Larry McMurtry, Novelist of the American West, Dies at 84

(NYTimes) Larry McMurtry, a prolific novelist and screenwriter who demythologized the American West with his unromantic depictions of life on the 19th-century frontier and in contemporary small-town Texas, died on Thursday at home in Archer City, Texas. He was 84. 

 The cause was congestive heart failure, said Diana Ossana, his friend and writing partner. 

 Over more than five decades, Mr. McMurtry wrote more than 30 novels and many books of essays, memoir and history. He also wrote more than 30 screenplays, including the one for “Brokeback Mountain” (written with Ms. Ossana, based on a short story by Annie Proulx), for which he won an Academy Award in 2006. But he found his greatest commercial and critical success with “Lonesome Dove,” a sweeping 843-page novel about two retired Texas Rangers who drive a herd of stolen cattle from the Rio Grande to Montana in the 1870s. Continued

Also: The Essential Larry McMurtry

Don’t Get What’s So Great About Westerns? Start Here

(NYTimes) ... Let’s start with wide-open spaces and a genre that has repeatedly been written off for dead: the western, which undoubtedly lives on in revisionist variations (“Unforgiven,” “Deadwood”) and the most enduring of all parodies, “Blazing Saddles.”

When people say they hate westerns, I always think they’re imagining something like “Bonanza” or a movie like “Shane.”
Without too much disrespect to “Shane,” the best westerns are rarely so clear-cut in their delineations of right and wrong. They deal in moral gray areas; they take place when society is still establishing basic laws and codes of honor. Continued

The Cowboy's Christmas Ball

"Thundering Sounds of the West" opens in Palo Duro Canyon

Show or not, Palo Duro is always worth a visit.

(Texas Day by Day) On this day in 1965, the Texas Panhandle Heritage Foundation opened a sound and light show entitled "Thundering Sounds of the West" in an outdoor amphitheater in Palo Duro Canyon. The foundation was organized in 1961, with Margaret P. Harper as president, to increase tourism to Palo Duro Canyon State Scenic Park through the presentation of a historical drama. Continued

Max Brand

(Wikipedia) Frederick Schiller Faust (May 29, 1892 – May 12, 1944) was an American author known primarily for his thoughtful and literary Westerns under the pen name Max Brand.
Faust (as Max Brand) also created the popular fictional character of young medical intern Dr. James Kildare in a series of pulp fiction stories.
Faust's Kildare character was subsequently featured over several decades in other media Continued

"Singing Brakeman" dies

(Texas Day by Day) On this day in 1933, country music pioneer Jimmie Rodgers, nicknamed "the Singing Brakeman," died in New York City at the age of thirty-five. Rodgers, born in Mississippi in 1897, worked as a brakeman on railroads throughout the South and learned songs from black railroad workers, who also taught him to play the banjo and the guitar. A severe case of tuberculosis, contracted in 1924, forced Rodgers to retire from the railroad. In 1927 he signed a contract with the Victor Talking Machine Company, and his records catapulted him to almost immediate fame. Continued

Norman Petty

(Wikipedia) Norman Petty (May 25, 1927 – August 15, 1984) was an American musician and record producer who is best known for his association with Buddy Holly and the Crickets, who recorded in his studio.
Petty was born in the small town of Clovis, New Mexico, near the Texas border. He began playing piano at an early young age. While in high school, he regularly performed on a fifteen-minute show on a local radio station. Continued

Ranch Romances: The Last of the Original Pulps

(pulpmags.org) … Ranch Romances, by far the most successful of the western romance pulps, enjoyed a 47-year run and over 860 issues published from September 1924 through November 1971.

The redoubtable Fanny Ellsworth -- who also handled the reigns of detective pulp icon Black Mask from 1936 to 1940 -- effectively edited Ranch Romances for half its existence, and three different publishers, from 1929 to 1953.

