Back in the Saddle Again - The Original Singing Cowboy, Gene Autry

He was the "Singing Cowboy," the wholesome, guitar-wielding hero who saved the day, got the girl, and never forgot to sing a song. But Gene Autry's journey from an Oklahoma railroad telegrapher to one of the biggest media stars of the 20th century is a staggering story of ambition, talent, and business genius. In this episode, we unpack the remarkable life of the only person to have five stars on the Hollywood Walk of Fame, one for each field he conquered: Records, Radio, Movies, Television, and Live Performance.

We trace Autry's rise from his early days as "Oklahoma's Yodeling Cowboy" on radio, eventually scoring the first-ever Gold Record for the sentimental hit, "That Silver-Haired Daddy of Mine." Then came Hollywood, where he essentially invented the musical Western genre. We'll explore the enduring appeal of his simple, straightforward persona—a good-guy cowboy who promoted honesty, fair play, and a positive American spirit during the Great Depression. We'll also look at his enduring partnership with his famous horse, Champion, and his sidekick, the comedic Smiley Burnette.

While fans remember his 93 films and his signature song, "Back in the Saddle Again," the true breadth of Autry’s legacy is stunning. We dive into his pivotal service as a pilot during World War II, his pioneering move into television with The Gene Autry Show, and his remarkable second career as an astute businessman who owned hotels, radio stations, and, most famously, founded the Los Angeles Angels Major League Baseball franchise.

Finally, we explore how this cowboy became forever linked to Christmas, discussing the stories behind his holiday classics, including "Here Comes Santa Claus" and the perennial favorite, "Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer." Join us as we celebrate the life of the entertainer who truly did it all.

Transcript

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SPEAKER_01 0:06

Hey Alex, how you doing, man? Hey Kelly, what's up, man? Uh, just back in the saddle. Glad to be here. It's it's uh getting close to Christmas. Now I'm not sure if this episode will be around Christmas time, but it does have a bit of a Christmas tie-in. So so if it can be close to Christmas, I'll try to do that. But I got a I got a really interesting person to talk to you about today. Um he's someone that you probably know the name, but I doubt you know much about. That's kind of our wheelhouse, right? It's our wheelhouse. And this is a 20th century guy. He was born in uh September of 1907 and died in 1998. So pretty much spanned the whole 20th century. Oh, that's squarely, right in the 20th century. Right in the 20th century. Um, and he was actually a Texan. He was born in Tyoga, Texas. Do you know where that is? Tyoga. T-I-O-G-A. No, I've never heard of that. Do you know that? Um, I hadn't heard of it until this. I looked it up. It is north of Dallas, kind of near Sherman, uh, near the Oklahoma border. Sure. Now, I'm gonna tell you this name, but this is this wasn't the name he went by, but this was his birth name. His first birth first name uh was Orvon. That's a cool name. Orvon Grover was Grover was his middle name. Kind of has like a Star Wars feel to it. Orvan Grover. Yeah, Orvon Grover. Like like he'd be a Muppet or a Force character or something, right? Orvan Grover would or or would would he be more of a a hermit Jedi with a with a cloak? What would Orvon Gro Grover be in this?

SPEAKER_02 1:42

Be somebody that you didn't actually see. They'd say, Well, you have to get through Orvon Grover about this. Oh.

SPEAKER_01 1:48

So very mysterious. In the outer rim.

SPEAKER_02 1:51

Yeah, I don't know.

SPEAKER_01 1:52

Well, this guy, this guy might have been a Jedi because he accomplished something nobody else accomplished ever in the world. Um, he has five stars on the Hollywood Walk of Fame. And I don't know if you know this, there's actually five categories on the Hollywood Walk of Fame. Did you know that? No, I didn't. So there's film, television, music, radio, and live performance. And this guy has all five.

SPEAKER_02 2:18

Wow, you'd think this person would almost have an egot, which we talked about previously. Um, and I would think our boy Dick Clark would would have five stars, or maybe a Ryan Seacrest. But man, Orvon Grover. Orvan Grover. Or I would have think Bob Hope would have five stars, but I know he's not Texan.

SPEAKER_01 2:40

Yeah, no, not a Texan. And and I don't know if if Bob Hope would have um music. Would he have music? I don't know.

