Don't Fence Me In is a popular American tune from 1934 with music by Cole Porter and lyrics by Robert Fletcher and Cole Porter. It was written for an unproduced 20th Century Fox musical called Adios, Argentina and was inspired by Fletcher’s Montana poetry; Porter bought the poem for $250 and reworked it. Originally published with Porter credited as the sole author, Fletcher later won co-authorship in subsequent publications. The song is a Western themed number famous for its frontier imagery, including lines like Give me land, lots of land and turn me loose, let me straddle my old saddle. A hit recording by Bing Crosby and the Andrews Sisters was released in 1944 and topped the charts for eight weeks; that same year Roy Rogers performed it in Hollywood Canteen, helping to popularize the tune further. Kate Smith introduced the song on radio in 1944, and it later became the title tune of the 1945 Roy Rogers film Don’t Fence Me In. The tune is widely covered and remains associated with the Western genre, with Ella Fitzgerald including it on her 1956 Cole Porter Songbook album. It was named one of the Top 100 Western songs of all time by the Western Writers of America.
