CMT Blog: Gene Autry

How long are we going to keep seeing the term “country western” in articles and blogs about country music? Apparently forever, as far as I can tell. Especially when even a so-called fashion reporter for a Las Vegas rag looks down her nose at Carrie Underwood for a supposed fashion faux pas, after praising Underwood for having previously “shed her country western tassels.” Well, who the hell wears tassels these days, to begin with? Maybe some Music Row execs with their tassels on their $500 Moreschi loafers, but otherwise I have seen nary a tassel in these parts since Cybill Shepherd wore them on her drum majorette boots. And mighty good-looking tassels they were, indeed.

But these writers grab onto the term “country western” and worry it to death, like a dog with a bone. Once upon a time, there were two distinct areas of country music – western, which involved music of the West with cowboy singers like Gene Autry and Roy Rogers, and hillbilly music which evolved into country. Even in 1962, when Ray Charles recorded his landmark Modern Sounds in Country and Western Music, the term was going out of favor.

These days, there’s nothing western about what passes for country music, and what little western music lingers is just happy to still be around.

We’ve still got a war going on. So where are the pro-war songs now? What’s happened to the kind of flag-waving, ass-kicking, score-settling sentiments that had crowds cheering and pumping their fists in the air back when Alan Jackson was still puzzled about the difference between Iraq and Iran? Whether it’s “The Battle Hymn of the Republic,” “Over There” or lyrical war cries of more recent vintage, there’s something really nasty and deceptive about songs that glorify combat, that hold it up as a bold adventure and a glorious clash between pure good and unalloyed evil. It’s harder to impart a festive mood to suicide bombings, beheadings, torture, the slaughter of civilians and another sprinkling of white crosses at Arlington.

The most memorable country songs of World War II, at least to me, are those that coped with the harsh realities of war and its aftermath — Ernest Tubb’s “Soldier’s Last Letter,” Gene Autry’s “At Mail Call Today,” Floyd Tillman’s “Each Night at Nine,” Bob Wills’ “Silver Dew on the Bluegrass Tonight” and “White Cross on Okinawa” and Merle Travis’ “No Vacancy.” The Korean War yielded such durable and honest goods as Jimmy Osborne’s “God Please Protect America” and the Jean Shepard-Ferlin Husky duet, “A Dear John Letter.” But it was on-the-spot television rather than songs that conveyed the horrors of the Vietnam War, although plenty of songs were written about it. Who can forget “Ballad of the Green Berets”? Well, just about everybody, I suspect.

The last war song of any stature to emerge from country music was Darryl Worley’s “I Just Came Back From a War,” which the singer wrote after performing in combat zones and witnessing the political and psychological complexities involved. In the song, a soldier ruminates about returning from “a place where they hated me and everything I stand for … a land where our brothers are dying for others who don’t even care anymore.” It’s not exactly a recruitment ditty. Compare that to Worley’s earlier gung-ho hit, “Have You Forgotten,” and you’ll see the difference between beating the drums and counting the costs. Maybe that’s why nobody’s singing about war these days — and why they shouldn’t sing about it so enthusiastically the next time.

I’ve been racking my brain for days since my first Kid Rock concert trying to figure out what constitutes a “Cowboy.” When I think of a cowboy, I think of Roy Rogers or Gene Autry. I think of “Happy Trails” and “Back in the Saddle Again.” I think of lyrics like, “Where the longhorn cattle feed/On the lowly Gypsum weed.” Not “Stoned pimp, stoned freak, stoned out of my mind,” as Kid Rock brags in his signature song, “Cowboy.” Perhaps he just got his “weeds” confused. 

Call me old-fashioned, but I thought cowboys wore something along the lines of cowboy hats and Wrangler jeans. Even today’s cowboys like George Strait and Alan Jackson still follow suit. They’re not prancing around in brim top hats and unzipped two-piece jumpsuits. Anyway, as much as I don’t think Kid Rock should be classified as country, I do think he has a nice voice when he’s actually singing. I’m definitely not a prude but I did spend most of the concert blushing from his raunchy comments, but I sang along with what I could. By the end of the concert I moved to the front row (thanks to the man in front of me also confusing his weeds). My homecoming date used to listen to “Cowboy” on repeat. Apparently, we listened to the clean version because when Kid Rock got to a certain vulgar part of the song in the concert – “Cuss like a sailor, drink like a mick / My only words of wisdom are…” – I yelled, “Radio Edit!” Dang it! Wrong again!

