Tag: roy rogers

Rose Maddox: The Remarkable Hillbilly Singer Who Made Bluegrass History

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Rose Maddox, the lead singer of the Most Colorful Hillbilly Band in America, made a significant mark in bluegrass, too, as the first woman ever to record a bluegrass album. Her incredible rags to-riches story touches on boxcars and sharecropping, the Grand Ole Opry and Buck Owens, and finally the Father of Bluegrass Music himself, Bill Monroe, who laid the foundation for that seminal 1962 Capitol Records LP, Rose Maddox Sings Bluegrass.

Born on August 15, 1925, in Boaz, Alabama, Roselea Arbana Maddox arrived in a family with some musical heritage. Her paternal grandfather was a fiddler and roaming preacher, while her uncle Foncey gave lessons to locals and performed in blackface. Rose’s father, Charlie Maddox, worked as a sharecropper and hired hand. After getting stiffed for a job chopping wood, Charlie decided to skip town and finally indulge his wife Lula’s lifelong dream of living in California, panning for gold. They sold everything they had and stashed away the proceeds — just $35. The two oldest children stayed behind, while the youngest five and their parents set out for the Golden State in the spring of 1933.

How? On foot. Then hitchhiking. And after crossing over the state line to Mississippi and encountering another family who explained train-hopping, the seven Maddoxes rode the boxcars all the way west. Rose was 7 years old. They settled and resettled in various towns, with their situation once so dire that Lula had to place Rose with another family — but Rose acted up so often that the family gave her back. When Charlie got harvesting work in Modesto, the family followed and became what they called “fruit tramps.”

With some stability, the kids were putting down roots in Modesto. They collected whiskey bottles, turned them in for a penny a piece, then spent their dimes on movies. One Sunday the Sons of the Pioneers appeared in person at the Strand Theater. At that moment, Rose had found her calling — to be a singer. Her brother Fred had a similar epiphany while picking cotton that fall. After hearing that the band who’d just played the rodeo made $100, he decided it was time to get into the music business. Acting as manager, he found a furniture store to sponsor some radio spots. The caveat was simple: The furniture store owner wanted a girl singer. Thus, the Maddox Brothers & Rose were launched — with the spunky lead vocalist just 11 years old.

They followed the California rodeo circuit and played bars for tips, then won a State Fair competition that crowned them California’s best hillbilly band. However, things unraveled for a time in the early 1940s, as Fred, Don, and Cal were drafted in World War I, and Rose became an unhappy bride at 16, then a single mother at 18. Auditions with Roy Acuff and Bob Wills went nowhere. She played occasional gigs with other bands until the war ended and the Maddox Brothers & Rose reformed, with the youngest Maddox child, Henry, now joining on mandolin.

Playing dances as well as radio shows, the group shifted their sound to get people moving. Their look got an overhaul after Roy Rogers recommended Los Angeles tailor Nathan Turk, a pioneer of flashy Western stagewear. They also signed a deal with 4 Star Records, an indie label that marketed them as Most Colorful Hillbilly Band in America. Their repertoire ranged from Woody Guthrie’s “Philadelphia Lawyer” to Hank Williams’ “Honky Tonkin'” to the gospel tune “Gathering Flowers for the Master’s Bouquet.” They made their Opry debut in 1949, where they met Bill Monroe, and became the first hillbilly band the play the Las Vegas Strip. That same year, however, Charlie and Lula Maddox divorced.

By 1950, various members of the family were living in Hollywood. A beautiful woman of 25, Rose took courses in modeling and vocal control, although Lula would not allow her to date. The band appeared on broadcasts like Hometown Jamboree and Town and Country in Southern California, as well as the regional show, the Louisiana Hayride. Columbia Records signed her as a solo act in 1953. With rock ‘n’ roll in full force in 1956, the Maddox Brothers & Rose sputtered, then disbanded, and not without some bitterness as Rose’s career still flourished. The Opry didn’t appreciate her first solo appearance though, when she wore a blue satin skirt that exposed her bare midriff. Nonetheless she relocated to Nashville (with the ever-vigilant Lula) and became an Opry member in 1956, but quit about six months later when Roy Acuff complained she (and not other Opry members who were touring) made appearances on too many local TV shows.

