Rex Elvie Allen was born in Willcox, Arizona on Dec. 31, 1920. He mother had made the six-hour trip in from the family ranch, some 40 hard miles away. "Most of the people in Willcox didn't know my first name was Rex. A lot of them thought I changed it after I left town. But I just decided to use my first name. Elvie is a lousy name for show business," recalls Rex Allen in his book, "My Life, Sunrise to Sunset," as told to Paula Simpson and Snuff Garrett.
"Dad was a homesteader in a state run by cattle barons. That was about when I came along. It was a tough life for my folks, but they stuck it out, and I guess I learned a lesson about never giving up from them, "recalled Rex in his book.
Times were tough for all the members of his family. His baby sister named Mildred died when before her first birthday. His older brother, Wayne, was just seven when he was bitten by a rattlesnake there on the ranch and died. His mother, Faye, was so frightened of losing more children that she demanded that the family move into Willcox. And they did. Rex was nine years old.
1930's
Four years later his mother died from blood poisoning.Twelve year old Rex began accompanying his father on guitar at local dances and fiddle contests. But he had an odd appearance, nearly cross-eyed looking, because of a maverick left eye. The Willcox Rotary Club, before which he had performed many times, paid for two surgical attempts to reform the eye. The surguries were unsuccessful and the odd appearance remained.
As a skinny little kid he played a guitar at a barbershop on Railroad Avenue for tips. Sometimes he would make as much as $1.50 for his efforts. Later on he also made money by working for the local movie theatre, where he would attract customers to the Roy Rogers and Gene Autry movies by standing outside and playing his guitar and singing. He had no idea, of course, that one day that same theatre would be showing films starring "Rex Allen, the Arizona Cowboy".
Rex Allen was one of the few movie cowboys who really did come ranching background. He learned to ride at an early age and helped with the livestock and ranch chores all the way through his school years.
His high school music teacher, Bernice McDaniels, thought he had great potential as a singer. But she wanted him to sing opera. Rex had other ideas. When he graduated from high school, he moved to Phoenix and worked as a plasterer, with his father.
It was during this time that Rex decided he'd like to try bullriding, and he entered a Tucson competition. He had never seen a Brahma bull before he climbed on one that day. The huge animal burst into the arena, threw him high into the sky, and walked all over him after he hit the ground. Scraped and bruised, he borrowed a blowtorch from a rodeo clown and set fire to his bull rope. That ended his rodeo days.
But he kept playing and singing, and finally got his first real job in entertainment at radio station KOY in Phoenix. There was a comedian/actor/jazz pianist also working at the station, and he would hardly even speak to this cowboy musician. His name was Steve Allen.
Three years later Rex quit mixing mud for the plasterers and struck out for show biz back east. He worked at a radio station in New Jersey for a time.
1940's
He drifted around the eastern states in the early 1940's. He was singing with "The Sleepy Hollow Gang" Quakerstown, Penn when a gentleman named Roy Acuff of the Grand Ole Opry heard him. He encouraged him to go to Nashville and audition for the show. When he got there, he found out that they had hired another young man--Eddie Arnold.
But in 1945 Rex Allen went on to join the popular National Barn Dance show on WLS in Chicago. It was heard nationwide on Saturday nights, but he also did a daily radio show, Monday through Friday. Then he was signed by Mercury Records. His first hit was, "Take It Back and Change It For A Boy".
"In those days, radio stations did not play records," Rex told one interviewer. "They didn't even have the facilities to play records. They all hired live entertainment, live musicians. I feel sorry for young guys today startin' out in this business. They don't have any way of gettin' known. Radio was our way of gettin' to the public."
He was still self-conscious about his eye problem, however, and it affected his confidence level. One day he was walking around Chicago and saw an eye clinic and decided to see if they could help. He borrowed $75 for the surgery from the radio station's credit union. And that third operation finally corrected his crossed eye.
Rex told one interviewer, "And then a whole new world opened up Just a while new world. My eyes were straight." Not only did his confidence level soar, but his paychecks did, too. In 1946, his weekly income went from about $50 to $1,500 a week overnight.
A recent release, "The Last of the Great Singing Cowboys" album is a collection of recordings made between 1946-1949, back when he was a star of Chicago's WLS Barn Dance.
\In 1949, Republic Pictures he was signed to do Western movies. These were actually the fading days of Western movies, and Gene Autry and Roy Rogers were already headed for the potentially green pasture of television. His first movie was, "The Arizona Cowboy". He bought his own horse, "Koko," to use in his movies and introduced the "wonder horse" in his second film, "The Hills of Oklahoma". That horse carried him throughout his career.
1950's
Allen starred in 19 movie westerns between 1950-1954. His movie co-stars included Buddy Ebsen, Fuzzy Knight, and Slim Pickens. These Westerns were low-budget affairs. Rex, the star, furnished his own horse and his own wardrobe and only made about $300 per week during filming. He once said that Roy Rogers told him, "You furnish everything you need to make movies or else they'll have you wearin' my old wardrobe!"
This genre of film is popularly called "B-Westerns". At that time most theatres ran two films together, the "A" film which was the primary draw and the "B" film which was an "added value".
