Music and Lyrics in the Spirit of the West

My great grandparents, Pansy and Roscoe Stockton, grew up in homes with extremely strong women who, in a male dominated world, didn’t blink an eye at succeeding in business, writing, speaking, and teaching. Pansy’s mother ran bakeries, boarding houses, and on her business card for the Grand View Hotel in Eldorado Springs, Colorado she was J.L. RePass, Proprietor. Roscoe’s mother traveled with her own speaking programs where she captivated audiences, a complete entertainment by herself, and in the Denver City Directory she was listed separately from her husband as Jessie D.A. Stockton, elocutionist. Her speeches were published in collections during the early part of the twentieth century. 

Roscoe and Pansy surrounded themselves with independent, creative women like their mothers. One of them was composer, pianist, teacher, and speaker Estelle Philleo. 

Born in Parkman, Ohio in either 1880 or 1881, Estelle grew up in Mason, Michigan, just south of Lansing. In her early twenties, she moved to Denver and taught piano at Wolfe Hall. 

Around that time, another young man was drawing a blank and didn’t want to miss the streetcar home for dinner. Nearing the end of the day in midbleakwinter, Arthur Chapman, staff writer for the Denver Republican, still hadn’t written the poem he included in his daily column “Center Shots.” Imagine it. He wrote a poem every single day. And not only did he write it, but he put the poem immediately out in print for everyone to read. It was either very brave or very foolish and I’m guessing at about five o’clock young Arthur was feeling a bit more like it was the latter.

As often happens, necessity bred invention, and after seeing an Associated Press dispatch about a meeting of governors determined to identify the boundary between the East and the West, his fingers flew over the keys to type out a poem that would form the words for a song that would one day be marketed as the anthem of the West in the way that Dixie is the anthem of the South. At the time he wrote it, he didn’t think much of it at all and was just glad to be able to head off to dinner. 

In December of 1911, the poem was printed in newspapers across the country. It was so well liked and remembered that it continued to run in papers for years and was even used in advertising campaigns without young poet Arthur Chapman seeing a single cent in revenue.

About four years later, Estelle Philleo was writing music reviews for the Denver Republican when she first read Out Where the West Begins on a postcard from Arizona. There was no author’s name on it, so the irony that she was sitting in the same building where it was written was lost on her at the time. Enamored with the Spirit of the West, Estelle loved the words and a melody came easily to her. She sang it for a few friends and they encouraged her to write it down, so she did and tucked it away.

About two more years passed and Estelle was in Chicago with her friend Margaret St. Vrain Sanford from Greeley, Colorado. She persuaded Estelle to publish Out Where the West Begins in 1917. 

It was a sensation. In 1919, Estelle went to New York City to welcome returning soldiers at the little place in the middle of the block between Fifth and Sixth Avenue on West 40th Street, just across from the library, with the sign that read “MICHIGAN Headquarters for Soldiers and Sailors.” Out Where the West Begins was the unofficial song of greeting with Estelle at the piano. By 1920, sheet music for Out Where the West Begins reached 100,000 in sales. 

Estelle Philleo ensured that Arthur Chapman was finally paid a royalty for the beloved poem he’d written nearly a decade earlier. 

Margaret St. Vrain Sanford asked Estelle to write a song for a well-known poem by an unknown author that was commonly called Time Worn Trails. Estelle joked that she would dream about the pioneers that night and see what happened. Incredibly, she woke with the complete score in her head. 

Margaret St. Vrain Sanford was from a prominent family in the Estes Park area of Colorado. Owners of the well-known Sanford Ranch, SS was their symbol and it was printed on the original trio of songs written by Estelle and published by Margaret: Out Where the West Begins, Trails, and Roundup Lullaby. A Chicago publishing house picked up the songs and kept the SS brand printed on the sheet music because they liked the distinct regional flair. Western artists were selected to make cover art for the music. Not known as a visual artist, my great grandfather Roscoe Stockton drew the cover art for Trails in 1920. Although Roscoe’s family lived in the same part of Michigan as Estelle at the turn of the century and Roscoe’s mother was also a Denver piano teacher and conducted programs involving school students that were similar to the ones Estelle toured, the Trails cover art is the earliest evidence that Roscoe and Estelle knew each other.

