Biography of Gene Autry

In 1934, Gene Autry rode into Hollywood and became the prototypical singing cowboy -- a handsome, gun-toting yodeler who came to town and set things right as he defeated the black-clad forces of evil, treated his clever horse kindly, married the prettiest girl, and found time to sing about it all. A country that was little interested in singing hillbillies flocked to the theaters to see the guitar-strumming embodiment of truth, justice, and the American way (the western American way) prevail over the baddies in the black hats. This romantic and fanciful image of the Golden West did much to help Americans forget the Depression and look beyond that sunset. This national fascination with that-which-never-was dominated country music in the '40s and has reappeared, from Marty "El Paso" Robbins through Michael Martin Murphey and Riders in the Sky.The cowboy song trail had been blazed before, by real or pretend cowboys such as Carl T. Sprague, Jules Verne Allen, Goebel Reeves, and even Jimmie Rodgers, but it was Gene Autry who caused the "country-western" term that for nearly fifty years has been commonly used (though inaccurately) to refer to country music in general. Hollywood studios discovered the goldmine in the sky, personifed by Ray Whitley, Eddie Dean, Jimmy Wakely, Rex Allen, Johnny Bond, Tex Ritter, and Roy Rogers, the latter being Autry's chief rival for the affection of every red-blooded American youth through the '40s.Autry's bit-singing role in Ken Maynard's In Old Santa Fe led to the gun-and-guitar hero who lives on in country music, though ebbing and flowing with the times: the horse opera is out of style but the boots are in; yodeling is corny but sequined suits are hip (thanks perhaps to Porter Wagoner alone); six-shooters frighten too many people but not those clichéd cowboy hats, appendages to Garth Brooks, George Strait, Clint Black, and many contemporaries who hope the Look will lead them to that perfect happiness with which each cowboy movie ended. The Outlaw fad and Urban Cowboy fallout show that at least part of the country doesn't want to let go of what Gene Autry started. To sum up Autry's philosophy in one titled sentence, "After I get back in the saddle again, I'll be riding down the canyon to see that silver-haired daddy of mine who lives south of the border, near Mexicali Rose." America and Americana were never the same after Gene Autry. ~ David Vinopal