For many years William A. Owens was professor of English at Columbia University. Tell me a story, sing me a song is the third volume of his autobiographical writings, following This Stubborn Soil and A Season of Weathering.

• Acknowledgments
• 1. A Third Beginning
• 2. Anglo-American to Anglo-Texan
• 3. Ballad Linkings
• 4. Anglo-Saxon Samplings
• 5. Violence from the Scottish Border to the Mexican Border
• 6. With Love and Sorrow Mixed Among
• 7. And Laughter Unsubdued
• 8. Cowboy Laments
• 9. Play-Party Songs and Dances
• 10. Cajun French: Lappings Over from Louisiana
• 11. Texas-Mexican Songs
• 12. Texas-German Songs
• 13. Texas-Czech Songs
• 14. Texas-Italian Songs
• 15. Texas-Swedish Songs
• 16. Anglo-Texan Spirituals
• 17. Afro-American Spirituals
• 18. Afro-American Secular Songs
• 19. Coda
• Index

Texas, the 1930s-the years of the Great Depression. It was the Texas of great men: Dobie, Bedichek, Webb, the young Américo Paredes. And it was the Texas of May McCord and "Cocky" Thompson, the Reverend I. B. Loud, the Cajun Marcelle Comeaux, the black man they called "Grey Ghost," and all the other extraordinary "ordinary" people whom William A. Owens met in his travels.
"Up and down and sideways" across Texas, Owens traveled. His goal: to learn for himself what the diverse peoples of the state "believed in, yearned for, laughed at, fought over, as revealed in story and song." Tell me a story, sing me a song brings together both the songs he gathered-many accompanied by music-and Owens' warm reminiscences of his travels in the Texas of the Thirties and early Forties.