344 PART 3 | FROM WORLD WAR I THROUGH WORLD WAR II
SINGING COWBOYS
Because so much of the early recording took place in the southern Appalachians,
the name “hillbilly” seemed fi tting for prewar country music. But not all of the
music came from the southern uplands, and by the end of World War II the term
was on its way out. Changes in the perception of this musical category are evident in
Billboard magazine’s name for its chart of top-selling country records in the 1940s.
In 1944 the category was called “Folk Records,” an obvious misnomer. In 1947 the
name changed to “Hillbilly Records,” and in 1949 it became “Countr y and Western,”
a designation that would last into the 1960s. The new term refl ected the appeal for
country audiences of musical genres originating in the West and Southwest.
A few genuine cowboy singers appeared on records in the 1920s. One, Goeble
Reeves, claimed to have taught Jimmie Rodgers how to yodel. Rodgers had lived
near San Antonio, Texas, for the last few years of his short life and sometimes
performed wearing western gear. In the wake of his success, some of his younger
imitators also adopted cowboy stage personae regardless of their actual back-
grounds. Ernest Tubb, who grew up on a cotton farm in east Texas, performed in
boots and ten-gallon hat, as did Hank Snow, who was born in Nova Scotia.
The most successful of the Jimmie Rodgers imitators was Gene Autry. Born in
Texas and raised in Oklahoma, Autry grew up on farms and could ride a horse, and
his early job as a telegraph operator left him with enough free time to work on his
guitar playing and singing. Tulsa’s KVOO billed him as “Oklahoma’s Yodeling Cow-
boy,” even though his repertoire included few western-themed songs, leaning instead
toward hillbilly numbers and Rodgers’s songs. Autry’s big break came in 1931, when
he was signed to the WLS National Barn Dance and had his fi rst hit record, “That Silver-
Haired Daddy of Mine,” an original song in the mold of Rodgers’s “Daddy and Home.”
Beginning in 1934 he took his cowboy persona one step further by appearing
in the fi rst of nearly ninety western fi lms, most of them low-budget B movies,
thus becoming, if not the fi rst, then certainly the most famous singing cowboy
in Holly wood. By 1940 Autry was one of the top box offi ce draws in the United
States. His fi lm acting did not bring an end to his singing career, which con-
tinued with live performances, radio shows, and several hit records, ranging
from traditional cowboy songs like “Home on the Range” to newly minted sea-
sonal songs like “Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer.” Autry’s recording of Johnny
Marks’s “Rudolph” would sell 2.5 million copies in 1949 and eventually reach ten
times that number, making it the second-best-selling single of all time, topped
only by Bing Crosby’s 1942 version of Irving Berlin’s “W hite Christmas.”
Like Tex Ritter, Roy Rogers, and other 1930s movie cowboys, and like cowboy-
themed singing groups such as the Sons of the Pioneers, Autry invited listen-
ers to indulge in gentle nostalgia for a West that had largely disappeared, even
though the legendary days of the Wild West remained in living memory—barely
half a century separated the Great Depression from the gunfi ght at the OK Cor-
ral or the death of Billy the Kid. A number of western songs were about the long-
ing to be out west, rather than the actual experience of being in the West. The
persona in Stuart Hamblen’s “Texas Plains” (1934), for instance, seeks relief from
the pressures of modern urban life:
These city lights and these city ways are driving me insane
I want to be alone
I want to be back home
Back on the Texas plains.Gene Autrywestern escapism172028_14_332-360_r3_ko.indd 344 23/01/13 8:37 PM