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Thanks to a cousin, an article from the Daily Oklahoman from the July 14, 1940 edition came my way today. I retyped it so that all of you who are related could see it.
Our grandfather, Stafford G. Smith, is the primary source for much of the information contained in the article. Autry lived with my granddad's family for a spell in Wetumka, OK. My mother, Clarice Smith (Knight) played the piano to accompany him when he sang to entertain them. He sent her two autographed pictures which we have. She loved to tell about him.
Enjoy. Mary Knight McGarr
OKLAHOMA'S SINGING COWBOY
A little smashup had occurred on the station platform at Wetumka, and the assistant superintendent who dropped off the train there one summer day in 1925 was all set to fire somebody.
He soon learned the details. The second trick operator, a young sprout named Gene Autry, had pulled his baggage truck alongside an incoming passenger train so as to lose no time in unloading mail, baggage and express.
A heavy mail pouch thrown from the train knocked the truck tongue from the operator's hands. The wagon veered into the side of the moving train, collided with some other trucks and smashed things up beautifully.
The agent in charge of the Wetumka station, however, was convinced the accident was more or less unavoidable. He interceded with the truculent assistant superintendent and Gene Autry continued in the railroad business.
That circumstance leads directly into another story xxxx years later. Autry was still a xxxxx for the Frisco. This time he was working the night shift at Chelsea, and time was passing slowly. Around midnight, he was plunking his guitar in the dim recesses of the empty station, singing in a mellow tenor some cowboy ballads and songs of the range.
A stranger stepped quietly through the door, listened intently until the song was finished.
Then he said, "You're pretty good, boy, keep at it and try your hand on the stage some time."
The stranger left a telegram to be wired, collect, to New York and slipped out before Autry read through the whole thing. By the time he got to the signature, which was Will Rogers, the stranger had disappeared.
Anyhow, it made a distinct impression on Autry. What had been more or less of a hobby to pass the time became a serious business with him and his guitar was ever present thereafter. It has gone along every since and has been no small factor in the rise of Gene Autry to theatrical fame and fortune.
S. G. Smith, now the Frisco agent at Lawton, was the agent at Wetumka who saved Autry's job. Smith and many another railroader along the Frisco lines remembers the young operator vividly.
"Funny the way I first met Gene," says Smith. "I'd wired in for a relief operator, but the train which should have brought him had gone, and nobody got off except a kid with a guitar. In a minute or two that kid came into the office and introduced himself as Gene Autry, the new operator.
"He kept that battered old guitar in the office all the time. When he wasn't busy otherwise, he was always banging the thing and singing."
"The fellows around the office enjoyed his singing, all right, but I'm afraid we didn't appreciate him then as we did later. However, he was improving all the time, and we believed that with opportunity he should go far."
Smith still keeps an old seniority list of operators on the Frisco's southwestern division, which lists the singer as "O. G. Autry," showing that he began railroad work June 16, 1925.
Gene had been lugging that guitar around since he was 10 years old. It dated back to the time he spent two months singing with a traveling medicine show that came through Gene's home town, Ravia. The 10-year-old boy was one of a quartet. The others were grown men. Gene didn't think much of their unaccompanied renditions, so he got the old guitar and taught himself to play it. It has been in every telegraph office where he worked.
Somewhere along the Frisco, he met Jimmy Long, another railroad man who also loved to sing. By this time Gene was expert on the guitar, and he and Long were in great demand at local entertainments. Together they wrote many western ballads.
In 1929, at the insistence of his friend Long, Gene went to New York for an audition by a recording company. The venture was discouraging. The late Jimmy Rogers was tops in the ballad field and a beginner's chance was slim, so Autry came back to the railroad and in spare time appeared on various radio programs. He spent six months on KVOO, Tulsa, being known as the "Oklahoma Yodeling Cowboy."
In October, 1930, he received an offer from the Victor Phonograph Co., and made his first recording for them. He recorded in quick succession for all the leading companies, and went to WLS, Chicago, as featured singer on a national barndance program. That put him on his way.
But when his contract with WLS expired, it wasn't renewed. He made the rounds and thought he was through.
But the era of musical westerns was beginning in Hollywood and Republic Studios were looking for a handsome young "cowboy singer" who could ride. Gene went out and took his voice and screen test.
While waiting for Hollywood to decide on giving him a chance in pictures, he went back to the railroad, and again he filled in on small radio stations, among them the now discontinued KOCW at Chickasha. Snyder is one place where he worked for the railroad, but most of his Frisco experience was farther east along the Red river subdivision.
Late in 1934, a shift was open at Bristow and the young operator was there when Hollywood's lightning finally struck. He left soon to begin his motion picture career, was immediately successful and became known as the outstanding cowboy singer of the screen. His income from pictures, records, song-writing, radio program and indorsements (sic) of dozens of merchandise articles is in Hollywood's upper brackets.
Friends along the Frisco in Oklahoma wondered what Gene Autry would be like after his whirlwind success. Would he be the same modest, likeable (sic) young fellow they knew, or had he changed?
They found out when Autry made a personal appearance tour through Oklahoma. Mobs came to the theaters merely to see him.
One day Agent Smith, then at the Ft. Sill station--was busy in his office. Autry walked in with a lusty greeting and sat down to talk. Soon he was busy at the telegraph key, calling old friends along the line--as friendly and unaffected as ever.
Railroaders have no time for softies and swell-heads--fakes don't get far with them. But Autry as a beginning railroader was "okay" with them--and he is "aces" with them now.
Autry was born in Tioga, Texas, and spent his early years in the hills of that cattle country. He learned to ride almost before he could walk, and began singing about the time he learned to talk. When he was quite small, Gene's family moved to a farm near Ravia, in Johnston county. There he grew up and got into the railroad business.
At the top of this article is this notice:
AUTRY ON MILK AND ICE FUND SHOW MONDAY
Because he lived for a long time in this state and because he still considers it more or less his home, Gene Autry has always had a lively interest in Oklahoma. Even with the pressure of his success in Hollywood, he has kept his contacts in this state and has come back to renew acquaintances at every opportunity. Monday, he returns again, this time to put on a show. He is giving his service without cost for an entertainment sponsored by the Oklahoman and Times for the benefit of the Milk and Ice fund. Every cent of the proceeds goes to the fund. The time is Monday night, 8:15 p.m. The place: Municipal Auditorium. The prices: 15 cents for children 12 - years of age and under, 50 cents for all others. No reserved seats; first come first served.
The xxx's indicate two words that were on a torn crease and unreadable.
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