Carl T. "Doc" Sprague

Most folks are unaware that the first hit recording of a cowboy song was recorded in New Jersey. It happened in August of 1925, when a 30 year-old athletic trainer from Texas A&M went into the Victor Talking Machine Company in Camden, NJ and recorded 10 songs he had learned on cattle drives in South Texas. The hit song coming out of that session was "When the Work's All Done This Fall," and it took the nation by storm, selling over 800,000 copies.

But Carl T. Sprague's impact on Western music wasn't limited to the sale of just one record. Others had recorded cowboy music before, but Sprague was the first man who had actually worked as a cowboy, to record and sell significant numbers of records.

He had lived the part, and he also dressed the part, and this is significant, because his wearing of cowboy clothes, especially a cowboy hat, in his publicity photos and in public appearances, was the first widespread use of the cowboy image by a singing performer. Sprague was the first to use it to market his recordings.

The image caught the public's eye and by the mid 1930s, with the emergence of the singing cowboys in the movies, the image became an important part of American culture, and it was Carl T. Sprague, who paved the way.

~O.J. Sikes