That professional setback might have given the perception that Rose couldn’t have a career without her brothers. That proved quite untrue. Hometown Jamboree in Los Angeles hired her, which led to plenty of gigs. When the Columbia deal ended, she recorded for two independent labels before signing with Capitol Records in 1959. When Lula tried to boss around producer Ken Nelson, he banned her from all future sessions. Rose, by this time 33 years old and still under her mother’s thumb, was secretly delighted. Taking things a step further, Rose eloped with a nightclub owner that December, then embarked on a European tour.

For Capitol, she made her first Billboard chart appearance ever with the honky-tonk weeper “Gambler’s Love,” climbing to No. 22 in 1959. Her first solo album, The One Rose, dropped in 1960, followed by a gospel set titled Glorybound Train. By 1961, she took “Kissing My Pillow” and “I Want to Live Again” to No. 14 and No. 15, respectively. Johnny Cash invited her to join his road show and Buck Owens asked to record some duets. Those twangy tracks, “Loose Talk” and “Mental Cruelty,” both entered the Top 10 in 1961. Her third album for Capitol, A Big Bouquet of Roses, appeared later that year.

The year 1962 proved to be the pinnacle of her career, as Bill Monroe encouraged her to make a bluegrass album. Because they recorded for competing labels, Big Mon anonymously played on the first day of the two-day session, recording several numbers from his own repertoire. Donna Stoneman stepped in on mandolin on the second day with the remainder of the material. Reno & Smiley joined the session too. Monroe later told Maddox biographer Jonny Whiteside, “The Maddox Brothers & Rose always had their own style, but you must remember their home was Alabama, and I always thought they sang a lot of the old Southern style of singin’. So I enjoyed helpin’ her on one of her albums. She had some great entertainers workin’ on it, and it didn’t take long at all.”

Maddox herself explained, “Bill Monroe has always told me that I sang bluegrass, and to me what he was talkin’ about is just what I call ‘hillbilly.'” She may not have agreed with the terminology, but she certainly adhered to the enthusiasm of the best bluegrass singers. Rose Maddox Sings Bluegrass became the first bluegrass LP recorded by a woman. Its release coincided with the chart success of an earlier country single, “Sing a Little Song of Heartache,” which rose to No. 3 (and practically begs for a bluegrass remake).

Without Lula to intervene, Rose’s life on the road nearly derailed her, with infidelity, volatility toward band members, and a propensity for Benzedrene wrecking her marriage and her professional reputation. A heavy schedule of international touring wreaked havoc on her voice, too. The singles she did release were moody, if not morbid. Although she eclipsed Patsy Cline and Kitty Wells to be named Cashbox‘s female country artist of 1963, her chart momentum fizzled out after her final album with Capitol, 1963’s Alone With You. Still she continued to tour with Buck Owens and Merle Haggard, with her grown son Donnie as her sideman.

Maddox occasionally recorded for small labels in the ’70s and ’80s to modest results, while her venues now included the San Francisco gay bars that embraced the Urban Cowboy phenomenon, as well as the annual gay rodeo in Reno, Nevada. She performed with the Vern Williams Band in folk clubs, too, and recorded a 1984 album with Merle Haggard & the Strangers that was funded by fans. A number of Arhoolie Records reissues helped keep her loyal audience appeased, while introducing her vivacious music to a new generation. She and her brother Fred patched things up for a 50th anniversary celebration of the Maddox Brothers & Rose in Delano, California.

Too often overlooked among the country performers of her era, Maddox landed her first Grammy nomination for her 1994 Arhoolie release, $35 and a Dream, in the category of Best Bluegrass Album. She recounted her exceptional career in the 1997 biography, Ramblin’ Rose: The Life and Career of Rose Maddox, and died the following year at age 71 in Ashland, Oregon. Remarkably, her life story has not been adapted for Hollywood, nor has she been inducted into the Country Music Hall of Fame or the Bluegrass Hall of Fame. Yet her catalog still shines as a beacon for listeners who seek out traditional music with an undeniable West Coast flair.

On the final track of that final album, Johnny Cash intones, “I worked with Rose Maddox a lot back over the years. And I found that when she started working my show that she was probably the most fascinating, exciting performer that I’d ever seen in my life. She was a total performer. She captivated the audience. She held them in the palm of her hand and made ‘em do whatever she wanted to. The songs that she sang were classics, and I loved the way she sang and kind of danced at the same time. I thought there was, and still think that, there will never be a woman who could outperform Rose Maddox. She’s an American classic.”

 

Riders in the Sky: Genuine Songs, the Cowboy Way

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It started with Ranger Doug giving “A great big western howdy!”

It ended with Doug and compadre Too Slim harmonizing on “Happy Trails” and calling, “Head ‘em up! Move ‘em out! Hee-yaw!”

