LeDoux was born in Biloxi, Mississippi on October 2, 1948. He was of French descent on his father's side. His father was in the US Air Force and was stationed at Keesler Air Force Base at the time of his birth. The family moved often when he was a child, due to his father's Air Force career. He learned to ride horses while visiting his grandparents on their Wyoming farm. At age 13, LeDoux participated in his first rodeo, and before long was winning junior rodeo competitions.
LeDoux continued to compete in rodeo events and played football through his high school years. When his family moved to Cheyenne, Wyoming, he attended Cheyenne Central High School. After twice winning the Wyoming State Rodeo Championship bareback riding title during high school, LeDoux earned a rodeo scholarship to Casper College in Casper. During his junior year at Eastern New Mexico University, LeDoux won the Intercollegiate National bareback riding Championship.
LeDoux married Peggy Rhoads on January 4, 1972. They had five children: Clay, Ned, Will, Beau, and Cindy.
In 1970, LeDoux became a professional rodeo cowboy on the national circuit. To help pay his expenses while traveling the country, he began composing songs describing his lifestyle. Within two years, he had written enough songs to make up an album, and soon established a recording company, American Cowboy Songs, with his father. After recording his songs in a friend's basement, LeDoux "began selling his tapes at rodeo events out of the back of his pickup truck".
In 1976 LeDoux won the world bareback riding championship at the National Finals Rodeo in Oklahoma City. Winning the championship gave LeDoux more credibility with music audiences, as he now had proof that the cowboy songs he wrote were authentic. LeDoux continued competing for the next four years. He retired in 1980. With his rodeo career at an end, LeDoux and his family settled on a ranch in Kaycee, Wyoming. LeDoux continued to write and record his songs, and began playing concerts. His concerts were very popular, and often featured a mechanical bull (which he rode between songs) and fireworks. By 1982 he had sold more than 250,000 copies of his albums, with little or no marketing. By the end of the decade he had self-released 22 albums.
Despite offers from various record labels, LeDoux refused to sign a recording contract, instead choosing to retain his independence and control over his work while enjoying his regional following. In 1989, however, he shot to national prominence when he was mentioned in Garth Brooks' Top 10 country hit "Much Too Young (To Feel This Damn Old)." Capitalizing on the sudden attention, LeDoux signed a contract with Capitol Records subsidiary Liberty Records and released his first national album, Western Underground, in 1991. His follow-up album, Whatcha Gonna Do with a Cowboy, was certified gold and reached the Top 10. The title track, a duet with Brooks, became LeDoux's first and only Top 10 country single, reaching No. 7 in 1992. In concert, he ended the song by saying, "Thanks, Garth!"
For the 35th annual Grammy Awards in 1992, the single track "Whatcha Gonna Do with a Cowboy" was nominated for Best Country Vocal Collaboration.
For the next decade, LeDoux continued to record for Liberty. He released six additional records, including One Road Man, which made the country Top 40 in 1998. Toward the end of his career, LeDoux began recording material written by other artists, which he attributed to the challenge of composing new lyrics. With his 2000 release, Cowboy, he returned to his roots, re-recording many of his earliest songwriting creations.
The RIAA certified two gold and one platinum recordings for LeDoux. On February 22, 1993, the single "Whatcha Gonna Do with a Cowboy" went gold. On June 2, 1997, the album The Best of Chris LeDoux went gold. And on October 5, 2005, the album 20 Greatest Hits went platinum.
In August 2000, LeDoux was diagnosed with primary sclerosing cholangitis, which required him to receive a liver transplant. Garth Brooks volunteered to donate part of his liver, but it was incompatible. An alternative donor was located, and LeDoux received a transplant on October 7, 2000. After his recovery he released two additional albums. In November 2004, LeDoux was diagnosed with cholangiocarcinoma for which he underwent radiation treatment until his death.
LeDoux died of cancer on March 9, 2005, at age 56. His funeral was held on March 11.
Official bio:
Enough tears have fallen to fill the Powder River through Kaycee, Wyoming where Chris LeDoux called home. He died of a rare form of cancer in March of 2005. During his all-too-short 56 years of life, LeDoux was indeed a rare breed. Beloved by the rodeo world, LeDoux’s music captured the spirit of the sport - and of the American West - as few will ever likely match. The young Chris put pen to paper often. Poem after poem reflected his love of rodeo and of a young girl, Peggy, who would become his wife and bear him five children. His sense of humor and self-deprecating manner were constants even in the most painful of times. Besides writing words to become songs, Chris liked to sketch cartoons ala Charlie Russell and “Ole Chuck” would have been honored to ride alongside LeDoux. Many heroes don’t quite live up to their reputations. This Wyoming, and rodeo, hero outshined them all. A practical joke player extraordinaire, who would not intentionally hurt even the squirrels on the golf course, Chris will forever be thought of with a certain amount of reverence in these parts. There is a hole in Wyoming’s heart.
