My Buddy baxter

My Buddy Baxter. I’m Greg Martin with today’s Line On Agriculture.

Baxter Black has made a name for himself not only in cattle industry but worldwide as a cowboy, a poet, story teller, humorist and all around nice guy. He has spent time in the chair next to Johnny Carson and sitting next to me over lunch. The first thing one usually notices about Baxter is the crumb duster growing from his upper lip but if you travel a bit north you will see sparkling eyes that dance with both sincerity and impish nature. I wouldn’t want to play poker with him. Baxter Black performs dozens of dates every year in just about every corner of the U.S.

BLACK: Just one step ahead of the parole officer.

Black was raised in Las Cruces, New Mexico and schooled as veterinarian so when tells his stories of being shoulder deep in the back end of a cow...he speaks from first hand knowledge. And as such he speaks to a lot of cattlemen.

BLACK: It is quite common actually, not to mention even dairy cattlemen. I also spoke to the pistachio growers this year. You know, let’s not get serious here. My best stuff - I’ll preface this a little to make it make sense - every time I’m invited to speak somewhere and lined up and booked I look at where I’m going and the group I’m going to be speaking to and have a pretty good idea what I think they will like. And that’s the whole objective. To make them laugh, find out what they think is funny and I can pretty much do that but the easiest one for me, the very easiest one would be a state like Idaho that I know intimately and they’re pure cow people.

He recently spoke to the Idaho Cattle Association and he admits that most of his best material comes from actual stories he is told. And one group loves to hear funny stories about themselves...cowboys.

BLACK: Oh, tell me about it. I have countless radio programs and books all built around telling cowboys jokes about themselves. It makes you laugh at yourself if you could do it. And the reason I can do it is because I have been in their shoes. I am in their shoes.

And Black says that sometimes it’s that animal that gets the laugh.

BLACK: Getting bucked off horses is also funny but it’s funny because of the cowboy and not the horse. When a cow does something you can put a personality to a cow that is real easy and it can be any personality you want it to be. Horses are a little - you have to leave the story and fill out the horses you don’t want to make the horse look bad but you want to make it look ornery. You know when you make animals look dumb you got to do it the right way.

That’s today’s Line On Agriculture. I’m Greg Martin on the Ag Information Network.