What a year!
With traveling, revising The CowBoy Handbook, and fulfilling obligations, it took a while to get this issue of the Roundup out.
The first edition of The CowBoy Handbook sold out, and a few minor revisions turned into something more time-consuming than anticipated. Now it’s done.
Some have asked, “Has cowboy history changed?” What happened still happened, but I felt the book could improve, and it did. The best addition is the introductory comments by three new (since the first edition) saddle pals with Buckaroo Attitudes. They give readers different angles on what the book is about
The introduction is by the erudite and eloquent Jon Guyot Smith. An intrepid investigator, and hearty enthusiast, Jon knows cowboys, movies, and music. He has taught college courses on Western movies, produced radio programs, and written many articles and liner notes for recordings (see page 9).
The revised edition also has forewords by Tex Hill, who has real and reel cowboy experience (see page 5) and by Doug Brewer, CowBoy poet. As a kid Doug had cowboy adventures on his dad’s Idaho ranch. Now Doug writes poetry, edits a fine Scout leadership publication, and goes on motorcycle adventures. He also has a son who runs an elk ranch in Missouri. Doug Brewer is the kind of guy who would put a waterfall in his back yard because he saw one in a Roy Rogers movie.
“They” say a book should have “blurbs”—quotes or testimonials, and we got some. We are happy that CowBoy Handbook has blurbs from Mark Allen, the Wild West Arts performer and entrepreneur, Country Music historian Douglas B. Green—Ranger Doug of Riders in the Sky—Dale Warren, Trail Boss of the Sons of the Pioneers, Impresario Jim Halsey—“One of the most influential people in the music business”—and Gene Autry himself.
At the Melody Ranch party for Gene Autry’s 90th birthday were Ray and Rose Marie Addison of St. Louis, Neila Brenke of San Jose, Karla Buhlman, Alex Gordon, and Maxine Hansen of Studio City, and Stanley Rojo of San Jose.
The Gene Autry Oklahoma Film and Music Festival found the aforementioned Addisons and Cherokee, also Shirley Blovins of Vermont, Bud and Mary Boyer of Missouri, Bill Hale of Texas, Tex Hill of Arizona, George Morgan of Kansas, Flo and Elvin Sweeten of Oklahoma.
In downtown Dodge City “Rusty” Nail does boot repair, his son does hat rejuvenation, and he has a nice collection of old saddles and other cowboy stuff.
Tom Hutchins continues to operate in two locations, Fredericksburg, Texas, and Dighton, Kansas, where his daughter Kim and her family of “basketball players and one cowboy” reside.
Don and Jo Lumpkin have a Penney’s Catalog Store in Phillipsburg, Kansas. Jo won fame as a wildlife artist. Now she is drawing and painting cowboys and Indians. She’s looking for old photographs of those characters to use as models.
Jim Halsey heads the Entertainment Industry Departent at Oklahoma City University.
Sons of the Pioneers perform at Branson, Missouri, until December 13, then resume daily shows in mid-March. The group is in its 63rd year. Trail Boss Dale Warren has been with them 45 years.
Brian and Gwen Dillman, celebrating a year as the entire club membership in Germany, continue to rack up the frequent-flyer miles. Gwen has been to eleven countries so far, Brian has been to eighteen. Brian does marketing for Wilson Sporting Goods.
Eleanor and John Durland are retired in Westlake Village, California. John raises some fine tomatoes and plays a mean piano. They also provided the cover picture for this issue. The photograph, taken several years ago, is of their nephew, Bob Dillman.
By Ann Applegarth
Copyright © Ann Applegarth. All rights reserved.
Ann Applegarth is a Rodeo mom, a horseperson, and a poet living in Oregon. Lone Prairie Poetry Page is now a feature of the Worldwide Web. If you have cowboy-related poetry you’d like to see on the Web or on the pages of the Roundup, send it to Lone Prairie Publishing, 2931 South Street, Lincoln, NE 68502 or Email it to Poetry@cow-boy.com. We pay in fame and glory. No money is involved.
“All my life I’ve been able to play cowboy and get paid for it.” That’s what Tex Hill said the first time I met him at the Gene Autry Oklahoma Festival a few years ago. He was a likeable sort of fellow, and he was telling stories about his careers as a movie star, a stunt man, the last singing cowboy on the silver screen, and a bunch more.
