The original singing cowboy, Gene Autry, who transformed a film and recording career into a vast business empire, died yesterday at his home after a long illness. He was aged 91.
Autry, the son of a Texas horse trader, began his career as "Oklahoma's Yodelling Cowboy" in 1929 and went on to record some of America's most popular songs including Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer and Back in the Saddle Again.
Rudolph, recorded on a whim in 1949, has sold more than 30 million copies and is the second biggest selling Christmas song behind Bing Crosby's White Christmas.
Autry also rode his horse, Champion, in about 90 movies and became one of the biggest box office draws in the 1930s and 1940s.
The profits from his ventures allowed him to buy the California Angels baseball team in 1960. Although he spent millions in buying the best players, the club never fulfilled his dream of winning the World Series.
He was born Orvon Gene Autry in Tioga, Texas, on September. 29th, 1908. After a nomadic childhood, at the age of 17 he settled with his family in Oklahoma where he learned to ride and rope. Soon afterward, he went to work as a radio telegrapher.
"When things got slow, I kept a little old guitar around that I would strum on," he told a reporter. "One night this farmer-looking guy with glasses on the tip of his nose came into the office and gave me some pages to send. Then he spotted the guitar. `You play that?' he asked. `Some,' I told him."
Autry played a couple of songs and the visitor, famed Oklahoma humorist Will Rogers, said: "Hey, you do all right. You ought to get yourself a job on the radio." Autry took his advice and made his first records in 1929.
Later he became the top Western star at the box office for Republic studios, a title he held for six years. "I honestly never considered myself an actor," he said later. "I was more of a personality."