He was world champion professional bareback rider in 1976. When speaking about that accomplishment LeDoux chuckled recalling his bounty. “I won a saddle and a buckle and I got a hat and a pair of boots – and a little bit of money. The money’s gone. The boots are worn out. The hat’s gone – someone bit a big chunk out of it at Fort Worth that next winter. I still have the saddle and the buckle. But that championship gave me credibility in the music that I’m doing and helped tremendously,” LeDoux believed. His stage act came to represent a rodeo complete with mechanical bull, pyrotechnics, and pulsating energy that kept standing-room-only crowds on their feet for two hours – always howling for more. The moment the net fell and the first strains of “Copenhagen” rang out is one all Chris LeDoux fans cherished. Flinging tins was a sport in itself. It was a way to show love too, sort of like resting a bunch of roses at Barbara Streisand’s feet. Forgive the comparison but it is just the kind of image that would make Chris smile and say, “Yeah.”
His interest in rodeo stemmed from a childhood in Texas surrounded by friends and neighbors for whom rodeo was a way of life. LeDoux decided to give it a try, won a buckle, and was “bitten by the bug.” The family moved to Wyoming where rodeo continued to peak his interest. Before he gave much thought to girls or hot cars, Chris LeDoux dreamt of becoming a rodeo champ. He wrote his classic tune “Bareback Jack” while a student at Casper College. His mom had bought a guitar for Chris at Jay’s Music Store in Cheyenne a few years earlier. He first strummed and sang along to Marty Robbins “Big Iron.” He had many rodeo stars to gaze upon while living in Cheyenne and musicians then started to gain his attention. Favorites included Johnny Cash, Waylon Jennings and Charlie Daniels. “I started listening to country music and loved it. I wanted to be able to play the guitar and sing some of those songs,” LeDoux remembered.
Football competed for some of his extracurricular time while at Central High School in Cheyenne but it was always Cheyenne Frontier Days that gave him “Gold Buckle Dreams.” His bareback riding skills rose measurably as fellow contestants offered pointers. Soon Chris LeDoux was among the top riders. He could have chosen many different paths during that period in the late 1960s and 70s but decided a wife and family – settling in rural Wyoming – was the best course for his life. A successful rodeo career was overtaken by music. Hundreds of songs about the West, cowboy and rodeo life, and love ensued. It was Garth Brooks who kicked things up several notches by singing the line “Worn out tapes of Chris LeDoux” in Brooks’ 1989 hit “Much Too Young (to Feel This Damn Old).” Almost immediately millions more fans of Chris launched a career that brought recognition and a degree of fame well outside the rodeo world.
Writing songs became more work than fun and Chris would come to depend on others for many of his recordings during the latter part of his long musical journey. “Writing to me is like sitting in a room by yourself all day pulling one hair out a time. I did enough of that. I’m ready to enjoy other things - be outside,” he said. He would get back home to the Kaycee ranch often and when there fix fence and do ranch chores his father-in-law saved for him. “I’m usually home calving time,” LeDoux recalled. “I kind of wish I was out on the road then.”
Another passion entered LeDoux’s life in the latter half of the 1990s. Golf. That surprised the cowboy musician. “I hate to admit it. I cussed the game for years. But it’s addicting. I don’t understand it. Maybe it’s just the nice little parks you get to walk through.”
Aren’t we glad he walked through our lives? More like leaped, and sang, and helped teach us to believe there is a lot of good out there we can do for others while at the same time enriching our own souls beyond measure.
Chris LeDoux’s band, Western Underground, carries on in his honor. Guitar player, and road manager, Mark Sissel stood by Chris’s side for 16 years. “It was like getting up every morning and walking down the road with John Wayne. The only difference was there was no on-screen/off-screen. Chris was the same every day – an extraordinary person; an exceptional man,” Sissel told the crowd at the first annual Tribute to Chris LeDoux in Casper, Wyo. last fall.
Seventeen
Chris LeDoux Lyrics
Jump to: Overall Meaning ↴ Line by Line Meaning ↴
To watch his dad work the young horse they called Smokey man did that horse buck
But his old dad just sat up there and rode him like there was nothin' to it
Right then the boy gained a whole new respect for the man
And from that day on he knew that when he grew up he wanted to be a cowboy
Seventeen cowboys' dreams ain't on fixin' fences
Once he's seen 'em ride in old Cheyenne
This ain't where his heart is but you know his daddy understands
Noonday comes father and son sit down and eat their dinner
Beneath that big Wyoming sky
His daddy knows he's gotta let him go the boy can't be a winner
If he don't spread his wings and fly
And in his mind he's riding bulls down in Las Vegas
Soon he'll be on a train that leads to Santa Fe
Sweet voice of freedom echoes down the ages calls another cowboy on his way
Fencin's done and the morning sun finds him packed and ready
Momma kissed his cheek and then she went inside
His old man well he shook his hand said son you ride 'em pretty
Didn't see the tears that his momma cried
And in his mind he's riding...
