First Cowboy Band- Shirley (Gray interview) 1959
From: Oklahoma Today- Fall 1959
FIRST COWBOY BAND
A Spanish-American War Hero,
A Caravan of Cadillacs
A monkey, and a shepherd dog,
were only the beginning for the
Daddy of the Cowboy Bands
BY GLENN SHIRLEY
---
WHILE westerns in the past four years have boomed until each week eight of the top ten by shows on TV are westerns and consume twenty- two percent of all TV air time, western music has dropped to an all-time low in popularity. Big name bands in the field are still making pretty good money, but instead of sawing out truly western tunes, they are "pickin' on Charlie Brown" and "hangin' Tom Dooley", because our youth want rock 'n' roll.
A new word has been inserted-rockabilly-music that is a combination of hillbilly and rock 'n' roll.
"Most western band leaders want to fight if you accuse them of playing 'rockabilly'," says Otto Gray, of Stillwater, Oklahoma. "'Rockabilly' is just another word the kids have dreamed up."
Otto Gray, who put the first all-string cowboy band on stage, radio and records, is the acknowledged "daddy of 'em all." He lives in a comfortable, ranch-style sub-urban home, and although he doesn't have all the million he made as a traveling entertainer, he is no candidate for an old age pension at 73. I asked Otto his opinion of the slump.
"For one thing," he said, "there hasn't been a typically western song written in years. Of course, with TV and a wider choice of entertainment, kids are no longer the steady western dance customers their parents were. But I think they're still hungry for the old-time fun and melodies."
OTTO GRAY AND HIS OKLAHOMA COWBOYS.
The name was once as well known as Paul Whiteman's, Wayne King's or Benny Goodman's, and as well respected in concert circles. It appeared on song books and sheet music and theater marquees from Stillwater to the Roxy in New York. For twelve years, from 1924 to 1936, that the Cowboys toured the country, they were "the most widely advertised attraction in the show business, receiving instantaneous applause and publicity" and "breaking box office records at almost every appearance." I wanted to know why.
Otto stretched his long legs, eyed his colorful cowboy dress boots and scratched his head thoughtfully.
"Maybe it was the novelty of it that appealed to so many. But I believe what kept us at the top to the end was that we were authentic."
They were real cowboys. And they looked the part- tall, lean,bronzed, with their two-gallon Stetsons, high- heeled boots and Angora chaps. They were recruited from Otto's 2500-acre "Flying Pan" ranch in the Osage near Wynona, when he and an old cowboy friend, Billy McGinty, got the idea of developing a group of actual cowpunchers dedicated to acquainting a new generation with the folktunes and ballads of the early West.
"McGinty fronted for the organization," Otto re-called. "He wasn't a musician, but he was famous. He was one of Teddy Roosevelt's heroes at San Juan Hill, you know-won a medal and all that-had traveled with Buffalo Bill's Wild West for years, and was one of the Billy McGinty (with lariat) and Otto Gray (with lariat and white Anaom chaps), first bronc-riding champions of the world. We called our- selves 'McGinty's Oklahoma Cowboy Band.' "
McGinty, now 89 and retired, lives at Ripley, Oklahoma, surrounded by mementoes of a busy and eventful life, and is permanent President of the National Rough Riders' Association.
Otto himself had a reputation throughout the United States, Mexico and Canada. First a stockman, then a bowboy on the ranges of Wyoming and South Dakota, he had married the daughter of a rancher, and together they launched a career as trick and fancy ropers.
"In 1918, I started ranching on my own," said Otto. "Then we got the idea for the band. We actually started as a fiddlin', singin' and dancin' unit for local gatherings and programs in nearby towns."
But their fame spread quickly and their reputation as entertainers soon brought them to the attention of radio station managers. It was over KFRU, a small broadcasting station in Bristow, that they made their debut.
"It was the first radio station in Oklahoma. There wasn't any time limit; we just played until we got tired. And at that time there were no commercials."
The Cowboys played over Tulsa's KVOO; over KFJF in Oklahoma City, that later became WKY. Fan mail started to pour in. Then an impromptu appearance at a Hominy theater which netted them more than $200 made them realize they had something. They staked everything on a shoestring trip to Kansas City for a fifteen minute date over WHB, but were kept on the air two hours.
"The phones just rang off the walls," Otto recalled. "Seemed like people hadn't heard anything like us."
McGinty was appointed postmaster at Ripley and left the band. With Otto in charge, the group, now known as "Otto Gray and His Oklahoma Cowboys," entered the big broadcasting studios of the Middle West.
Within three years they were famous from coast-to-coast, They were heard over 130 radio statione and were a regular feature on the Red and Blue Networks of NBC.
"We wed only fretted instruments at first. Out where $here were no orchestras for accompaniment in the early clays, it was natural that people should app-te the fullpossibilities of the mandolin, guitar, banjo and violh as the foundation for vocal harmonies. Later, we added a piano and 'cello.'
