The Steel Guitar Forum

I have several LP's by each one of these guys that I aquired in an estate sale. Anybody know 'em? They date back to the late '40's/early '50's. I've never heard of any of them.

Al Clauser & his Okla. Outlaws
Rudy Sooter's Californians
Tx. Jim Lewis & his Lone Star Cowboys
The Rough Riders
"Skeeter" Hubbard & his Cowboys
The Prairie Ramblers
Red River Valley Boys
Pals Of The Golden West
Jack Rivers & his Boys
Scotty Harrell,The Plainsmen,& Orchette
Jimmie Newill w/ the Tx. Ramblers
Abe Lyman & his Californians

How 'bout you Jason?

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<font face="monospace" size="3"><pre> ~ ~
©¿© ars longa,
mm vita brevis
-=sr€=-</pre></font>

Smiley...the only name from that group that I recognized was Scotty Harrell. He was originally on WKY radio in Oklahoma City with Jimmy Wakely, Noel Boggs, etc, before they migrated to California. In later years he returned to OKC where he appeared on various "local" television shows. Haven't heard of him in years. www.genejones.com (P.S. My apology for not knowing that you were in Oklahoma on-tour until your post after you returned home)

Smiley, the group called "Prairie Ramblers" sounds like a group that played on the old WLS Barn Dance in Chicago on Saturday nights back in the 40's and 50's.

Al Clauser worked for radio station KTUL in Tulsa for many years and had a recording studio until he passed away several years ago. I did several sessions at his studio which were recorded on his Alvera label.

Never heard of them but I did hear of Pee WEE gokey and the Country Squirrels. Heck just when I found out who the World famous Smiley Roberts was now you go and hit me with this list.

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CJC


<FONT SIZE=1 COLOR="#8e236b"><p align=CENTER>[This message was edited by Joe Casey on 01 November 2001 at 08:21 AM.]</p></FONT>

A couple of these sound familiar. My guess is that they were all closer to the "Cowboy-Music" western genre that was big in the '40s and '50s, than they were to Classic Country Music. The proliferation of electric instruments, and the demise of the familiar "horse opera" both hastened the demise this style of music.

The group "Riders In The Sky" is one of a very few that carries on this style today.<FONT SIZE=1 COLOR="#8e236b"><p align=CENTER>[This message was edited by Donny Hinson on 01 November 2001 at 09:02 AM.]</p></FONT>

Hey Smiler,I knew Jack Rivers.He was in many Gene Autry movies also Jimmy Wakely Movies.He played lead guitar.He passed away about 8 years ago.I believe he was 88 years young and was still playing gigs right up untill the last.He lived and died right here in Apache Junction AZ.
Bet you didn't know I was so full of it,Huh?
Ray

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Steeling is still legal in Arizona

Although I'm sure Jason could fill us in much more so than any native of the USA, I know that Jack Rivers played lead guitar for Jimmy Wakely back in the late 1940's in California (I have some Wakely radio show transcriptions with Jack as featured solo guitarist), and he hung with Travis, Murphey, Bamby, Bond, Stone, etc., and the rest of the usual Hollywood suspects.

He was born sometime around 1915-18, somewhere in the south, as his family traveled a lot. His real name, incidentally, was Rivers Lewis, and he was the half-brother of Texas Jim Lewis, another Western star to whom history has unfortunately given scant attention.

There is a long article on Texas Jim Lewis in the latest edition of Jesse Morris' Western Swing Journal. Texas Jim was born in 1909 and died in 1990 in Seattle. He had a long history in WS music, owned nightclubs, recorded a lot, had a career in Texas in the 30's, then one in New York City, also worked in Detroit with Smokey Rogers and Cactus Soldi, moved to California, owned the 87th Street Corral, went broke several times, etc. etc. etc.

I don't think Jack Rivers was as old as previously mentioned, because he was the younger brother (by at least 6 years) of Texas Jim, who was 80 when he died in 1990. At least, according to his biographer, Dennis Flannigan who interviewed Jim in 1985.

Hope this little bit helps you, Smiles.
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Herb's Steel Guitar Pages
Texas Steel Guitar Association

<FONT SIZE=1 COLOR="#8e236b"><p align=CENTER>[This message was edited by Herb Steiner on 01 November 2001 at 09:40 AM.]</p></FONT>

Smiley...I have heard of most of those you listed but am unable to connect them with a piece of music. Here is one that I'm sure some of the "Older" steelers remember. Did you ever hear of "Bill Boyd & the Cowboy Ramblers". They were in a few of the "B" westerns of the late 30s and early 40s. Their contribution to the music and steel guitar world was "Roadside Rag" and the "New Roadside Rag". I don't know the name of the steeler but suspect it might have been Billy Bowman.

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kd...and the beat goes on...

Herb,your most likely right about Jacks age,could be he was 78 or so.I see his wife quite often,she still gets out and listens too us, when she gets some help too get around.I'll get some more info from her for Smiley.You pretty well covered it though.
Ray

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Steeling is still legal in Arizona

Would that be the same Plainsmen that Joaquin Murphey used to be with?

Guys, bare with me here, my monitor is acting up and at the moment the whole screen is stretched to an almost unworkable extreme, so I'm struggling here... (new screen soon!)

Some of this has been answered by the others, but I'm having trouble reading them, so forgive me if I double up here. For a start most of these are Californian artists, and as Herb mentioned Jack Rivers was indeed a sideman as well as a bandleader. An interesting thing to remember about the Hollywood and CA band scene in the 1940s is that the industry had really opened up, a lot of guys who were sidemen in groups were also getting record deals, so quite often what looks like a group is really a spin-off group. Jack Rivers material would quite often be Cliffie Stone's band or evene the guys who worked with Jack Guthrie (love that guys work)... and so on.

