Red River Dave McEnery (born David Largus McEnery) (December 15, 1914 – January 15, 2002) was an American artist, musician, and writer of

topical A topical medication is a medication that is applied to a particular place on or in the body. Most often topical medication means application to body surfaces such as the skin or mucous membranes to treat ailments via a large range of classes ...

songs. He was born in

San Antonio ("Cradle of Freedom") , image_map = , mapsize = 220px , map_caption = Interactive map of San Antonio , subdivision_type = Country , subdivision_name = United States , subdivision_type1= State , subdivision_name1 = Texas , subdivision_t ...

Texas Texas (, ; Spanish: ''Texas'', ''Tejas'') is a state in the South Central region of the United States. At 268,596 square miles (695,662 km2), and with more than 29.1 million residents in 2020, it is the second-largest U.S. state by ...

, United States. He got the nickname "Red River Dave" because he enjoyed singing "Red River Valley" in high school. He was the leader of The Swift Cowboys.

Career

As a teenager, he appeared regularly on KABC radio. Dave began his career by singing,

yodeling Yodeling (also jodeling) is a form of singing which involves repeated and rapid changes of pitch between the low-pitch chest register (or "chest voice") and the high-pitch head register or falsetto. The English word ''yodel'' is derived from the ...

, and performing rope tricks at rodeos. In 1936, he broadcast a live singing performance from the Goodyear Blimp over

CBS CBS Broadcasting Inc., commonly shortened to CBS, the abbreviation of its former legal name Columbia Broadcasting System, is an American commercial broadcast television and radio network serving as the flagship property of the CBS Entertainm ...

AM radio AM broadcasting is radio broadcasting using amplitude modulation (AM) transmissions. It was the first method developed for making audio radio transmissions, and is still used worldwide, primarily for medium wave (also known as "AM band") transmis ...

station

WQAM WQAM (560 AM, "AM 560 Sports") is a radio station in Miami, Florida. Owned by Audacy, Inc., it broadcasts a sports talk format carrying a mixture of local and CBS Sports Radio programming. Its studios are located in Audacy's Miami office on No ...

in Miami. His career really took off with his song "

Amelia Earhart's Last Flight "Amelia Earhart's Last Flight" is a song written by Red River Dave McEnery shortly after Amelia Earhart's disappearance. It has been believed to be the first song ever performed on commercial television (at the 1939 World's Fair). It was copyri ...

", broadcast in a pioneer television broadcast from the 1939 New York World's Fair. He worked for radio station

WOR (AM) WOR (710 AM) is a 50,000-watt class A clear-channel AM radio station owned by iHeartMedia and licensed to New York, New York. The station airs a mix of local and syndicated talk radio shows, primarily from co-owned Premiere Networks, inclu ...

in New York City. He was a radio personality in border radio for station XERF. In the latter part of his life, he became a well-known painter of Texas landscapes and Western Americana themes and was often known to paint the backs of his used guitars.

Cinema

He worked in several

westerns The Western is a genre set in the American frontier and commonly associated with folk tales of the Western United States, particularly the Southwestern United States, as well as Northern Mexico and Western Canada. It is commonly referred ...

as a singing cowboy, including '' Swing in the Saddle'' (1944), ''Hidden Valley Days'' (1948) and ''Echo Ranch'' (1948).

Publications

* *

Songs

Red River Dave's songs have been recorded by

Hank Snow Clarence Eugene "Hank" Snow (May 9, 1914 – December 20, 1999) was a Canadian-American country music artist. Most popular in the 1950s, he had a career that spanned more than 50 years, he recorded 140 albums and charted more than 85 singles on ...

and

Tex Ritter Woodward Maurice Ritter (January 12, 1905 – January 2, 1974) was a pioneer of American country music, a popular singer and actor from the mid-1930s into the 1960s, and the patriarch of the Ritter acting family (son John, grandsons Jason and ...

. * "Amelia Earhart's Last Flight" 1937 * "The Blind Boy's Dog" ("I'd Like To Give My Dog To Uncle Sam") * "The Red Deck of Cards" 1954 * "Ballad Of Emmett Till" * "The Ballad Of Francis Powers" 1960 * "Trial of Francis Powers" 1960 * "The Flight Of Apollo Eleven" 1969 * " The California Hippy Murders" * "The Ballad Of Patty Hearst" * "The Ballad of Three Mile Island" 1979 * "Shame is the Middle Name Of Exxon" * "Atlanta's Black Children" 1981 * "The Pine-Tarred Bat, the Ballad of George Brett" 1983 * "The Clinging Lovers of Kenya" 1983 * "Night That Ronald Reagan Rode With Santa Claus" 1984

References

{{DEFAULTSORT:McEnery, David 1914 births 2002 deaths People from San Antonio American male composers 20th-century American composers American country guitarists American country singer-songwriters American folk guitarists American male guitarists American folk singers American male singer-songwriters Singer-songwriters from Texas Mexican radio presenters Yodelers 20th-century American singers 20th-century American guitarists Guitarists from Texas Country musicians from Texas 20th-century American male singers