(Bob Nolan - I Can't Lie to Myself (2:54)
Bob Nolan - An A...)
Bob Nolan - I Can't Lie to Myself (2:54)
Bob Nolan - An Angel in the Choir (2:49)
Bob Nolan - The Mystery of His Way (2:55)
Bob Nolan - The House of Broken Dreams (2:25)
Bob Nolan - Tumbling Tumbleweeds (3:06)
Bob Nolan - Manhunt (Dragnet Closing in on Me) (2:37)
Bob Nolan - Tumbling Tumbleweeds (2:12)
Bob Nolan - He Walks with the Wild and the Lonely (2:56)
Bob Nolan - That Old Outlaw Time (2:40)
Bob Nolan - Cool Water (3:31)
Bob Nolan - Can You Hear Those Pioneers (3:12)
Bob Nolan - Man Walks Among Us (3:49)
Bob Nolan - Texas Plains (2:28)
Bob Nolan - The Touch of God's Hand (3:08)
Bob Nolan - Old Home Town (3:12)
Bob Nolan - Ride Me Down Easy (2:56)
Bob Nolan - Wandering (3:18)
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(Instrumental cowboy classics featuring the sounds of the ...)
Instrumental cowboy classics featuring the sounds of the open range
Jim Hendricks is a multi-instrumentalist who plays guitar, mandolin, dobro and autoharp. His career has spanned over four decades of American Music. He was a pioneer on the 1960's folk circuit, performing with such artists as 'Mama' Cass Elliot and John Sebastian. He wrote the number one hit 'Summer Rain' for Johnny Rivers and the theme song 'Long Lonesome Highway' for the TV show 'Then Came Bronson'.
Now living in Nashville, Tennessee, Jim has recorded over 50 albums of traditional American folk, mountain, gospel, and western music. The warmth and spirit of Jim's music touches our hearts and memories, and adds to the legacy of America's music and the legacy of a true American folk artist... Jim Hendricks.
Bob Nolan was a Canadian composer and singer. He is generally regarded as one of the finest Western songwriters of all time, penning classics of the genre like "Tumblin' Tumbleweeds" and "Cool Water. "
Background
Bob Nolan was born on April 1, 1908 in New Brunswick, Canada. He was the son of Harry Byron Nobles, a tailor, and Florence Nobles. Raised by aunts in Boston, where he could receive an education, he developed a keen interest in American folk music. His father, after receiving a medical discharge from the United States Army Air Service, moved to the dry climate of Tucson, Arizona, to recuperate from lung damage and changed the family name to Nolan (as more American-and Irish-sounding). Young Clarence joined him there at age fourteen and soon acquired a deep appreciation for the awesome beauties of the western desert.
Education
Bob attended Safford Junior High School until 1922. In high school he was an average student, was a member of the Arion Club choral group, and excelled in athletics. He graduated from Tucson High School in May 1928.
Career
Inspired by such nineteenth-century romantic poets as Byron and Shelley, Nolan applied their styles to his own poems about the natural wonders of the desert; these poems, which did not yet include the cowboy, provided themes for songs he later composed. Another source of musical inspiration was trains with their whistles.
His first song, "Way Out There, " followed this theme of the rails; he wrote it while singing with a Los Angeles Chautauqua troupe in 1929. As Bob Nolan he joined the Rocky Mountaineers, a western musical group of instrumentalists and two other singers in Los Angeles in 1931 to provide the baritone voice and yodeling; the lead was sung by Leonard Slye (later named Roy Rogers). But he left the group after a few months in favor of steady work as a golf caddie at an exclusive country club. In September 1933, Slye and Tim Spencer prevailed upon Nolan to join them in forming a western vocal ensemble, the Pioneer Trio. Determined to outclass the few other popular western singing groups, the three men developed an original style of clear, precise harmonizing in unison, both singing and yodeling, an unprecedented feat. Slye also played lead guitar; Nolan, the bass fiddle. The trio gained a local following on Los Angeles radio programs. In order to provide breaks in their singing and to enrich their sound, the vocalists in early 1934 added an accomplished Texas cowboy fiddler, Hugh Farr, who eventually also sang occasional bass parts. That March they changed their name to Sons of the Pioneers and then added Farr's brother Karl on guitar. The Farr brothers blended perfectly with the vocal trio to round out its unique sound. The popularity of the Sons of the Pioneers stemmed from their close, seemingly effortless harmonies, their string accompaniment, and especially the original song compositions of Nolan and Spencer. Nolan set the pace by breaking with the customary cowboy sentimentalism to paint romantic images of nature embodied in the western plains and the men who tamed that land and its herds of cattle. He first wrote the poetic words, then set them to music.