Rudy Sooter is another sideman with a deal, while Al Clauser & his Okla. Outlaws were of course a really big Southwest group.
Tx. Jim Lewis & his Lone Star Cowboys, well Herb's spot on... imagine that Western Swing from Detroit in the 1930s), he moved around and hit SoCal around 1940, his group included Smokey Rogers who went on to work with Spade Cooley, Tex Williams and his own group atthe Bostonia Ballroom for over a decade. Etc, etc...
Jim Lewis later moved to the Northwest had a TV show, etc.

"Jimmie Newill w/ the Tx. Ramblers
Abe Lyman & his Californians"

These two are a mystery, Smiley, if you'd be so kind as to email me with the label and numbers of the labums, I'll try a couple of Yahoo lists and see what the response is, and then I'll post it here and email you with any findings that get passed on.

According to "Ancestry.com"
Jack Rivers
born 16 Dec 1917
died 11 Feb 1989
Apache Junction, Pinal, AZ

it was either jack rivers or texas jim lewis that owned a very very early bigsby solid body guitar. it was featured in a vintage guitar type mag a few years back. as i recall, the body on the thing was no more thn 8 or 10 inches wide. both jack and jim made some fine western swing and hillbilly records.

sooter wrote some solid hillbilly songs such as "dear okie", and the cooley/noel boggs workout "lord nottingham's war dance", recorded in the 40s and possibly into the early 50s. he later got into TV and played a bartender on Gunsmoke for a while.

he spent his last years in Reno, reduced to sorting used playing card decks into suits for one of the casinos--for resale or giveaway i guess. he lived out north of town as i recall.

wasn't it clauser that first gave patti page a job?

This is a great thread ,I have been racking my (whats left of it)little brain and seaching the Internet. I'm sure Jason will beat us to the punch and let me get some sleep.

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CJC

There is a hillbilly discussion group on yahoo at: http://groups.yahoo.com/group/hillbilly
I bet some folks there would be familiar with the groups. --Joel

Before TV... there were road houses.
Those were the days. :>)

Do any of you guys know who played the steel in the band backing Gene Autry's movie songs and recordings(1930s and 40s)? It was mostly just basic fills, a few bars solo very occasionally, but to me was part of the trademark Autry sound. It was also one of the things that inspired me to make my first lap steel! (it didn't work, but the second one did).

....here's a whole page full of links about Abe Lyman, should keep you busy for a while..

http://www.google.com/search?q=%22abe+lyman%22

...and a little something about Jimmie Newill..

Title: High in the saddle.
First Line:
Chorus: I'm high in the saddle, yip-ee-ky-yay, yip-ee-ky-yay
Music by: Coe, Tex, Jimmie Newill, and Dave O'Brien.
Words by: Coe, Tex, Jimmie Newill, and Dave O'Brien.
P/P/D: New York : Peer International Corporation, c1943.
Location: SPC, KIRK PS 1942-1944

...who apparently played with Prince Albert Hunt's Texas Ramblers, and apparently the Texas Ramblers were led by others besides Prince Albert Hunt...

http://www.countysales.com/php-bin/products.php?category_id=9626&product_id=2725

....and now I see why!!! Old Prince Albert met an untimely death at the hands of a jealous husband outside a Dallas honkeytonk in 1931..musicians never change, do they...

http://www.si.edu/folkways/harry/anthnotes30.htm <FONT SIZE=1 COLOR="#8e236b"><p align=CENTER>[This message was edited by Pat Burns on 03 November 2001 at 04:57 PM.]</p></FONT>

Do any of you know of, or remember, a group by the name of "Bob Shaffer and the Saddlepals"? My father was a member. He played lead guitar.
They played on the Old Barn Dance on WLS, and somewhere, there is supposed to be a video that was made of that show, that my father was on. They played on that station regularly I guess. I don't know a lot of details about it, but I heard it was played on late night TV reruns a few times.

I do know they played with Gene Autry, ( I think were on a scene in a movie with him?) and Jimmy Dickens, and others back then.

I would appreciate any information I can get on that part of my fathers life.

They had a steel player, but I can't remember his name right now to safe me...

Dad didn't talk much about this.

Tom<FONT SIZE=1 COLOR="#8e236b"><p align=CENTER>[This message was edited by Tom Diemer on 03 November 2001 at 05:31 PM.]</p></FONT>

...Tom, looks like this guy Scott Childers could help you if anybody could...check out this website, and especially click on the picture for the "history of the National Barn Dance" under section 2, "Prairie Farmer Days...

http://www.wlshistory.com/

...this next section with annual "yearbooks", so to speak, may be particularly helpful as well, if you know what years your father played...

http://www.wlshistory.com/WLS30/familyalbums.htm
<FONT SIZE=1 COLOR="#8e236b"><p align=CENTER>[This message was edited by Pat Burns on 04 November 2001 at 07:39 AM.]</p></FONT>

Boy,you guys are great. Thanx for all the info.

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<font face="monospace" size="3"><pre> ~ ~
©¿© ars longa,
mm vita brevis
-=sr€=-</pre></font>

Smiley, I'm getting a lot of emails bounced from your account, have you got too many gals filling your inbox with various proposals or what?
Did you get the Al Clauser sessionography I sent, and am I flooding you with multiple emails when you onbox is empty?