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Gene Autry's Melody Ranch
''Gene Autry's Melody Ranch'' is a Western variety radio show in the United States. A 15-minute pilot show aired on December 31, 1939. The program ran from January 7, 1940 to August 1, 1943, and from September 23, 1945 to May 16, 1956.French, Jack & Siegel, David S. (eds.) (2014). "Radio Rides the Range: A Reference Guide to Western Drama on the Air, 1929-1967. McFarland & Company, Inc. . p. 75. The show's entire run was broadcast over the CBS radio network, sponsored by Doublemint gum.Dunning, John. (1976). ''Tune in Yesterday: The Ultimate Encyclopedia of Old-Time Radio, 1925-1976''. Prentice-Hall, Inc. , p. 236. The approximately two-year interruption resulted from Autry's enlistment in the United States Army to serve in World War II. Initially titled ''Doublemint's Melody Ranch'', the show's name was changed to ''Gene Autry's Melody Ranch'' in early 1941. Episodes were 30 minutes long except for a 15-minute version that ran from September 23, 1945 to June 16, 1946. The theme ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Country Music
Country (also called country and western) is a genre of popular music that originated in the Southern and Southwestern United States in the early 1920s. It primarily derives from blues, church music such as Southern gospel and spirituals, old-time, and American folk music forms including Appalachian, Cajun, Creole, and the cowboy Western music styles of Hawaiian, New Mexico, Red Dirt, Tejano, and Texas country. Country music often consists of ballads and honky-tonk dance tunes with generally simple form, folk lyrics, and harmonies often accompanied by string instruments such as electric and acoustic guitars, steel guitars (such as pedal steels and dobros), banjos, and fiddles as well as harmonicas. Blues modes have been used extensively throughout its recorded history. The term ''country music'' gained popularity in the 1940s in preference to ''hillbilly music'', with "country music" being used today to describe many styles and subgenres. It came to encompas ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Gene Autry, Oklahoma
Gene Autry is a town in Carter County, Oklahoma, United States. The population was 158 as of the 2010 census, up from 99 in 2000. It is part of the Ardmore, Oklahoma Micropolitan Statistical Area. History The town was originally named "Lou" by C.C. Henderson for his wife; the post office was established July 11, 1883. At the time of its founding, the community was located in Pickens County, Chickasaw Nation. On November 22, 1883, it was renamed "Dresden". The name was changed to "Berwyn" on September 1, 1887, after Berwyn, Pennsylvania, making the Oklahoma town one of several along the Santa Fe railroad line through the Territory (re)named for stations on the " Main Line" of the Pennsylvania Railroad. Finally, on November 16, 1941, it was renamed "Gene Autry" to honor the singer and motion picture star. Though Autry was born in Tioga, Texas, his family moved to Oklahoma while he was an infant. He was raised in the southern Oklahoma towns of Achille and Ravia. Autry had a ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Norma Zimmer
Norma Zimmer (July 13, 1923 – May 10, 2011) was an American vocalist, best remembered for her 22-year tenure as Lawrence Welk's "Champagne Lady" on ''The Lawrence Welk Show''. Early years Born Norma Larsen on a dairy farm in Shoshone County, Idaho, she grew up in Seattle, Washington after her father moved the family west when she was 2 years old. Her father was a violin teacher, and Zimmer had hoped to play that instrument until he told her that her hands were too small. She was offered a scholarship to Seattle University but chose to continue vocal studies. Zimmer was singing in a church choir when a guest artist suggested she travel to Los Angeles, California and audition for a musical group. When she turned 18, she did just that, singing with a succession of top vocal groups, including the Norman Luboff Choir and the Ken Darby Singers, among others. Norma married builder and property developer Randy Zimmer in 1944, and settled in Los Angeles. They were married for 64 years ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Ruby Dandridge
