Back in the Saddle Again by Gene Autry Lyric Meaning
Factor Autry, "the Singing Cowboy". AFP/AFP/Getty Images hibernate caption
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AFP/AFP/Getty Images
Gene Autry, "the Singing Cowboy".
AFP/AFP/Getty Images
NPR 100 Fact Canvas
Championship: Dorsum in the Saddle Again
Artist: Words/ music: Ray Whitely, Cistron Autry
Performed by: Factor Autry
Reporter: Linda Wertheimer
Length: 12:30
Interviewees: David Rothel, Author
Alex Gordon, Autry Enterprises
Douglas Dark-green, music historian
Carla Buelman, Autry Enterprises
"Back In The Saddle" was one of Gene Autry's biggest hits, and he had a lot of hits. He was a radio and Television set star, and he made 93 cowboy movies. In 1941, he used the title of the song every bit the title of a motion picture. Like most of his films, "Back in the Saddle" is fix in modernistic times, and Gene Autry plays what he called a kind of New Bargain cowboy, fighting large business concern and special interests. The picture show opens at the Madison Square Garden rodeo in New York Urban center and moves backstage with a radio reporter to where the cowboys and cowgirls are packing up their gear.
Autry'south comical sidekick, Frog, was played by Smiley Burnette, but many of his songs were written by another cowboy movie sidekick, Ray Whitley, who wrote "Back In The Saddle Again" in 1938. David Rothel, the author of the Gene Autry book, talked to him 40 years later, and Ray Whitley told how he'd written "Dorsum in the Saddle Again."
"Information technology went like this. I got a telephone call about, oh, 4 or 5:00 in the morning. I answered and talked with my producer. And I hung up and came dorsum into the bedroom very sleepily. My wife said, `Well, what was that all well-nigh, anyone calling at this hour?' I said, `Well, I'1000 back in the saddle again.' She says, `What exercise you mean, dorsum in the saddle over again?' I said, `Well, they told me that they had room in the picture for another song, if I could write another 1 between now and 8:00 this morning,' at which time nosotros had our recording session. And she says, `Well, you've got a adept title.' I said, `What's that?' She said, `"Back in the Saddle Again."' And I saturday down on the side of the bed, and I wrote the outset 8 lines of the song, and I said, `At present when we go to the studio, I'll put a whoopie ty-yai-yo and a whoopie tai-yai-yea, and perchance a yodel and nosotros'll have a song.' "
Ray Whitley wrote the song for a movie called "Border G-Men." Autry heard it and had a feeling about it. It reflected the Singing Cowboy view of the West as a meliorate place, as well as Autry'due south own good-natured optimism. It became his theme song on his radio show, "Melody Ranch," and later on Tv set. He sang information technology at dozens of personal appearances every twelvemonth. Somewhen, almost of the country knew the vocal, but Ray Whitley sang it first.
Whitely sold "Dorsum In The Saddle Again" for $350, a pretty significant amount of coin in 1938, writer David Rothel notes. And even though a piddling piece of that song'southward residuals would have added up from all the zillions of times it's been played, but didn't allow on that he had any regrets for selling information technology.
"Autry was buying songs from his sidekick, Smiley Burnette, for $5 and $10, and then this was a pretty high-cost song for the times. Maybe in the dark of night that idea might have passed his mind. But he certainly never in any of his interviews, any of his public appearances when he sang the song and talked about it, never did he ever express any regret that I know of. They were very good friends. And Whitley performed with Gene Autry and also Roy Rogers on many of their personal appearances."
Gene Autry tinkered with "Back in the Saddle Again," recorded it, put it in movies and spent the next 60 years living with it. Alex Gordon worked for Factor Autry for most of that time.
"He liked the thought of friendship, out where a friend is a friend," Gordon says. "He seemed to make friends with everybody very quickly. And people liked him, and also he always played himself in all his movies and television movies. He was always Factor Autry the radio star, or Gene Autry the rodeo star or Gene Autry working for the sheriff'due south section or any. But information technology was always Gene Autry playing himself, unlike other cowboys."