Margaret St. Vrain Sanford wrote a forward for Trails, capturing the Spirit of the West that so captivated both Estelle and Roscoe.

“Trails! The winding, western wind blown trails. Trails! What a wealth of fiction, poetry, and romance has been built around the thought conjured up by that simple word. How it brings to mind the coonskin cap and shoulder-slung rifle of Daniel Boone, the daring adventures of Crockett, Bridger, “Wild Bill,” and Kit Carson. How our thought surges to that tomb on Lookout Mountain, where sleeps the last of the great trailblazers, “Buffalo Bill.” Along the trails were fought many of the bloodiest battles of the early pioneers. Along the trails burned the campfires of America’s most daring men and women, when all the west was a sage-grown wilderness. Along the trails all the greatness of manhood and womanhood, all the richness of life at its fullest, entered into the great drama of settling the west. With the passing of the pioneers, giants in bravery, lofty purpose, and unswerving perseverance, goes much of our romance, spirit of adventure, and western life; but the windblown ribbons of dusty yellow trails, peopled now only by imaginary forms, may yet be preserved to the nation, if a sincere effort be made in behalf of these once glorious, now almost forgotten highways.” 

Estelle wrote an additional chorus for the song:

There is no more travel on the old, old trail,
Gone is the pioneer,
And the steady rumble of the wagon train,
Crossing the lone frontier,
But the spirit flames like a signal fire,
Lighting the sky above,
For the trail that led to the Heart of the West,
Was the trail of love!

Estelle did not stay in one place very long. As if movement kept the Spirit of the West alive, the peripatetic composer crossed and recrossed those time-worn trails by more modern means. For a time, Estelle lived in Rosebud, Montana, a fact The Billings Gazette was very proud to advertise, claiming the town as the birth-site of a number of her compositions. Estelle toured with Badger Clark, who was known as the Cowboy Poet and wrote the words for Estelle’s song Roundup Lullaby. 

Estelle toured a program called “Setting the West to Music” where she’d spend ten weeks or so in a location and teach using the “Melody Way” method of class piano instruction, culminating in a show for the public that opened with Out Where the West Begins and included student performances.

“I want my music to express western life and western spaces – the bigness – that vital something that is in the west and nowhere else,” Estelle stated in an article for the Tucson Citizen during her “Setting the West to Music” visit in 1928.

While doing the same tour in Wichita, Kansas, the Wichita Eagle wrote that Miss Philleo “is committed to the work of making the silences of its vast spaces and distant mountains eloquent to its own children and to the rest of the country.” The same article stated that Estelle’s The Spirit of the States march had won band awards and was written “while its composer sat at her window watching the boys marching down Michigan avenue on their way to France.” Estelle later corrected that she actually wrote the song two years after watching those soldiers march down Chicago’s Michigan Avenue and first played it in New York City when she was there to welcome Michigan soldiers. 

The Wichita Eagle also announced that Estelle was beginning to compose songs about aviation, specifically Louis L. De Jean’s poem Out of the Skies.

The Wichita Eagle quoted Estelle, “If you ask me where I think the West begins, I should include Wichita. But I should also quote an old editorial in Collier’s which says on this subject: ‘The West begins wherever the audacious heart dares to answer to the call of vision, whether on the Atlantic or the Pacific or the prairies that roll between….God deliver us from a machine-made, cut and dried civilization….The West begins with a breed of hard-fisted mystics who are dreaming, and who at the same time are keeping their feet upon the earth.’” (The Wichita Eagle, October 23, 1927.)

Based on this definition, Estelle Philleo personified the West. She was a practical dreamer and a hardworking free spirit. 

With six composition collaborations discovered so far, it is possible that Roscoe held the honor of having more of his lyrics set to music by Estelle Philleo than anyone else.

Among them was Farther West published in 1921. Roscoe’s lyrics center around the idea that it may be dark, but it is still day in the farther west place where a loved one is also looking at the sky. The viewer wonders if the loved one can sense the twilight surrounding the viewer, bridging the distance, bringing the distant loved one near.

“When the sun last night,
Caressed with a waning light,
The crest of my snow horizoned West,
Sweetheart far, 
When his last departing ray,
Left me in the twilight grey,
Even then it still was day,
Where you are.