Well, how else would you expect a conversation with the two founding members of Riders in the Sky to be framed? That’s the Riders in a nutshell right there, these troubadours being dedicated to both the preservation and continuation of the rich traditions of cowboy music and celebrating life on the range. It’s a nutshell they’ve honed and inhabited over the course of four decades as the premiere (perhaps the only) purveyors of the form — not to mention the associated comedy schtick (one of those Old West terms) and embroidered, be-chapped and tall-hatted finery.

They are currently celebrating that time span with a new album, 40 Years the Cowboy Way, their 35th full release, a survey of the wide range (pardon the expression, pardner) and extensive history of cowboy music, from paeans to the prairies and rivers, to campfire songs, to jigs and polkas, to gunfighter ballads. There’s also a tour, which will soon bring their total career concert count past a whopping 7,300! It’s a legacy they never dreamed of back on that day in 1977 when guitarist Ranger Doug (known to some as Doug Green) first sat in with a bluegrass band that featured upright bassist Slim (a.k.a. Fred LaBour). Well, best — and most entertaining — to let them tell the tale.

“He was just Deputy Doug then,” Slim recalls. “He’d show up in a hat, play a Bob Nolan tune.”

“‘Song of the Prairie,’” Doug interjects. “You loved it.”

“I said, ‘Where’d that come from,” Slim says. “He said, ‘Bob Nolan.’ I said, ‘Did he write any others?’ He said, ‘Yeah, about 1200.’”

That, Slim says, was his introduction to the music of the Sons of the Pioneers, the Western swing-and-harmony group that featured Nolan and cowboy-star-to-be Roy Rogers. Soon, with the addition of Windy Bill Collins, they dedicated themselves to the traditions of the singing cowboys — Gene Autry, Tex Ritter, Rogers of course — and the Western ideal. Well, at least for one show.

“I famously called Ranger Doug a couple days after our first gig and said, ‘I don’t know what happened back there, but America will pay to see that,’” Slim says. “It was so much fun, and it was music that had kind of gone from the landscape. The Sons of the Pioneers had albums in the cut-out bins and no one was doing what we were doing, so different and weird and entertaining.”

It was from one of those cut-out Sons albums, happened across by Slim, that the group took its name, and there was no looking back. With Collins leaving after a year (and replacement Tumbleweed Tommy Goldsmith staying just a year himself), Western swing fiddler Woody Paul (Paul Chrisman) came on board in 1978. Accordion wizard Joey Miskulin started working with them in 1988, becoming a full-timer soon after, squaring out the quartet we know today. Or as the Riders tell it:

“Woody joined us, bringing more original songs, a great tenor voice and that great fiddle style,” Doug says.

“And he can also fix the bus when it breaks down,” says Slim.

“That’s why we keep him,” adds Doug. “Not for his fiddle.”

“Not for his punctuality,” says Slim.

Doug continues, “Then about 10 years later we saw a guy on the side of the road with a sign that said, ‘Will Squeeze for Food.’ That’s how Joey joined us.”

Slim: “So that’s how we got a couple songwriters, a producer [Miskulin] and great players.”

“And Too Slim is being modest about his comedy skills,” Doug notes.

“I am objectively one of the second-funniest guys in America,” Slim says, with a modest level of modesty.

Soon the accolades, credits and, of course, fans around the world mounted up impressively: They were inducted into the Grand Ole Opry in 1982. They sang “Woody’s Roundup” in Pixar’s Toy Story 2 and contributed to the soundtrack of another Pixar film, Monsters, Inc., while their related albums, Woody’s Roundup: A Rootin’ Tootin’ Collection of Woody’s Favorite Songs and Monsters, Inc. Scream Factory Favorites each won them a Grammy Award for best children’s album. Also in animation, they were portrayed as a robot cowboy band in a 2003 episode of the animated Duck Dodgers, for which they sang the parts. In other media, they had their own Riders Radio Theater show and starred in a 1991 CBS Saturday morning kids show — kind of Pee Wee’s Playhouse on the prairie — which though not a hit, is pretty noteworthy nonetheless.

“About 10 years ago I said, ‘This has been way more,’” Slim says. “Two Grammys, getting to work with Pixar, the great venues and all the things we’ve done.”

Of course, even 40 years ago, this was already music of deep nostalgia. For that matter, when those singing cowboys and frontier heroes were doing it, it was already music evoking a bygone era — “the thrilling days of yesteryear,” as the Lone Ranger’s announcer put it.