SPEAKER_02 2:48

Those guys all recorded songs back in the day.

SPEAKER_01 2:51

True, true. Well, this this might be the giveaway clue for you. Um, he had a pretty famous horse named Champion.

SPEAKER_02 2:59

No, but um I mean, are we talking like Will Rogers?

SPEAKER_01 3:06

Similar vibe, similar vibe. He was he was known as the Singing Cowboy. The Singing Cowboy was um Jean Gene Autry. Gene Autry, yes. Orvon Grover, aka Gene Autry. Um, he actually took the name Gene after Gene Austin, who I guess was also a uh Western star back in the early 1900s that he admired. And he was told that nobody would buy a uh record or watch a film starring Orivan Grover Autry. That might be true. They certainly would, Gene Gene Autry. So yeah, Gene Autry, the singing cowboy. He was an actor, a musician, a singer, composer, performed on the radio, performed in the rodeo. He owned several baseball teams, he owned hotels. Sure. He started um he started several uh uh he was in several um comic books as a as a character. He's he started several um organizations for young people. I mean, he he did a lot of stuff. But what do you know about him?

SPEAKER_02 4:14

Yeah, and and uh and along with Irving Berlin, one of the greatest Christmas songs of of all time, right?

SPEAKER_01 4:21

Yes, yes, and that was kind of the inspiration. I was looking for people Christmas Tangential. That's I typed in Christmas tangential into uh Chat GPT, and he was this is one of the ones that popped up.

SPEAKER_02 4:34

I think it's weird the phenomenon you were just talking about of people having to change their name because nobody would buy a record by a person. I don't think that's the case these days. I think you could have any name you want, and yeah. In fact, the the weirder the better. Yeah, yeah. The more obscure the name, the more catchier it would be, right? People remember it. But there was a time where recording artists, newscasters, people would change their names just because I guess because of xenophobia or racism or something that um I don't know why people wouldn't buy uh uh that or maybe that was never tested. Maybe people just thought that nobody would buy it and it was never actually tested.

SPEAKER_01 5:17

I I'm sure there was an underlying amount of bias that that caused people to change their names, but I also feel like you know, there some names are just more catchy than others, right? You know, it's uh Gene Autry. That that of course we hear we've heard that a lot, but Orvon that that just isn't as catchy. But you're right, today people embrace and lean into those um stranger names, and I think it serves them better today than it did back then. But yeah, they he was told, and you know, Roy Rogers was also uh what that was not his real name. Not neither, neither Roy nor uh Rogers. I forgot what his real name was, but it was not Roy Rogers. Um so that this was a pretty common practice back then. Uh as I said, he was born in 1907 in Tioga, Texas. He uh in his career, you want to guess how many movies he appeared in?

SPEAKER_02 6:08

Oh man, and those those were back when those uh they would churn those westerns out pretty quick.

SPEAKER_01 6:14

I'll give you the time frame. It was 1934 to 1953, so 19 years. 34 to 53, almost almost 20 years.

SPEAKER_02 6:24

Uh I would say they put out uh you know five or six movies a year, uh I don't know, 50 movies?

SPEAKER_01 6:31

93 between 1934 and 1953.

SPEAKER_02 6:35

Wow, yeah.

SPEAKER_01 6:36

And then he had his own television show from 1950 to 1956 called Guess What? The Gene Autry Show. They they weren't real, they weren't real original with the names back then. Um he also owned several television stations. And then, you know, I'll skip, I'll skip to this part uh from 19 in 1961. He actually was trying to get the rights to broadcast the new upstart in Los Angeles, the Angels, the baseball team.

SPEAKER_03 7:05

Right.

SPEAKER_01 7:06

And instead of uh getting the rights to broadcast, he ended up uh buying the team. It was kind of a funny thing. They he said, I'd like the rights to radio broadcast these games, and they said, Why don't you just buy the team? And he did.

unknown 7:19

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 7:20

Yeah, I remember that. I remember when Gene Autre owned the Angels. And and he was known as the uh number 26 on the Angels because there were 25 people on the roster, 25 players, and he was like the 26th man. Ah. Kind of like the 12th man. Well, yeah, he was born uh to a Methodist preacher. Um his parents were not very wealthy, and they kind of bumped back and forth between Texas and Oklahoma. Eventually, his father was able to secure a small piece of property. So Gene grew up working on a ranch and he very much valued hard work. Um, he did learn how to ride a horse at a pretty early age and actually had to ride a horse to school every day, uh, back and forth. And he did ranch work and sang songs, and his grandfather was a Methodist preacher, so his grandfather actually got him involved in the choir, and so he would sing in the Methodist choir at the church, and that was kind of where he discovered that he enjoyed singing, he enjoyed performing, he had a talent for it. But in 1925, he left the ranch and went to the St. Louis San Francisco Railway, and he was a telegraph operator for those times. Remember the beep beep, beep beep, beep, beep, beep.

