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.
Roy Rogers, nicknamed the King of the Cowboys, was an American singer, actor, television host, and rodeo performer.
The Nashville Network, usually referred to as TNN, was an American country music-oriented cable television network. Programming included music videos, taped concerts, movies, game shows, syndicated programs, and numerous talk shows. On September 25, 2000, after an attempt to attract younger viewers failed, TNN's country music format was changed and the network was renamed The National Network, eventually becoming Spike TV in 2003 and Paramount Network in 2018.
Riders in the Sky is an American Western music and comedy group which began performing in 1977. The band has released more than 40 full length albums, starred in a single-season self-titled television series on CBS, wrote and starred in an NPR syndicated radio drama Riders Radio Theater, and appeared in television series and films including as featured contributors to Ken Burns' Country Music. Their family-friendly style also appeals to children, exemplified in their recordings for Disney and Pixar. They have won two Grammy Awards and have written and performed music for major motion pictures, including "Woody's Roundup" from Toy Story 2 and Pixar's short film, For the Birds. The band also recorded full length companion albums for Toy Story 2 and Monsters, Inc.
Opryland USA was a theme park in suburban Nashville, Tennessee. It operated seasonally from 1972 to 1997, and for a special Christmas-themed engagement every December from 1993 to 1997. During the late 1980s, nearly 2.5 million people visited the park annually. Billed as the "Home of American Music," Opryland USA featured a large number of musical shows along with typical amusement park rides, such as roller coasters.
Cheap Seats without Ron Parker, or Cheap Seats: Without Ron Parker commonly shortened to Cheap Seats, is a television program broadcast on ESPN Classic and hosted by brothers Randy and Jason Sklar. The brothers appear as fictional ESPN tape librarians who amuse themselves by watching old, campy sports broadcasts and lampooning them. Produced by Mark Shapiro, Showrunner, Todd Pellegrino, James Cohen and Joseph Maar, Cheap Seats was originally an hour-long program. There were eight one hour-long episodes in the first season, all of which were edited to fit a 30-minute time slot.
Lester Alvin Burnett, better known as Smiley Burnette, was an American country music performer and a comedic actor in Western films and on radio and TV, playing sidekick to Gene Autry, Roy Rogers, and other B-movie cowboys. He was also a prolific singer-songwriter who is reported to have played proficiently over 100 musical instruments, sometimes more than one simultaneously. His career, beginning in 1934, spanned four decades, including a regular role on CBS-TV's Petticoat Junction in the 1960s.
Maxwell Emmett "Pat" Buttram was an American character actor. Buttram was known for playing the sidekick of Gene Autry and for playing the character of Mr. Haney in the television series Green Acres. He had a distinctive voice that, in his own words, "never quite made it through puberty."
The Phantom Empire is a 1935 American Western serial film directed by Otto Brower and B. Reeves Eason and starring Gene Autry, Frankie Darro, and Betsy King Ross. This 12-chapter Mascot Pictures serial combined the Western, musical and science-fiction genres. The first episode is 30 minutes, the rest about 20 minutes. The serial film is about a singing cowboy who stumbles upon an ancient subterranean civilization living beneath his own ranch that becomes corrupted by unscrupulous greedy speculators from the surface. In 1940, a 70-minute feature film edited from the serial was released under the titles Radio Ranch or Men with Steel Faces. This was Gene Autry's first starring role, playing himself as a singing cowboy. It is considered to be the first science-fiction Western.
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.
The Gene Autry Show is an American western/cowboy television series which aired for 91 episodes on CBS from July 23, 1950 until August 7, 1956, originally sponsored by Wrigley's Doublemint chewing gum.
Riders Radio Theater is a studio album by the Western band Riders in the Sky based on their radio program Riders Radio Theater. It was released in 1988 and it is available as a single CD.
Cowboy Songs is a compilation recording released by the Western band Riders in the Sky in 1996. It is available as a single CD.
Douglas Bruce Green, better known by his stage name Ranger Doug, is an American musician, arranger, award-winning Western music songwriter, and Grand Ole Opry member best known for his work with Western music and the group Riders in the Sky in which he plays guitar and sings lead and baritone vocals. He is also an exceptionally accomplished yodeler. With the Riders, he is billed as "Ranger Doug — The Idol of American Youth" and "Governor of the Great State of Rhythm". He is also a member of The Time Jumpers.
American Sports Cavalcade was an American motorsports television show produced by Diamond P Sports in Hollywood, California that aired on The Nashville Network (TNN) from 1983 to 1995. American Sports Cavalcade was a winner of the cable television ACE Award for their motorsports coverage.
Silver Jubilee is a compilation recording released by the Western band Riders in the Sky in 2003.
All That is an American sketch comedy children's television series created by Brian Robbins and Mike Tollin. The series originally aired on Nickelodeon from April 16, 1994, to October 22, 2005, lasting ten seasons, and was produced by Tollin/Robbins Productions and by Schneider's Bakery in season ten. The pilot episode was originally shown as a special "sneak peek" on April 16, 1994, with the show officially debuting as a regular series on December 24 the same year.
Rim of the Canyon is a 1949 American Western film directed by John English and starring and co-produced by Gene Autry; featuring Nan Leslie, and Thurston Hall. Based on the short story Phantom .45's Talk Loud by Joseph Chadwick, the film is about a horse stolen by escaped convicts and the cowboy who pursues them to a ghost town inhabited by a ghost.
Riders Radio Theater was an ongoing radio show performed live by the Western band Riders in the Sky. The series was initially recorded in at the Johnson Theater at the Tennessee Performing Arts Center in Nashville, with WPLN-FM as the presenting station, but moved to Cincinnati, Ohio. These half-hour radio shows can be heard on Tuesdays at 11am (EST) on WMKV 89.3 FM, out of the Cincinnati, Ohio area and on Wednesday Nights at 7:00 PM (CST) on KPMI 1300 AM, out of the Bemidji, Minnesota area. It has recently been picked up by Bluegrass Country Radio on Tuesdays midnight to 1:00am and Fridays 9 until 10:00pm. page It can also be heard on the official Riders In The Sky iTunes page and SoundCloud for free at any time.
Robby Turner is an American pedal steel guitarist, best known for his work with Waylon Jennings and his contributions to recordings by many other artists.
