Back in the Saddle Again Humor

Gene Autry, "the Singing Cowboy". AFP/AFP/Getty Images hide explanation

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AFP/AFP/Getty Images

Gene Autry, "the Singing Cowboy".

AFP/AFP/Getty Images

NPR 100 Fact Canvass

Title: Back in the Saddle Once again

Artist: Words/ music: Ray Whitely, Cistron Autry

Performed by: Factor Autry

Reporter: Linda Wertheimer

Length: 12:thirty

Interviewees: David Rothel, Author

Alex Gordon, Autry Enterprises

Douglas Green, music historian

Carla Buelman, Autry Enterprises

"Back In The Saddle" was ane of Factor Autry's biggest hits, and he had a lot of hits. He was a radio and TV star, and he made 93 cowboy movies. In 1941, he used the title of the vocal every bit the championship of a movie. Similar nigh of his films, "Back in the Saddle" is set in mod times, and Cistron Autry plays what he called a kind of New Deal cowboy, fighting big business and special interests. The movie opens at the Madison Square Garden rodeo in New York Urban center and moves backstage with a radio reporter to where the cowboys and cowgirls are packing upwardly their gear.

Autry's comical sidekick, Frog, was played past Smiley Burnette, but many of his songs were written by another cowboy pic sidekick, Ray Whitley, who wrote "Back In The Saddle Again" in 1938. David Rothel, the author of the Gene Autry book, talked to him 40 years subsequently, and Ray Whitley told how he'd written "Back in the Saddle Over again."

"Information technology went similar this. I got a phone telephone call about, oh, iv or 5:00 in the morning time. I answered and talked with my producer. And I hung up and came back into the sleeping room very sleepily. My married woman said, `Well, what was that all most, anyone calling at this hour?' I said, `Well, I'm back in the saddle again.' She says, `What practice yous mean, back in the saddle once more?' I said, `Well, they told me that they had room in the motion-picture show for another vocal, if I could write another 1 betwixt now and eight:00 this morning,' at which fourth dimension we had our recording session. And she says, `Well, yous've got a good title.' I said, `What's that?' She said, `"Back in the Saddle Again."' And I saturday down on the side of the bed, and I wrote the first eight lines of the song, and I said, `Now when we become to the studio, I'll put a whoopie ty-yai-yo and a whoopie tai-yai-yea, and maybe a yodel and we'll have a song.' "

Ray Whitley wrote the song for a movie called "Edge 1000-Men." Autry heard information technology and had a feeling near it. It reflected the Singing Cowboy view of the W as a better place, as well every bit Autry's ain good-natured optimism. Information technology became his theme song on his radio show, "Tune Ranch," and later on TV. He sang it at dozens of personal appearances every year. Eventually, virtually of the land knew the song, just Ray Whitley sang information technology first.

Whitely sold "Back In The Saddle Again" for $350, a pretty meaning amount of coin in 1938, writer David Rothel notes. And fifty-fifty though a picayune slice of that song's residuals would have added up from all the zillions of times it'southward been played, but didn't permit on that he had whatsoever regrets for selling it.

"Autry was ownership songs from his sidekick, Smiley Burnette, for $v and $10, so this was a pretty high-price song for the times. Mayhap in the nighttime of night that thought might take passed his listen. But he certainly never in whatsoever of his interviews, any of his public appearances when he sang the vocal and talked about it, never did he ever express whatever regret that I know of. They were very expert friends. And Whitley performed with Gene Autry and besides Roy Rogers on many of their personal appearances."

Cistron Autry tinkered with "Back in the Saddle Once more," recorded it, put information technology in movies and spent the next 60 years living with it. Alex Gordon worked for Gene Autry for well-nigh of that time.

"He liked the idea of friendship, out where a friend is a friend," Gordon says. "He seemed to make friends with everybody very apace. And people liked him, and also he e'er played himself in all his movies and telly movies. He was ever Factor Autry the radio star, or Gene Autry the rodeo star or Gene Autry working for the sheriff's department or whatsoever. Simply it was always Factor Autry playing himself, unlike other cowboys."