SPEAKER_02 8:36

Yeah. Now he didn't have like a classically great singing voice, he had a cowboy voice.

SPEAKER_01 8:42

Well, um, you know, you say that he actually originally was known as the Yodeling Cowboy, Oklahoma's Yodeling Cowboy, and he yodeled. Um, he also did his early records, his early songs were more uh hillbilly style, and that was that kind of voice. Almost like a nasally and kind of like a um uh auctioneer, I think. You know, if you when you think of an auctioneer, kind of I was born in a nan. And his early songs were all about vice. So he sang a lot about um, you know, this was earlier early on during his career, you know, in the late uh 1920s, it was prohibition. And so he was he was a big um singer about moonshine and whiskey and and uh stuff like that. But it's kind of funny because later in his career he became a bit more conservative and wanted to be more of a role model and and you know the straight shooting cowboy who always did right. So early songs that he did was like uh Do Right Daddy Blues and the Black Bottom Blues and songs about uh bootlegging and songs about women and stuff like that that were kind of popular at that time. In 1932, his first big hit was called This Silver Haired Daddy of Mine, and it was a duet with a fellow railroad guy named Jimmy Long. They they co-wrote that. Um he also do you remember who his sidekick was? Was it a woman? No, you might be thinking of um Dale Evans, who was Roy Rogers' kind of sidekick, but no, uh his was a guy named Smiley Smiley Burnett. No, I don't know him. Well, Smiley Burnett was another singer, and he and Gene Autry were cast together. The way they met, they were cast together in one of the first um Singing Cowboys movies called uh in Old Santa Fe. And this was kind of a new concept was the Singing Cowboy, and immediately Autry and Burnett had really good chemistry together, they were really funny together, and they started um making movies together, and they ended up making 44 films together pretty pretty early on because they were so popular and they kind of were always hired as as a uh uh a duo. You know, it was it was Gene Autry with his sidekick, Smiley Burnett.

SPEAKER_02 11:28

Now you can you can kind of see why those movies were so popular, though. I mean, you know, talking movies had just started, and so so having music in them, and then just the constant kind of action of being on horses and the simplicity of those stories. You can kind of see why western like singing westerns are real, and they weren't real cheap, or they weren't real expensive or hard to make, right? Churn them out real fast. A lot of them were filmed on uh Catalina Island, I know. Um yeah, in California, huh?

SPEAKER_01 12:00

Yeah. Have you ever been over there? I've heard of it. I know there's wild horses on it, but I've never actually been there.

SPEAKER_02 12:07

There's buffalo all over the place, and it's because they used to bring buffalo over for those to film those uh throws, and then they just reproduce. Yeah, and they're all over the island, and it's really cool. Just this random island off the coast of LA, and um there's buffalo everywhere.

SPEAKER_01 12:26

Wow. No, no, I I I'd heard of wild horses out there. Um well, this was kind of that, like you said, it was the beginning of talking movies, you know, in the early 1930s, and it was a time when the Western was really big. Um, you know, he had a big Gene Autry had a big um hit with Back in the Saddle Again. Did you catch that reference at the beginning of the podcast, by the way? Yeah, yeah.

SPEAKER_02 12:53

I was thinking Aerosmith when you said that, but uh yeah.

SPEAKER_01 12:56

Not not the I I don't know if it's the same lyrics or not. Um but I know it's very very very different version.

SPEAKER_02 13:04

It's not a cover of uh the song.

