Yellow Rose Of Texas
Lyrics
About This Song
The Yellow Rose of Texas is traditional. It first turns up as a lyric with no music in Christy's Plantation Melodies No. 2, a minstrel songbook printed in Philadelphia in 1853. The first sheet music came out in New York in 1858, credited only to "J.K." In 2011 an archivist found material suggesting J.K. may have been John Kelly, a minstrel banjo player and composer. The early words were sung by a Black narrator about a "yellow girl," meaning a woman of mixed race. The 1858 sheet changed that to "yellow rose," and later singers dropped the other racial wording. Confederate troops from Texas marched to it in the Civil War. The legend tying it to Emily West and the Battle of San Jacinto mostly grew up in the 1950s. Meanwhile fiddlers in Virginia and North Carolina had turned it into a breakdown in D. In 1955 Don George reworked it as a march, and Mitch Miller's recording of his version went to No. 1.
| Year | Artist | Notes |
|---|---|---|
| 1927 | Da Costa Woltz's Southern Broadcasters | Ben Jarrell on fiddle |
| 1933 | Gene Autry and Jimmie Long | Sung as a cowboy song, with the racial references removed |
| 1955 | Mitch Miller | Pushed "Rock Around the Clock" off the top of the chart; heard in the film Giant |
| 1964 | New Lost City Ramblers | Played as a string band instrumental |
| 1976 | Tommy Jarrell | Learned from his father, Ben Jarrell |
Also recorded by Milton Brown and his Musical Brownies, Ernest Tubb and the Red Clay Ramblers.