Artist: Gene Autry
Genre(s):
Vocal
Country
Discography:
Rudolph Red Nosed Reindeer and Other Christmas Classics
Year: 2003
Tracks: 18
Gene Autry Collection
Year:
Tracks: 60
Gene Autry was more than than a musician. His music, joined with his careers in movies and on radio set and television set, made him a voice of the mythos that has made up the American individuality for the past tense one C days -- John Wayne with a little bit of Sam Houston and Davy Crockett all rolled into one, with a expectant vocalizing vocalization and an ear for music added on. He defined state music for deuce generations of listeners, rodeo rider songs for lots of the twentieth c, and American music for much of the creation. He was country music's low unfeigned "multimedia" star, the best-known country & westerly singer on records, in movies, on receiving set, and on television system from the early '30s until the mid-'50s. His ccc songs cut between 1929 and 1964 include ball club au record awards and one platinum record; his 93 movies saved one big chunk of the picture show industry, delighted millions, and made millionaires of various producers (as intimately as Autry himself); his wireless and tv set shows were even more popular and successful; and a number of his songs outside of the body politic & western field accept become American pop culture touchstones.
The biggest marketing land & western isaac M. Singer of the middle of the twentieth century was born Orvon Gene Autry on September 29, 1907, in the petite Texas town of Tioga, the son of Delbert and Elnora Ozmont Autry. He was low gear taught to sing at long time five-spot by his grandad, William T. Autry, a Baptist sermonizer and descendant of some of the earlier settlers in Texas, coevals of the Houstons and the Crocketts (an Autry had died at the Alamo). The boy's interest in music was encouraged by his mother, wHO taught him hymns and family songs and read book of Psalms to him at night. Autry got his low gear guitar at long time 12, bought from the Sears, Roebuck & Co. catalog for octad dollars (saved from his lick as a hired hand on his uncle's farm baling and stacking hay). By the prison term he was 15, he had played anyplace there was to perform in Tioga, including school plays and the local coffee bar, but made most of his living working for the railroad as an prentice at $35 a month. Later on, as a proper telegraph hustler, he was making $150 a month, which those years was a comfortable income in that part of Texas.
He was working the four-to-midnight budge at the local telegraph bureau in Chelsea, OK, one summer night in 1927 when, to break up the monotony, he began strumming a guitar and singing quiet to himself. A customer came into the office; preferably than insistence upon immediate service, he motioned for Autry to continue telling, then sabbatum depressed to watch and hear patch he looked over the pages he was preparing to send. At one point, the visitant asked him to sing some other. Finally, after dropping his written matter on the rejoinder, the client told Autry that with some hard put to work, he mightiness have a succeeding on the tuner, and should view exit to New York to pursue a telling career. The man, whom Autry had recognized instantly, was Will Rogers, the humorist, writer, and flick doer, and unitary of the most popular figures in the amusement public of that geological era.
Autry didn't like a shot give up his job, but precisely over a yr afterwards he was in New York auditioning for a instance of RCA Victor. The judgment was that he had a good voice, but should remain away from pop hits, regain his have genial of songs and his own sound, and scram some know. He was back six-spot months later, on October 9, 1929, cut his first base record, "My Dreaming of You"/"My Alabama Home," for Victor. Two weeks later, Autry was making a demonstration record for the Columbia label of Jimmie Rodgers' "Drear Yodel No. 5." Present that same sidereal day in the studio were deuce up-and-coming singers, Rudy Vallée and Kate Smith. Autry ground himself organism pressured to sign an undivided foreshorten with Victor, but chose rather to sign with the American Record Corporation. Their universal handler, Arthur Sattherly (world Health Organization would afterwards record Leadbelly, among many other acts), persuaded Autry that spell Victor was a big party and could offer more money and a better marketing setup, he would be bewildered at Victor amid its existing stable of stars, whereas ARC would treat him as their most important star. Additionally, Sattherly -- through a series of arrangements involving major retail and chain stores across the country -- now had the means to get Autry's records into peoples' custody as easily as Victor.
His number one recordings had exactly been released when his mother, who'd been ill for months, died at the age of 45, evidently of cancer. Autry's father began drifting away before long afterward, and he became the head of the class and the main help of himself, two sisters, and a younger sidekick. In early December of 1929, Autry cut his number one six sides for ARC. The euphony was a integrate of bushwhacker, blues, nation, yodel songs, and puncher ballads. His breakthrough record, "That Silver-Haired Daddy of Mine," co-written by Autry and his friend Jimmy Long one night at the railroad depot, was released in 1931. The vocal sold 30,000 copies within a month, and by the end of a year five hundred,000 had been sold, an occasion that American Records decided to cross with the public presentation of a gold-plated copy of the track record. Autry received a moment gold record when gross sales afterward stone-broke ane trillion. And that was where the whimsey of the Gold Record Award was born. The record as well lED him into a new life history on the radio as Oklahoma's Yodeling Cowboy on the National Barn Dance show sponsored by WLS out of Chicago. It was at that place that Autry became a major national star -- his record gross sales rosebush assisted by his exposure on radio.
