Performer Information

Gene Autry recorded his last LP in 1962. Ten years later, nearly two decades after he made the last singing cowboy movie, Rex Allen, Sr. recorded what was to become a classic Western LP, Rex Allen Sings Boney Kneed Hair Legged Cowboy Songs. John Wayne wrote the liner notes for it, but it was on a small label and was not widely distributed at the time. RCA had not renewed the Sons of the Pioneers contract at the end of the 60s, and except for Columbia’s sporadic Marty Robbins releases, big labels showed no interest in Western music. The outlook for the genre wasn’t bright.

Rex Allen, Jr. had a contract with a big label, Warner Bros., and he was keenly aware of his Western music heritage. He was popular as a country artist but couldn’t figure out how to preserve Western music in a commercial world that didn’t seem receptive. But one night, as he was driving home from a gig in Indianapolis, he heard a DJ play Eddy Arnold’s “Cattle Call.” The DJ followed the song with the comet that he thought it was “time we put Wester back in the country sound.” The comment gave Rex an idea for a song! That evening with a little help from his wife, he wrote what was to become one of his biggest hits, “Can You Hear Those Pioneers?”

It wasn’t easy to “sell” the song to the record company. When he finally did, he recorded it with his dad and two of the Sons of the Pioneers, Lloyd Perryman and Rusty Richards, providing harmony. It injected new life into the Western music genre.

Rex didn’t stop with that Western hit. In 1982 he recorded a full Western LP, The Singing Cowboy, for Warner Bros. On it, he was backed by the Reinsmen, and the album contained two songs that have become modern day Western standards. The first, “The Last of the Silver Screen Cowboys,” included narrations by Rex, Sr. and Roy Rogers, and is one of today’s most widely recognized contemporary songs. The second was one Rex, Jr. co-wrote titled “Ride, Cowboy, Ride.’ It has been performed and recorded by numerous Western artists since it first appeared on that LP. Both songs made the music charts.

In fact, in the 1970s and 80s, Rex Allen, Jr. recorded a total of six Western songs that made the charts beginning in 1976 with “Can You Hear Those Pioneers?” following by “Teardrops in My Heart,” “Ride, Cowboy, Ride,” “The Last of the Silver Screen Cowboys,” “Cowboy in a Three-Piece Business Suit,” and “Yippie Cry Yi.” He has also recorded a number of other Western songs and some very popular Western swing songs as well, like “It’s Over,” and his regular television appearances on his own show and others, have exposed his Western music to huge audiences. In 1984, his composition “Arizona” became the official alternate State Song of Arizona.

He has performed Western music at numerous major rodeos and State Fairs, continuing the tradition of the singing cowboys of the silver screen. He’s been actively promoting Western music nationally for over 30 years and internationally in recent years. When he started his career, producers were only interested in Rex Allen, Jr.’s country recordings, not in his Western heritage. But his persistence has paid off,  and he has played, and continues to play, a major role in keeping Western music a vital part of music in America and around the world.
O.J. Sikes