ROANOKE TIMES
Copyright (c) 1997, Roanoke Times
DATE: Saturday, April 19, 1997 TAG: 9704210093
SECTION: EXTRA PAGE: B12 EDITION: METRO
DATELINE: NEW YORK
SOURCE: JOHN ROGERS ASSOCIATED PRESS
It sounds almost like a life too good to be true now, one that might have been torn straight from the pages of a Merle Haggard song book.
No, check that: The guy would have wound up in prison if it was a Merle Haggard song book. Make that a Gene Autry song book.
But picture it, growing up in dusty Tioga, Texas, just after the turn of the century. Learning to rope and ride about the same time you learned to walk. Singing those Sunday spirituals in the church choir at age 5 and quietly learning those blue-yodel Jimmie Rodgers tunes off the radio.
Gene Autry did all that. What's more, he was a pretty good baseball player, too. So good that he passed up a chance to turn pro in the 1920s.
``I chose the railroad, as I thought it would offer more of a future,'' he says.
And who could be surprised. For Gene Autry always did the right thing, the smart thing, in every one of those movies and TV shows he made.
If he hadn't, he might not be Gene Autry today. Not the one we know, anyway. Not America's singing cowboy, who, at age 89, has just released a new collection of his songs.
The story goes that he was in his railroad telegrapher's office in Oklahoma one slow night in 1927, singing and playing his guitar when in walked none other than Will Rogers. The latter is said to have listened awhile and told the young musician he might have a future in show business.
Well, it didn't happen quite that way, Autry says.
For one thing, Autry already was a professional singer, having traveled with the Fields Brothers Marvelous Medicine Show straight out of high school. For another, he and Rogers had met in the office several times before.
``Will Rogers used to send his daily newspaper column from Sapulpa, Okla., when he visited his sister in Chelsea,'' which was often, Autry says. ``On one of these occasions, he heard me playing and singing during some down time and he encouraged me to try radio.''
Autry thought about it for a while. For about a year, in fact. Having finally worked up the nerve, he packed his guitar, used his free railroad pass and headed east to New York.
It's 70 years later now, and Orvon Gene Autry, who turns 90 in September, has just about done it all.
He made 94 movies, many with his sidekick Smiley Burnette and his horse named Champion, and was the top Western box-office star for four years running in the 1930s. Among his movies: ``In Old Santa Fe'' (1934), ``Tumblin' Tumbleweeds'' (1935), ``Cowboy Serenade'' (1942) and ``Winning of the West'' (1953).
His radio show, ``Melody Ranch,'' was on the air for 16 years and he was the star of television's ``The Gene Autry Show'' for five years in the 1950s.
During World War II, he enlisted in the Air Force and, a licensed pilot since the early days of aviation, he flew supply missions in the Far East and North Africa.
The chance to play major-league baseball may have been lost, but what the heck, he wound up owning the team. He bought the California Angels franchise when the American League expanded in 1961.
And now the singing cowboy has come full circle. His latest project is not a hotel or television or radio station acquisition (of which he made many in years past). Nor is his latest project the creation of another public institution to go with the Gene Autry Museum of Western Heritage that he opened in Los Angeles' Griffith Park in 1988.
No, he's back in the saddle with that new album, a three-CD, box set from Rhino Records: ``Sing, Cowboy, Sing.''
``Some of the material hasn't been heard in a long time,'' Autry, who declines interviews these days, said in a lengthy exchange of questions and answers by fax. ``It brought back a lot of wonderful memories.''
All of his hits of years gone by are there, from ``Back in the Saddle'' to ``Rudolph the Red Nosed Reindeer'' and ``That Silver-Haired Daddy of Mine.'' There's even a surprise, a previously unreleased Autry version of Woody Guthrie's ``Oklahoma Hills.''
Despite the primitive recording techniques of the 1930s, '40s and '50s, the songs sound surprisingly fresh. And it isn't lost on Autry that others (from Willie Nelson to Arlo Guthrie to Riders in the Sky) continue to perform his songs - or that younger performers like Dwight Yoakam acknowledge his influence.
``My songs are simple and I sing them straight, without fancy arrangements and tricky orchestrations,'' he says. ``That kind of music does not go out of style.''
Such a remark might sum up Autry in general. He's straight to the point, doesn't waste time with elaboration. He knew what he needed to do to succeed in life and did it. Take for example why he left behind his incredibly successful cowboy image in the mid-1950s for a career as a business tycoon.
``My income was about $600,000 a year when I joined the Air Force,'' he says. ``As a member of the Armed Forces, it dropped to $175 a month. I decided then and there that if anything ever happened to me ... I needed something to fall back on.
``As I had been in radio and on records, it was logical for me to buy a radio station when it became available, and then several more, and a TV station when it became available.''
Still, maybe there was a bit of the impulsive in him. He bought the team now known as the Anaheim Angels, he says, because the late Dodgers' owner Walter O'Malley took his team off Autry's Los Angeles radio station and Autry wanted to broadcast baseball games.
Though he complains, ``I've slowed down a bit,'' he's still a fixture at Angels' games and he traveled to Palm Springs, Calif., again this year for spring training. He bristles a bit at being reminded the team has never made it to a World Series, saying he's not going to second-guess the players or management.
He turned control of the Angels over to the Walt Disney Co. last year as part of a deal that will eventually allow the company to buy all of his stock as well.
As for life these days: ``I don't play the guitar anymore,'' he says. ``Sometimes I'll find myself quietly singing along when I hear one of my records being played. And I've been talked into singing a few bars at parties and such.''
Looking back on his long life, the only note of sadness he reveals is when he describes his mother: ``a delicate and lovely woman who loved music'' and who ``passed away before I made it big.''
``It's been a terrific ride,'' he says of life in general. ``Who could ask for more? Well, maybe a World Series.''
LENGTH: Long : 120 lines ILLUSTRATION: PHOTO: ASSOCIATED PRESS America's singing cowboy (above) hasby CNBjust released a new collection of his songs. In his movies (right)
Gene Autry always did the right thing. color