SPEAKER_01 13:06

Well, Autry had over six hundred and forty recordings of music um that he played on, and three hundred of those songs were either written or co-written by himself. So he was a songwriter. Um he had several uh dozen gold records and platinum records and sold more than a hundred million copies of records throughout his career. A lot of people, like you said earlier, I I think a lot of people don't realize, at least I didn't until this that Gene Autry was the force behind three of our biggest Christmas hits. Now, do you know which three those are? Well, Rudolph the Red Nosed Reindeer.

SPEAKER_02 13:48

Yes, Frosty the Snowman.

SPEAKER_03 13:51

Yes.

SPEAKER_01 13:54

And is it Jingle Bells? No, no, he actually wrote Here Comes Santa Claus. Here comes Santa Claus. And actually, I say three. Uh number four was Santa Claus is coming to town. He he um he was a uh um uh musician, or he's saying Here Santa Claus is coming to town. So but Here Comes Santa Claus was an interesting um uh phenomenon. He was invited to the 1946 Santa Claus Lane Parade. Now this is today it's called the Hollywood Christmas Parade, but at the time it was a um a there was a Santa Claus Lane and Santa Claus would ride down in a uh a sleigh.

SPEAKER_02 14:40

Oh, the really Santa Claus Lane.

SPEAKER_01 14:43

Yeah, yeah, in in in Los Angeles. And Gene Autry was on his horse, champion, riding through, and all of a sudden, behind him he could hear kids shouting, Here comes Santa Claus, here comes Santa Claus. And that was the inspiration for him to write, Here Comes Santa Claus, right down Santa Claus Lane. Another interesting thing about that song is they recorded a demo of it, like right after he wrote it. He he wanted to get it, you know, to to he wrote it very quickly and he wanted to get it published before the the holiday season was over. Well, they recorded a demo of it, and apparently one of the singers in it was holding a cocktail with ice in it, and you could hear the clinking of the ice, and he thought, Oh, it kind of sounds like sleigh bells. So he added the sleigh bells to it from from the clinking of the ice.

SPEAKER_02 15:26

It's great because as we talked about with Irving Berlin, that was you know at the beginning of popular music in the US, and those were secular Christmas songs. Right, right. The first secular Christmas songs, and then that just started an avalanche that we know today.

SPEAKER_01 15:43

Yeah, and and that along with, of course, Rudolph the Red Nosed Reindeer. Now, that song he originally didn't want to do it, but his wife talked him into doing it. It was supposed to be part of a children's record to be released by Columbia Records in 1949, and it was going to be the B-side of another song. Um, but Autry uh rejected it. His wife convinced him, and then all of a sudden, in uh 1950, by the end of January or January 7th, 1950, it had hit number one. So it was it was uh one of the first songs. Oh, it was the very first song to be a number one hit in 1950. It was and all of those songs he re wrote and recorded. He did not write um Rudolph. He did not Rudolph was taken from actually it was taken from a children's book and someone else wrote it, but he recorded it. But he did write um Here Comes Santa Claus.

SPEAKER_02 16:44

But it was contemporary, right? Like they wrote it around the same time. Wasn't like Yes, yes.

SPEAKER_01 16:50

The the the children's book was was a yeah, the children's book was kind of a older 1800s thing that but then somebody had written the song that Gene Autry recorded. You know, it was kind of one of those things like we've talked about in other episodes where other people would write the songs and then they would try to find a star to sing it. And that's what happened with Rudolph.

SPEAKER_02 17:09

But Rudolph wasn't part he wasn't one of the reindeers in the um twas the night before Christmas, so it had to be written after that.

SPEAKER_01 17:18

Right, right. And that may be where the rate where the original names for those reindeer came from. I don't know. I'm sure it was, yeah. So um, but you know, that line of you know, Dasher and Dancer and Prancer and Vixen and all that, that came from the children's book that that was turned into the song. Um the yeah, it's got staying power. You know, I'm sure it's one of those things when you look at the charts, like right now it's trending very, very much up, and then right after Christmas it'll drop. You know, it'll just hit get hit down. Nobody listens to it in January.

SPEAKER_02 17:51

I wonder back up. I wonder if his version is still like the most downloaded. Because I can't even think of another version that's that popular.