Now when dusky shadows start,
And the brighter joys depart,
From the bound’ries of my heart,
Sweetheart far;
Do you see a sunlit view,
Or does my mood speak to you,
So you sense my twilight, too
Where you are?”

Another Philleo-Stockton collaboration, No More Troubelin,’ also known as The Meadowlark Song, was a favorite of the school kids in Wichita, perhaps in part because Kansas had just chosen the meadowlark as its state bird.

“Meadowlark’s a singin’ when I’m feelin’ sad and blue:
“No more troubelin’!”
In a little melody that comes a stealin’ through,
Joy’s o’er bubbelin’
Early in the mornin’ I can hear it cool and clear; 
Hurries off my worries like I’d never had ‘em near!
Happy little wingin’ little singin’ bit o’cheer!
“No more troubelin’!”
If a song can make you strong,
This Old World can’t be all wrong!
Even when the sun’s away
Singin’ always makes it day!
When I hear the Meadowlark,
Life is bright instead o’dark,
Joy comes bubbelin’
Gladness doubelin’
There’s no more troubelin’ for me!”

Immovably optimistic, hope always shone through in Roscoe’s writing. No matter how dark things got, there was always the unseen light of sun or stars above the clouds.

As someone who dabbles at setting words to music, it fascinates me to think about what it was like to compose in the 1920s and 1930s. Forget software. The music would need to be noted on the staff in readable fashion by hand. And probably directly in pen, too, because based on my personal experience, pencil fades and writing over in pen is prone to the same errors as writing it for the first time in pen. There is a high level of focus for accuracy involved.

Estelle and Roscoe left behind painstakingly handwritten compositions, some of them now almost 100 years old. I enjoy reading them, especially the parts where they wrote in notes to add additional measures or relocate sections.   

Following are some of the lyrics from two more collaborations.

Thousands of Stars
“Thousands of stars has the night dear,
Two in your eyes shine for me,
Heaven’s own beauty and light, dear,
Smile from the two that I see.

Thousands of stars far about me,
Light but the blue of the skies,
Two stars that tell me you love me,
Shine from the blue of your eyes.”

The Name of You
“When shining stars of Night have gone,
And left the stars of dew,
In tender whisperings of Dawn,
I hear the Name of You!
A golden cloud across the Morn,
Reflects the Sun’s first hue;
So my sad heart lightens,
As remembrance brightens,
Golden days I spent with You!

Ever, Dear, the Name of You,
Wakes Love’s olden flame of You!
Joys you gave are part of me,
Graven in the heart of me;
Ever, Dear, your dream caress,
Wakes Love’s olden happiness!
Dreams are all that’s left, I guess,
And the Name of You!”

Roscoe wrote the words and music for his own song about the beloved state Colorado that some considered the informal state song over the next decade. It was billed as “the snappiest, peppiest, happiest Colorado song ever written.” Although cumbersome to spell and say, Roscoe was likely pleased with his inventive song title: 
C-O!HelLO!HooRAy!D-O!  The song was referred to by many different names, including the “Mile High Colorado Song” or “I’m in Denver Feelin’ Fine.” Roscoe wrote countless verses featuring many different Colorado cities, organizations, and occasions. Other people followed suit, writing parody lyrics that sought Roscoe’s forgiveness. Thankfully, Roscoe had a sense of humor.

C-O!HElLO!HooRAy!D-O! was published in 1926, and soon after, The Daily Sentinel in Greeley, Colorado wrote: “A new song was introduced to the club by its author, Roscoe K. Stockton, who sang ‘C-O!Hello!Hooray!D-Oh,’ his latest composition and one which is meeting popular favor all over the state. Mr.  Stockton is principal of the Bryant school in Denver and he has written several songs symbolic of the state. In this one, however, he seems to have struck a distinctive note, and instead of talking of the pines and columbines, he catches something of the breezy air of the Mile High state.”

Music was distributed at Community Sings throughout the state. In one copy of the sheet music, there are notes to alternate the chorus between male and female voices, with men singing “C-O!” and women “Hello!” followed by men “Hooray!” and women “D-O!” It was a great crowd pleaser and Roscoe loved rousing the public in unified Mile High Spirit. 

