Cowboy poetry
Western Jubilee Recording Company

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cowboy poetry from a real cowboy who became a world-renowned cowboy storyteller and Buckaroo Poet

Performance Schedule

Elko! A Cowboy's Gathering

This recording is an effort to give you - the listener - a glimpse of what you would hear if you were to attend the National Cowboy Poetry Gathering in Elko, Nevada. It is not a 'best of' nor a 'definitive works.' It is mererly a sampling of the diversity of poetry, music, voices, subjects and generations that are The Gathering.

Waddie Mitchell
That No Quit Attitude

"He is the quintessential cowboy poet..." -The New york Times Magazine

Waddie Mitchell
Waddie Mitchell Live

"Horse sense and humor from America's best known cowboy poet..." - People Magazine
Recorded live at the Western Jubilee Warehouse Theater in Colorado Springs, Colorado

Don Edwards, Waddie Mitchell and the Fort Worth Symphony
A Prairie Portrait

"Edwards and Mitchell blend their individual
gifts of song and story with the majesty of the symphony - the result is a musical celebration of the Great American West...." -National Cowboy and Western Heritage Museum (Cowboy Hall of Fame).

 Books

Waddie Mitchell
Waddie's Whole Load Book

Waddie Mitchell is one of the best practitioners of the growing art of cowboy poetry........Billboard
The cowboy poetry kingpin.......Country America
Performed for audiences on The Tonight Show, VH-1, Larry King Live and CMT.

Waddie's Whole Load is a book chock full of Waddie's own poems, from trademark humor to serious cowboy philosophy. His funniest stories are included -- Bet at the Bar, Story with a Moral, and Peg-Leg Pig -- as well as his philosophy about ranching, family and lifestyle.

Waddie Mitchell
Christmas Poems Book
Click on the photo for a larger view!  

This little book of Christmas cowboy poems has enough down-home charm to win over almost anyone. Waddie Mitchell is a buckaroo who has become a legend. He is widely recognized from his appearances on the "Tonight Show."
Waddie has twinkling blue eyes above a Pancho Villa mustache, and can often be found decked out in duster, high-heeled boots, and fancy spurs, with a flowing buckaroo scarf at his neck. He is also a working ranch boss who writes and recites America's freshest and most lively oral verse - cowboy poetry. Illustrations by Larry Bute.

Waddie Mitchell was a real cowboy who became a world-renowned cowboy storyteller and poet, enchanting contemporary audiences with tales of life in the rugged West. He was born Bruce Douglas Mitchell on the enormous Horseshoe Ranch, located over thirty miles south of Elko, Nevada. Young Bruce, nicknamed "Waddie" (a synonym for 'cowboy') by his father, spent most of his time with real cowboys and at night listened to their stories and memorized their poems. He dropped out of school at age 16 to become a full-time wrangler and chuck wagon driver. He was drafted into the Army and was stationed at Fort Carson, Colorado on a 24,000-acre ranch where he broke and trained horses for the U.S. Cavalry.

I can’t ever remember ‘finding’ cowboy poetry, “ Waddie Mitchell says of the entertaining and enduring art of storytelling. “It was always there. The cowboys sure never called it poetry. I know I wouldn't have liked it if they would have. Seems like an oxymoron, don’t it!?”

From his earliest days on the remote Nevada ranches where his father worked, Waddie was immersed in the cowboy way of entertaining, the art of spinnin’ tales in rhyme and meter that came to be called cowboy poetry, a Western tradition that is as rich as the lifestyle that gave birth to it. Within his stories, told in a voice that is timeless and familiar, are the common bonds we all share, moments both grand and commonplace, the humorous and the tragic, the life and death struggles and triumphs that we each recognize. And yet, Waddie presents his material with personal insights and the lessons learned during his life spent as a buckaroo.

“All the time I was growing up we had these old cowboys around,” he says. “When you live in close proximity like that with the same folks month after month, one of your duties is to entertain each other, and I suppose that’s where the whole tradition of cowboy poetry started. You find that if you have a rhyme and a meter to start that story, people will listen to it over and over again,” Waddie states in his down-to-earth description of its beginnings.

