From My "Country & Western" Days

 My All-Time Favorite Song

 

"The Cattle Call" is a song written and recorded in 1934 by American songwriter and musician Tex Owens. The melody was adapted from Bruno Rudzinksi's 1928 recording "Pawel Walc". It later became a signature song
for Eddy Arnold.

Members of the Western Writers of America chose it as one of the Top 100 Western songs of all time.

Owens wrote the song in Kansas City while watching the snow fall. "Watching the snow, my sympathy went out to cattle everywhere, and I just wished I could call them all around me and break some corn over a wagon wheel and feed them. That's when the words 'cattle call' came to my mind. I picked up my guitar, and in thirty minutes I had wrote the music and four verses to the song,"
he said. His August 28, 1934 recording was among the first for the newly formed Decca Record Company. He recorded it again in 1936.

 Eddy Arnold- Cattle Call from The Best of Eddy Arnold Album

Another Favorite is "Deck of Cards" 

"The Deck of Cards" is a recitation song that was popularized in the fields of both country and popular music, first during the late 1940s. This song, which relates the tale of a young American soldier arrested and charged with playing cards during a church service, first became a hit in the U.S. in 1948 by country musician T. Texas Tyler.

Though Tyler wrote the spoken-word piece, the earliest known reference is to be found in an account/common-place book belonging to Mary Bacon, a British farmer's wife, dated 20 April 1762. The story of the soldier can be found in full in Mary Bacon's World. A farmer's wife in eighteenth-century Hampshire, published by Threshold Press (2010). The folk story was later recorded in a 19th-century British publication entitled The Soldier's Almanac, Bible And Prayer Book.

Story

The song is set during World War II, where a group of U.S. Army soldiers, on a long hike during the North African campaign, arrive and camp near the town of Bizerte. While scripture is being read in church, one man who has only a deck of playing cards pulls them out and spreads them in front of him. He is
immediately spotted by a sergeant, who believes the soldier is playing
cards in church and orders him to put them away. The soldier is then
arrested and taken before the provost marshal to be judged. The provost marshal demands an explanation and the soldier says that he had been on a long march, without a bible or a prayer book. He then explains the significance of each card:

• Ace: one God.
• Deuce: the Old Testament and New Testament in the Bible.
• Trey (three): the Holy Trinity.
• Four: St. Matthew, St. Mark, St. Luke, and St. John.
• Five: the five wise virgins in the parable of the Ten Virgins.
• Six: the number of days taken by God to create the earth according to the Genesis creation narrative.
• Seven: the day on which God rested, now known as the Sabbath.
• Eight: The people God saved during the Great Flood: Noah, his wife, their three sons and their wives.
• Nine: out of the ten lepers cleansed by Jesus, according to the Gospel of Luke (see Luke 17:11-19), who did not thank Him.
• Ten: the Ten Commandments handed down by Moses.
• King: Jesus Christ; King of Kings, Lord of Lords.
• Queen: Mary, the mother of Jesus.
• Jack or knave: Satan or the Devil.
• 365 spots: the number of days in a year.
• 52 cards: the number of weeks in a year.
• Thirteen tricks (in a game of whist or bridge) or values: the number of weeks in a season, or quarter of a year.
• Four suits: the number of seasons in a year [in some versions: the number of weeks in a month]
• Twelve face, picture or court cards: the number of months in a year.

He then ends his story by saying that "my pack of cards serves me as a
Bible, an almanac, and a prayer book." The narrator then closes the story by stating that "this story is true," by claiming he was the soldier in question or that he knew/knows him.

The story as told contains an error in the number of days in a year. In a standard deck, there are 220 (4×(1+2+3+4+5+6+7+8+9+10)) spots on the pip cards and if it is assumed that the face cards have 11, 12 and 13 spots respectively, the total is 364. A single joker counting as one spot, however, would make 365. A version of the legend dating to 1865, cites the unreliability of existing almanacs as a justification for this apparent error.

 

 "Deck of Cards" is a great song by the late Tex Ritter

 

 

 

Singing cowboy Tex Ritter stood as one of the biggest names in country music throughout the postwar era, thanks to a diverse career that led him everywhere from the Broadway stage to the political arena. He was born Maurice Woodward Ritter in Marvaul, TX, on January 12, 1907, and grew up on a ranch in Beaumont.

 

After graduating at the top of his high school class, he majored in law at the University of Texas. During college, however, he was bitten by the acting bug and moved to New York in 1928 to join a theatrical troupe. After a few years of struggle, he briefly returned to school, only to leave again to pursue stardom. 