… one of my favorite editor's quotes from the era, which is Hersey's famous phrase: "There are only two kinds of women in the western pulpwoods -- your sister and nobody's sister."

"Your sister" became an endless line of independent, daring, impulsive yet invariably feminine western heroines with whom untold millions of modern female readers could identify while reading Ranch Romances. Continued

Utah Phillips

(Wikipedia) Bruce Duncan "Utah" Phillips (May 15, 1935 – May 23, 2008) was an American labor organizer, folk singer, storyteller, poet and the "Golden Voice of the Great Southwest."
He described the struggles of labor unions and the power of direct action, self-identifying as an anarchist. He often promoted the Industrial Workers of the World in his music, actions, and words.
... Though known primarily for his work as a concert performer and labor organizer, Phillips also worked as an archivist, dishwasher, and warehouse-man. Continued

Carson & Barnes Circus on the Way!

"The Carson & Barnes Circus is The World’s Biggest Big Top Show with two hours of fun and excitement for children of all ages!
Be amazed by our extraordinary artists from around the world as they thrill you with their death defying feats and exquisite artistry. Come early! The Midway opens one hour before showtime with a Free Petting Zoo, plus Elephant rides." The circus will be at Roswell, Clovis, and Pampa in May. Link

The Wild Bunch: Sam Peckinpah, a Revolution in Hollywood, and the Making of a Legendary Film

 

(Santa Fe New Mexican) … The Wild Bunch, set in 1913, crafts a story of an American West in decline. There, a band of six outlaws and killers have outlived their time, and the ubiquitous signs of progress — automobiles and machine guns and modern hand grenades — are at odds with the way they understand their world and their place in it.
In this gritty masterpiece, the men, led by William Holden and Ernest Borgnine, look for one last score, but find themselves thrust into the Mexican Revolution and on the run. Continued

Fiddler Bob Wills dies

Tribute to Bob Wills in Roy, New Mexico (Sixgun Siding)

(TDbD) On this day in 1975, Texas swing musician James Robert (Bob) Wills died.
He was born in 1905, near Kosse, Limestone County, Texas. In 1913 his family moved to Hall County, where Wills learned to play the fiddle; in 1915 he played at his first dance.
He played for ranch dances in West Texas for the next fourteen years, and his life and career were greatly influenced by that environment. During that time he brought together two streams of American folk music to produce western swing. Continued

Sonny Curtis

 

(Wikipedia) Sonny Curtis (born May 9, 1937) is an American singer and songwriter. Most of his work falls into the pop and country genres. He was a teenage friend and band member with Buddy Holly in Lubbock, Texas.
... Curtis joined the Crickets after Holly's death in 1959, and soon took over the lead vocalist role in addition to lead guitar. As the credits show, he was part of the band for the 1960 album In Style with the Crickets for which they recorded the original versions of two of Curtis's best known songs, "I Fought the Law" and "More Than I Can Say" (co-written with drummer Jerry Allison). Along with Cricket Jerry Allison he participated in Eddie Cochran's last recording sessions, including the song 'Three Steps to Heaven.' Continued

Jimmie Dale Gilmore

 

(Wikipedia) Jimmie Dale Gilmore (born May 6, 1945) is an American country singer, songwriter, actor, recording artist and producer, currently living in Austin, Texas. Gilmore is a native of the Texas Panhandle, having been born in Amarillo and raised in Lubbock, Texas.
His earliest musical influence was Hank Williams and the honkytonk brand of country music that his father played. In the 1950s, he was exposed to the emerging rock and roll of other Texans such as Roy Orbison and Lubbock native Buddy Holly, as well as to Johnny Cash. He was profoundly influenced in the 1960s by The Beatles and Bob Dylan and the folk music and blues revival in that decade. With Joe Ely and Butch Hancock, Gilmore founded The Flatlanders. Continued