Tex turned out to be one of the greatest guys on the planet. I discovered that right after he wrote a foreword for the revised edition of The CowBoy Handbook. I thought you should know about Tex, so here is his official show biz bio.
Tex Hill, “The Rhinestone Ranger,” evokes fond memories of the golden age of singing cowboy movies as he entertains audiences with his unique singing style, colorful costumes, family comedy, and thrilling exhibitions of daring and skill with blazing six-guns, flashing knives, and the resounding crack of a lightning bullwhip.
Tex and his band bring new life to the rollicking cowboy tunes and romantic range ballads that made Gene Autry and Roy Rogers the heroes of five generations.
A multi-talented performer, Tex has appeared as actor and stuntman in more than sixty movies and television productions, including starring roles in Code of the Rangers, Shadowkill, and others. He has performed in circuses, Wild West shows, fairs, festivals, rodeos, and special events in the United States, Mexico and Europe. He hosted and starred in his own Rhythm Ranch Show, on Arizona radio stations. His latest album, "How The West Was Sung," is available at concerts, or by mail order. It contains a great selection of western folk music and cowboy songs made famous by Gene Autry, Roy Rogers, the Sons of the Pioneers, Eddy Dean, and other legends of the silver screen.
Fast and fancy six-gun work by Tex is a highlight of the show that must be seen to be believed. Historical old West gunfighting lore and Hollywood anecdotes punctuate his masterful handling of twin colt .45’s. Where space permits and local law allows, the show includes incredible feats of marksmanship as Tex shoots targets from the hands and mouth of his lovely and courageous assistant. Every demonstration of Tex’s amazing skill is accompanied by a firearms safety lecture aimed at the children in the audience. An expert knife and tomahawk thrower, Tex surrounds his smiling assistant with a ring of glittering death as he impales the tiny targets she holds.
His exhibitions of the demanding and dangerous art of bullwhip handling rival those of the legendary Lash LaRue. These incredible exhibitions of skill and daring always hold audiences breathless and spellbound through the amazing finale.
Cowboy humor is an important and popular part of the Tex Hill show.
Some other information about Tex has come to light. He comes from Texas. He was a cowhand before he got into the movies. He was also a law enforcement officer and served in the U.S. Air Force. He was also a saddlemaker for the legendary Ed Bohlin, and now he is a director of the Western Music Association.
Tex, his wife, Claudia, several horses, and a dog named Chica live on a ranch outside of Wickenburg, Arizona. One day Tex came home from performing with a circus in Alaska an Claudia told him she had opened a book store, Readers of the Purple Sage (see the review in the Fifth Issue of the Roundup). It’s an extraordinary place, and that’s where you’ll find the Tex Hill Museum.
The Levi’s Legend says Levi Strauss, a Bavarian immigrant, went to San Francisco during the Gold Rush to sell tents to miners. The tents didn’t sell, so Levi took his canvas and made pants, reinforced the pockets with rivets, and the miners bought them like hot cakes. Cowboys also took to them, and Levi’s were the original blue jeans. Well, some of that is legend, some is advertising, and some is true.
What follows is some of the true parts according to the Levi Strauss & Co. official historian.
Loeb Strauss was born in Buttenheim, Bavaria, February 26, 1829. He migrated to New York in 1847 and joined his brothers in the dry goods business. In 1853 he sailed to San Francisco, opened a wholesale and retail dry goods business, and changed his name to Levi.
The Gold Rush was over, but he built a good business. The one who made the riveted pants for miners was Jacob Davis, a Nevada tailor. In 1872 Davis asked Strauss to finance the patent process for those pants. He did, and the two shared the patent, which was awarded in 1873. Then Levi Strauss & Co., with Jacob Davis in charge of production, started manufacturing “copper-riveted waist overalls.” This model had a watch pocket, one back pocket, suspender buttons, and a cinch (belt) in the back to adjust the waist size. It had no belt loops.
When people hear about others paying a thousand dollars, or ten thousand, for one pair of old Levi’s, they are aghast, even nonplussed. But then, some folks are startled at the price tags on a pair of new Levi’s. Whatever the price, there’s no doubt that attitudes toward Levi’s have changed.
Those early waist overalls were made of blue cotton denim, which shrank when washed. In those days all cotton garments did. Cowhands did not take to blue denim until the 1890s. Previously cowhands had worn pants pretty much like any other men. There was a heavy wool style called California pants, which they liked for cold weather. They associated blue denim with farmers, and that didn’t appeal to riders.
