It’s hard to resist the lure of the singing cowboy, as portrayed in Douglas B. Green’s SINGING COWBOYS. Okay, it’s not real hard, but in our post-modern age, the pure goofiness of action heroes who stop chasing the black hats in order to trot along strumming their gitfiddless and singing about their silver-haired daddies is borderline surreal.
And the first singing cowboy to star in his own series was – wait for it – John Wayne.
The year was 1933 and Wayne had flopped as an A-list leading man three years previously in Raoul Walsh’s THE BIG TRAIL. RIDERS OF DESTINY was the first of 14 “B” oaters the Duke would make with writer/director Robert N. Bradbury, but it was the only one in which Wayne played Singin’ Sandy Saunders.
“I was just so #(%^&*@ embarrassed by it all,” Wayne later told a biographer. “Strumming a guitar I couldn’t play and miming to a voice which was provided by a real singer made me feel like a #*^&@$ pansy. After that experience, I refused to be Singin’ Sandy again.”
In his coffee-table introduction to the phenomenon of SINGING COWBOYS, Green (aka “Ranger Doug” with Riders in the Sky) informs us that Singin’ Sandy’s anonymous warbling was provided by director Bradbury’s son Bill, twin brother of later singing cowboy Bob Steele.
Next in line were Gene Autry and Dick Foran, who began their two series in 1935. Foran was bland, but still a good enough actor to enjoy a career that was mostly non-singing, appearing in pictures as varied as THE PAINTED DESERT, FORT APACHE and MY LITTLE CHICKADEE.
But, with all due respect to Roy Rogers, it’s Autry who stands out as the iconic singing cowboy to this day. The story is that he got a call at home one morning telling him to report to the studio to begin shooting a new movie. He mumbled to his wife, “Looks like I’m back in the saddle again.” She told him that was a pretty good title, and Autry wrote the song on his way to work: “Whoopi-ty-aye-oh / Rockin’ to and fro / Back in the saddle again / Whoopie-ty-aye-yay / I go my way / Back in the saddle again.”
Green’s book is nowhere as complete as his earlier SINGING IN THE SADDLE, but it probably contains more than enough anecdotal material on its subject for most people. It’s heavily illustrated and even contains a music CD with performances by Autry, Rogers, Tex Ritter, Ken Maynard, Rex Allen, Smiley Burnette, the Sons of the Pioneers and three others. Highlights include “I’m Headed for the Last Round Up,” “Do Not Forsake Me, Oh My Darlin’,” “Momma Don’t Allow No Music” and – for you BIG LEBOWSKI fans – “Tumbling Tumbleweeds.”
And there’s lots of cool trivia as well. For instance, do you know which singing cowboy later did prison time for brutally murdering his wife? Or which one was a two-term governor of Louisiana? (Okay, they were Spade Cooley and Jimmie Davis.)
Grab your saddle, your six-guns and your metronome. Let’s head ‘em off at the pass. –Doug Bentin
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