There was nothing synthetic in their performance. "We acted like we were in the bunkhouse back at the ranch. We had an all 'round good time and played the songs that appealed to the heart."
Radio rodeos were not exactly new, but songs of the plairas virtually dripping with sentiment, ballads that had their origin in the dim past and had been handed down from one generation of cowboys to the next, were the band's repertoire. Mrs. Gray, nicknamed "Mommie", drew upon her storehouse of unusual songs she had learned from the cowboys who rode for her father when the West was still a country of cattle kings.
"Your Sweetheart Waits For You, Jack," "The Baggage Coach Ahead," and "A Picture From Life's Other Side" still hold a tear for many. The evils of strong "likker" were emphasized in such gems as "The Drunk-ard's Lone Child" and "'The Drunken Fool", and in a mother's unanswered question, rendered by Mommie hemelf, "Oh, Where Is My Wandering Boy Tonight?"
They made old "breakdowns" sound as they never had behre, and there was an almost human German shepherd dog, "Rex", who had a solo part in the open-idg and closing numbers, with "Pip", a tiny monkey, squealing and smaming an obligato.
"There were only three rhythms to the real songs of the range-not the distorted versions you hear today," Otto pointed out. "They came from the gaits of the cow- boy's horse-the walk, the trot and the lope."
"For instance,the rollicking 'Chisholm Trail' fit the cowpony's broken trot, the songs like 'Streets of Laredo' swung along with the lope. Based on the horse's walk were the lullaby tunes like 'The Dying Cowby' and 'Barbara Allen.'
"That's why the cowboy song is different than any othre spontaneous song product in America- its characteristic rhythm and the freedom of expression of the singers."
"The cowboy used different songs by day and by night. At sun-up, the herd was on the move and he kept it stirred with tunes punctuated by staccab yelil+like: 'Come a ti-yi-yippee yippee yay yippee yay!' At night, when the cattle were bedded down, the eon@ were sweet and low, even mournful-like: 'O bury me not on the lone prairie.'
"We gave our audiences this kind of reality. We were no western swing band, but much of ow music was the fat-tapping, body-swaying variety that brought grins of appreciation."
For a real thrill the public heard "Bugger' Fields, the cowboy guitarist, going on some special numbers worked out himself from unwritten melodies.
Fred Wilson, Rube Tronson, Bill Crane and Owen Gray, strapping six-feet-four-inch son of Mommie and Otto, made a big hit with their novelty musical act, playing four instruments, fingering one and picking the other.
There were instrmentals by the banjo and 'cello kings, "Zeke" and "Hy" Allen, and the half-breed Cherokee violinist, Chief Sanders; rope tricks by Otto and Mommie; and a knife act in which Jack Edwards was the thrower and his wife and dog, Altus, the targets. Jack Webb and his partner from the 101Ranch did some fancy rifle shooting.
As the money rolled in, Otto acquired a fleet of Cadillacs, colorfully decorated. One was specially designed for the comfort of the members of his company, and from its radiator extended a highly polished set of "longhorns". Often, upon entering towns, their fancy cars brought traffic to a standstill.
In Missouri, Illinois, Indiana, Ohio and Pennsylvania, they "stopped the show." At Goebel's Park in Covington, Kentucky, the crowd was so large and anxious the police and fire departments couldn't hold it back. In 1932, the Cowboys set a new "family party" record at En-Joie Health Park in Endicott, New York, where over 50,000 expressed their appreciation with applause that "rang through the Valley of the Southern Tier like thunder."
Their radio programs were disliked only by two classes of working foll-telephone operators and mail men. The first week after opening at WGY, Schenectady, phones rang almost continuously and they broke all existing records by receiving over sixteen thousand telegrams and letters.
It was the same on KMOX, St. Louis; WZS, Chicago; WLW, Cinci; WSYR; Syracuse; WHAM, Rochester, KDKA, Pittsburg, and QUAN, Scranton. They recorded for Gennett at Richmond, Indiana, for Pathe, Paramount, Vocalion, Columbia, Brumwick, and Okeh, the General Phonograph Corporation of New York.
Violin, banjo, guitar, mandolin, 'cello and piano; solos, duets and quartets, interspersed by gutteral or string imitations of birds, trains,wind and wild Indians. "Capering in an exhibition of prairie dancing." "A riot of fast-moving entertahment from the first number." "A variety that no other aggregation can imitate."
And THE BILLBOARD reprinted this piece of publicity in a colorful advertising folder that went all over the world: "They can broadcast for eighteen hours, or thirty-six half-hour periods, without repeating and without looking at a sheet of music or referring to memoranda for their dialogue."
Otto never planned a program in advance, depending entirely upon "ad libbing" to put them over.
They became as much a part of America's lore as Pochahontas. "We got mighty close to the hearts of men, women and children." Otto concluded. "Western music may be in for a long siege, but it can be shortened with a little native showmanship and American naturalness."