SPEAKER_01 18:00

Yeah. Yeah. I mean, obviously, you know, like Mariah Carey has done a lot of Christmas songs, and there's there's lots of famous people that have done Christmas songs, like recovered those. But I think when you hear um, you know, like the what was it, uh, Rockin' Around the Christmas tree and and uh Jingle Bell Rock, and like those are generally the original recordings of those that are the most popular. Um so he actually did have his own record label for a while, and in uh the 1950s he recorded several other artists, and one of them was the Champs, um, who in 1958 had a big hit. Do you know what the 1958 hit of the champs was? No, no, no, it was uh it well, you'll know the song. It was a uh song uh with only one word, only one lyric, and it was an instrumental. Was it tequila? Yes, yes. That was that was on that was on uh GA Records um or Challenger Records. It was Challenger Games Challenge Records was the name of his checker record label, and on Challenge Records there was a uh label that had a shield with GA in it for Gene Autry.

SPEAKER_02 19:22

Oh, nice.

SPEAKER_01 19:23

That's how you knew. And you know, we like to talk about moneymakers in in this show, and sometimes we talk about um who made the most money. Well, in a in a poll of the top ten money-making western stars, Gene Autry was on the poll from 1936 to 1942. He was number one, and then you know what happened in 1943, he wasn't on the poll, 43 to 45. He was in the military.

SPEAKER_02 19:52

Yeah, I'm sure.

SPEAKER_01 19:53

Yep.

SPEAKER_02 19:54

And there's a list that probably doesn't exist anymore.

SPEAKER_01 19:57

Then from 46 to 54, he was back on, but instead of number one, he was number two. And you want to guess who he was behind? So wait, the list is the most money-making western stars. Money-making western stars.

SPEAKER_02 20:11

So this isn't like country music, it's just western stars. No, no, no.

SPEAKER_01 20:14

This is this is like movies, music, but I think back then there was a whole genre of these western stars. Sure, sure. So he was number one from 36 to 42. He joined the military in 43 and and didn't, you know, wasn't on the list.

SPEAKER_02 20:29

I mean, Roy Rogers was probably the other one. Yes.

SPEAKER_01 20:32

Roy Rogers was his was younger than him. Roy Rogers was kind of uh, from what I gather, a bit of a frenemy. You know, they knew each other, they respected each other. But actually, while uh Gene Autry was in the military, his record label threatened because they didn't want him to join the military, they wanted him to keep making movies, they threatened to replace him as their number one star because he was their number one star for a while. Um, and you know, they did it with was Roy Rogers. So let's talk a minute about his military service. Um, Gene Autry uh found out that he was going to be drafted. He went to his manager at the time, and his manager said, Well, we can probably get you out of this. You know, you you could get a deferment or you could be it could be postponed so you don't have to go in right away. And he said, No, what would that look like if I if I got that and all of my fans are going into the military? He had a very young audience, and so he he went ahead and joined up and he served in the U.S. Army Air Corps, so that was kind of before the Air Force, and he actually uh got his pilot's license at Love Field in Dallas, that's where he trained, and he ended up flying um supply airplanes and he flew it over um China and India, so it was this place called the Bulge, you Heard of like Battle of the Bulge. Yeah. It it was a um pretty treacherous place to fly. He did survive a pretty treacherous uh landing where he had to um land because like in the mountains or something because of weather, and uh came out a hero, you know, looked like he had served, he had served, and and set a good example for the kids. So when you say he his audience was young, do you mean they were kids? So he did very much um try to make family-friendly films, and so a lot of his audience were kids. He had uh like a Gene Autry fan club that was for kids under 14 or under 18, um, which he actually for part of the Gene Autry fan club, he made it free. And so if the kids just mailed in their address and their name, he would send them like an official um card member or or membership card. He would send them a um like a newsletter, then he would send them the rules of the club and like a I don't know, maybe a monthly or a uh semi-annual thing that he would send out semi-annual twice a year or every two years. Yeah, twice a year. Yeah, twice a year he would send something out. Anyway, um, yes, he did really try to uh be a good influence on kids, so much the so much so that he had uh the cowboy code, and this was something that G.I. uh that Gene Autry actually came up with the Cowboy Code and really championed on his show um the you know the Gene Autry show. He also had another radio show before the television code called Gene Autry's Melody Ranch. Um I think this was a big thing back then for musicians and movie stars to do was to have these weekly or monthly shows that they would go on. But the cowboy code, it's a little bit like your uh your uh wooden wooden code from the the coach. Um there were ten main things. First of all, the cowboy must never shoot first, hit a smaller man, or take unfair advantage. That was number one.