Gene Autry flew transports in the Pacific theater during the war. He came domicile to find Roy Rogers the number one singing cowboy. In his autobiography, also chosen "Back in the Saddle Over again," Autry says the state of war made him think about the doubtfulness of the future, and he made a plan. He got dorsum into movies and began investing, first in radio stations. Autry regretted that he didn't save the title, "Dorsum in the Saddle," for his first post-state of war movie, considering it had a special significance then. David Rothel again.

"There was a off-white corporeality of fanfare when he came out of the service and he was dorsum in the saddle once more. And there was a lot of that mail service-war feeling that, you know, getting back into the swing of things."

Autry made at least a dozen recordings of "Back in the Saddle Again," but this is his favorite, a mellow version recorded merely afterward the state of war in 1946.

"Dorsum in the Saddle Once more" was Gene Autry'southward 2d gold record, the 1939 version. Douglas Green is a music historian. As Ranger Doug, he withal performs Gene Autry'due south music with the group Riders in the Heaven, and here speaks on where the music of the singing cowboys comes from.

"I think all of those men were influenced by the records of Django Reinhardt, by barbershop singing, by gospel quartets, by everything that they'd grown up with, everything they were listening to on the radio. And and then they distilled that and put information technology in a Western setting."

As Mr. Dark-green explains, there something about this vocal that you could just hear it over and over, sing it over and over, and he could perform it over and over.

"It has an immediacy. It has a vision of the West which is very comforting. It has a wonderful lilting piddling melody, and it has Factor Autry's voice. You tin't deny that either. He personalized every song that he sang. He was no technically great vocalizer, but he had i of the most warm, intimate voices in the business. And everything he sang, he just had that kind of sun-baked Southwestern experience that kind of made you feel proficient."

Gene Autry fabricated his last motion-picture show in 1953. He was fabulously wealthy by then, owning radio and television receiver stations, hotels, ranches, production companies. He was a businessman, but he still had that song. Alex Gordon now works for Autry Enterprises.

"People who come in, whether it'south a delivery boy from Federal Express and then on, when they see it'due south a Gene Autry office and they haven't been there before, they sort of grinning and they say, `Oh, Gene Autry,' and then they might go, `Da-da-da da-da-da da-da,' or, `I'thou dorsum in the saddle,' and kind of make a joke out of information technology, you lot know?"

And nonetheless, Gene Autry never got tired of it.

"Well, when Factor liked something--and he liked nearly of the piece of work he did, his movies, recordings, everything that he did, personal appearances--and very often the audition would so join in at the rodeo or something. Yous know, and they knew the words. Fifty-fifty General MacArthur liked the song. It was i of his favorites. At the end of one of the tours, he took me with him to see General MacArthur on a personal visit that MacArthur had invited him to the Pentagon, and MacArthur not only gave him an autographed photo to Cistron and to me, merely he even hummed a couple of lines and only a couple of words of "Back in the Saddle" as Gene walked in."

Gene Autry bought the California Angels in 1960, which he said gave him as much fun every bit a grown man can have. When he went to the ballpark, he'd visit with players in both dugouts, moving ridge his white lid to the fans and, says Carla Buelman of Autry Entertainment, the vocal would still be there.

"Imagine a man in a Western cowboy concern adapt, a white hat and his walking stick, coming in and greeting everyone, maxim hello, and so sitting down and watching his team and enjoying the team, and keeping the score for every single game. I mean, that's amazing. And they would play clips, and it would be of Factor communicable the bad guy or riding hard on Champion, and then but playing music in the background. A lot of fans will ask me, `What was Factor Autry really similar? What was the man really like? Y'all got to know him.' And I tin honestly say the Gene Autry you lot come across in the movies, the Cistron Autry you lot saw on the personal appearance tours, the Gene Autry yous heard on the radio, that was the real Factor Autry."

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Source: https://www.npr.org/2000/07/24/1079912/npr-100-gene-autry

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