In July 1929, Roscoe and Pansy went on a pilgrimage to the Mount of the Holy Cross, and the Eagle Valley Enterprise wrote: “Mr. Stockton, author of the Mile High Colorado Song, was quite agreeably surprised to ride into camp a stranger to everyone almost, just at the moment when some of the pilgrims were singing his song. He was a most entertaining reader and some of his productions were enjoyed immensely, being called for repeatedly. His wife, Mrs. Pansy Stockton, is a talented painter and artist. The Stocktons were most satisfactory members of the Pilgrimage program.”

The official state song, Where the Columbines Grow by A.J. Flynn, was adopted by the Colorado State Congress on May 8, 1915. It became controversial, with many claiming that the song was difficult to sing and others saying that it just needed to be given a chance. Many wrote their own “Colorado” songs, including Estelle Philleo, however, none seemed to be as widely sung as Roscoe’s C-O!HelLO!HooRAy!D-O! As recently as 1976, school students recorded the song among other historic Colorado tunes, and in 1969, a school teacher put in his vote for Roscoe’s song to replace Where the Columbines Grow as the state song.

“There have been a good many songs about columbines and whispering pines and moonlight,” Roscoe stated in 1926 in an article in Grand Junction’s The Daily Sentinel. “I wanted to get another spirit into my song – the feeling I always have when I get back to the state….We have sung this song a good deal at Overland Park this summer, and it seems to take with the tourists there….After all, five-eighths of ‘Colorado’ is ‘Color,’ when you come to analyze it. Why not try to get some of the color into our songs and our paintings?”

The paintings Roscoe referred to were his wife Pansy’s sun paintings, which had exploded into fascinated popularity at that time. Outgoing, bubbly, and always ready for some fun, Pansy was eager to share her works and, for a time, Roscoe and Pansy found a way to join forces to make music and art available to visitors to the state. 

Roscoe wrote many other songs over the years. The Tree of the P.T.A. was used by the Parent Teacher Association for decades. From the Rockies I’m Calling Yoo-Hoo! was sung by the Denver Philharmonic Acappella Chorus at the all-night KOA Dedicatory Party and Nationwide Broadcast in honor of KOA’s new 50,000 watt transmitter on July 7, 1934. 

Roscoe teamed with composer Fred T. McKean to write two songs for the Boys Scouts of America: Be Prepared! The Song of the Scouts and Carry Through, Song of the Scouters. 

Roscoe dove head-first into commercial radio in the late 1920s, directing and writing for the radio dramas Solitaire Cowboys, Old Wagon Tongue, Reminiscences of the Old West, and Light on the West. 

Estelle also got involved in the new medium. On May 18, 1926, KOA broadcast Estelle’s The Spirit of the States March, Out Where the West Begins, and Colorado with Estelle on piano and Mary Lee Read on organ. Mary Lee Read later became famous as the woman who played the organ at Grand Central Station in New York City every Christmas and some other holidays from 1928 onward. Mary Lee Read’s most famous concert at Grand Central Station was when she played The Star-Spangled Banner on the day that the United States went to war after Pearl Harbor, which caused a bit of trouble because it brought the entire concourse to a standstill. Mary Lee Read was asked not to play the national anthem at Grand Central Station ever again. 

Estelle composed songs for the Solitaire Cowboys such as Powder River Blues. She would appear as a guest on their shows and play the accompaniments for their songs on piano. 

“I am not concerned much with the trend in music,” Estelle Philleo was quoted in an interview in 1932 with The Salt Lake City Tribune, “but I feel that my mission is to keep alive the romantic traditions of the west through the medium of music. The spirit of the west must be caught and perpetuated.”

In the fall of 1935, when news came that the ever-active Estelle Philleo was sick with cancer, the KOA radio team poured their energy into “a KOA Talent Parade to honor and benefit Colorado’s Own Composer Miss Estelle Philleo, who has written many songs glorifying our West and who has made the West available to the world in a musical setting.” The Colorado State Governor and Mayor of the City of Denver were at the top of the list of patrons, immediately followed by composer Charles Wakefield Cadman.

