I was just told to go home and write a cowboy song,” says country music singer, songwriter and producer Sharon Vaughn. Seventeen minutes later, she had “My Heroes Have Always Been Cowboys,” a song that helped usher in country’s “outlaw movement” when the legendary Waylon Jennings cut it as the lead track on the 1976 classic album “Wanted! The Outlaws.” But country music history wouldn’t have been made if not for a case of mistaken identity. Vaughn told her “Cowboys” story to Bart Herbison, executive director of Nashville Songwriters Association International. Sharon Vaughn: It is a truth. I was madly, passionately in love with Roy Rogers. I was raised on a ranch in Florida, and so I was around a lot of cowboys. There was one in particular who used to break the yearlings for us. His name was Arley. He was this lanky, silent, non-communicative guy, but he’d ride round and round in circles. I’d sit on the fence with my feet tucked under the rail, and I’d say to myself, “Arley, please talk to me.” He never said one word. It kind of married between what I felt like was going on in Nashville at the time. People were starting to feel itchy about being stuck in a format. You could just feel it, because I was a session singer, and you learn more by osmosis, by being in these rooms than you realize. It was kind of like the outlaw mentality and my love for cowboys, which embodies that mentality, and I was just told to go home and write a cowboy song. And I did. Seventeen minutes. I don’t know how I remember that, but from the beginning to the end, it was a gusher. Seventeen minutes, and it was done. There was no such word as “outlaw movement” when I wrote “Heroes,” so it was more of a feeling than a niche. … It was kind of an odd thing. This was a serendipitous moment, and it’s proof to songwriters that you have to have the nerve to stick your neck on the block, even if you are going to look stupid.
Songs with Banjo from Harold Hagler