SPEAKER_03 24:13

Okay.

SPEAKER_01 24:14

Number two, he must never go back on his word or trust confided in him. Number three, he must always tell the truth. Number four, be gentle with children, the elderly, and animals. Number five, he must not advocate or possess racially or religiously intolerant ideas. Number six, he must help people in distress. Number seven, he must be a good worker. Number eight, he must keep himself clean in thought, speech, action, and personal habits. Number nine, he must respect women, parents, and the nation's laws. And number ten, the cowboy is a patriot.

SPEAKER_02 24:52

Interesting.

SPEAKER_01 24:54

That was his uh that was the cowboy code that he was in the forties. Yeah, this was in the forties, and this was something that happened uh I think you know, his his uh radio show was from 1940 to 1956. So I'm not sure exactly when this um when this uh cowboy code came on. Uh but that's part of why he why he said he had to join the military, because he couldn't have this cowboy code with all these ideals and then skip out on joining the military.

SPEAKER_02 25:27

No, I was just gonna say that in his later years then towards the late you know fifties, uh then those kids there was tons of them because they were the baby boomers. Um I I think people that were like, you know, 10 years old in the in the mid-50s or late fifties, um those were the baby boomers, and there were so many of them. I could see how a child uh a person catering to young oysters would be huge back then. We don't really have anybody like that now. I mean, I guess Taylor Swift appeals to younger people, but she certainly doesn't like I think she recognizes that's her market, but she doesn't only carry cater to them, you know what I mean?

SPEAKER_01 26:09

Yeah, and and and she certainly you know she isn't afraid to have sex appeal and to write songs about you know PG 13 topics and stuff like that. Right. Um but I I I think that um it's it's interesting though, now that I think about this, my grandfather on my dad's side, um who you know for the most part lived in Kansas, he called my dad Roy after Roy Rogers. And I guess my my dad loved Roy Rogers. And I never really heard my dad talk about Gene Autry, but I did hear him talk about Roy Rogers. So this was the guy that was the um Johnny Cash fan. My grandfather was, yes. My grandfather was a big Johnny Cash fan. So um, so yeah, I think I think their idea was to be family friendly, to be to shoot a straight shooter, you know, a hardworking cowboy who always stood up for the little guy kind of thing. And I thought it was interesting too that one of the things was he must not advocate or possess racially or religious and religiously intolerant ideas. Like what a forward-thinking thing for the 1940s. To put out there for kids, yeah, for sure. I mean, it it's common sense, right? It's it's the way it should be. I'm not saying that that was somebody being really innovative, but for him to take that stand by putting that in his cowboy code, I thought I think that's No, absolutely.

SPEAKER_02 27:34

That was, you know, that was around the Jackie Robinson days. Yeah. So I mean, yeah, amazing.

SPEAKER_01 27:40

Well, um, he also was involved in the rodeo. He had uh 1,200 acres in uh on a ranch near Ardmore, Oklahoma, and that served as his traveling rodeo headquarters. Uh there is a nearby town called, or was a nearby town called Berwin that actually changed its name to Autry. So uh it's now called Autry, Oklahoma. And he was so influential in not only having these traveling rodeo shows, and he would go to these shows. He would go on his horse champion and he would perform or be the MC or whatever. Um, but he was um so he would also supply livestock, he would supply horses, he bred bred things to to be used in other rodeos, so he was kind of known as a rodeo man, and he was so well known in it that in 1979 he was uh inducted into the Professional Rodeo Cowboys Association, which you know, like of all the things you do, that's one of the things that seems very specialized.

SPEAKER_02 28:42

I think he played the Houston Livestock Show in Rodeo a few times, actually. Really? Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 28:50

Well, yeah, I mean he did he did uh last until almost the end of the 90s, so that would make sense. And we would have been around at that time in Houston. Would have been a fun person to go see. Yeah, probably would have. Um so he also was portrayed in comic books. Uh there were lots of Western theme comics books back then. The first one was in 1940 called Gene Autry's Ride by a guy named Till Gooden. Um he was in another one from 1941 to 43 by Fawcett Comics, and then there was one um the that Dell Comics put out, and that was from 1946 to 1955 with over 101 issues. And I thought this was kind of cool. There was a uh uh comic, I guess, uh uh publisher in Mexico called Editorial Navarro that published his his comics books in Spanish from 1954 to 1984. Well, that was cool. Um, there was also Gene Autry uh toys, the biggest one being Kenton Hardware Company in Kenton, Ohio, came out with a cast iron cap gun. Now, do you remember cap guns? Oh yeah, cap guns, they made a bang, right?

