Acquisition:	Gift, 1960; Purchase, 2006 (Reg. no. 15431)
	Processed by:	Sarah Norris, 2002; Richard Workman, 2003; Hope Rider, 2006

Repository:

Harry Ransom Center, The University of Texas at Austin

	David Wendell Guion was born in Ballinger, Texas, on 15 December 1892, to John I. and Armour Fentress Guion. His earliest musical influences included the cowboy culture of his rancher father and the songs of his family's African American household servants. Piano studies took Guion to Vienna, Austria, in 1912 to study with Leopold Godowski at the Royal Conservatory of Music, but he was forced to return to Texas in 1914 by the onset of World War I.
	Guion supported himself by teaching and composing and moved to New York in 1929. There an association with publishers G. Schirmer, Inc. brought new popularity for his arrangements of cowboy songs and spirituals. His biggest hit, "Home on the Range," emerged from his New York production Prairie Echoes. Guion hosted a weekly radio program entitled "Hearing America with David Guion" and later, "David Guion and his Orchestra" with an NBC studio orchestra. His larger work, Ballet Primitive, "Shingandi," was originally intended to be film music for Cecil B. DeMille's Madam Satan. When "talkies" changed the film landscape, however, Guion instead premiered Shingandi in 1931 in a different orchestration with a prominent jazz group, the Paul Whiteman Band. The work eventually toured as a ballet production with Dallas's Kosloff Ballet Company. In 1950 Guion was commissioned to write the suite Texas for the Houston Symphony Orchestra, and he completed the piece in 1952.
	In addition to "Home on the Range," Guion is best known for his arrangements of "Turkey in the Straw,""The Yellow Rose of Texas," and "The Arkansas Traveler," and for his piano pieces "The Harmonica Player" and "The Scissors Grinder." He captured Texas cowboy culture in tunes such as "Ride, Cowboy, Ride,""Ol' Paint,""The Bold Vaquero," and "Lonesome Song of the Plains." His piano arrangements caught the interest of pianist and composer Percy Grainger, who included Guion's work in his own concerts to great acclaim. Guion's affinity for African American spirituals appears in both his own songwriting and in collaboration with lyricist Marie Wardall in the opera Suzanne. He also worked with lyricist Jessie B. Rittenhouse, a poet and anthologist in New York.
	Guion lived on a Pennsylvania estate he called "Home on the Range" from 1937 until moving to Dallas in 1965. He taught at Howard Payne University, Fort Worth Polytechnic College, Fairmont Conservatory, Chicago Musical College, Daniel Baker College, and Southern Methodist University. Guion died in Dallas on 17 October 1981 and was buried in his hometown of Ballinger. In 1987 he was honored by a permanent exhibit of his personal items and recordings at the International Festival Institute in Round Top, Texas.

The inventory for the David Wendell Guion Collection is a conflation of one finding aid created in 2002 and updated in 2003 and a preliminary inventory created for a minimally processed addition received in 2006. The 2006 addition was appended to the end of the original finding aid. Because both descriptions began the box numbering with Box 1, the 1995 addition is differentiated by adding the letter "a" to the original box number (e.g., Box 1a, Box 2a, etc.). The inventories were combined in 2025 to comply with a new content management system.

	1960 Acquisition
	The David Wendell Guion Collection consists of handwritten manuscripts of Guion's music from about 1902 to 1937, primarily influenced by cowboy songs and African American spirituals. The pieces are arranged in a single series, Compositions, ca. 1902-1937. All pieces are written for piano, and some have lyrics. Individual titles include "Home on the Range,""The Yellow Rose of Texas,""Turkey in the Straw," and others. Also included are scores for two larger works, Ballet Primitive, "Shingandi" and selections from the opera Suzanne. The music is often marked with handwritten notes and publication dates.
	This collection reveals Guion alternately functioning as composer, arranger, and collector of folk tunes. Collaborations with lyricists include extensive work with Marie Wardall and Jessie B. Rittenhouse. Most compositions were written either in Texas or New York and are often marked accordingly.
	An Index of Titles following the container list provides the titles of individual works for this acquisition only.
	2006 Acquisition
	This addition to the collection contains scores and choreographic notes used to stage the first full ballet performance of Guion's work Shingandi in 1933, by Theodore Kosloff and the Kosloff Ballet Company. It contains an orchestral score, a set of orchestral parts, a piano score, and two-piano parts. The piano score is heavily annotated with choreographic directions by Kosloff.

Other Guion materials are held in the Southwest Collection at Texas Tech University, the Crouch Music Library at Baylor University, the Dallas Public Library, and the International Festival Institute in Round Top, Texas.

	People
		Rittenhouse, Jessie B (Jessie Belle), 1869-1948.
		Wardall, Marie.
	Subjects
		Composers -- Texas.
		Cowboys -- Texas -- Songs and music.
		Piano music.
		Songs.
		Spirituals (Songs)
	Document Types
		Scores.