How much of what they do is based on real traditions, how much on myth? Is there a core of reality to the music, or is it, in the parlance of pageantry, “folklorico?”

“That’s a complicated question,” Ranger Doug says. “The West had been glamorized and mythologized since the [James] Fenimore Cooper novels [notably The Last of the Mohicans in 1826], or [Owen Wister’s] The Virginian, at the turn of the 20th century. Buffalo Bill’s Wild West Show was created while the West was still wild! There’s a whole tradition of romanticizing the West. Just so happens that it works musically. The great poets like Bob Nolan and Stan Jones and Tim Spencer were able to make it into song. Roy Rogers and his flowery shirts and six-shooter, that was not the real life of the cowboy in 1867.”

But, Slim stresses, “There was music in 1867. Folk music. A lot of Celtic, Appalachian songs to it, the whole blues thing. And when jazz happened it took on that element. So it became a melting pot, a gumbo of music, wouldn’t you say, Ranger Doug?”

“I would,” Doug says. “And the Mexican music, too, not only the songs but in costuming.”

And, Doug adds, “There’s a tradition of singing among working men who are isolated, in the days before they were on their iPhones. Sailor shanties and lumberjack songs and miner songs. These existed. So no surprise that there were genuine cowboy songs as well.”

“Some of these survive, and we do them,” Slim says.

Doug cites a few classics: “The Old Chisholm Trail,” “Red River Valley,” “Streets of Laredo,” “Bury Me Not on the Lone Prairie.”

There’s one, a little more obscure today, featured on 40 Years the Cowboy Way.

“‘The Blue Juanita’ was written in 1844 and was written about a river in Pennsylvania, which was the West to a lot of people then,” Slim says.

“It’s about an Indian maiden, plying her canoe up and down the Blue Juanita,” Doug says.

They do know their stuff.

“I wrote the book,” Doug declares.

“He actually did,” Slim elaborates. “Singing in the Saddle, the whole history from Fenimore Cooper to Riders in the Sky. A lot of emphasis on the Golden Era, the ‘30s and ‘40s when cowboy music was huge.”

The new album covers much of that ground. Surrounding “The Blue Juanita” are some expected, familiar songs (“Cimarron,” “Mule Train,” even Marty Robbins’ 1950s hit gunfighter ballad “El Paso”), some originals evoking classic styles (Green’s “Old New Mexico”) and some corny comedy (“I’ve Cooked Everything,” a food-centric rewrite of the Johnny Cash hit “I’ve Been Everywhere,” sung by craggy camp cook Side Meat, who may or may not be a LaBour alter-ego).

There are also what for some might be unexpected turns, including the jigs medley of “Pigeon on the Gatepost” and “The Colraine Jig” and the spritely “Clarinet Polka,” co-written by Woody Paul and Joey Miskulin, who, by the way, had a long pre-Riders stint with “Polka King” Frankie Yankovic. Oh, and some yodeling. There has to be yodeling.

Then there’s a Too Slim arrangement of the old traditional song “I’ve Got No Use for Women.” Talk about bygone eras. They are highly conscious of the fact that times, and attitudes, have changed, not just from the days of the real Old West but since the days of the Hollywood Old West, neither of which may have cast Native Americans and other non-Caucasian ethnic groups in the best light, not to mention women. It’s a touchy subject.

“Do you want to take that one, Slim?” Ranger Doug asks, gingerly.

“Go ahead, Ranger Doug,” Slim replies.

“At least two of us have some political views,” Doug says. “But we don’t bring them forth on stage unless we slip. We’re there to entertain. As far as the image of the cowboy, some people like John Wayne and Jimmy Stewart and Gene Autry were arch-conservatives, and that stuck. I think of cowboys as environmentalists, people who appreciate good behavior and preserve the beauty of the West.”

“We are of our time,” Slim says. “And what we foster is a good feeling, an escape in a way. But also a reinforcement of timeless values of contentment, sincerity, being true to your word and humor. And I think that’s why people still come back to our shows. They like the feeling we engender on stage. But I’ve got ‘I’ve Got No Use for the Women’ on the album, and it’s an old song and I do it in character. But in the #MeToo generation, I’ll be honest, I’ve thought about it. But it’s a valid song and performance and I think it works great. But we all recognize that there was part of the West that had to do with genocide, the underbelly of American history. We’re aware of that.”

