Orvon Grover "Gene" Autry, nicknamed the Singing Cowboy, was an American actor, musician, singer, composer, rodeo performer, and baseball team owner, who largely gained fame by singing in a crooning style on radio, in films, and on television for more than three decades, beginning in the early 1930s. During that time, he personified the straight-shooting hero — honest, brave, and true.
Roy Rogers, nicknamed the King of the Cowboys, was an American singer, actor, television host, freemason and rodeo performer.
The Academy of Country Music (ACM) was founded in 1964 in Los Angeles, California as the Country & Western Music Academy. Among the founders were Eddie Miller, Tommy Wiggins, and Mickey and Chris Christensen. They wanted to promote country music in the western 13 states with the support of artists based on the West Coast. Artists such as Johnny Bond, Glen Campbell, Merle Haggard, Roger Miller and others influenced them. A board of directors was formed to govern the academy in 1965.
Michael Martin Murphey is an American singer-songwriter. He was one of the founding artists of progressive country. A multiple Grammy nominee, Murphey has six gold albums, including Cowboy Songs, the first album of cowboy music to achieve gold status since Gunfighter Ballads and Trail Songs by Marty Robbins in 1959. He has recorded the hit singles "Wildfire", "Carolina in the Pines", "What's Forever For", "A Long Line of Love", "What She Wants", "Don't Count the Rainy Days", and "Maybe This Time". Murphey is also the author of New Mexico's state ballad, "The Land of Enchantment". Murphey has become a prominent musical voice for the Western horseman, rancher, and cowboy.
A chuckwagon or chuck wagon is a horse-drawn wagon operating as a mobile field kitchen and frequently covered with a white tarp, also called a camp wagon or round-up wagon. It was historically used for the storage and transportation of food and cooking equipment on the prairies of the United States and Canada. They were included in wagon trains for settlers and traveling workers such as cowboys or loggers. In modern times, chuckwagons feature in special cooking competitions and events. Chuckwagons are also used in a type of competition known as chuckwagon racing.
Western music is a form of music composed by and about the people who settled and worked throughout the Western United States and Western Canada. Western music celebrates the lifestyle of the cowboy on the open range, along the Rocky Mountains, and among the prairies of Western North America. The genre grew from the mix of cultural influences in the American frontier and what became the Southwestern United States at the time, it came from the folk music traditions of those living the region, those being the hillbilly music from those that arrived from the Eastern U.S., the corrido and ranchera from Northern Mexico, and the New Mexico and Tejano endemic to the Southwest. The music industry of the mid-20th century grouped the western genre with that of similar folk origins, instrumentation and rural themes, to create the banner of country and western music, which was simplified in time to country music.
The National Cowboy & Western Heritage Museum is a museum in Oklahoma City, Oklahoma, United States, with more than 28,000 Western and Native American art works and artifacts. The facility also has the world's most extensive collection of American rodeo photographs, barbed wire, saddlery, and early rodeo trophies. Museum collections focus on preserving and interpreting the heritage of the American West. The museum becomes an art gallery during the annual Prix de West Invitational Art Exhibition and Sale each June. The Prix de West Artists sell original works of art as a fund raiser for the museum. The expansion and renovation was designed by Curtis W. Fentress, FAIA, RIBA of Fentress Architects.
The International Western Music Association was incorporated in 1989 to promote and preserve western music in its traditional, historical, and contemporary forms.
Cowboy culture is the set of behaviors, preferences, and appearances associated with the attitudes, ethics, and history of the American cowboy. The term can describe the content or stylistic appearance of an artistic representation, often built on romanticized impressions of the wild west, or certain aspects of people's lifestyle, such as their choices in recreation, apparel, and western or southwestern cuisine.
A singing cowboy was a subtype of the archetypal cowboy hero of early Western films. It references real-world campfire side ballads in the American frontier. The original cowboys sang of life on the trail with all the challenges, hardships, and dangers encountered while pushing cattle for miles up the trails and across the prairies. This continues with modern vaquero traditions and within the genre of Western music, and its related New Mexico, Red Dirt, Tejano, and Texas country music styles. A number of songs have been written and made famous by groups like the Sons of the Pioneers and Riders in the Sky and individual performers such as Marty Robbins, Gene Autry, Roy Rogers, Tex Ritter, Bob Baker and other "singing cowboys". Singing in the wrangler style, these entertainers have served to preserve the cowboy as a unique American hero.
Elmer Kelton was an American author, known for his Westerns. He was born in Andrews County, Texas.
Larry Scott was an American country music disc jockey who hosted a number of country music shows in the U.S. First announcing on a radio station in Neosho, Missouri in 1955, Larry received a call from Al Brumley, originally from Powell. MO. Al and his brother, Tom,bwere in Bakersfield, CA playong country music. Al told Larry that if he ever wanted to be anybody in country music he needed to get out there. Larry packed his bags and headed West. He went to work for Cousin Herb Henson at KUZZ. He was there when it all happened, The Bakersfield Sound. He had an air shift at KUZZ a television show, produced Barbara Mandrell"s' first 45, plus making lifelong friends with Buck Owens, Merle Haggard, Bill Woods, and the other greats of Bakersfield music scene. Scott later moved to Los Angeles where he worked at radio stations KBBQ and KLAC from 1967 to 1982. During the Los Angeles time, his boss and dear friend, Bill Ward, knew the talent, but wanted him to fain more experience, KVEG, Las Vegas and WiL. St. Louis. Then returned to Los Angeles. Bill and Larry had met in Dallas at a Gordon McLendon station. They were the first all country Station. Larry did the night shift, Bill was daytime. Larry still had his old California friends and knew about country music going to Los Angeles. He asked Bill if he wanted to go to California. They left Dallas for Burbank and KBBQ.
Russell "Red" Steagall is an American actor, musician, poet, and stage performer, who focuses on American Western and country music genres.
The Bronze Wrangler is an award presented annually by the National Cowboy & Western Heritage Museum to honor the top works in Western music, film, television and literature.
R. W. Hampton is an American western music singer-songwriter, actor and playwright. Hampton has achieved both critical and commercial success, winning multiple awards from the Western Music Association and the Academy of Western Artists and four separate Wrangler Awards from the National Cowboy & Western Heritage Museum in Oklahoma City.
Howard Terpning is an American painter and illustrator best known for his paintings of Native Americans.
Mike Kearby is an American novelist and inventor. Since 2005, Kearby has published twelve novels and two graphic novels.
Buck Ramsey, born Kenneth Melvin Ramsey, was an American cowboy poet and singer. He earned a national reputation for preserving cowboy lore and traditions.
Bill Barwick was an American Western music singer-songwriter, guitarist, and voiceover artist based in Colorado.
The Texas Trail Hall of Fame is a cowboy hall of fame in Fort Worth, Texas. Established in 1997, the building is located at 130 E. Exchange Avenue, in the Fort Worth Stockyards National Historic District of the city.