Ruby Jean Dandridge (née Butler; March 3, 1900 – October 17, 1987) was an American actress from the early 1900s through to the late 1950s. Dandridge is best known for her role on the radio show '' Amos 'n Andy'', in which she played Sadie Blake and Harriet Crawford, and on radio's '' Judy Canova Show'', in which she played Geranium. She is recognized for her role in the 1959 movie ''A Hole in the Head'' as Sally. Early life Born Ruby Jean Butler in Wichita, Kansas, on March 3, 1900, she was one of four children. Dandridge's parents were Nellie Simon, a maid, and George Butler, who was a janitor, grocer and entertainer. Dandridge's father was also "a famous minstrel man." Career In 1937, Dandridge played one of the witches in what an article in '' The Pittsburgh Courier'' called a "sepia representation" of ''Macbeth'' in Los Angeles. California. The production began on July 8 at the Mayan Theater. Five years later, she appeared in a production of '' Hit the Deck'' at th ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Sara Berner
Sara Berner (born Lillian Ann Herdan; January 12, 1912 – December 19, 1969) was an American actress. Known for her expertise in dialect and characterization, she began her career as a performer in vaudeville before becoming a voice actress for radio and animated shorts. She starred in her own radio show on NBC, ''Sara's Private Caper'', and was best known as telephone operator Mabel Flapsaddle on ''The Jack Benny Program''. Columnist Erskine Johnson described Berner in 1944 as "the most famous voice in Hollywood." Early life and career Born Lillian Ann Herdan in 1912 in Albany, New York, she adopted her stage name by combining her mother's first name (Sarah) and her maiden name of Berner. She was the oldest of four children, and her family relocated to Tulsa, Oklahoma when she was a teenager. She became interested in performing after watching silent movies and vaudeville shows at a theater and then imitating scenes in front of the women's restroom attendant. Berner performe ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Pat Buttram
Maxwell Emmett "Pat" Buttram (June 19, 1915 – January 8, 1994) was an American character actor. Buttram was known for playing the sidekick of Gene Autry and for playing the character of Mr. Haney in the television series ''Green Acres''. He had a distinctive voice that, in his own words, "never quite made it through puberty." Early life Buttram was born on June 19, 1915, in Addison, Alabama, to Wilson McDaniel Buttram, a Methodist minister, and his wife Mary Emmett Maxwell. He had an older brother, Augustus McDaniel Buttram, and five other elder siblings. When "Pat" Buttram was a year old, his father was transferred to Nauvoo, Alabama. Buttram graduated from Mortimer Jordan High School, then located in Morris, Alabama, then entered Birmingham–Southern College to study for the Methodist ministry. Career Buttram performed in college plays and on a local radio station, then became a regular on the ''National Barn Dance'' broadcast on WLS (AM) in Chicago. He also had his ow ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Smiley Burnette
Lester Alvin Burnett (March 18, 1911 – February 16, 1967), better known as Smiley Burnette, was an American country music performer and a comedic actor in Western films and on radio and TV, playing sidekick to Gene Autry, Roy Rogers, and other B-movie cowboys. He was also a prolific singer-songwriter who is reported to have played proficiently over 100 musical instruments, sometimes more than one simultaneously. His career, beginning in 1934, spanned four decades, including a regular role on CBS-TV's ''Petticoat Junction'' in the 1960s. Biography Lester A. Burnett (he added the final "e" later in life) was born in Summum, Illinois, on March 18, 1911, and grew up in Ravenwood, Missouri. He began singing as a child and learned to play a wide variety of instruments by ear, yet never learned to read or write music. In his teens, he worked in vaudeville, and starting in 1929, at the state's first commercial radio station, WDZ-AM in Tuscola, Illinois. Burnette came by his ni ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Mary Ford
Mary Ford (born Iris Colleen Summers; July 7, 1924 – September 30, 1977) was an American vocalist and guitarist, comprising half of the husband-and-wife musical team Les Paul and Mary Ford. Between 1950 and 1954, the couple had 16 top-ten hits, including "How High the Moon" and " Vaya con Dios", which were number one hits on the '' Billboard'' charts. In 1951 alone they sold six million records. With Paul, Ford became one of the early practitioners of multi-tracking. Early life Mary Ford was born Iris Colleen Summers in El Monte, California, the second daughter of Marshall McKinley Summers (born February 13, 1896, in Ridgway, Illinois; died August 5, 1981, in Los Angeles), a Nazarene minister, who later became a painting contractor,Mary Alice Shaughnessy, ''Les Paul: An American Original'' (W. Morrow, 1993):146. and his wife, Dorothy May White Summers. Mary Ford was the sister of Byron Fletcher Summers, Esther E. Williams, Carol Jean Corona, Bruce Summers, Eva Wootten, and ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Eddie Dean (singer)