Roy Orbison

(Wikipedia) ... Roy Kelton Orbison was born in Vernon, Texas, the middle son of Orbie Lee Orbison (1913–1984), an oil well driller and car mechanic, and Nadine Vesta Shults (July 25, 1913 – May 28, 1992), a nurse.
Both of his parents were unemployed during the Great Depression and, searching for work, moved the family to Fort Worth, Texas, when Roy was a child. He attended Denver Avenue Elementary School until a polio scare prompted the family to return to Vernon. Later, they moved to Wink, Texas. Continued

Selena

(Wikipedia) Selena Quintanilla-Pérez (April 16, 1971 – March 31, 1995) was an American singer, songwriter, spokesperson, model, actress, and fashion designer.
Called the Queen of Tejano music, her contributions to music and fashion made her one of the most celebrated Mexican-American entertainers of the late 20th century.
Billboard magazine named her the top-selling Latin artist of the 1990s decade, while her posthumous collaboration with MAC cosmetics became the best-selling celebrity collection in cosmetics history. Media outlets called her the "Tejano Madonna" for her clothing choices.
She also ranks among the most influential Latin artists of all time and is credited for catapulting a music genre into the mainstream market. Continued

Sonny Throckmorton

(Wikipedia) James Fron "Sonny" Throckmorton (born April 2, 1941 in Carlsbad, New Mexico) is an American country music singer and songwriter.
Known primarily for his songwriting, Throckmorton has had more than 1,000 of his songs recorded by various country singers.
He has also had minor success as a recording artist, having released two major-label albums: The Last Cheater's Waltz in 1978 on Mercury Records and Southern Train in 1986 on Warner Bros. Records.
Throckmorton is a member of the Nashville Songwriters' Hall of Fame, and has been awarded Songwriter of the Year by both Broadcast Music Incorporated and the Nashville Songwriters Association International. Continued

Ali MacGraw

(Wikipedia) Elizabeth Alice "Ali" MacGraw (born April 1, 1939) is an American actress, model, author, and animal rights activist.
She first gained attention with her role in the 1969 film Goodbye, Columbus, for which she won the Golden Globe Award for Most Promising Newcomer.
She reached international fame in 1970's Love Story, for which she was nominated for an Academy Award for Best Actress and won the Golden Globe Award for Best Actress in a Motion Picture – Drama.
In 1972, MacGraw was voted the top female box office star in the world and was honored with a hands and footprints ceremony at Grauman's Chinese Theatre after having been in just three films.
... Since 1994 she has lived in Tesuque, New Mexico, after "fleeing Malibu" when a house she was renting burned down. Continued

Grumpy Old Men on the Trail of Glamorous Killers

(NYTimes) … To call “The Highwaymen” revisionist — or even reactionary — would be an understatement. This retelling of the Bonnie and Clyde story is not content to posit that those two Depression-era outlaws got what they deserved when they died in a hail of bullets on a Louisiana back road. It has a sackful of bones to pick with the modern world as a whole.
Violent criminals are a problem, yes, but so are movies, airplanes, car radios, women in politics, newspapers — you name it. If Grandpa Simpson could figure out how to get himself a Netflix subscription, this movie would be the whole algorithm. I’m here to say I didn’t entirely hate it. Continued

Was there a real Josie Wales and did he really go to Texas?

 

Bill Wilson, maybe

(North Texas E-News) The story of Bill Wilson has been told throughout the Ozark Mountains since he began his bloody career in 1861 to the present day. He is a true folk hero. The Ozarks were full of men who took to the bush and waged a single man to a small gang warfare on the union soldiers, red legs, jayhawkers and spies for the Union.
Although there were a lot of these men, if someone said, “The Bushwhacker,” “The Great Bushwhacker,” or the “Famous Bushwhacker,” everyone knew that they were talking about Bill Wilson. His daring deeds are still considered miracles due to his never being wounded once. He is remembered for his superior skill with revolvers and clever tactics in surprising his enemies. The writings and movie about Josie Wales are based on the real bushwhacker, Bill Wilson. Continued