Woodward Maurice "Tex" Ritter was an American country music singer and actor popular from the mid-1930s into the 1960s, and the patriarch of the Ritter acting family (son John and grandsons Jason and Tyler).
Background
Woodward Maurice "Tex" Ritter was born on January 23, 1905 at Murvaul, Panola County, Texas, to James Everett Ritter, a farmer and rancher, and Elizabeth Matthews. The family lived on a 400-acre homestead that had been claimed by the Ritter ancestors in 1830 when it was still part of Mexico. Confusion exists about his birth year primarily because publicists misrepresented his age early in his movie career; fictitious dates were so commonly used that even his bronze plaque in the Country Music Hall of Fame lists his birth year as 1907.
Education
Ritter attended local public elementary schools and South Park High School in Beaumont, Texas, where he was an honor student, played basketball, and sang in the glee club. He enrolled at the University of Texas at Austin in 1922, majoring in law, but he was influenced by the folklorist-historians J. Frank Dobie, Oscar J. Fox, and John A. Lomax to study and perform the music of the Texas frontier. Ritter began touring with a self-written lecture/recital called "The Texas Cowboy and His Songs. " His singing career blossoming, Ritter left the university in 1927, though only one credit shy of a law degree.
Career
Ritter went to New York in 1929, and for the next decade performed on such radio shows as "The Lone Ranger, " "Cowboy Tom's Roundup, " "Tex Ritter's Campfire, " "Death Valley Days, " "WHN Barn Dance" and "Songs of the B-Bar-B. " During that same period, "Tex" was also appearing in plays, including Green Grow the Lilacs (on which Oklahoma was later based), The Roundup, and Mother Lode. It was the cast and crew of Green Grow the Lilacs who began to call Ritter "Tex" in 1931.
Success on the radio and on stage led to opportunities in recording and films. Ritter cut his first records for the American Record Company in 1933 and in 1942 became the first "country" singer signed by Capital Records.
As a recording artist, his big hits included "Rock & Rye Rag, " "Daddy's Last Letter, " and "High Noon, " which was featured in the movie of that name.
In the 1960's Ritter had nine records on the country charts, including several that made the top ten. His singles included such favorites as "Boll Weevil, " "Wayward Wind, " "Hillbilly Heaven, " "There's a New Moon over My Shoulder, " "Have I Told You Lately that I Love You, " "Rye Whisky, " and "You Are My Sunshine. " Albums released by Capital included Songs (1958), Blood on the Saddle (1960), Border Affair (1963), Friendly Voice (1965), Hillbilly Heaven (1965), Best of Tex Ritter (1966), Just Beyond the Moon (1967), Sweet Land of Liberty (1967), and in the late 1960's, Green Green Valley, and early 1970's Supercountry-legendary, as well as a three-record set, The Legendary Tex Ritter (1973) - some of which included songs he had composed.
Ritter's popularity was not based solely on the quality of his voice; his Texan background and his academic studies of the history of real working cowboys gave his songs an authenticity that his chief rivals, Roy Rogers and Gene Autry, could not match. And his likable down-home personality attracted audiences both on stage and on screen.
Grand National Films signed Ritter in 1936, and he made his first movie, Song of the Gringo that same year. For the next twenty years he made movies, including seventy-eight Westerns, while working for Monogram, Columbia, and Universal studios.
For six of those years he ranked among the top-ten money-making Western stars in Hollywood. Film-bills reveal that in the majority of these films he played a character named "Tex. " In at least nine of these films his leading lady was Dorothy Fay Southworth.
When the market for movie Westerns began to wane, Ritter moved to television, starring in the series "Ranch Party, " which ran from 1959 to 1962. When his movie and television career faded, Ritter stepped up his involvement in country music, moving to Nashville, Tennessee, in 1964, where he became a regular on the "Grand Ole Opry. "
The bronze plaque in the Hall of Fame honoring Ritter contains the following inscription: "One of America's most illustrious and versatile stars of radio, television, records, motion pictures, and Broadway stage. Untiring pioneer and champion of the country music industry, his devotion to his God, his family, and his country is a continuing inspiration to his countless friends throughout the world. " Ritter died after suffering a heart attack while visiting the Nashville jail to help secure the release of a musician friend.
Achievements
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Politics
Ritter's interest in politics led him to support a number of Democratic candidates, and led also to his own campaigns for both U. S. senator (1970) and governor of Tennessee (1973).
These campaigns were not only unsuccessful, but financially disastrous for him.
Connections
Ritter married Dorothy Fay Southworth on June 14, 1941. They had two sons, one of whom became a successful actor and director.