SPEAKER_02 30:13

And they had like a little sheet of paper that you put through the gun. Little red strips and a little smoke came out too, right?

SPEAKER_01 30:20

Yeah, I think the the paper had little bits of gunpowder uh or some sort of explosive in it, and when you pulled back the the hammer on the gun and you pulled the trigger, the hammer would go down and hit that little bit of um uh paper where the gunpowder was and make it pop. You could also hit it with a hammer.

SPEAKER_02 30:39

Yeah, cap gun. I forgot about cap guns.

SPEAKER_01 30:42

Did you have one? I I yeah, I did. I did. My parents were never like toy gun kind of people. I I remember, but I think I think because my dad was a Roy Rogers fan and you know grew up in rural Kansas, I did have a cap gun, and you would thread it around and it would unspool as it as it uh went. But I remember I would take the a couple of things I would do with those uh rolls of caps, and it would be like 50, 50 bangs in one roll or something like that. Uh you could take the whole thing and hit it with a hammer, and the whole thing would just go boom.

SPEAKER_02 31:16

Oh, and you preferred doing that than actually.

SPEAKER_01 31:20

I I remember doing that. I don't know if I preferred. I just remember uh taking it and you know, instead of having lots of fun for for an hour with 50 50 pops in my cap gun, I just one big um yeah, and and then uh as we talked about earlier in the 1950s, uh he was the minority owner of a minor league team called the Hollywood Stars. And then in 1960, uh the uh Major League Baseball announced they would have an expansion team in LA called the Angels, and he had gone to them originally asking if he could um broadcast them uh I think starting in 1961 on the radio because he had several radio stations too, and he ended up buying it. So he was the owner of of it, and his number was twenty-six as the twenty-sixth man on the team. And I guess I I don't know that much about baseball, but I guess the Angels won their only World Series championship in 2002. So uh Tim Salmon, who was an outfielder, wore Gene Autry's uh cowboy hat and they played back in the saddle again.

SPEAKER_02 32:34

That's cool.

SPEAKER_01 32:35

So he retired in 1964, at least retired from show business, and he had so many things going on. Again, TV stations, uh real estate, hotels, lots of things like that. And he kind of tried to do some nonprofit work with kids and to help um, you know, kind of give back, I guess, during his later times. He was he was definitely living on um all the royalties of all those years and all those movies he had made over that time. Now I only I I didn't really mention he was married twice, um, and I don't know that either of his wives had a whole lot to do with his career. Um I mean, of course they did, but behind more behind the scenes, but not really in a way that is relevant to this show, I don't think. But he was married to a woman named Ina Mae Spivey and in 1932, and she died, um, but he was supposedly having an affair during that marriage with a woman named Gail Davis, who played Annie Oakley in the television series called Annie Oakley. And and uh Gene Autry was the producer of that show and and was having a an affair with her. But I don't know whether you know, I don't know if Ina May Spivey knew that or if she didn't, but she died in 1980, and he remarried a woman named Jacqueline Elam, who was, I guess, a big time banker um back in the 70s and 80s, and after he married her, um he passed away first, I believe, and she continued to be a uh major influence over the angels.

SPEAKER_02 34:23

Well, that probably wasn't against the cowboy code. I didn't hear anything about cheating on your wife and that code.

SPEAKER_01 34:28

So yeah, it said actually to treat to be kind to women. So he was he was being uh uh I must respect women, parents, and the nation's laws. That was the actual rule rules. Um his uh he was he was died in 1998 in Studio City City, California, and he is buried at the Forest Lawn Hollywood Hills Cemetery in LA. Oh, yeah. We can do a show out there. We do a live a live show from Gene Autry's grave.

SPEAKER_02 34:57

We've had a lot of uh people from from our show over there.