His first hit, "Tumbling Tumbleweeds, " recorded by the Sons of the Pioneers for Decca in 1934, captured this flavor, became the group's theme song, and was sung by Gene Autry in the 1935 Western film that had the same title as the song. The deep feeling and vocal coloring with which the Sons of the Pioneers sang these melodies were marked by Nolan's unusual baritone voice, as on his 1935 gospel song "When I Leave This World Behind"; the ethereal "Blue Prairie, " which he helped Spencer compose; his added yodeling on "Echoes from the Hills"; and the rollicking "Roving Cowboy, " which later became Hank Williams's theme song as "Happy Cowboy. "
Nolan wrote over 1, 200 songs, his second most famous one being "Cool Water" (1936, a hit in 1941); Spencer wrote several hundred, usually hits for the Sons of the Pioneers, notably "The Everlasting Hills of Oklahoma" and "Cigareets, Whusky and Wild, Wild Women" in 1947 and "Room Full of Roses" in 1949.
In 1936 the Sons of the Pioneers appeared with Bing Crosby in the motion picture Rhythm on the Range and made their first road tour, to perform at the Texas Centennial in Dallas with Will Rogers. The same year Spencer left the group and was replaced by an exceptionally powerful and clear tenor, Lloyd Perryman, who remained with the Pioneers after Spencer returned late in 1937 to sing lead when Slye moved on to a cowboy movie career under the name Roy Rogers. Slye, however, rejoined the Sons of the Pioneers in December 1937 for a recording session of outstanding Nolan tunes for Columbia, including another gospel-railroad song, "When the Golden Train Comes Down, " and Nolan singing lead on "Song of the Bandit. " By the end of that year Spencer's brother Glenn had joined to write songs and act as business manager, and Pat Brady was added to relieve Nolan on the bass fiddle, provide comedy in public performances, and occasionally sing tenor.
The Sons of the Pioneers appeared in many western cowboy films, including twenty-nine with Charles Starrett and forty-one with Roy Rogers, sometimes with speaking parts. Their movie roles were usually incongruous, however, for although their smooth, gentle harmonies complemented the cowboy singers, with whom they evoked the mythology and mystique of the legendary cowboy, the lyrics remained almost spiritual in contrast to the rambunctious six-gun plots of these films. Eventually billed as Bob Nolan and the Sons of the Pioneers, because his voice was usually featured, the group created a poetic western sound that captured popular imagination in America and Europe during the 1930's and 1940's. The music was not western swing, which aimed primarily at energetic dancing, nor was it the hillbilly folk music of the rural Midwest, whose practitioners, however, imitated or borrowed heavily from the Sons of the Pioneers' western flavor to help fashion "country" music.
Nolan remained the foundation of the Sons of the Pioneers as World War II brought personnel replacements: stuttering Shug Fisher filled in for Brady, and tenor Ken Carson for Perryman.
The Sons of the Pioneers had their own radio show, "Sunshine Ranch, " appeared as guests on other programs, toured constantly, and recorded again for Decca until 1945, when they switched to RCA Victor, adding orchestral accompaniment for a fuller sound. The group also produced hundreds of radio transcriptions.
He elected to follow Tim Spencer into retirement from the Sons of the Pioneers in 1949, in order to devote his time to song writing; he did not leave until a replacement had been found whose voice closely matched his own, Tommy Doss.
In the 1950's, Nolan made guest appearances on a new Sons of the Pioneers radio program and replaced Doss on Sons of the Pioneers records with Perryman and Ken Curtis (later the scruffy Festus on television's "Gunsmoke") during the period 1955-1957. By then, however, the unique western musical creations of Nolan and the Sons of the Pioneers had gone the way of the singing movie cowboy, always to remain the epitome of the golden age of pure western popular music.
Achievements
Nolan was a founding member of the Sons of the Pioneers.
The group was honored by trade journals as the most popular western vocal group in the world and was inducted into the Country Music Hall of Fame in 1976.