However, the fabric did have some advantages cowboys came to appreciate, comfort, long wear, and the seams wouldn’t rip, they were riveted.
The rivets were a mixed blessing, because the rivets on the hip pockets could scratch a high cantle of a saddle. The shrinking became an advantage when cowhands figured out that they could jump in a creek or stock tank in their unwashed Levi’s, then let them dry on their bodies, the pants would shrink and also conform to their contours. Summer was the best time for that ritual. The clever cowpunchers bought their Levi’s an inch too large in the waist and two or more inches too long.
Until the 1950s cowboy fashion was to wear Levi’s several inches too long and turn up the excess in cuffs, which could serve as ashtrays or hold horseshoe nails and other small items.
John Wayne, in his B movie days, was one of the first cowboy stars to wear Levi’s on screen. In 1936 Bing Crosby made his only Western, and he wore Levi’s turned almost halfway up to his knees. So did Lou ostello in Ride ’Em Cowboy.
Levi’s waist overalls gained a second back pocket around 1902 and had belt loops added in 1922. In 1937 the suspender buttons were dropped, and the back pockets were sewn so that fabric covered the rivets to protect saddles and furniture. By that time Levi Strauss & Co. was advertising itself as “the cowboy’s tailor.”
World War II brought on many shortages, and Levi Strauss and Company removed the back cinch and the rivet at the bottom of the fly to save cloth and metal.
Other companies also had versions of the garment known as waist overalls, overalls, bibless overalls, and overall pants. Often they were called by the brand name, Lee Riders, Wranglers, or Levi’s.
Wranglers, originally made by the Blue Bell Company of North Carolina, were designed by rodeo cowboys in the late 1940s, and have pretty much clothed rodeo contestants since then.
Levi Strauss and Company got into trouble with the Feds in the 1960s for a thing called Fair Trade, which meant retailers had to charge the price the company said to, or they got no more Levi’s to sell. The Federal Trade Commission saw it as restraint of trade, and said, “stop it.”
In 1960 Levi’s were advertised as “jeans” for the first time—to catch up with what people had been calling them for some time. Originally jeans meant another kind of garment. The word comes from Columbus’ home town, Genoa, Italy, and can refer to a kind of fabric or a type of pants worn by sailors from Genoa. The word denim may come from serge de Nimes—a fabric from Nimes, France—or serge de nim, which resembled another fabric called nim.
Anyway, by the time they got to America, both jean and denim were different. Denim was all cotton woven with a white warp and a colored woof, or vice versa. Jean, cheaper and less durable, was all colored thread. If you want more material on these materials, see Levi Strauss’ Web site at http://www.levistrauss.com.
Levi Strauss & Co. went for a broader market in the 1960s and ’70s and abandoned the “Cowboy’s Tailor” approach. It did have a cowboy promotion in Italy a few years ago in which it advertised Oakdale, California, as “The Cowboy Capital of the World.”
MOVIES There is no statute of limitations on what gets reviewed on these pages, and these movies certainly demonstrate that.
Your rampaging reviewer had the opportunity to catch up with four films he’s heard about and wanted to see for a long time. All are on video, all are Westerns, but not quite.
This is Bing Crosby’s only Western, which is somewhat surprising, since “Der Bingle” recorded a bunch of cowboy songs and even owned a ranch near Elko, Nevada. This one, from 1936, came when most studios were jumping on the Musical Western bandwagon.
Though parts are more serious than necessary, this flick is fun if you realize that this is in no way realistic. But if you want reality, you shouldn’t be watching movies.
It starts in New York at the rodeo. Cowhand Crosby’s only desire is to get a prize bull back to his ranch Out West. To do that he needs to win money. He wins the singing contest (remember what I said about reality) but has to give the money to charity. Then the plot thickens as we meet an heiress (Frances Farmer) who pretends she isn’t, and she goes West with Bing and the bull and Bob Burns (inventor of a weird musical instrument he called a bazooka, a name Army troops applied to a shoulder-mounted anti-tank rock-et launcher in World War II) in his movie debut. He and Martha Raye (also in her first film) provide comic relief, as do a trio of hobos, who follow Frances with evil intent. After the cross-country chase things work out somehow, and it has some good songs. It introduced Billy Hill’s “Empty Saddles” and Johnny Mercer’s “I’m an Old Cowhand.” That number provides brief glimpses of the Sons of the Pioneers. They are not in the credits, and each one, Bob Nolan, Len Slye, and Tim Spencer, does one line of the song solo, then they are in the background, off camera for a few seconds.