SPEAKER_01 35:00

True, true, that are buried there. His epitaph reads America's favorite cowboy, American hero, philanthropist, patriot, veteran, movie star, singer, composer, baseball fan, and owner, 33rd degree Mason. I guess he was part of the Freemasons, media entrepreneur, loving husband, and gentleman. Wow, that's a that's quite a that's quite a stone. Quite a uh quite a resume. Now, a couple of other things um that I've found interesting. Johnny Cash actually uh recorded a song in 1978 called Who is Gene Autry? And uh Gene Autry signed Johnny Cash's famous Black Martin guitar. And I guess in that video we were talking about this earlier of you know one of those later Cash songs that are a little iffy in their um execution, uh, but the song Hurt by Nine Inch Nails, that's the that's the guitar he's playing, the one that was signed by Gene Autry. Oh, really? Yeah. Um and as I said, the only the only person to have a uh all five stars on the Hollywood Walk of Fame. So um the one for it was originally called Live Theater and it was later renamed Live Performance.

SPEAKER_02 36:23

So where was so those were for like his radio performances?

SPEAKER_01 36:29

No, no, he was in in the rodeos and he oh he did these traveling live shows. He would go, especially in England, he was very popular in England, and he would go over and actually he had a shtick uh during those live shows in England where when he was gonna play Rudolph the Red Nose Reindeer, he would um say, Okay, I know nobody wants to sing along because you're embarrassed to sing, but let me take care of that. And he would call out to the electrician to turn off the lights. Hey, Mr. Electrician, turn off the stage lights so these are the house lights so that these fine people could sing. Nothing would happen. And then he would pull out his uh pistol and he would shoot out the stage lights, you know, a little sound effect, and they would supposedly go off. And then and then they'd all sing Rudolph the Red Nose Reindeer. Um loving that. And then at the end he would say, and for all you boys who brought your date here, you can leave a penny for me at the door.

SPEAKER_02 37:26

Do you think he sang Rudolph the Red Nose Reindeer year-round because it was his song? All those Christmas songs. Do you think he was performing those because those were like his biggest hits?

SPEAKER_01 37:38

I would say probably I I I don't have no idea, but if I was gonna guess May, and you're he's singing that no, no, it probably was you know, probably fair game after October. So October, November, December, and probably January was okay, but February through September, no, no go. Oh. Like Mannheim Steam roller. Steam Steam roller. Exactly. There, they're there again, it it ebbs and flows, right? They go the popularity goes way up and it comes way down.

SPEAKER_02 38:08

But you don't want to see Mannheim steamroller in July. No, you really don't. You've never heard of anything they're they're putting out.

SPEAKER_01 38:16

Well, although although I know that some people like, I think June 25th is six months, right six months before Christmas. Oh, sure.

SPEAKER_02 38:25

And then you I think it's Christmas in July after that. Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 38:28

You know, I actually saw um Mojo Nixon at the hole in the wall. Sure. And this was in June, uh, and he was playing his hor Horny Holidays show is what he called it. And he dressed up as Santa in June in in Texas and played uh played a set. And that was actually the night I was I was there when this happened when um uh who's the guy from the Eagles? Uh not Glenn Fry, but uh Don Henley. Don Henley showed up and sang along with him on Don Henley Must Die, which is that's legendary. Yeah, yeah. It was I mean, we were right there, and and uh I I actually peed next to Mojo in the bathroom that night uh because he was in his Santa Claus suit and I was like, Who is this dude? Good times, good times. Well, Gene Autry uh he is um now memorialized, you know, where Griffith Griffith Park is in Los Angeles. Um there is the Gene Autry Western Heritage Museum, and you can go see a lot of his memorabilia as well as a lot of other Western memorabilia out there, and it's uh set you know to be one of the memorials to him, and he is a person that until I Googled um tangential Christmas stars, I had no very little knowledge of, and now I do. Well, good for you. You'd heard of Gene Autry, though, right? I'd heard of him, but I didn't know any of this stuff really. I didn't know he wrote those Christmas songs, did you? Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 40:07

Well, obviously I knew three of them.

SPEAKER_01 40:09

Yeah. Well two of them, I don't know. Let's uh let's get back in the saddle again and head on out to the old okay corral.

SPEAKER_00 40:18

I'm back in the saddle again. Uh where a friend is a friend.