Don Nix
Don Nix, cowboy poet and singer, lives in Texarkana, Arkansas. He writes his own poetry and composes his own music. He has performed at the Elko (Nev.) Cowboy Poetry Gathering, the Oklahoma Cowboy Poetry Gathering, the National Cowboy Symposium, and at many other events throughout the West.
Don Nix also raises cattle and quarter horses. And he builds and restores custom saddles.
Hoyle Nix
(Deceased)
Hoyle Nix, fiddler and band leader, was a contemporary of Bob Wills and was based in Big Spring, Texas. He and his band played Western and Western swing music throughout the southwest.Hoyle Nix wrote the oft-recorded Western swing song, "Big Ball's In Cowtown." He was the father of singer-fiddler-bandleader Jody Nix.
Jody Nix
Jody Nix is a talented Western singer, fiddler and band leader. He and his band, The Texas Cowboys, play the legendary style of Western swing created in the 1940s and 1950s by two great talents, Bob Wills and Jody's father, Hoyle Nix.
By age 4, Jody Nix was playing drums in the music sessions his father held. At 8, when most children are learning the music scales, he began his professional career, playing five nights a week for his father's band, The West Texas Cowboys.
In 1973, at twenty-one, Jody performed on Bob Wills' last album, "FOR THE LAST TIME". Bob Wills had a stroke during the session and later died.
When Jody's father, Hoyle, died, Jody moved from the drums to the fiddle. And he also moved from the back of the stage to the front, singing and leading the band. His natural talents, total dedication to western swing fiddle have dazzled audiences ever since. As a band leader, Jody created a mix of pure, traditional western swing and true country music which blends to produce a unique sound that appeals to the educated listener of today.
I got to know Jody Nix in the late 1980's when I did a morning talk show for KSNY radio in Snyder, Texas. Nix was based just over the sand hills to the West, in Big Spring, so he often dropped by the studio. And I performed on the same programs with him a few times. A very nice guy, with more talent than it is legal for one person to have.
Jody received a special honor in 1989 when he and his band were asked to perform at the Texas State Society Black Tie & Boots Ball for George Bush the President Of the United States !
Jody has recorded seven albums to his credit and was a guest artist with Asleep At the Wheel on the "Tribute To Bob Wills" album. This album was a Country Music Association nominee for "Album of the Year" honors at the CMA Awards Show in 1994. In October of 1996, Jody was inducted into the Western Swing Hall of Fame in Sacramento, California.
He plans to continue offering good, clean family entertainment in concerts and solid Texas dance music, a combination he feels will become only more popular in the years to come.
CLICK HERE to go to the home web page of Jody Nix.
Joan Lowery Nixon
Joan Lowery Nixon was born in Los Angeles, Calif. on Feb. 3, 1927. She received her A.B. in 1947 from the University of Southern Calif. And in 1949 she married Hershell H. Nixon; they have four children. She worked as an elementary school teacher in her hometown from 1947 to 1950. She has served as an instructor of creative writing at both Midland College (Midland, TX., 1971) and the University of Houston (1974-78).
She is a prolific writer of books for children, some with a Western slant, and she is focusing even more these days on Western fiction. Her books include If You Say So, Claude (Warner, 1980), Beats Me, Claude (Viking-Penguin, 1986), The Alligator Under the Bed, for which she won the Texas Institute of Letters Award in 1975. She won an Edgar Allen Poe award for best juvenile mystery with The Kidnapping of Christina Lattimore (1980), and won the award again for The Seance (1981). Two other books of her's, The Mysterious Red Tape Gang (1976) and The Ghosts of Now (1985) were each nominated for Poe Awards.
Some of her other books include The Adventures of the Red Tape Gang (Scholastic, 1983), Before You Were Born (Our Sunday Visitor, 1980), Days of Fear (Dutton, 1983), The Halloween Mystery (A Whitman, 1979), Mysterious Queen of Magic (1981), The Other Side of Dark (Delacorte, 1986), The Stalker (Delacorte, 1985), And Maggie Makes Three (Harbrace, 1986), and The Gift (Macmillan, 1983).
Joan Lowery Nixon received a Spur at the 1988 WWA Convention in San Diego in the category of "Best Juvenile Western" for The Orphan Train (Bantam, 1987). And she collected her second Spur in Portland in 1989 for In the Face of Danger (Bantam, 1988). Her 1996 books include Don't Scream (Delacorte), The Shadow Man (Delacorte), and six books for ages 7-11 in "The Casebusters" series for Disney Press.Her short stories have appeared in anthologies such as Great Writers and Kids Write Mystery Stories (Random House) and Night Terrors (Simon & Schuster).
