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In ’42 he went to Universal for a seven-picture series with Johnny Mack Brown, and in ’44 signed with Producers Releasing Corp. for an eight-picture series with Dave O’Brien. These films were neither well mounted nor carefully made but had a certain quality. The first, GANGSTERS OF THE FRONTIER, had a theme somewhat similar to HIGH NOON. Ritter’s last picture for PRC, FLAMING BULLET, was also his last series Western. The last Western in which he appeared, APACHE AMBUSH, was released ten years later (’55).

Throughout the years in which he was a star of “White Hat Westerns” Tex Ritter was also a headliner in the recording industry. His recording success began in ’33 when he made two singles for Columbia: “Goodbye Old Paint” with “Rye Whiskey” on the other side, and “Every Day in the Saddle” with “A Riding Old Paint.” From ’37 to ’39 he recorded for Decca, mostly songs from his early Westerns. One of these, “The Hills of Old Wyoming,” was a hit. In ’42 Johnny Mercer, one of the founders of Capitol Records, made Tex that company’s foremost recorder of Western songs. Mercer had first become interested in Tex a decade before when he heard him sing “The Old Chisholm Trail” on radio.

Ritter’s early successes for Capitol were “I’m Wastin’ My Tears on You,” “New Moon Over My Shoulder” and “Jealous Heart,” all of which were in “Billboard’s” list of the ten top jukebox favorites for five months each. In “Billboard’s” chart of January 20, ’45, those three songs placed first, second and third.

In the mid-’40s, as his screen career drew to its end, Tex Ritter began touring his own stage show, with, of course, his horse White Flash. Said “Variety” of a performance of the show in Washington in July ’48: “There’s no question of who’s headlining this bill – with moppets packed four deep to get a peek at a Western star and White Flash, the most beautiful horse in the world . . . Ritter has an accompaniment of three guitars for his hillbilly routine, and the assist of a raucous voiced gal to add interest. But it is the star himself who rates the kudos for ability to parlay a pleasant personality, a film rep, and a typical twangy Western voice, into a first class vaude act.”

In ’49 Ritter expanded his show, called it Tex Ritter’s Western Festival and Circus, and toured it in the arenas and auditoria of over 100 cities. The following year he renamed it The Western Revue and added a chimpanzee named Cheetah. That same year his Korean War ballad, “Daddy’s Last Letter,” became one of the top ten in Country Music’s survey of best selling, and most played, songs.

His most acclaimed recording, of course, is of the title song of HIGH NOON. Elmo Williams, whose editing of that film is so largely responsible for its success, chose Tex when, in the course of editing, it became apparent that there were too many silent moments as Gary Cooper, as the marshal of a Western town, went about preparing to meet, singlehanded, a gang of killers, and Ned Washington and Dimitri Tiomkin were commissioned to provide a fitting song. Williams had once worked for Capitol Records and was sure “Tex’s earthy Western voice” was exactly right for a film like HIGH NOON. The song, which won an Academy Award, is the only music on HIGH NOON’S sound track.

Although Frankie Layne succeeded in getting his recording of “High Noon” released before Ritter’s, and thereby sold a million copies, Ritter’s did well enough and was a Capitol best-seller for eight months.

Ritter says singing “High Noon” at the Academy Award show was one of the two highlights of his career. * The presentations of the ’52 Academy Awards were the first to be televised. Tex Ritter’s rendition of “High Noon” is so complete an exposition of the Western ethos it was inevitable that producers of Westerns would attempt to imitate it. Said Harold Heffernian in an article entitled “The Minstrel Is the Man of the Hour” in “The Baltimore Sun” (7.26.53): “Already the cycle is nobly launched and, judging from the rush around movietown to sign cowboy warblers who can give a pretty good imitation of Tex Ritter’s agonized delivery of Gary Cooper’s musical woes in High Noon, any picture of the old West without such accompaniment may go begging for theatre engagements. Full credit for a ‘first’ in the new style musical story-telling field must go, of course, to Ritter.”

Tex himself was hired to sing the title songs of three of these Westerns: The Marshal’s Daughter, Wichita and Trooper Hook. He sang the title song of an episode of television’s “The Zane Grey Theatre” in which he also appeared (as the storyteller). Warners hired him to sing “Remember the Alamo!” in the documentary called DOWN LIBERTY ROAD.

Elmo Williams got him to speak the narration of the outrageously neglected THE COWBOY. He was even prevailed upon to narrate a cartoon Western (THE FIRST BADMAN). And as late as ’66 he narrated a 5-minute film about Nashville’s Country Music Hall of Fame and Museum called WHAT’S THIS COUNTRY COMING TO.

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