Comeback for cowboy crooner?

Slane Taggert has dropped a new single “If I Hadn’t Lost my Mind (You’d Be on It).”

The onetime Western troubadour has resurfaced with a surprise single after years of obscurity. Taggert formerly had a three-decade journey on the back roads of fame.

Originally from Broke Luck, Texas, he worked at the local poultry plant as a chicken sniffer and later as a Refuse Disposal Technician in the Army. “Sounds like the bomb squad but I mainly just burned sh-t in cans,” he’s said. 

He was discovered when A & R legend W.E. Ludlow overheard him singing from the drive-up window of a dry cleaner’s outside Houston. Taggert credits the cleaning chemicals for his unique vocal range. Critics have called it “an asthmatic duck on helium.” But he’s somehow kept his loyal legions of Slim Whitman fans and women over 50. “I like to tell people I’ve pleased over 50 women,” smiles Taggert.

His breakthrough hit was the 1973 Western lament “The Saddle Makes Me Sore Now Where You Used To.” Following the success of his debut album “Sleeping with the Stars” and a move to Possum Ford Studios, he proceeded to churn out a succession of trail ballads, like “That Heifer Reminds Me More and More of You” and “The Safest Kind of Pickup is a Truck.”

Taggert has been married five times. Three of those marriages ended in divorce and the last two were overlapping. Gone are the 3,000-acre spread in west Texas and the 37 custom F-150’s that used to grace his garages. Now he lives in a modest bungalow near Phoenix with “three head of cat and something that steals their food at night.”  

Many people at the VFW don’t even realize that the lanky guy with the battered guitar on Talent Night once cranked out hits alongside the biggest names in rodeo music.  To them, he’s just “S.T.” who serenades 4-H winners and calls bingo when Carl is sick.

But Taggert was itching to get back in the recording saddle and took a dare from a friend to “clear out the pipes and let one rip.” His beer-soaked webcam demo was later cleaned up at Saguaro Studios and laid over some session backup tracks. “He still has that lonesome sound,” mused a misty-eyed W.E. Ludlow. “Like a freight train lost in a tunnel.”

With this new entry aimed at the Country-Western charts, maybe another generation looking for good tunes sung well will instead discover Slane Taggert and give him one last shot at sunset cowboy glory.

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