Eddie Dean (born Edgar Dean Glosup, – ) was an American Western singer and actor whom Roy Rogers and Gene Autry termed the best cowboy singer of all time. Dean was best known for "I Dreamed of a Hill-Billy Heaven" (1955), which became an even greater hit for 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 an ... in 1961. Dean charted twice on the US Country charts; "One Has My Name (The Other Has My Heart)" peaked at number 11 in 1948 and "I Dreamed of a Hill-Billy Heaven" peaked at number 10 in 1955. Dean co-wrote both songs. Dean charted again with the song "Way Out Yonder" in 1955. References External links * {{DEFAULTSORT:Dean, Eddie American male singer-songwriters Singer-songwriters from Texas American country singer-songwriters American male film actors ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Johnny Bond
Cyrus Whitfield Bond (June 1, 1915 – June 12, 1978), known professionally as Johnny Bond, was an American country music singer-songwriter, guitarist and composer and publisher, who co-founded a music publishing firm, he was active in the music industry from 1940 until the late 1970s. Early years Bond was born in Enville, Oklahoma, and grew up on several small farms in Oklahoma. As a youngster, he was influenced musically by records that his parents played. He learned basics of music as a member of his high school's brass band. While in high school he bought a ukulele, but soon he switched to playing the guitar. Performing Bond first performed on radio in Oklahoma City when he was 19 years old. In 1937, he began performing with Jimmy Wakely and Scotty Harrell in the Bell Boys trio, named after the Bell Clothing Company, which sponsored the group on radio station WKY in Oklahoma City, Oklahoma. He went on to join ''Gene Autry's Melody Ranch'' in 1940. He also performed wi ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Mary Lee (actress)
Mary Lee (October 24, 1924 – June 6, 1996) was a big band singer and B movie actress from the late 1930s into the 1940s, appearing mostly in Westerns. She did not make any screen appearances after 1944. Early years Born Mary Lee Wooters in Centralia, Illinois, on October 24, 1924, her mother and father were Lela Myrtle Telford and Louis Ellis Wooters. They had four daughters, Vera Mae, Dorris Lucille, Mary Lee, and Norma Jean. Dorris Lucille died shortly after birth in 1923.FamilySearch, Illinois Deaths and Stillbirths, Dorris Lucille Wooters, (Click on the link to view.) When Mary Lee was four years old the family moved to Ottawa, Illinois, where Louis Wooters opened a barbershop. At age six, Mary Lee began singing with her father and older sister, Vera, who were already performing country and popular songs over a low power radio station and at various events in the LaSalle County, Illinois, area. Music In mid-June 1938, Lee joined the Ted Weems Orchestra, traveling with t ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Horace Murphy
Horace Murphy (June 3, 1880 – January 20, 1975) was an American film actor. He appeared in more than 120 films between 1931 and 1953. Early years Born in Osceola, Arkansas, Murphy was playing cornet by age 11, and six years later led the band for the Newton Family Wagon Show. The next spring, he became the leader of a 45-piece band for the C.W. Parker Carnival Company. After two years in that position, he left to work in Dr. Rucker's Korak Wonder Medicine Show in order to be able to act in addition to leading the band. Radio Murphy played Will Kimble, the storekeeper, in ''Granby's Green Acres'', a radio show which was on CBS in the summer of 1950. He also had roles in several radio westerns, including Shorty on ''Gene Autry's Melody Ranch'', Clackity for one season of ''The Roy Rogers Show'', and Buckskin Blodgett on '' Red Ryder''. Selected filmography * '' Timber War'' (1935) * ''Last of the Warrens'' (1936) * ''Rogue of the Range'' (1936) * '' Desert Guns'' (1936) ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
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