best bars.  Edwards also began playing throughout Oklahoma and Texas, and with the birth of the Cowboy Poetry Gathering in Elko, Nevada, he achieved widespread recognition.  He has now entertained throughout the United States, Canada, Great Britain, Ireland, New Zealand, Europe and the Far East.

Don Edwards has two recorded anthologies of cowboy songs, Guitars & Saddle Songs and Songs of the Cowboy, included in the Folklore Archives of the Library of Congress.  These anthologies have been re-recorded and expanded for the Western Jubilee Recording Company as the 32-song double CD/cassette called Saddle Songs.  This project took first place as the Best Folk/Traditional Album of the year at the annual INDIE Awards Ceremony held in May of 1998, and has garnered strong sales in stores and on television.  He has received from Oklahoma City’s National Cowboy & Western Heritage Museum a/k/a Cowboy Hall of Fame, five prestigious Wrangler Awards for Outstanding Traditional Western Music.  Other projects include: a book Classic Cowboy Songs; performance on Nanci Griffith’s Grammy-winning video and recording, Other Voices, Other Rooms; co-presenter along with Waddie Mitchell on the network-televised Academy of Country Music Awards, featured performer for the Los Angeles’ Golden Boot Awards, multiple awards by the Western Music Association for Male Vocalist and Performer of the Year and in 2000 was inducted onto the Newhall, California Western Walk of Stars.  In April 2000, Don was immortalized onto the Walk of  Western Stars by the City of Santa Clarita, CA.

Don has presented seminars at Yale, Rice, Texas Christian and other universities. His recordings under the Warner Western label, Goin’ Back to Texas, Songs of the Trail , The Bard & The Balladeer and West of Yesterday spawned a new audience for his craft.  The summer of 1997 found Don Edwards in Livingston, Montana portraying the role of  Smokey in Robert Redford’s film The Horse Whisperer.  In addition to his acting/singing role, Don is featured on the MCA soundtrack.  In May of 1998, to coincide with The Horse Whisperer theater release, Warner’s compiled and released The Best of Don Edwards while Western Jubilee offered Don’s My Hero Gene Autry recorded live at Mr. Autry’s 90th Birthday.  His next two recordings for Western Jubilee resulted in two more visits to Oklahoma City, both receiving the  Outstanding Traditional Western Music Recording of the Year - A Prairie Portrait (April 2001) with Waddie Mitchell and the Fort Worth Symphony Orchestra and Kin To The Wind, Memories of Marty Robbins (April 2002).  In the Fall of 2002, Western Jubilee released an important special project:  Don Edwards and Bluegrass icon, Peter Rowan  teamed up on High Lonesome Cowboy.  This recording traces the roots of Western music from Appalachia to Abilene and includes legendary musicians, Norman Blake and Tony Rice.  High Lonesome Cowboy resulted in a Grammy nomination for 2002 – the first time Cowboy music has ever been nominated for this prestigious award.  In 2003, Western Jubilee offers Saddle Songs II – Last of the Troubadours, 32 more Classic Cowboy Songs, which was followed by Don’s newest book, Saddle Songs – A Cowboy Songbag.  2005 finds Don Edwards’ solo concert and personal appearance schedule the busiest to date.  The Warner Herzog film production, Grizzly Man is released which features Don’s recording of Coyotes at the conclusion of the movie.  Don Edwards newest Western Jubilee recording Moonlight And Skies is also completed and contains Coyotes along with 12 other little gems Don found along the trail.

The richness of Don’s voice coupled with an unforgettable stage presentation makes Don Edwards America’s number one Western singer and concert attraction.  The accolades have been simply added bonuses for Edwards, who sings what he does out of love and respect for the genre.  Don’s career continues to blossom, and luckily for all who care about it, he has because of his sincere approach, added much to the literature and music of the West, passing on to the rest of us a rich legacy.