The show opened with Roscoe’s C-O!-Hello!-Hooray!-D-O! and continued with 16 songs written by Estelle Philleo intermingled with other performances in her honor. Clarence C. Moore, baritone singer and announcer and later to become Program Manager at KOA, was Master of Ceremonies. Men O’ The West Quartette, The Sweethearts of Melody, The Merchants Orchestra, The Rhythmettes Trio, The Colorado Cowboys Quartette (formerly the Solitaire Cowboys), xylophonist Ralph Hansell, and various soloists and impersonators performed in Estelle’s honor. 

The show opened with Roscoe’s C-O!-Hello!-Hooray!-D-O! and continued with 16 songs written by Estelle Philleo intermingled with other performances in her honor. Clarence C. Moore, baritone singer and announcer and later to become Program Manager at KOA, was Master of Ceremonies. Men O’ The West Quartette, The Sweethearts of Melody, The Merchants Orchestra, The Rhythmettes Trio, The Colorado Cowboys Quartette (formerly the Solitaire Cowboys), xylophonist Ralph Hansell, and various soloists and impersonators performed in Estelle’s honor. 

Estelle Philleo died at age 55 on March 20, 1936 near where her sister lived in Chicago. Her gravestone is at the site of the Colorado Cabin in Dumont, Colorado that was her mountain retreat and enough of a home to warrant the song Estelle published in 1930.

Colorado Cabin
to H.N.B.
Where a mountain stream is flowing,
Where a soft west wind is blowing,
And the columbines are growing
‘round a cabin door,
There the night was made for dreaming,
In the silver moonlight beaming,
And the whole day long is a just a song 
Repeating o’er and o’er.
In a Colorado cabin
By a singing mountain stream,
Let us linger here, awhile my dear,
And dream.
Yesterday is far behind us,
Let tomorrow come and find us,
In a Colorado cabin
By a singing mountain stream. 

SOURCES

“Arizona Inspired Music Of Song ‘Out Where West Begins,’ Composer Reveals.” The Tucson Citizen. Tucson, AZ. April 8, 1928.

Chapman, Arthur. “Men and Things. Where the West Begins.” Burlington Daily News. Burlington, VT. December 14, 1911.

“Chorus Songs Featured At Lions Meeting.” The Daily Sentinel. Grand Junction, CO. August 17, 1926. 

“Color of Colorado in Pictures and Song.” The Daily Sentinel. Grand Junction, CO. August 22, 1926. 

“Composer Tells of Song Writing.” Arizona Daily Star. Tucson, AZ. April 11, 1928. 

“Estelle Philleo, Denver Composer, Dies Here.” Chicago Tribune. Chicago, IL. March 21, 1936.

Iowa City Press-Citizen. Iowa City, IA. February 21, 1930.

“KOA to Broadcast Songs From Pen of Former Montanan.” The Billings Gazette. Billings, MT. February 1, 1929. 

“KOA Tonight.” The Aspen Daily Times. Aspen, CO. May 18, 1926.

Messenger, Donald. “A Wichita Tendency That Is Being Set to Music.” The Wichita Eagle. Wichita, KS. October 23, 1927.

“Michigan Glad Hand Grasped.” Lansing State Journal. Lansing, MI. March 10, 1919.

Miller, Kris. “The Estelle Philleo Grave.” Mill Creek Valley Historical Society Newsletter. Dumont, CO. March 2008. 

Natelson, Robert G. “Reclaiming the Centennial State’s Centennial Song – The Facts About ‘Where the Columbines Grow.’” Independence Institute. September 2015. 

“RMHS music groups to produce record.” Fort Collins Coloradoan. Fort Collins, CO. February 11, 1976.

Sampsel, Laurie J. and Puscher, Donald M. “’Out Where the West Begins’: The Denver Song that Became a Western Classic.” American Research Center Journal. Volume 22, 2013. pp. 35-57.

“Song Writer of Western Classic Utah Visitor.” The Salt Lake Tribune. October 27, 1932.

“Story Given of Famous Colorado Song.” The Daily Sentinel. Grand Junction, CO. August 1, 1921.

Woodworth, Betty. “State Song Controversial Subject – Teachers Tell Opinions.” Fort Collins Coloradoan. Fort Collins, CO. March 23, 1969.

“Would Make Poem To the West What Dixie Is To The South.” The Ardmore Daily Press. Ardmore, OK. March 7, 1922.