During the early eld of his vocation, Autry took a number of authoritative collaborators and musicians on base. Among them were Fred Rose, the songster (by and by responsible for "Your Cheatin' Heart") with whom he collaborated on many of his hits, and fiddle player Carl Cotner (wHO as well played adolphe Sax, clarinet, and pianissimo), world Health Organization became his organiser. Autry had a knack for well-educated a good song when he heard it (though he most passed on the biggest hit of his career), and for lettered when a birdcall needful something extra in its placement, merely it was Cotner wHO was able to transform his sensibilities into musical notes and arrangements. Mary Ford, later of Les Paul celebrity, was in Autry's band at one time, and in 1936 Autry signed up a 17-year-old guitar player named Merle Travis, the next country star and ballad maker.
By the early '30s, Autry became one of the most dear singers in country & western music. By 1933, he was getting winnow letters by the hundreds every week, and his track record gross sales were simply going up. Autry's calling might've been made right on that point, but fate intervened once more that year, in the configuration of the moving picture business. The Western -- specially the B Western, the bottom-of-the-bill, low-budget natural process oater -- had been hit very hard by the coming of sound in the years 1927 to 1929. Audiences expected dialogue in their movies, and nearly Western stars up to that time were a lot punter at equitation, roping, and shooting than reading lines. Not only did producers and directors pauperization something to fill up the soundtracks of their movies, specially on the limited budgets of the B Westerns, only something to reserve for violent action, which was being increasingly criticized by citizen groups.
Cowherd lead Ken Maynard, wHO was a great trick rider and stuntman but no vocaliser, had tested vocalizing songs in a few of his movies, and the producers noticed that the songs had gone o'er well despite his outspoken limitations. Maynard was qualification some other Western, In Old Santa Fe (1934), for Mascot Pictures, and producer Nat Levine distinct to try an experimentation, putt in a musical number sung by a professional. By plain chance, the American Record Company and Mascot Pictures were locked together financially, though indirectly, and with the help from the chairperson of ARC, Levine was steered toward Autry.
A sound call in brought the offspring singer and some other ARC performer -- Smiley Burnette -- out to Hollywood, where, after a warm coming together and screen door test, the deuce were set into In Old Santa Fe. Autry had only unrivalled scene, singing a song dynasty and vocation a square dance, simply that scene proved to be one of the most democratic parts of the flick.
Levine following stuck Autry and Burnette into a Ken Maynard serial, Whodunit Mountain, in minor supporting roles. But Autry's side by side show was much more important, as the lead of the highly successful 12-chapter serial The Phantom Empire. Perhaps recognizing that Autry was no "worker," and that he had an audience of millions already, he, the writers, and the producer in agreement that he should plainly play "Gene Autry," a good-natured wireless vocaliser and erstwhile cowboy. The success of Autry's early films was non sufficiency to spare Mascot Pictures, which collapsed under the weight of debts held by Consolidated Film Laboratories, which did Mascot's film processing. In 1935, Consolidated forced a unification of Mascot and a handful of other modest studios and formed Republic Pictures, with Consolidated's president of the United States, Herbert J. Yates, at the helm. Republic thrived in the B picture market, at last commanding the integral area for the succeeding 20 geezerhood. And central to Republic's success were the Westerns of Gene Autry.
His number 1 leading Western for the newly unionised Republic Pictures, Acrobatics Tumbleweeds (released on September 5, 1935), which also included the singing group the Sons of the Pioneers, was a huge strike, and was followed by Tonal pattern Trail, The Sagebrush Troubador, and The Singing Vagabond, all released during the last three months of 1935. Autry settled into a schedule of one motion-picture show every six-spot weeks, or eight-spot per year, at $5,000 per film, and a expression was cursorily accomplished. The production values on these movies were mild, in guardianship with their low budgets and close shooting schedules, but within the theoretical account of B Westerns and the setting of their medicine, they were super productions. By 1937 and for basketball team years after -- a string that was only broken when he enlisted in the united States Army during World War II -- Autry was rated in an industry survey of theatre owners as one of the top ten-spot ticket booth attractions in the area, alongside the likes of James Cagney and Clark Gable. Autry was the only cowboy star to make the list, and the only worker from B movies on the list.
