Ragtime Cowboy Joe
popular song published in 1912
"Ragtime Cowboy Joe" is a popular western swing song. The lyrics were written by Grant Clarke and the music was composed by Lewis F. Muir and Maurice Abrahams. It was copyrighted and published in 1912 by F.A. Mills.
Artists
The song has been recorded by a diverse group of artists, including Bob Roberts (1912), the Tune Wranglers (1936), Pinky Tomlin (1939), Eddy Howard (1947), Jo Stafford (1949), and the Chipmunks (1959). It was also performed by Betty Hutton in the 1945 musical film Incendiary Blonde.
In 1978, Jimmy Stewart made a memorable surprise cameo appearance performing the song on the piano on the final episode of The Carol Burnett Show.
Origin
The song's lyricist and composers are Clarke, Muir and Abrahams. Clarke also wrote "Second Hand Rose". "Ragtime Cowboy Joe" was composed in Brooklyn after an appearance at the home of Abrahams by his nephew, Joe Abrahams, wearing a cowboy outfit. Maurice Abrahams was so captivated by the appearance of his nephew dressed up as a cowboy that he was inspired to write "Ragtime Cowboy Joe".
“Ragtime Cowboy Joe” enters the record as popular song published in 1912. Crown Archives preserves that source wording while asking what Ragtime, Cowboy and popular can confirm, complicate or overturn.
Why this record matters
“Ragtime Cowboy Joe” is worth following because a concise public description often conceals a longer documentary argument. Here, Ragtime, Cowboy and popular provides the most credible route into that argument.
Reception evidence should be dated and situated: later canonical status may differ sharply from the work’s initial circulation. The source revision retrieved here is dated Jun 9, 2026. The linked authority identifier is Q7283248. None of the 0 selected statements returned an explicit reference. The first chronological checks are 1912, 1936, 1939 and 1947.
Rights, attribution and provenance may remain disputed even when a general reference summary presents a stable account. The lead is largely declarative, so disagreement and counter-evidence require a deliberate search beyond the opening account. Authority statements aid reconciliation but still require their own references, qualifiers and ranks to be checked.
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This entry incorporates text from “Ragtime Cowboy Joe” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.