the Cole Porter tune   Don't fence me in      has, obviously, long outlasted the musical in which it appeared. It's fun for me, as a rhythm guitarist, to play, which I do regularly at my Music with the Frail Elderly gig. It resonates, I suppose, in this agricultural area, where many of the 75+ crew lived with horses. Anyway, your thread title brought it immediately to mind, and I very nerdily wanted to get "Adios, Argentina" correct, and found this trivia:

      "Originally written in 1934 for Adios, Argentina, an unprodued 20th Century Fox film musical,    "Don't Fence Me In"    was based on text by a poet and engineer with the Department of Highways in Helena, Montana, Robert (Bob) Fletcher. Cole Porter, who had been asked to write a cowboy song for the 20th Century Fox musical, bought the poem from Fletcher for $250. Porter reworked Fletcher's poem, and when the song was first published, Porter was credited with sole authorship. Porter had wanted to give Fletcher co-authorship credit, but his publishers did not allow that. After the song became popular, however, Fletcher hired attorneys who negotiated his being given co-authorship credit in subsequent publications. Although it was one of the most popular songs of its time, Porter claimed it was his least favorite of his own compositions.[1]

The Fletcher poem used would seem to be "Open Range," contained in his 1934 book Coral Dust. The final couplet is "And turn me loose on my cayuse, But please don't fence me in." Apart from that, the rest of the lyrics appear to be Cole's invention, unless he utilized other material from the book.[2]" {wiki obviously}

thanks 4 the thread, Bert!

cheers,
dennis