 

Ritter was playing cowboy songs on the radio when he returned to New York in 1931 to act in the Broadway production Green Grow the Lilacs; during scene changes, he also performed on his guitar. Thanks to his success on the stage, he began hosting radio programs like Tex Ritter's Campfire and Cowboy Tom's Roundup before entering the studio with producer Art Satherley in 1933, where his deep, lived-in voice graced songs like "Rye Whiskey." He caught the attention of Hollywood producer Edward Finney, who was searching for a cowboy singer in the mold of the highly successful Gene Autry and was tapped to star in the 1936 Western Song of the Gringo. Over the next two years, Ritter starred in a dozen films, including 1937's Trouble in Texas (co-starring a young Rita Hayworth), before Finney's studio, Grand National Pictures, folded. Ritter then switched to Monogram Studios, for whom he made some 20 Westerns, including 1940's Take Me Back to Oklahoma with co-star Bob Wills; work at Columbia and Universal followed, and by the time of his movie swan song, 1945's The Texas Rangers, he had appeared in a total of 85 films. As Ritter's Hollywood career went into decline, his music career began to blossom, and in 1942, he became the first country artist signed to Capitol Records, where he recorded everything from traditional folk tunes to patriotic material to sentimental songs. 

 

In 1944, Tex Ritter & His Texans topped the charts with the single "I'm Wastin' My Tears on You." The record's flip side, "There's a New Moon Over My Shoulder," peaked at number two, as did the follow-up "Jealous Heart." 1945's "You Two-Timed Me One Time Too Often" proved to be Ritter's greatest success, holding at number one for 11 consecutive weeks. Among his other successes in the 1940s were 1945's number one "You Will Have to Pay," 1948's "Rock and Rye," and 1950's "Daddy's Last Letter (Private First Class John H. McCormick)," based on the actual correspondence of a soldier slain during the Korean War. 

 

Ritter recorded the theme to the Fred Zinneman classic High Noon in 1953, and the resulting single proved extremely successful with pop audiences, helping win him the job as the MC of the television program Town Hall Party, which he hosted between 1953 and 1960. In 1958, he issued his first full-length LP, Songs From the Western Screen, followed the next year by Psalms. After leaving Town Hall Party, he released the LP Blood on the Saddle, a dark collection of cowboy narrative songs, and in 1961, he returned to the country charts after an 11-year absence with the Top Five hit "I Dreamed of a Hillbilly Heaven." In 1963 Ritter began a two-year tenure as the president of the Country Music Association, and in 1965 he moved to Nashville to join the Grand Ole Opry. After an unsuccessful bid for the U.S. Senate in 1970, Ritter died of a heart attack on January 2, 1974.

 

 

The Ballad of High Noon - Do not forsake me, oh, my darling 

 
Tex Ritter (original soundtrack High Noon; Dimitri Tiomkin, composer)
It was introduced in the movie High Noon, sung over the opening credits by Tex Ritter. It was awarded the 1952 Academy Award for Best Original Song, and was performed that night for the Academy by Ritter. 

 

The song is about the film's main character, Will Kane (played by Gary Cooper), and the moral dilemma of his new wife, Amy Fowler-Kane (played by Grace Kelly), abandoning (or "forsaking") him because he chooses to stay and fight (and risk being killed) instead of running away with her after their wedding. The song refers to how he can't have a safe life with her until he has eliminated the threats that face him, and he wants her to stay with him just a while longer until it's all over and not give up on him for good.

In the context of film music, "The Ballad of High Noon" is acclaimed not merely for its musical integration with High Noon's score, but also for expounding lyrically on the themes of honor and obligation which define the film. 

 

It is placed at #25 on "AFI's 100 Years... 100 Songs". Members of the Western Writers of America chose it as one of the Top 100 Western songs of all time.

Dimitri Zinovievich Tiomkin (May 10, 1894 – November 11, 1979) was a Russian-American film score composer and conductor. Musically trained in Russia, he is best known for his western scores, including Duel in the Sun, Red River, High Noon, The Big Sky, Gunfight at the O.K. Corral, and Last Train from Gun Hill. Tiomkin received twenty-two Academy Award nominations and won four Oscars, three for Best Original Score for High Noon, The High and the Mighty and The Old Man and the Sea, and one for Best Original Song for "The Ballad of High Noon" from the former film.

 

 

 

Johnny Paycheck always sing from his heart, I love the way he bought his point across RIP Johnny.

 

 

 

Phantom 309 A tale of a hitchhiker who hops a ride from a trucker who turns out to be the ghost of a man who died years ago giving his life to save a school bus full of children from a horrible collision with his rig.
Dedicated to Red Sovine. Born Woodrow Wilson Sovine  

 

 

 Ghost Riders In The Sky - sung by Marty Robbins