Back in the Saddle
A year after the demise of Wild West World, the Diamond W Wranglers are making music with a new name and venue.
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"We are the Diamond W Wranglers,” says lead singer and guitarist/fiddle player Stu Stuart as he stands on a portable stage in a corner of the visitor’s center at Old Cowtown. “We used to be the Prairie Rose Wranglers. But as you might have heard, when the farm goes down, you move to town.”
The room is filled with locals and people from Higginsville, Missouri, a town of 4,500. They’ve driven four hours and nearly 300 miles to see the Diamond W Wranglers, and they’ve just finished chowing down on brisket, cornbread and cobbler served by the entertainers. “We like hustling food almost as much as we like playing music,” Stuart says, eliciting a laugh from the audience.
The Diamond W Wranglers launch into their first song of the evening, an upbeat number about golden trails and roaring rivers. They sing in perfect harmony, a fusion of traditional folk and men’s glee club, flavored by arrangements as big as the great outdoors. With a repertoire of around 250 songs, the Wranglers choose the first three or four songs ahead of time and then customize the set list to each audience. As a result, the show take on a life of its own. “When we’re feeding off each other, it’s hard to describe,” says guitarist and music arranger Jim Farrell. “There are some nights that it’s just magic.”
A lot has changed during the past year. The name is different. They’ve abandoned the prairie for the city. Today, they play inside a building that hugs the shores of the Arkansas River and stands beside a dust-covered trail that’s as old as the songs they sing. Still, some things remain the same—namely, the tunes, time-tested tales that hold true even as the rest of the world changes around the Diamond W Wranglers.
Home on the Range
Orin Friesen, the group’s upright-bass player, points out a 95-year-old man in the crowd. The man is wearing a cowboy hat and sits in a mechanized wheelchair. “Ladies and gentleman, we’re honored to have Mr. Herb Jeffries in the audience tonight,” says Friesen. “He is one of the last of the famous cowboys from movies and radio in the ’40s, and he’s in the Country Music Hall of Fame.”
Friesen possesses an uncanny knowledge of Western music, derived from more than 40 years on Kansas radio stations and as the host of both a nationally syndicated bluegrass show and a Western music show. He has the hard, etched features and reserved attitude you would expect of an old-time cowboy. He spends his downtime working cattle and riding horses.
One of his fondest memories is seeing Roy Rogers, Dale Evans and The Sons of the Pioneers at the Nebraska State Fair as a boy. “Today would have been the 100th birthday of Bob Nolan of Sons of the Pioneers,” says Friesen. “So we’d like to play a song in his memory. This one is called ‘Cool Water.’”
As they sing, Friesen tips his bass and hums the backup vocals. The group continues with several faster-paced numbers, including “Diamond Joe.” Across the stage, guitarist Jim Farrell closes his eyes and croons in a high-pitched tone. Farrell wears a purple shirt and a tan vest. At one point, Friesen jokes, “You’ll have to forgive Jim. He was in a rush to get here and didn’t have a chance to change today. He was auditioning to be the grape in a Fruit of the Loom commercial. “Throughout the evening, the audience chuckles as the band members lightheartedly poke fun of each other.
Stuart continues, “When I first met Jim, he drove this beat-up, old truck. If tow trucks could fly, they’d hover over that truck like vultures.” During a brief moment of seriousness, he introduces “Tennessee Jim,” who grew up in Tennessee and first worked with Stuart as part of the J38 Land & Cattle Company. Farrell has produced music with Western music legends like Roy Rogers Jr. , Rex Allen Jr., and Johnny Western and engineered all 10 of the Wranglers’ albums.
In fact, it was Stuart who first recruited Farrell to Wichita to join the Wranglers in 1999. It was back then that a larger-than-life Texan named Thomas Etheredge approached Stuart and Friesen about starting a chuckwagon supper near Benton. Stuart and Friesen, who were part of a foursome known as the Home Rangers at the time, accepted the offer and called Farrell to ask him to join. The Prairie Rose Wranglers were born.
Riding High
With fiddle in hand, Stuart says, “We’ve had a request to play ‘The Orange Blossom Special,’ but we don’t do it . . .” Before he can finish, the other band members launch into the country classic. Stuart shrugs and plays along. During a lull, he explains, “There’s a reason that I haven’t done this song in 25 years. My first wife ran off with a train conductor years ago, and every time I hear the sound of that whistle, I get scared. I’m afraid she’s coming back.” The audience erupts with laughter.
In truth, Stuart’s first and only wife is at the back of the room. She has prepared meals for audiences for years. During the past nine years, Stuart have never missed a performance. He comes from a family of entertainers, including his grandfather, Hal O’Halloran, former chief announcer for WLS Radio’s The National Barn Dance in Chicago. After starting a rock and roll band in high school and a stint in the Navy, Stuart played in a series of bluegrass and country bands before moving to Nashville. He then helped form a group known as Hank Flamingo that appeared on TV shows like Crook & Chase and Late Night with Conan O’Brien and toured nationally. That is, before becoming the first Prairie Rose Wrangler.
The band nears the high point of “Orange Blossom Special. “Now traditionally, most fiddle players play every lick they know on this part,” explains Stuart. “I’m not going to do that. I’m gonna do something that’s never been done before in this song.” The others pick up the tempo. Stu steadies his fieddle in front of the mike, then abruptly belts out a stream of Spanish words punctuated with the phrase “el rancho grande!” The rest of the band follows suit. At one point, Farrell gets carried away and shouts a shrill “y-y-y-i--p-a-y-y-y!” Stuart turns to look at him. “You are a disturbing individual,” he says.
Over the years, the Wranglers have perfected this act. As they’ve played together, the crowds have grown larger and astoundingly loyal. They went from performing in a pasture near Benton to headlining sold-out concerts at Carnegie Hall. More than 2,000 people packed into the famous theater in 2003 to hear their brand of old-time Western music. “After one of the concerts, the owner of the Carnegie Deli told us that he hadn’t seen crowds like that in 10 years,” recalls Friesen.
Two years ago, the Wranglers became the first musical group ever to play on the Great Wall of China. “We stood out like a sore thumb,” recalls Steve Crawford, the band’s drummer. The band memorized several songs in Mandarin by rote, though they grasped only the songs’ general meanings. “There was this tremendous sense of disbelief the entire time we were there,” recalls Crawford.
It was Etheredge who negotiated with China’s minister of culture to make the concert possible. And it was Etheredge who caused the Wranglers’ biggest setback just a year later.
