Beech Tree News Network

Where are all the old cowboys gone? – Those that I remember.  The ones I used to see on the silver screen at the Palace Theater-back in my hometown on Saturday afternoons: Ray and Gene; Rocky Lane and Johnny Mack Brown, to name a few. 
Of course I know where; most have gone on up the trail, along with their side-kicks, the hikes of Bobby Hayer, Frog Millhouse.  (Smiley Brunette); Lee (Lasser) White and Al St. John (Fuzzy Q. Jones), and Festur (ken Curtis) of “Gunsmoke” fame.
It’s been said that the association of music and the cowboy is not purely mythical.  Nearly all working cowboys sang, but not all that many ever became “singing cowboys”.  Or even could carry a tune.  Back in the days of the old cattle drives, it was common for the cowboy riding might herd to sing, in order to keep the cattle quiet after they were bedded down.  One old cowboy said, “It is surprising how quiet the herd will be so long as they can hear a human voice.”
Another sentiment was: “singing kept the herd from junín’ around.”  Too it’s said that any little sound, like a horse shaking itself could spook a herd.  But if you were singing the herd wouldn’t notice.”  The long cattle driver from the Southwest began right after the Civil War, from Matagorda, Texas to Sedalia, Missouri; the Chisholm, the Santa Fe and the Goodnight- Loving trails- march to the railroads at Abline, Kaasar, and Dodge city, Ogallala Nebraska.
There were already familiar cowhands Sanger popular by then: Red River Valley, Home on the Range, Cowboy’s Lament (Streets of Laredo), etc.
Gene Autry was one of the few popular singing cowboys, who had also been a real working cowboy, growing up on a ranch in Oklahoma.  Rex Allen Sr. was also a real cowboy, from Wilcox, Arizona.  Rex was known as “She Singing Cowboy”. I’m told he had a voice range of three octaves.  Ironically, Rex Allen got his first radio singing job, not in the west, but at a radio station in Trenton, New Jersey in the 1940s.  But by the 1950, the end of the singing cowboy was on the decline.  The fact in, Rex Allen was known as the last of the singing cowboys. 
Perhaps Rex, after a brief stint in the movies, became best known as narrator for the Walt Disney animal movies.  Oddly enough, Rex Allen’s only gold record (1 million copies) was a 1953 song called Crying in the Chapel- not a cowboy song.
Of course we still have TV re-runs starring Ray Rogers and Gene Autry, the most notable singing cowboys.  Lester (Smiley) Burnette was side-kick to Gene Autry in all of Gene’s first films.  He also had short stays as Compodre to Ray Ragen, Charles Starrett and Sunset Carson.  Smiley was “Frog Millhouse”, to the main cowboy stars.  The younger generation may have known him better as Charley Pratt, the railroad engineer on TV’s Petticoat Junction.
Smiley was a talented song writer, among his best known work, I suspect, was the western classic, “Ridin’ down the Canyon”.  It said he could play over a hundred musical instruments-I did not know there were that many.
The last I ever knew anything of Smiley Burnette, I came across his picture in my hometown paper, The Greenville Leader.  Smiley was playing drums in a non-descript country band, at the opening of a new food store.  He died suddenly after that of acute leukemia, February, 1967.
                            Kindest regards…..