Like the Eagles’ ‘Desperado’? Don Henley says thank Stephen Foster

Don Henley marvels at the broad range of music he was immersed in growing up in northeast Texas, near where the Lone Star State borders Arkansas and Louisiana.

A lot of those musical influences are felt in “Cass County,” the Eagles’ singer-songwriter’s first solo album in 15 years, something that came up when Henley sat down with The Times recently.

While discussing the array of sounds he was exposed to while growing up in that part of the country, Henley traced the lineage of one of the Eagles’ signature songs, “Desperado.”

“Listening to the radio with my father and my grandfather, and the programs we heard when I was a kid, including the famous Louisiana Hayride from Shreveport, La., on KWKH, which is where Hank Williams made his big broadcast debut in 1948,” Henley remembered. “That was the first year of the Louisiana Hayride, and then six years later, a young man named Elvis Presley stepped on that same stage and changed the history of music forever.

SIGN UP for the free Essential Arts & Culture newsletter >>

“So my dad and I listened to that program,” said Henley, whose solo tour brings him to Santa Barbara on Oct. 7 and to the Forum in Inglewood on Oct. 9. “Also, my mom played piano. We had a piano in the house. She played a sort of gospel-style piano. I took piano lessons as a kid, but I didn’t last very long.

“My grandmother lived with us. She sat in a rocking chair every day, singing hymns and Stephen Foster songs: ‘My Old Kentucky Home,’ ‘Way Down Upon the Suwanee River’ and ‘The Old Folks At Home,’ and all those very American things.

“That’s probably where I got ‘Desperado.’ If you listen to that melody and those chords ... Billy Joel said to me the minute he heard it, ‘That’s Stephen Foster! I said, ‘OK, fine!’ ”

A homage, perhaps?

‘Exactly, it’s an homage. You know Stephen Foster died penniless in NYC — so the record business hasn’t changed much,” he said, then adding quickly with a laugh, “No, no, no.”

Follow @RandyLewis2 on Twitter. For more on Classic Rock, join us on Facebook.