That Crosby could sing is no startling revelation. With this film and his records he took Western music to a wider audience.
Dick Foran and Johnny Mack Brown provide cowboy relief in the 1941 Abbott & Costello film, Ride ‘em Cowboy
It also opens at a New York rodeo, this time with Foran in a white outfit on a white horse singing a song. It’s no “Empty Saddles.” In fact, I don’t remember it or any other song in the film, and there are several, except for Ella Fitzgerald’s “A Tisket, A Tasket.”
There are comedy routines, verbal and slapstick, a little rodeo action, and enough plot to keep things going. Lou Costello ends up with a great pair of chaps, and you can see what ranchwear and rodeo wear looked like in 1941.
In the Golden Age of Hollywood, almost every actor from Francis X. Bushman to Lionel Barrymore made at least one Western. That included Laurel & Hardy and the Marx Brothers. Way Out West
Stan Laurel and Oliver Hardy are on a mission to take give a young woman her inheritance. Naturally they mess it up. Hijinks ensue, and things sort of work out somehow. It’s a quiet (except when they have to be quiet to get the deed out of the bad guy’s safe), gentle little film.
On the other hand, the Marx Brothers take the same basic plot, and the same get-the-deed-out-of-the-safe scene, and commit mayhem. There’s nothing quiet about this, especially when they need quiet, and especially from Harpo, who doesn’t talk.
Comedy teams have to be somewhere to do their stuff. They might as well be Out West.
There’s one more movie on my list of want-to-see comedy Westerns, Jack Benny’s Buck Benny Rides Again, and it has not been released on video.
BOOKS
The Adventures of Hank, The Cowdog
by John Erickson.
Cartoonist Al Capp, who created Li’l Abner in the 1930s, said that in those days kids learned to read so they could read comics. For a long time it seemed as if there was nothing kids wanted to read. Now there’s Hank, the Cowdog.
Hank, head of ranch security, has been around since 1982, when author John Erikson published a volume of stories, which included “Confessions of a Cowdog.” The next book was The Adventures of Hank, the Cowdog. Now there are 29 of Hank’s adventures in both book and audio tape form.
You can sample these books on the Worldwide Web (search for Hank, the cowdog), or save days of suspense and just go to the bookstore. They are for kids, like Hank’s Security Squad, but 15 percent of that club are adults.
Erikson had 2000 copies of Hank’s first book in his garage, but they sold quickly, and now teachers, librarians and students across the country love Hank.
Gene Autry, The Singing Cowboy
Gene Autry with the Legendary Singing Groups of the West
The Country Music Association Awards show in September impressed people I’ve talked with. It impressed them with the fact that today’s Country artists seem to be interchangeable. They sound alike, they look alike. We can tell the males from the females, and that’s about it.
About a year ago several of those artists appeared on a Nashville Network program honoring a one-of-a-kind, legendary performer. The current crop sang onstage and the honoree appeared in old black-and-white film clips. The contrast helped emphasize just how good Gene Autry really was.
Now some of those movie songs are available to those of us who are not television producers.
In the 1930s and ’40s people got music by making it themselves, by listening to live performances, by listening to radio or 78 rpm records at home, or by going to the movies. Of those five choices, four of them could have involved Gene Autry, the Sons of the Pioneers, and the Cass County Boys. As mentioned several issues ago, compact discs (CDs) are giving us the opportunity to hear music that has only been available to dedicated collectors for decades. The latest example is the two Gene Autry CDs released by Varese Sarabande Records. We have had CDs of Autry records. We have had CDs of songs from Autry radio programs. Now we have CDs of songs from Autry movies, literally.
These are soundtrack recordings, so they include dialogue and sounds of other things going on during some of the songs. Most of the songs in these collections were released as records, but the movie arrangements are different.
Each CD has a theme. Gene Autry, the Singing Cowboy has 16 title songs from Gene Autry movies. They go from Tumbling Tumbleweeds (1934) to Riders in the Sky (1951). Gene Autry with the Legendary Singing Groups of the West is also soundtrack recordings. It features great groups as they sang in Autry movies—the Sons of the Pioneers, the Cass County Boys, Al Clauser and his Oklahoma Outlaws, the Beverly Hillbillies, the Golden West Cowboys, and the Jimmie Wakely Trio—with and without Gene Autry. It demonstrates how good the Sons of the Pioneers and the Cass County Boys were.