The lyrics to Chris LeDoux's song Seventeen tell the story of a young man who dreams of becoming a cowboy. The song opens with a scene of the boy watching his father break a horse. This experience inspires the boy to want to be a cowboy when he grows up. As he gets older, the boy realizes that being a cowboy is not all about fixing fences and ranch routines. He dreams of riding in rodeos and traveling the country to compete.
However, the young man's father knows that his son's dreams cannot be fulfilled on the ranch. Although it is hard for him to let his son go, the father knows that he must allow his son to pursue his dreams. The final verse of the song depicts the young man leaving home and heading out to follow his dreams. His parents say goodbye and wish him well, knowing that he will find his own path in life.
The song explores themes of coming of age, following one's dreams, and the love between a father and his son. It shows how the boy's experiences growing up on the ranch shape his dreams and goals for the future. In the end, he takes a risk and sets out on his own, following his passion for rodeo and cowboy life.
Line by Line Meaning
When he was five years old his mom took him down to the round corral
At the age of five, his mother took him to see his father work the young horse named Smokey in a round corral.
To watch his dad work the young horse they called Smokey man did that horse buck
He went to watch his father work the young horse named Smokey, who was known for bucking.
But his old dad just sat up there and rode him like there was nothin' to it
Despite Smokey's bucking, his father rode him with ease, as if it was effortless.
Right then the boy gained a whole new respect for the man
Watching his father handle Smokey made the boy admire and respect his dad even more.
And from that day on he knew that when he grew up he wanted to be a cowboy
Seeing his father's skills in handling the horse made the boy decide to become a cowboy when he grew up.
Seventeen cowboys' dreams ain't on fixin' fences
At the age of seventeen, the boy's dream of being a cowboy did not involve simply fixing fences.
Once he's seen 'em ride in old Cheyenne
After seeing cowboys ride in Cheyenne, he was inspired to become like them.
Ranch routine and his old man's schemes
The monotonous ranch routine and his father's plans were not where his heart belonged.
This ain't where his heart is but you know his daddy understands
He knew that his heart did not belong in ranching, but his father was understanding of his desire to be a cowboy.
Noonday comes father and son sit down and eat their dinner
At noon, father and son sat down to eat their food under the vast sky of Wyoming.
Beneath that big Wyoming sky
The sky of Wyoming was vast and beautiful.
His daddy knows he's gotta let him go the boy can't be a winner
His father knew that he had to let him go and pursue his dreams, otherwise, he would not be successful.
If he don't spread his wings and fly
If he does not take chances and follow his dreams, he cannot be successful.
And in his mind he's riding bulls down in Las Vegas
In his mind, he was already imagining himself riding bulls in Las Vegas.
Soon he'll be on a train that leads to Santa Fe
He was soon to be on a train that would take him to Santa Fe, to pursue his dreams of being a cowboy.
Sweet voice of freedom echoes down the ages calls another cowboy on his way
The sweet voice of freedom calls upon him to pursue his dreams of being a cowboy.
Fencin's done and the morning sun finds him packed and ready
After finishing the fence work, he was ready to leave early in the morning.
Momma kissed his cheek and then she went inside
His mother kissed him goodbye before he left.
His old man well he shook his hand said son you ride 'em pretty
His father wished him luck and praised his riding skills.
Didn't see the tears that his momma cried
His mother cried silently, without him noticing.
And in his mind he's riding...
In his mind, he was already riding towards his dreams of being a cowboy.
Lyrics © CONCORD MUSIC PUBLISHING LLC, Peermusic Publishing
Written by: CHRIS LEDOUX
Lyrics Licensed & Provided by LyricFind
@ldolphin34
I am proud to tell the internet that I was the first guy ever to play this song on the radio anywhere, as a twenty-two-year-old broadcaster in Sheridan, Wyoming on 1410 KWYO. Gordon Stack was our program director and got the deal to have that single exclusively for one week.
@billhillify4924
Interesting…First time I heard it was on KIML out of Gillette…also heard out of Casper on KTWO…was out working on a ranch along the Belle Fourche. Now, it seems, that was a long time ago.
@sandkworkshop
Dang I miss this so much. I was a huge fan from the beginning and am now an old man, that just misses the best artist to come along. And a great man!!
@TJFritz
The last of the American True Cowboy 🇺🇸👍 God Bless 🙏 Chris LeDoux. will never Be forgotten. A True legend
@craigholt3485
There isn't a cowboy song as specific as this...thank you Chris.
@justincolt9968
Cowboy anthem for the ages. Sweet voice of freedom calls another cowboy on the way!
@randerson2991
One of my favorite songs of his. Sure do miss you Chris
@LoganPresley-rl4wr
I was once a 17 year old farm kid, learning how to ride bulls. This song was my anthem i guess. I did ok. Now im 48 years old. Id do it all again in a heartbeat.
@gentlemanwithagun2770
My family moved away from the cowboy life style when I was about 7, and I never really got back into it, but my favorite music is still cowboy music.
@sheadonlewisofficial
This is definetely in chris ledouxs top 3 songs