Gene Autry flew transports in the Pacific theater during the war. He came home to find Roy Rogers the number 1 singing cowboy. In his autobiography, too chosen "Back in the Saddle Once more," Autry says the war made him retrieve nearly the uncertainty of the future, and he made a plan. He got back into movies and began investing, get-go in radio stations. Autry regretted that he didn't save the title, "Back in the Saddle," for his first post-war movie, because information technology had a special significance so. David Rothel again.
"There was a fair amount of fanfare when he came out of the service and he was dorsum in the saddle again. And there was a lot of that post-war feeling that, you know, getting back into the swing of things."
Autry made at least a dozen recordings of "Back in the Saddle Again," simply this is his favorite, a mellow version recorded merely after the state of war in 1946.
"Back in the Saddle Again" was Gene Autry's 2d gold record, the 1939 version. Douglas Green is a music historian. As Ranger Doug, he still performs Gene Autry'south music with the group Riders in the Sky, and here speaks on where the music of the singing cowboys comes from.
"I think all of those men were influenced past the records of Django Reinhardt, by barbershop singing, by gospel quartets, by everything that they'd grown up with, everything they were listening to on the radio. So they distilled that and put information technology in a Western setting."
Every bit Mr. Light-green explains, in that location something well-nigh this song that you could only hear it over and over, sing it over and over, and he could perform information technology over and over.
"It has an immediacy. Information technology has a vision of the West which is very comforting. Information technology has a wonderful lilting little melody, and it has Gene Autry'southward vocalization. You can't deny that either. He personalized every song that he sang. He was no technically bully singer, just he had 1 of the most warm, intimate voices in the business. And everything he sang, he just had that kind of sun-baked Southwestern feel that kind of made you lot feel good."
Gene Autry fabricated his final motion-picture show in 1953. He was fabulously wealthy by then, owning radio and television stations, hotels, ranches, production companies. He was a businessman, but he notwithstanding had that vocal. Alex Gordon at present works for Autry Enterprises.
"People who come in, whether it's a delivery male child from Federal Limited and then on, when they see it'due south a Gene Autry function and they haven't been at that place before, they sort of grin and they say, `Oh, Gene Autry,' and and then they might go, `Da-da-da da-da-da da-da,' or, `I'm back in the saddle,' and kind of make a joke out of information technology, you know?"
And notwithstanding, Gene Autry never got tired of information technology.
"Well, when Cistron liked something--and he liked most of the piece of work he did, his movies, recordings, everything that he did, personal appearances--and very oftentimes the audition would then join in at the rodeo or something. You know, and they knew the words. Even General MacArthur liked the vocal. It was one of his favorites. At the end of i of the tours, he took me with him to see General MacArthur on a personal visit that MacArthur had invited him to the Pentagon, and MacArthur non simply gave him an autographed photo to Factor and to me, just he even hummed a couple of lines and merely a couple of words of "Back in the Saddle" as Gene walked in."
Gene Autry bought the California Angels in 1960, which he said gave him every bit much fun as a grown homo can have. When he went to the ballpark, he'd visit with players in both dugouts, moving ridge his white hat to the fans and, says Carla Buelman of Autry Entertainment, the song would still be there.
"Imagine a man in a Western cowboy concern arrange, a white hat and his walking stick, coming in and greeting everyone, saying hello, and so sitting down and watching his team and enjoying the team, and keeping the score for every single game. I mean, that's amazing. And they would play clips, and information technology would be of Cistron catching the bad guy or riding hard on Champion, so simply playing music in the background. A lot of fans volition ask me, `What was Gene Autry actually like? What was the homo actually like? You got to know him.' And I tin honestly say the Gene Autry you lot see in the movies, the Gene Autry you saw on the personal advent tours, the Cistron Autry you heard on the radio, that was the real Gene Autry."
Back in the Saddle Again by Gene Autry Lyric Meaning
Source: https://www.npr.org/2000/07/24/1079912/npr-100-gene-autry