Before there was “Country and Western”, before there was Garth Brookes, before Bob Wills, before Roy Rogers, before George Jones, before Buck Owens, before Hank Williams, before Johnny Cash, before EVERYBODY…there was Gene Autry. In the beginning…
Gene Autry was the very first of the “singing cowboys”, on a parallel path only comparable to The Carter Family and Jimmie Rodgers. This 53 song anthology in two discs is like a history of country music, with each song influence everyone that has ever sung a song a bout a pickup truck, girl in blue jeans, life in the country plains and horses in general. Yes, he also gave the iconic versions of Christmas songs like “Frosty the Snowman” and “Here Come Santa Claus”, but that is not why you want this collection.
Teaming with guitarist/vocalist Jimmy Long, Autry set the standard for standards with songs like “The Yellow Rose of Texas”, “The Last Roundup” and “Tumbling Tumbleweeds”. On his own, Autry both creates and defines the genre on pieces such as “Back In The Saddle Again”, “South of the Border” , “You Are My Sunshine” and “Deep In The Heart of Texas”. And , of course you get the defining song of an America looking for freedoms in all of its venues, “Don’t Fence Me In”. Like Bing Crosby and Louis Armstrong, Autry sang in a style that may have been called “western”, just as Bing was “pop” and Armstrong was “jazz”, but in reality, what Autry and these gents sang was “America”.