However fine a line they may amble in that regard, however the image of the cowboy and the old times may have changed, whatever the Riders have done has worked for 40 years, people do keep coming to see them — at Bonnaroo, where they just played as part of a special Grand Ole Opry show, something they’d tried to make happen for 15 years, to Tokyo, at a tattoo convention in Maine or in the village of Anaktuvuk Pass, Alaska, well north of the Arctic Circle. Asked about the most memorably strange gig they’ve done, they cite that latter one.

“The whole town came to see the show,” Doug says. “All 40 of them, all Native Americans — Eskimos. They all brought their boom boxes and recorded the show.”

Slim adds, “And after the show we watched the Northern Lights, and I had a bottle of Southern Comfort.”

Whether riding off into New Mexico sunsets or the sitting under the Northern Lights, it’s been some mighty happy trails.

…until we meeeeet… aaaa…. gain.

Illustration: Zachary Johnson

Herb Jeffries: The Original ‘Black’ Singing Cowboy

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Welcome back to In Memoriam, a monthly series that chronicles Americana musicians. So often, one giant is memorialized in their field while the others are displaced to historical footnotes. In Memoriam spotlights influential musicians who are fading from the collective conscious. This month: controversial Western film star Herb Jeffries.

In the 1930s, the United States was knee-deep in the Great Depression: Unemployment was at an all-time high; the once-fertile Oklahoma basin was awash in dust; and a great migration occurred. California — a supposed promise land full of oranges, stars, and jobs — filled with displaced farmers. It was an abundant state, but its agriculture economy was unprepared for the onslought.

People took solace in Western films and Hollywood began producing low-budget Westerns that glorified our nation’s past. Tough characters from hard-luck lives made good. It was a salve for our wounded country. At the same time, in New York, African-American culture prospered. The Harlem Renaissance was in full swing — as Duke Ellington was revolutionizing modern music, authors like Langston Hughes were redefining poetry and literature. Hollywood decided to try and get all parties on the same boat. Their vision? The Black Singing Cowboy. Enter Herbert Jeffries.

Jeffries was perfect: He sang in a rich baritone voice who was already an accomplished crooner. Louis Armstrong discovered a young Jeffries at 19 and recommended him to the Savoy Ballroom. He sang with Duke Ellington. He was handsome. Hollywood hoped that women would love him, and that the men would want to be him, so they released a series of films starring Jeffries with titles like Harlem on the Prairie, Two Gun Man from Harlem, and Harlem Rides The Range. It was a blatant cash grab and, once movie theaters across the country desegregated, Jeffries's film career stalled.

Still, his story would be fascinating enough, if he only sang for Duke Ellington. It would be all the more interesting because of his film career. But what really takes the cake is that Jeffries wasn’t Black.

Jeffries was born Umberto Valentino to an Irish mother and a Sicilian father. He had a slippery relationship with the truth, but by all accounts, he took his stepfather’s last name — Jeffries. From there, he adopted an African-American identity. At times, he claimed it was to avoid Italian persecution in Capone-era Chicago. At other times, he still maintained his African ancestry. What is known is that he was extremely effective. He darkened his skin with Max Factor makeup and quickly developed a smooth crooner persona.

Catching the ear of Ellington, Jeffries was hired and sang on a number of Ellington’s most popular songs. His rich voice captivated listeners, and his success in New York opened doors in Hollywood leading to his quick recruitment as the face of their latest scheme.

It’s hard to get a handle on Jeffries's past, as it’s full of contradictions. With his passing at 100 in 2014, the full story will never be known, but it’s hard to believe that Hollywood wasn’t aware of his ethnicity. It's quite likely that all the involved parties were aware of the fraudulent claim. Jeffries, for his part, never backed down from it. He concocted an increasingly elaborate family tree.

His sixth wife, Savannah, told the BBC that “there were times that Herb and I would go out and we’d get looks — prejudiced looks.” When the BBC pointed out that they were both white and pressed further, all she would say was that “Herb doesn’t see skin colors.” Perhaps Jeffries feared that his minstrel act would overshadow his other accomplishments, so he stuck to the story. 

Herb Jeffries was not the best-loved nor most well-known of the singing cowboys. He never had the name recognition of Gene Autry or the adoration of Roy Rogers. Some people consider him a master marketer. Others view him as a victim — he was a shade too dark for the whites with no other options. Many Hollywood honchos would prefer Herb Jeffries be forgotten along with this inglorious piece of film and music history … which is all the more reason to remember this complicated man and keep him from being relegated to the dustbins of history.