Singing Cowboys and Ten-gallon Hats
In the 19th century and first half of the 20th century, a hat was an indispensable item in every man’s wardrobe. Stetson focused on expensive, high-quality hats that represented both a real investment for the working cowboy and statement of success for the city dweller.
Early on, Stetson hats became associated with legends of the West, including “Buffalo Bill”, Calamity Jane, Will Rogers, and Annie Oakley. It is said that George Custer rode into the Battle of Little Big Horn wearing a Stetson. Later on, Western movie cowboys were quick to adopt the Stetson; many were drawn to the largest most flamboyant styles available.
Texans were known for their preference for the "Ten Gallon" model. According to Win Blevins' Dictionary of the American West (p388), the term "ten-gallon" has nothing to do with the hat's liquid capacity, but derives from the Spanish word galón (braid), ten indicating the number of braids used as a hat band. However, an early Stetson advertising image, a painting of a cowboy dipping his hat into a stream to provide water for his horse, symbolized the Cowboy hat as an essential part of a stockman’s gear and was later featured inside every western style hat.
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Famous quotes containing the words singing, cowboys and/or hats:
“My mother had a maid called Barbary;
She was in love, and he she loved proved mad,
And did forsake her. She had a song of “Willow,”
An old thing ‘twas, but it expressed her fortune,
And she died singing it. That song tonight
Will not go from my mind.”
—William Shakespeare (1564–1616)
“What do you think spies are: priests, saints and martyrs? They’re a squalid procession of vain fools, traitors too, yes; pansies, sadists and drunkards, people who play cowboys and Indians to brighten their rotten lives.”
—John le Carré (b. 1931)
“There are several natural phenomena which I shall have to have explained to me before I can keep on going as a resident member of the human race. One is the metamorphosis which hats and suits undergo exactly one week after their purchase, whereby they are changed from smart, intensely becoming articles of apparel into something children use when they want to “dress up like daddy.””
—Robert Benchley (1889–1945)