When my imagination first got let out of the gate, it was from an old-time cowboy, with a story set to rhyme,” he says in his second recording from Warner Western, “Lone Driftin’ Rider.” By the age of 10, he was reciting poetry himself; at 16, he quit school to follow his heart and went to making his living as a cowboy.

I’d never done anything else, never made money without horses or cows until I started telling cowboy poetry.” The father of five children, (“They’re all girls, except four of them!”) his goal is to one day buy his own ranch. “I’m hoping,” Waddie says, “for the opportunity to go broke on a ranch by myself instead of helping somebody else do it!”

There came a time though, which he relates in his poem “Where To Go”, when he had to choose between being a full-time cowboy (he managed a 36,000 acre ranch in Lee-Jiggs, Nevada) and the art form that he loved so much. In 1984, he helped organize the internationally recognized Elko Cowboy Poetry Gathering and gave his first public performance. Although Waddie didn’t think anyone would be interested, (he thought it would be a pretty good party for the weekend) the first Cowboy Poetry Gathering was set for a cold, snowy weekend in January. This was one of the only times Waddie and his fellow cowboys had free from ranch duties. More than 2,000 people showed up, and Waddie was off and running.

Since then he has performed internationally for audiences from Los Angeles to New York, Zurich to Melbourne, and all points in between. With television appearances ranging from The Tonight Show (his neighbor took the first phoned invitation, drove 40 miles to deliver the message to the remotely based Waddie and returned with a “No Thanks” because it was calving time and he’d never heard of Johnny Carson), Larry King Live, Good Morning America, TNN, The History Channel, PBS, and the BBC, Waddie has also been featured in People, Life, The New York Times, USA Today, Fortune, National Geographic, the Official Program for Super Bowl XXX and the Wall Street Journal, along with numerous other appearances, performances, articles and books.

Waddie Mitchell’s widely successful writing endeavors includes his book “Waddie’s Whole Load,” a wonderful compilation of his rhyming stories, artfully complemented with his charming drawings. Waddie is winning deeper appreciation of his art as well as international recognition. His series of recordings for Warner Bros. Records’ subsidiary label Warner Western and more recently for the Western Jubilee Recording Company have received critical acclaim.

His 1998 release, “Waddie Mitchell Live” for Western Jubilee Recording Company features Don Edwards as well as world class instrumentalists Rich O’Brien and Norman Blake. A glowing review of “Waddie Mitchell Live” appeared in People Magazine, which concludes with “Bottom Line: Horse sense and humor from America’s Best Known Cowboy Poet.” His busy 1999 touring schedule included the Fort Worth Symphony Orchestra. The excitement created by these concerts resulted in a Western Jubilee recording of Waddie, Don Edwards and the Fort Worth Symphony Orchestra titled A Prairie Portrait. This recording has spawned additional orchestra performances with Don Edwards. In April, 2001, the Oklahoma City based Cowboy Hall of Fame / National Cowboy & Western Heritage Museum presented Waddie with the coveted “Wrangler” bronze statue for his participation in the “Outstanding Traditional Western Album” of the year. At the end of 1999, the Reno Gazette-Journal published a list from a panel of writers, historians and other notables, who selected the Top 20 Artists, Authors and Entertainers To Influence Nevada in the 20th Century. Sure enough pards, there was Waddie!

The 2002 Cultural Olympiad commissioned Waddie Mitchell to write a commemorative poem. His offering, “That No Quit Attitude”, gained importance as the Salt Lake 2002 Olympic Winter Games grew nearer. “No Quit” appeared in the “Welcome To Salt Lake” film, in schools and libraries, on Delta Airlines, the Olympic web site, at the Olympic Arts Festival, on Western Jubilee’s CD single and many publications, including the Official Souvenir Program of the 2002 Winter Games. In the Fall of 2002, “That No Quit Attitude” titles Western Jubilee’s first studio recording of Waddie’s containing fourteen new original poems and thirteen original ‘Waddie-isms’.

Waddie Mitchell has recently received the title of Adjunct Professor from the University of Wyoming. This honor was based on “Real world credentials which Waddie possesses in wealth.” “We didn’t have electricity and that meant we didn’t have T.V. We had darn poor radio too. So that meant we did the strangest things at night ... we talked to each other!”

WADDIE MITCHELL
Cowboy Poet / Entertainer