I’ve never been a great fan of singing cowboys. By and large it never looks to me as they do either (singing or being a cowboy) particularly well. However, when I was a kid television, hungry for content, was just full of B-movies and movie serials from the 1930s and 40s and you could hardly escape singing cowboys so I’ve probably been more exposed to the genre than most of my readers have.
The first singing cowboy was Ken Maynard. His 1929 movie, The Wagon Master, is generally considered the first movie featuring a singing cowboy. I’ve never seen it. I honestly don’t know that I’ve ever seen a Ken Maynard picture. He’d been a trick rider with the Wild West Show so I expect his stunts are pretty good. The impression I’ve received is that his horse, Tarzan, was actually the star of his movies. To the best of my knowledge the second singing cowboy was, of all people, John Wayne in 1933’s Riders of Destiny which I have seen. It’s pretty much what you’d expect.
Bob Steele, one of the best B-movie cowboy stars and later in his career a great heavy (see his performance as Lash Canino in The Big Sleep), also did a stint as a singing cowboy.
Gene Autry was unquestionably the most successful of all singing cowboys and, due to his recordings of “Frosty the Snowman” and “Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer”, people still recognize his voice today. IMO he has a pleasant screen affect and his pictures wear pretty well today. A lot of Gene Autry’s success was undoubtedly due to his business acumen. Here’s a tip: use the money you make starring as a singing cowboy to buy radio and TV stations in Southern California.
Tex Ritter, a prolific singing cowboy star (and the father of the late John Ritter), is probably most recognized today for singing the “Do Not Forsake Me, Oh My Darlin'” in High Noon.
After Gene Autry the singing cowboy best-known today must be Roy Rogers who was given his start in movies by Gene Autry. A founding member of the Sons of the Pioneers, he had a couple of hits under his belt before he turned to being a singing cowboy on the screen. Despite that solid start, I’d say the reason that he’s remembered today is timing. His TV show which was syndicated for decades is still remembered by millions of Baby Boomers.
From a singing standpoint Dick Foran was probably the best of the singing cowboys. He wasn’t much as a cowboy or an actor though.
No post on singing cowboys would be complete without mentioning Herb Jeffries, the Bronze Buckaroo. He made four westerns targeted to the black audience in the late 1930s. He’s a good singer and the movies aren’t bad, considering their ultra-low budgets.
My understanding is that there was a robust tradition of singing cowboys during the Golden Age of Mexican cinema in 1930, 40s, and 50s but that’s outside my experience.
Researching Gene Autry movies to buy my dad several years ago, I found a website dedicated to the singing cowboy, with tons of reviews of movies. His preference as what appeared to be a real fan was for the Mexican themed movies like Down Mexico Way and South of the Border. (Note: Autry had a song called “South of the Border (Down Mexico Way)” so it created two movies) I watched a few and they seemed to feel more “frontier-like” in having a Mexican local, and also had Mexican singers in them. One tidbit from the extra material: the censors rejected films with Mexican villains during the pre-WWII era as having potential implications on international affairs. For one of the movies the Mexican bandit was rewritten as a Hollywood studio.
The sidekick seems to hold these together. Smiley Burnette was from West Central Illinois originally, but Vaudeville by training. Comedy, song and dance, they fill whatever talent the film required.
Here’s a tip: use the money you make starring as a singing cowboy to buy radio and TV stations in Southern California.
Probably worked better back then than it would now! Just like how Bob Hope and several others became insanely rich in SoCal real estate – I don’t think it could be done today.
Incidentally, I was joking when I mentioned singing cowboys. I don’t remember seeing any of the syndicated TV shows (we got more of The Lone Ranger, The Rifleman, and ’60s shows when I was young), and I’m not sure if I’ve ever seen any singing cowboy movies. Except for Paint Your Wagon.
In movie called “Trail of the Lonesome Pine”, made in the 30s, Fuzzy Knight (my alltime fav as The Sidekick), sings all the songs, in particular he sings a song called “Stack a Lee’s Blues”, which, when I heard it, was, of course, the LLoyd Price “Stagger Lee” of my youth.
My memory goes back a bit longer, to when the only stations in St. Louis were PBS and the NBC affiliate.
When the ABC affiliate in particular was first getting off the ground it filled a huge amount of its time with old movie serials and B westerns. That’s how I saw the Flash Gordon and Buck Rogers serials.
I should mention that my dad tended to be an early adopter of technology. I can’t remember a time when we didn’t have a TV in the house. Even when there was very little programming.
I believe he was the first lawyer in St. Louis to own a copying machine and, if you can imagine it, also an early adopter of the use of audio recording by lawyers. He dictated all of his letters to a dictaphone and his secretary typed them from there. He’d’ve been nuts about word processing and personal computers if he’d lived that long.
I remember seeing the old Flash Gordon serials when I was young. Those were a real treat at the time! I don’t remember much about them now, save for the sound effects. I got to watch the very first of the Flash Gordon serials recently when I borrowed the Flash Gordon* movie DVD from the library.
* A movie much better than its reputation, in party because it doesn’t pretend to be what it isn’t.