New Mexico History Museum

Don Edwards, "America’s Cowboy Balladeer," Comes to the History Museum

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
March 10, 2013

MEDIA CONTACT


Don Edwards, a premier performer of old-time ballads and cowboy songs, performs in the New Mexico History Museum Auditorium at 2 pm on Sunday, March 10, an advance event for the exhibition Cowboys Real and Imagined, opening April 14. Tickets for Edwards’ performance are $25 at the History Museum Shop; call (505) 982-9543 or go to www.newmexicocreates.org.

A historian, author and musicologist, Edwards has been nominated for a Grammy and enjoys national popularity for his authentic recreations of cowboy lore and musical traditions. Gifted with a rich voice and engaging stage presence, he has two recorded anthologies of cowboy songs: Guitars & Saddle Songs and Songs of the Cowboy, which were combined into the 32-song double CD/set, Saddle Songs, winner of the Best Folk/Traditional Album at the 1998 INDIE Awards. The National Cowboy & Western Heritage Museum in Oklahoma City has awarded him six prestigious Wrangler Awards for Outstanding Traditional Western Music. Edwards has presented seminars at Yale, Rice, Texas Christian and other universities. His recordings under the Warner Brothers Western label include Goin’ Back to Texas, Songs of the Trail, The Bard & The Balladeer and West of Yesterday. As an actor, he portrayed Smokey in the film The Horse Whisperer. The conclusion of the 2005 Werner Herzog film, Grizzly Man, featured Edwards’ recording of “Coyotes.

The son of a vaudeville magician, Edwards’ professional path has crossed with the likes of John Lomax, Gene Autry, Waddie Mitchell, Nanci Griffith, Michael Martin Murphey, Peter Rowan, Norman Blake and Tony Rice. Learn more about him by clicking here (or log onto www.somagency.com/donedwards).

Download a high-resolution image of Edwards by clicking here (or log onto http://media.museumofnewmexico.org/mediabank.php?mode=events&action=files&instID=19&eventID=1696).

Cowboys Real and Imagined explores New Mexico’s cowboy legacy from its origin in the Spanish vaquero tradition through itinerant hired hands, outlaws, rodeo stars, cowboy singers, Tom Mix movies and more. Guest curated by B. Byron Price, director of the Charles M. Russell Center for the Study of Art of the American West at the University of Oklahoma and director of the University of Oklahoma Press, the exhibit grounds cowboy history in New Mexico through rare photographs, cowboy gear, movies and original works of art. The largest original exhibit mounted by the museum since 2009’s Fashioning New Mexico, it includes a bounty of artifacts including boots and spurs, ropes, movie posters, and the chuck wagon once used by cowboys on New Mexico’s legendary Bell Ranch.

For more information on Cowboys Real and Imagined, including a full year of programming events, click here (or log onto http://media.museumofnewmexico.org/events.php?action=detail&eventID=1421).

Cowboys Real and Imagined is generously supported by the Brindle Foundation; the Burnett Foundation; the New Mexico Humanities Council; the Albert and Ethel Herzstein Charitable Foundation, Houston; Candace Good Jacobson in memory of Thomas Jefferson Good III; Newman’s Own Foundation; Eugenia Cowden Pettit; Jane and Charlie Gaillard; the Palace Guard; Moise Livestock Company; the New Mexico Cattlegrowers Association; and the many contributors to the Director’s Leadership and Exhibitions Development Funds.



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