Will someone please help me figure out what it takes to be a cowboy? So far, here’s the checklist I’ve come up with according to Kid Rock–

1. Call yourself and name signature song, “Cowboy.”
2. Get married at Tootsie’s.
3. Play at the Ryman Auditorium and cover one country song – preferably, “You Never Even Called Me by My Name.”
4. Start a brawl and get arrested at Waffle House at 5 a.m.

Wait, maybe not that last one. I obviously know nothing about what it takes to be a “Cowboy.”

War in Iraq. Corporations pay millions to fired CEOs, then lay off hundreds of workers to pay for it. Children are hurt by cheaply manufactured goods from China. It’s easy to read the news and get discouraged about the fate of humanity, especially if you look back at the “good ol’ days” when times were simpler. For many, silver-screen cowboy Gene Autry represents that nobler era. He always wore a white hat; he owned a major-league team in baseball, a sport so all-American it’s been called the national pastime; and he lived by the Cowboy Code of ethics.

Autry, best-remembered musically for the Western classic, “Back In The Saddle Again,” was always a good guy on screen, and mostly one off-screen, too, though he had his flaws, including a tendency toward too much alcohol and an apparent series of affairs. A member of the Country Music Hall of Fame, his heroism was strong enough that Toby Keith name-checked him in “Should’ve Been a Cowboy.” This Saturday (Sept. 29) marks the centennial of his birth, which will be celebrated with a Riders in the Sky concert in Gene Autry, Okla., and has already been recognized with the release of Holly George-Warren’s excellent biography, Public Cowboy No. 1: The Life and Times of Gene Autry.

World War II, conducted at the height of Autry’s popularity, was worse than anything we’ve seen this decade. His public battle with Republic Pictures chief Herb Yates shows that businessmen putting profits over people is nothing new. And a public relations catastrophe in which children were burned by flammable playsuits marketed with Autry’s name demonstrates that defective products have left scars before. While you can’t help but like Autry after reading Public Cowboy No. 1, it also leads to some rhetorical questions. Did the world really used to be a better place? Or do we simply get exposed to more of it now that we have instant news 24/7? It’s hard to know the answer, but it’s comforting to see that Autry navigated it, despite his flaws, in a way that suggests nice guys don’t really have to finish last.

Every country singer who wears a cowboy hat ought to tip it now and then to the memory of Gene Autry. Sept. 29 is the centennial of Autry’s birth in Tioga, Texas. While his greatest fame came from the Western movies he made — starting in 1934 with In Old Santa Fe and continuing through his 1950-56 TV series — he was initially a country singer and would remain one throughout his long recording career.

Autry emerged musically around the time that high-powered radio stations were beginning to attract millions of listeners with their weekly “barn dances,” all of which featured live musical talent. Because much of the talent and many of the fans were from rural backgrounds, the singers and musicians often dressed up as “hillbillies” for their performances and publicity pictures, with bib overalls, grotesquely patched trousers and shirts, battered felt and straw hats, suspenders, gingham dresses and the occasional corncob pipe.

But there was none of this demeaning tomfoolery for Gene Autry. Although he was not the first country singer to sport Western wear (Jimmie Rodgers sometimes did), Autry was already cultivating a neatly pressed cowboy persona when he joined the National Barn Dance on Chicago station WLS in the early 1930s. There he deftly marketed that persona by promoting his personalized songbooks, records and Gene Autry Roundup Guitars. The movies, of course, subsequently burned his wholesome, Stetson-topped image even more deeply into the American consciousness. It’s still there in the looks of such troubadours as George Strait, Alan Jackson, Kix Brooks, Brad Paisley, Garth Brooks, Clint Black and, most sincerely and soulfully, Riders in the Sky (who have re-released their Public Cowboy # 1 album, now subtitled A Centennial Salute to the Music of Gene Autry).

Want to talk cowboy classics? Autry had a bundle of them: “The Last Roundup,” “Tumbling Tumbleweeds,” “South of the Border,” “Back in the Saddle Again” and “Don’t Fence Me In.” Much of his best work, though, was straight-ahead country fare, songs like “That Silver-Haired Daddy of Mine,” “I’m Thinking Tonight of My Blue Eyes,” “I Hang My Head and Cry,” “At Mail Call Today” and “Someday You’ll Want Me to Want You.” Still, his key to cultural immortality may turn out to be those infectiously crooned tales about Peter Cottontail, Frosty the Snowman and Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer. The man knew how to build a brand.

Gene Autry cantered into the sunset on October 2, 1998, leaving a life well lived and a job well done.