Allen said of his style: "I just wanted to be different than everyone else. I wanted to have a different colored horse, vest different, blocked my hat differently. Everything I could so nobody could say I was a copy of anybody else." And Rex Allen, Jr. said of his dad, "He wanted to be the opposite of Roy Rogers. He rode a black horse, he didn't wear fringed shirts and he had his guns back-to-front. If he'd got involved in a real gunfight, he'd have been dead."
In 1951, Willcox began celebrating the success of the city's favorite son with the first Rex Allen Days, a tradition that has continued annually, the first weekend in October.
Allen's recording career was sporadic, though he did have a million-selling single in 1953 with "Crying in the Chapel". It was later recorded by Elvis Presley.
Rex starred in 39 episodes of the TV show "Frontier Doctor" which ran from 1955 to 1957.
During this time Dell Comic Books published 30 Rex Allen comics. And Rex's picture appeared on scores of promotional items.
1960's
In 1962 his recording of "Don't Go Near the Indians" returned the singer to the country Top 10 and the pop Top 20
1970's
Over the years he narrated 122 Walt Disney TV shows and movies. And he lent his deep bass voice, which covered three octaves, to commercials for hundreds of companies. In 1973 he did major voice-over work on the Hanna-Barbera feature cartoon "Charlotte's Web". By the mid- 1970's his movie work was over. But he had left behind quite a legacy in film. His movie credits included:
Vanishing Wilderness (1974)
Legend of Cougar Canyon (1974)
Swamp Country (1966)
The Legend of Lobo (1962)
Tomboy and The Champ (1961)
For the Love of Mike (1960)
Down Laredo Way (1953)
Red River Shore (1953)
The Phantom Stallion (1953)
Iron Mountain Trail (1953)
Shadows of Tombstone (1953)
Border Saddlemates (1952)
Old Overland Trail (1952)
Old Oklahoma Plains (1952)
South Pacific Trail (1952)
Colorado Sundown (1951)
Silver City Bonanza (1951)
Rodeo King and The Senorita (1951)
The Last Musketeer (1951)
Utah Wagon Train (1951)
Thunder in God's Country (1951)
Trail of Robin Hood (1950)
Hills of Oklahoma (1950)
Under Mexicali Stars (1950)
Arizona Cowboy (1950)
Redwood Forest Trail (1950)
1983
Rex Allen was inducted into the Hall of Fame of Western Performers at the National Cowboy Hall of Fame in April of 1983. He was honored for having starrred in some 50 Western movies, usually riding his own horse, "Koko". And he also narrated some 122 Walt Disney movies in which animals, rather than human actors, were the main characters.
He told a reporter just before his induction that the image he had always projected has disappeared from the screen and lamented the profanity in today's films. He said, "We were doing more moral films back then. People won't go see those type of movies today. The diaglogue is different now; the look of today's films is different."
There is now a larger than life-sized statue of Rex Allen in Willcox. And it stands just across the street from the old movie theatre where he drummed up business for movies starring his heroes, Roy and Gene. A headstone marking Koko's grave stands directly in front of the statue.
Rex Allen standing beside his statue.
Rex insisted that the sculptor place a bronze replica of a human heart inside the statue to symbolize that no matter where he went in life, Rex's heart has always been, and will always be, in Willcox, Arizona.
1990's
In about 1990 I had the pleasure of interviewing him on my morning radio show on KSNY radio in Snyder, Texas. He was soon to appear as the Master of Ceremonies for the annual telethon for the West Texas Rehabilitation Center in Abilene, as he did for many years. So we phoned him at his home in Arizona and conducted a telephone interview with him. And that voice, that unmistakably rich and deep voice was still in fine form.
In 1996 the Walt Disney Co. gave Rex Allen a plaque that read:
As Disney's favorite narrator, you're strictly first rate.
All of us in the studio think that you're great.
From singing cowboy to Disney legend your career we rejoice.
Thanks for entertaining the world with your wonderful voice.
One of his last public appearances was in November just before his death. My wife and I sat a few rows behind Rex Allen, Sr., when he attended the Thursday night show at the Western Music Association Festival in Tucson on Nov. 4, 1999. He left before the show was over, and was unable to return the next day, so I never got to actually meet him.
However, his talented son performed on Saturday night and dazzled the audience with his own versatile vocals. Rex Allen, Jr., is also a song writer. His song, "I Love You Arizona," is the alternate state song of Arizona.
On Friday, Dec. 17, 1999, a friend of Rex Allen's was backing his Cadillac out of Rex's garage and acidentally ran over him. The autopsy showed that Rex had suffered a massive heart attack and was probably already dead when the car rolled over him. So it appears that he had the heart attack and fell down behind the car, where the driver could not see him, and was probably already deceased when run over. He would have been 79 years old on Dec. 31st. We will miss him. But, thankfully, we still have his music and many of his films preserved.
Peggy Coleman, Western performer and at the time a director of the Western Music Association, told me that a private funeral was on Sunday, December 19th. "Rex asked to be cremated and for his ashes to be spread over the park in Wilcox where his beloved horse Koko was buried, so he and Koko could be together again."
Rex Allen was survived by his current wife, Virginia (they were separated at the time), and four children, including entertainer Rex Allen, Jr.
Most of Rex Allen's memorabilia can be seen on display at the Rex Allen Museum in Willcox, Ariz., about 85 miles east of Tucson. For more information on the Rex Allen Museum, call (520) 384-4583.
Related Links
Rex Allen Museum
Be sure to visit Stan Paregien's other web site, Paregien.Net