This collection starts of with dialogue between Sheriff Autry (played by Gene Autry) and Buck O’Keefe (played by Len Slye of the Sons of the Pioneers) in The Old Corral (1936). It is often described as the scene where “Gene Autry beats up Roy Rogers in a fistfight, then forces him to sing a song at gunpoint.” As usual, the actual event is different from the legend, but fun.
Also fun and informative are the liner notes by movie veteran Alex Gordon and former folklore professor and Western enthusiast Jon Guyot Smith.
These collections contain rare and, for some folks, nostalgic material. For those who like songs with hummable tunes and understandable words, they are good music.
Fred Engel
By Fred Engel
Now in the heart of fly-over country, the state of Kansas was once a crossroads of commerce and transportation. Name a famous Western trail, and there’s a good chance part of it was in Kansas. You could start with the Santa Fe, Oregon, and Chisholm Trails, then add several others. Most of Kansas was not originally equipped with trees. This made it unattractive to settlers, who believed the first step in making a farm was cutting down trees. Railroads had millions of acres to sell, and the Homestead Act offered free land, so when the territory opened, farmers came and plowed.
There is one area they did not plow—across Kansas, and into Oklahoma. This area was, and is, scenic, and it is great pasture for cattle. The reason they didn’t plow, however, is that there is rock close to the surface, and you can’t plow rock. So amid the vast wheat, corn, soybean, and grain sorghum fields of Kansas, and Oklahoma, this is cattle country. The region is noted for its bluestem grass, which has been known to grow eight feet high, so it is classified as tallgrass. Named after the plow-thwarting rock, the region it is called the Flint Hills.
Yellowstone and Yosemite are overcrowded and eroding, yet more people will wait in line to visit them than will visit the newest entry on the National Park roster, the Tallgrass Prairie National Preserve in Kansas. That’s good for the prairie, but those who opt for the big names will miss something special.
After 44 years of squabbling among several partisan groups, Congress approved the creation of the Tallgrass entity November 12, 1996. The National Park Service will manage just 180 acres of the Z-Bar ranch with the rest of the land (over 10,000 acres) managed by the National Park Trust with a local advisory board to address any concerns by landowners, environmentalists or historic preservation organizations. The Trust land will have cattle grazing, and controlled burning—which is what most of the ranchers in the region do.
In its pre-settlement state the prairie had little woody vegetation thanks to fires and buffalo, which ate about anything that grew.
A few hundred years ago there were 400,000 square miles of tallgrass prairie on the North American continent. Less than 4,000 square miles remain unplowed, most of it in the Flint Hills.
About 120 miles to the south (as the crow flies) in neighboring Oklahoma, also in the Flint Hills (a.k.a. the Osage Hills) the Nature Conservancy bought a 30,000-acre in 1989 and turned it into the Tallgrass Prairie Preserve, which now covers 37,000 acres north of Pawhuska. The Nature Conservancy will also use grazing and burning to return the prairie to a natural ecosystem, but in this case buffalo do the grazing.
You can see the scenic Flint Hills by driving down the Prairie Parkway, Kansas Highway 77 from I-70 south of Manhattan to Council Grove to Cottonwood Falls, home of the historic Chase County Court House, the Grand Hotel, and Jim Bell’s Western Wear store (since 1929). The National Preserve is on K-177 just north of the junction with US-50 west of Strong City and north of Cottonwood Falls. You can take I-35 or the Kansas Turnpike to Emporia, then west on US-50.
Yellowstone and Yosemite are worth seeing, but if you like cow country, see the Flint Hills.
Though still in a planning phase, the Tallgrass Prairie National Preserve offers a few “visitor opportunities,” such as tours of the 100+ year-old Z-Bar ranch house and bus tours of preserve. More pportunities are being planned, so check for the latest information. On the Internet go to http://www.nps.gov/tapr/ or contact the Superintendent, Tallgrass Prairie National Preserve, PO Box 585, Cottonwood Falls, Kansas 66845 Telephone: 316-273-6034.
You can tour the Tallgrass Prairie Preserve in Oklahoma on public roads. Starting and ending in Pawhuska, the drive is about 35 miles and takes about 2 hours. For details contact Tallgrass Prairie Preserve, P.O. Box 458, Pawhuska, OK 74056. 918/287-4803, Fax 918/287-1296
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Lone Prairie Roundup, Fifth Issue
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