America’s most beloved cowboy, Tex Ritter was one of the few singing cowboys of the 1940s, who was able to sustain a successful recording career long after the era of the Hollywood B-westerns had drawn to a close. He graduated from appearing on Broadway in the early 1930s to starring in more than sixty Hollywood westerns throughout the 1940s. Along the way he recorded prolifically, initially for ARC and Decca and in 1942 he was the first singer to sign with the new Capitol Records. He provided the label with a long string of hits, becoming one of country music’s biggest sellers of the 1940s. He did not have a great voice, but his unusual accent, odd slurs and phrasing allied to a strong feeling of genuine honesty, made his voice one of the most appealing in country music history. He presented a repertoire of diverse material from cowboy ballads, religious material, children’s songs, country and western swing tunes and recitations. His best-known hit came in 1952 with his rendition of the haunting High Noon, one of the most famous western movie themes of all time that won an Academy Award. A lifelong student of western history, he was instrumental in setting up The Country Music Foundation and The Country Music Hall Of Fame, to which he was elected in 1964.

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One of the first to follow Gene Autry into films as a singing cowboy, Tex moved to Hollywood in 1936, where he was to star in some sixty films for Grand National, Monogram, Columbia, Universal and PRC. Some of his early classics included Song Of The Gringo, Trouble In Texas (with a young Rita Hayworth), and Take Me Back To Oklahoma. Throughout this period he was recording regularly for Decca, without too much success. In 1942, he became the first country artist signed to Capitol Records, and within two years became a regular in the country top ten with hits like I’m Wastin’ My Tears Over You, Jealous Heart, You Two-Timed Me One Time Too Often, Have I Told You Lately That I Love You and Deck Of Cards. The latter was a recitation, the first of many that he was to record over the years: Daddy’s Last Letter was the recitation of an actual letter from a soldier killed in the Korean War; The Pledge Of Allegiance and The Gettysburg Address were powerful readings of patriotic documents.

When his filming career declined, he turned to touring and concentrated on his recording career, alongside his two regular radio series. His last singing cowboy role was in 1945’s Flaming Bullets, though he did return to the silver screen in several cameo roles in the early 1950s. In 1947 he recorded the first of many children’s songs, and produced a surprise hit in Pecos Bill. Featured in the Walt Disney movie Melody Time, it provided him with a top twenty hit the following year. Though High Noon, proved to be a massive pop hit in 1952, and reputedly sold a million copies, it failed to make an impact on the country charts. In fact, he failed to make an impact on the country lists throughout the 1950s, though he did enjoy another pop hit with The Wayward Wind in 1956, a record that was also a UK top twenty hit.