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got bushels-full of mail. I just said tomyself,
‘I ha ve to write more of these things.’”
Never allergic to publicity, in 1936
McEnery boarded a Goodyear Blimp and
sang live on CBSradio stationWQAM while
hovering over Miami.
A year later, Dave and his
bandwere in NewYork
State, trying toraise
money to get to aradio
date in Chicagoby
playingchurches and
nightclubs along the
way. Aviatrix Amelia
Earhart hadrecently
vanished into thePacific
Oceanvoid, and one night
around the campfire McEnery
sat on arock and picked outa
new song as his stew cooked.The sublime
‘Amelia Earhart’s Last Flight’was the result,
and when he debuted the song in Buffalo it
brought the house down.
“The nightclub said,‘we’re not going
to payyou anything but ifyou want to go
ahead and be on the show, any money that
is thr own out on thefl oor, you cankeep,’” he
remembered.
“She’d been in the news andwas still hot
on everybody’s mind. So I just began to sing.
‘Air ship out o’er the ocean, just a speck
against the sky...’ I tore the house down.
The money and the dollars. I’d never seen
anything like it inmy life. I said,‘I’vereally
got something. I can live off this song.’I
really felt I had areal piece of Americana
written there.”THE BEST YEARS
By 1938, ‘Red River Da ve’ (so namedfor his
propensityfor singing ‘Red RiverValley’
when in high school)was a genuine singing
cowboy star.Then resident in South Ozone
Park, Queens, hewas beamed coast-to-
coast onradioWOR from NewYork and
was soonrecording prolificallyfor Decca,
Continental, Musicraft and many otherlabels.
As Dave told it, hewas also thefi rst
ever hillbilly to sing live on television
and, indeed, thefi rst ever paid television
performer, broadcasting‘Amelia Earhart’s
Last Flight’ with his band from the
1939 NewYork World’s Fair.
Eventually, the songwould sell
in the millions and became
a timelessfolk/country
standard performedby
KinkyFriedman,Joan Baez
and countless others.“I still
get roya lties on that one,”
he notedyears later. At this
point,WWII intervened and
McEnery signed upfor tw o
years’ service as an infantryman
beforereturning stateside and
resuming his singing career.
Dotted amongst his busy post-war
discography of cowboy andWesternfare
were also some notable topical balladsand emotive journalistic odes, like ‘Hitler
Lives’ (recorded togreat affectby Rosalie
Allen in 1947), aremarkable song that
highlighted rumours of the Nazi leader’s
reputed survival in Argentina after the
war, as detailed inrecentlyreleased FBI
memos, counterpointed against the plight of
neglectedWWIIveterans.
“Back then, a lot of guys sang songsabout
whatever was happening in theworld,” Dave
recalled.“Kidnappings,murders, disasters,
famous peopledying – itwas all grist.”
For a couple ofyears, McEnery moved
in and out of Hollywood and featured in
horse-opera ‘talkies’ likeSwing in the Saddle
(1944),HiddenValley Days(1948) andEcho
Ranch(1948) – the video-jukebox es of their
day – strumming his guitar and dazzling the
gals with a high lonesome tune.
Once, in 1946, at San Antonioradio
stationWOAI, he took a bet that allowed
him to display his prodigious songwriting
skills. He sat handcuffed to a pianofor 12LEFT:Davesets a world record, penning 52 songs
while chained to a piano.ABOVE:One of Dave’s
manyfi lm appearances from the 1940s.BELOW:
Sheet music for aRed River Daveclassic.