ProRodeo Sports News - September 20, 2024

TIME CAPSULE GENE AUTRY

Gene Autry, who was one of rodeo’s top stock contractors, is a member of the country Music Hall of Fame and the Nashville Songwriters Hall of Fame.

BY PRCA STAFF G ene Autry, known as the “Singing Cowboy,” was a popular movie star and performer on radio and television for three decades. He was the original owner of the Los Angeles Angels baseball team, which followed his highly successful career as a rodeo stock contractor. Autry was inducted into the ProRodeo Hall of Fame with the inaugural 1979 class. He was born in 1907 in Tioga, Texas, and owned rodeo stock in 1942, at the height of his screen popularity. He became a partner in 1943 in the World Championship Rodeo Company, and in 1954 he acquired Montana’s top bucking string from the estate of Leo J. Cremer, Sr. and put Canadian saddle bronc riding champion Harry Knight in charge of the operation. A merger with the World Championship Rodeo Company in 1956 made Autry the sole owner. For the next 12 years, his Famous Cowboy

Singer and actor Gene Autry was a top stock contractor

company provided stock for most of the major rodeos in Texas, Colorado, Montana and Nebraska. Autry’s signature song was “Back in the Saddle Again.” He wrote “Here Comes Santa Claus” and his biggest hit was “Rudolph the Red Nosed Reindeer.” He’s a member of the Country Music Hall of Fame and the Nashville Songwriters Hall of Fame. He’s the only person to be awarded stars in all five categories on the Hollywood Walk of Fame – for film, television, music, radio and live performance. He was inducted into the National Cowboy & Western Heritage Museum in Oklahoma City, Okla., in 1972. The town of Berwyn, Okla. – which is near Ardmore, where Autry grew up – was renamed Gene Autry in his honor on Nov. 16, 1941. He founded the Museum of the American West in Los Angeles’ Griffith Park in 1988. Autry died Oct. 2, 1998, at the age of 91 in Studio City, Calif.

ProRodeo Sports News 9/20/2024

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