Brewster M · Key of G · Public domain
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This chart is written in G. Tap any key above the chart to see the whole song in that key, with every chord already worked out. To stay in G with different chord shapes, play it capo 3 with the E shapes, or capo 5 with the D shapes, or capo 7 with the C shapes. Singing with a group? Pick the key where the highest note is comfortable for everyone, then print that page.
The words began as a poem. Dr. Brewster M. Higley, an Indiana doctor who had taken up a homestead claim on West Beaver Creek in Smith County, Kansas, wrote "My Western Home" in 1872 or 1873, and the Smith County Pioneer printed it; the Kirwin Chief reprinted it in March 1874. His friend Daniel E. Kelley, who played in the Harlan Brothers Orchestra, worked out a tune for it on his guitar. Higley's poem did not yet say "home on the range": his line was "Oh, give me a home where the buffalo roam," and the refrain was simply "A home, a home."
Cowboys and settlers carried it across the plains, changing words as they went, and in 1910 the folklorist John A. Lomax printed the version we sing in Cowboy Songs and Other Frontier Ballads, saying he had it from a saloon keeper in Texas who learned it on the Chisholm Trail. By the 1930s its origins were so muddled that a 1934 lawsuit claimed it copied a 1905 song called An Arizona Home; the investigation that followed traced it back to Higley's cabin, which still stands and is on the National Register of Historic Places. Kansas made it the state song on June 30, 1947. Words and melody are in the public domain.
Four open chords: G, C, A7 and D7, in a gentle waltz time (count three, or let it roll in six). Each verse line is four bars. The first line sits on G and moves to C on "buffalo," the second runs G, A7, D7 across "deer and the antelope play," the third repeats the G to C move on "discouraging," and the fourth comes home G, D7, G. The chorus is the same tune with "Home, home on the range" sung over G, D7, G, so once you know the verse you know everything. The A7 is the one chord that makes it sound right: lean on it. A bass note and two soft strums per bar is all it needs, and a group will slow it down on the last chorus by instinct; let them.
Tap any chord for its diagram, other voicings, and the notes inside it.
Another song of the plains: Red River Valley chords and lyrics
All the campfire and folk song chord sheets, each one in every key.
Further reading: Home on the Range (Wikipedia)
