Who Sang Back in the Saddle Again.

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

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AFP/AFP/Getty Images

Gene Autry, "the Singing Cowboy".

AFP/AFP/Getty Images

NPR 100 Fact Sheet

Championship: Back in the Saddle Over again

Artist: Words/ music: Ray Whitely, Gene Autry

Performed by: Gene Autry

Reporter: Linda Wertheimer

Length: 12:30

Interviewees: David Rothel, Author

Alex Gordon, Autry Enterprises

Douglas Green, music historian

Carla Buelman, Autry Enterprises

"Back In The Saddle" was one of Gene Autry's biggest hits, and he had a lot of hits. He was a radio and TV star, and he fabricated 93 cowboy movies. In 1941, he used the title of the vocal as the championship of a motion-picture show. Like near of his films, "Dorsum in the Saddle" is set in modern times, and Factor Autry plays what he called a kind of New Deal cowboy, fighting big business concern and special interests. The picture show opens at the Madison Square Garden rodeo in New York Metropolis and moves backstage with a radio reporter to where the cowboys and cowgirls are packing up their gear.

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

"Information technology went similar this. I got a phone call about, oh, 4 or v:00 in the morning. I answered and talked with my producer. And I hung up and came back into the bedroom very sleepily. My married woman said, `Well, what was that all most, anyone calling at this hour?' I said, `Well, I'chiliad back in the saddle again.' She says, `What do y'all mean, back in the saddle once more?' I said, `Well, they told me that they had room in the picture for another song, if I could write another one between now and 8:00 this morning,' at which time nosotros had our recording session. And she says, `Well, you lot've got a proficient championship.' I said, `What's that?' She said, `"Back in the Saddle Once more."' And I sat 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 pic called "Border G-Men." Autry heard it and had a feeling most it. It reflected the Singing Cowboy view of the West as a better place, as well as Autry'southward own good-natured optimism. It became his theme song on his radio show, "Melody Ranch," and later on Tv set. He sang it at dozens of personal appearances every year. Eventually, almost of the country knew the song, but Ray Whitley sang it first.

Whitely sold "Back In The Saddle Again" for $350, a pretty significant amount of money in 1938, writer David Rothel notes. And even though a footling piece of that song's residuals would have added up from all the zillions of times information technology's been played, but didn't let on that he had any regrets for selling it.

"Autry was ownership songs from his sidekick, Smiley Burnette, for $5 and $x, then this was a pretty loftier-price song for the times. Mayhap in the dark of night that idea might have passed his mind. Merely he certainly never in any of his interviews, any of his public appearances when he sang the song and talked about it, never did he ever express whatever regret that I know of. They were very good friends. And Whitley performed with Factor Autry and also Roy Rogers on many of their personal appearances."

Factor Autry tinkered with "Dorsum in the Saddle Again," recorded it, put it in movies and spent the next 60 years living with information technology. Alex Gordon worked for Cistron Autry for virtually 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 quickly. And people liked him, and also he always played himself in all his movies and television movies. He was always Gene Autry the radio star, or Gene Autry the rodeo star or Gene Autry working for the sheriff's section or whatsoever. Just it was always Factor Autry playing himself, dissimilar other cowboys."

Gene Autry flew transports in the Pacific theater during the state of war. He came home to find Roy Rogers the number one singing cowboy. In his autobiography, likewise called "Dorsum in the Saddle Again," Autry says the war made him think near the doubtfulness of the future, and he made a programme. He got back into movies and began investing, first in radio stations. Autry regretted that he didn't salve the title, "Back in the Saddle," for his outset post-war movie, because it had a special significance so. David Rothel once again.

"There was a fair amount of fanfare when he came out of the service and he was dorsum in the saddle over again. And there was a lot of that mail-war feeling that, you know, getting back into the swing of things."

Autry fabricated at least a dozen recordings of "Dorsum in the Saddle Again," but this is his favorite, a mellow version recorded just later the war in 1946.

"Back in the Saddle Again" was Gene Autry'southward 2nd gold record, the 1939 version. Douglas Greenish is a music historian. Every bit Ranger Doug, he still performs Factor Autry's music with the grouping Riders in the Sky, 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 then they distilled that and put it in a Western setting."

As Mr. Green explains, there something about this song that you could just hear information technology over and over, sing it over and over, and he could perform information technology over and over.

"Information technology has an immediacy. It has a vision of the West which is very comforting. It has a wonderful lilting fiddling melody, and it has Gene Autry's voice. You can't deny that either. He personalized every song that he sang. He was no technically nifty singer, but he had ane of the near warm, intimate voices in the business. And everything he sang, he just had that kind of sun-baked Southwestern feel that kind of fabricated you feel good."

Gene Autry made his last moving picture in 1953. He was fabulously wealthy by then, owning radio and television stations, hotels, ranches, production companies. He was a businessman, but he still had that song. Alex Gordon at present works for Autry Enterprises.

"People who come in, whether it's a delivery boy from Federal Express then on, when they run across it's a Cistron Autry office and they haven't been there earlier, they sort of smile and they say, `Oh, Factor Autry,' and so they might go, `Da-da-da da-da-da da-da,' or, `I'm back in the saddle,' and kind of make a joke out of it, yous know?"

And yet, Gene Autry never got tired of it.

"Well, when Gene liked something--and he liked almost of the work he did, his movies, recordings, everything that he did, personal appearances--and very often the audition would then 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 Gene and to me, but he even hummed a couple of lines and just a couple of words of "Back in the Saddle" every bit Gene walked in."

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

"Imagine a man in a Western cowboy business suit, a white chapeau and his walking stick, coming in and greeting everyone, saying hello, and and then sitting down and watching his team and enjoying the team, and keeping the score for every single game. I mean, that's astonishing. And they would play clips, and it would be of Gene catching the bad guy or riding hard on Champion, so merely playing music in the background. A lot of fans will ask me, `What was Gene Autry really like? What was the man really like? You got to know him.' And I can honestly say the Gene Autry y'all see in the movies, the Gene Autry you saw on the personal appearance tours, the Cistron Autry y'all heard on the radio, that was the real Gene Autry."

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