Marguerite Noble
Marguerite Noble was born in Tent City, Roosevelt Lake, Arizona Territory in 1910. She shares great-grandparents with Comanche chief Quanah Parker. She has published articles in such magazines as Arizona Highways, Western Horsemen, The New York Times, and others. She is the author of Filaree (Random House, 1979; reissued in 1985 by the University of New Mexico). Her daughter, Cynthia Buchanan, is also a member of WWA.
On Feb. 15, 1988 Arizona State Senator Bill Hardt presented Noble, 78, with the "Spirit of Arizona" award denoting her contributions to Arizona and the West as an author, teacher and pioneer. She also received a commemorative watch from acting Governor Rose Mofford (now the Governor). She said in her acceptance speech, among other things, "You know, John Wayne did not win the West alone. Women were there too."
Pat Nobles
Pat Nobles was born in a Fort Worth & Denver boxcar parked in the Childress, Texas stockpens. Nobles is a painter as well as a writer. He has made shows for educational TV and has written over 75 articles on Western art, history, railroads, the Civil War, and archaeological digs. He is the author of The Stalker (Manor, 1978). Nobles may be the only writer around who served as the "editor" for his pen name author Alex Rail. That's what he did, in fact, as he was editor and illustrator of Mexico, by Alex Rail (Seabird Pub., 1986).
Bob Nolan
(Deceased)
Bob Nolan, musician and songwriter and singer, was born Robert Clarence Nobles on April 1, 1908 in New Brunswick, Canada.
About the only form of music that Bob came in contact with was furnished by the missionaries who made twice-a-year trips into the back woods to hold their old-fashioned camp meetings. To obtain schooling, Bob lived in Boston Massachusetts, with his aunts at different times; and it was in Boston that Bob was exposed to American folk music in large doses.
His association with the American West began when he moved to Arizona after being born and raised in the Canadian backwoods. The abrupt change of environment had a tremendous impact on the impressionable fourteen year old. He was awed and captivated bythe expanse of desert and prairie, which, though apparentlydesolate, actually teemed with life and beauty. He would often spend hours alone in the desert fascinated by its sights and sounds.And his love for nature's beauty began to manifest itself in western poems Bob wrote for his school newspaper. Later, many of these works became the Nolan songs.
Getting the rambling fever around the year 1927, Nolan caught the first freight train going east out of Arizona. Not satisfied, he caught the next train going west. Nolan traveled constantly, covering the length and breadth of the country many times. The haunting sound of the train whistle was to remain with him and would be the central theme of his first composition "Way Out There." "One More Ride" was written as its sequel a few years later.
In the meantime, Bob's father had moved to California. And Bob joined him there in 1929. Nolan started singing at various concerts and it turned his thoughts to a career in music. With this in mind, he answered an ad in a Los Angeles newspaper to try out as a member of a western singing group. In 1933 he joined Leonard Sly and Tim Spencer as the Pioneer Trio, which eventually became the Sons of the Pioneers. Throughout the 1930s, 40s and 50s, the Pioneers became the group singularly most associated with the western song.
Bob Nolan is at top, center in this photo
of the Sons of the Pioneers.Bob Nolan was inducted into the Western Music Hall of Fame as an individual western music songwriter. Although Bob Nolan was previously inducted into the Hall of Fame as a member of the Sons of the Pioneers, the contributions he made to the western music field as a songwriter qualified him for this individual recognition.
Two of Bob Nolan's classic songs, "Cool Water" and "Tumbling Tumbleweeds," were the theme songs of the Sons of the Pioneers. "Cool Water" has been inducted into the National Academy of Recording Arts and Sciences Hall of Fame.
Other notable compositions by Bob Nolan include: "Blue Prairie" (written with Tim Spencer), "Chant of the Wanderer," "Down the Trail," "He Walks with the Wild and the Lonely," "Hold That Critter Down," "I Still Do," "Let's Pretend," "Moonlight on the Prairie" (written with Tim Spencer), "The Mystery of His Way," and "There's a Round-Up in the Sky." Bob Nolan passed away on June 16, 1980. At his request, his ashes were scattered across the Nevada desert.
The Sons of the Pioneers appeared in many Western movies including numerous movies featuring Charles Starrett, Roy Rogers, etc. Bob Nolan died in 1980, the year the Sons of the Pioneers were inducted into the Country Music Hall of Fame in Nashville, TN.
Bob Nolan appeared in such Western films as Night Time in Nevada (1948), