JPF Home Page Forums Creative Arts Forums Acting, Theater, Film and TV Forum Greatesest Westerns All Time Favorites (re-visited)

Hi Mike, the original John Ford "Stagecoach" with John Wayne playing Johnny Ringo and Clair Trevor as Dallas. Andy Devine as the stagecoach driver.

Gene Autry and all of the B grade westerns.
And Smiley Burnett.
Burnette wrote more than 400 songs and sang a significant number of them on screen. His Western classic, "Ridin’ Down the Canyon (To Watch the Sun Go Down)," was later recorded by Willie Nelson, Riders in the Sky, and Johnnie Lee Wills.
Other compositions included "On the Strings of My Lonesome Guitar" (Jimmy Wakely's theme song in the 1940s), "Fetch Me Down My Trusty .45," "Ridin' All Day," and "It's Indian Summer" as well as "The Wind Sings a Cowboy Song," "The Old Covered Wagon," and "Western Lullaby." He also composed musical scores for such films as The Painted Stallion and Waterfront Lady. His songs were recorded by a wide range of singers, including Bing Crosby, Ferlin Husky, and Leon Russell. His performance of "Steamboat Bill" appeared on The Billboard's country chart in 1939.

Burnette devised and built some of his unusual musical instruments in his home workshop. His "Jassackaphone," for example, which he played in the film The Singing Cowboy, resembled an organ with pipes, levers, and pull mechanisms.

In the 1940s, he invented and patented an early home audiovisual system called "Cinevision Talkies." Each package contained a 78 rpm record with four of his songs and fifteen 35mm slides. The slides were to be projected in order and advanced each time a short tone played on the record during the songs. An inside cover of the record album was white so that those with no projector and screen could simply shine a flashlight through the slides and view them on the cover. He also devised more than a dozen clever uses for a common wire clothes hanger and demonstrated several of them during a TV show guest appearance.

The above was from Wikipedia concerning Smiley Burnette. He was a musician first. Over 400 songs. That's quite a few songs. Just the song "Ridin'" should ring a bell when you hear it.

I don't care much for the westerns from the 90's to now. Too much emphasis on violence and special effects. Ruins the whole genre.

It should be entertainment, not social comment via an old reliable genre.

Leave the cowboy movies alone.