Tex Owens

Best remembered today as the author of the Eddy Arnold hit "Cattle Call," Tex Owens was a fixture on local radio in Kansas City and the CBS network during the 1930s and early '40s, and he was one of the first artists signed to Decca Records back in the '30s. He was the youngest of 13 children in a sharecropper family whose musical interests began with his generation -- his brother Chuck was a singer and songwriter, and his sister Texas Ruby was a performer with the Grand Ole Opry. Despite their musical activities, however, it took Owens until he was nearly 40 to decide on a career in music.