For Republic Pictures, his movies were such a john Cash moo-cow, and so democratic in the southern, mete, and westerly states, that the flyspeck studio was able-bodied to use them as a way to force "block engagement" on theater owners and irons -- that is, theaters only got access code to the Autry movies scheduled each season if they bought all of Republic's titles for that season. It was Autry's discovery of this insurance (which, in beauteousness, was adept by every major studio at the prison term, and lED to the antitrust suit by the politics that at long last forced the studios to give up their theater irons) in former 1938 that lED to his low damp with Republic. The problems had been brewing for some time, over Autry's unhappiness at never having gotten a raise from his original Mascot-era $5,000-per-movie deal, and contractual clauses -- which had ne'er been exercised, just worried him however -- giving Republic a portion of his radiocommunication, personal appearance, and indorsement profit. After trying unsuccessfully to function out the problems with Yates, Autry walked out of the studio chief's power and thenceforth refused to account for the first day's shooting on a movie called Capital Cowboy, later retitled Below Western Stars when it became the debut of Roy Rogers.
Afterward 8 months of legal sparring, Autry was left enjoined from fashioning live appearances. Republic, still, set up itself with an rebellion of dramatics owners and chains on its hands -- without a guarantee that it would have whatever Autry movies to release, the studio's intact annual distribution plans were jeopardized. By the precipitate of 1938 the two sides had come to terms, with raises for Autry and freedom from the to the highest degree burdensome clauses in his old contract. Despite his best efforts, however, he couldn't facilitate the dramatics owners o'er the block-booking policy, for it was now entrenched in the industriousness and an inbuilt part of Republic's business plan.
Meanwhile, his transcription life history continued, a great deal in tandem with the movies. Whenever Republic could, the studio commissioned the rights to any hit call Autry had nigh of late recorded to usance it as the title of his newest picture -- when this was through, Republic always charged the theater owners somewhat more for the film, and they nonrecreational it, because the song had "pre-sold" the movie to the world. The songs kept climax, sometimes out of the movies themselves, and non always his have: Autry's friend Ray Whitley had written "Back in the Saddle Again" for a 1938 George O'Brien Western called Border G-Man, and when Autry was look for a topic vocal for his have radio show, he went plunk for to Whitley's strain, made a few changes, and recorded it himself. Along with "That Silver-Haired Daddy of Mine," it was the strain he would be to the highest degree closely associated with.
Autry's calling was fitful by his service in the military during World War II, simply when he returned to the recording and motion picture studios in 1945, he resumed both his tattle and film careers without skipping a beat. He was tranquil a call to be reckoned with at the box power, although he was never once more ranked among the top ten-spot remunerative stars of movies. The cultural dislocations caused by World War II and their effect on rural and village America and on the film business organization, as easily as the imminent reaching of television receiver, had shrunk the B film marketplace to a shadow of its 1930s glorification. His movies tranquil made money, however, and he kept making them correct into the beginning of the fifties, later on which he moved into tv set yield -- Autry had already begun purchasing up radio stations of the Cross ahead the war, and by the early '50s he was owner of several video stations, a studio, and his have production party, where he made his have tV syllabus as advantageously as others that he owned.
His singing career was larger than ever so, all the same. Even in front the war, Autry had now and again moved away from country music and scored big, as with his 1940 strike interlingual rendition of "Blueberry bush Hill," which predated Fats Domino's recording by 16 days. After the war, he still did rodeo rider and country songs such as "Silver Spurs" and "Sioux City Sue," sprinkled with periodic common people songs and pop book of Numbers. In 1949, however, Autry scored the biggest unmarried stumble of his vocation -- and maybe the second or third-biggest hit birdcall of all time recorded up to that time -- with "Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer," a birdsong by Johnny Marks that Autry had recorded only reluctantly, in a single take at the end of a school term. That same yr, he cut "(Ghost) Riders in the Sky," a issue by a former woods fire warden named Stan Jones, which became both a country and pop medicine standard, cut by everyone from Vaughan Monroe to Johnny Cash.
By the mid-'50s, Autry's career had slowed. Rock & seethe and R&B were attracting younger listeners, and a newfangled generation of country music stars, heralded by Johnny Cash and Marty Robbins, was beginning to attract sober gross sales. Autry, and so in his forties, noneffervescent had his audience, merely he step by step receded from the limelight to attend to his burgeoning business sector interests. He died October 2, 1998.
The 411
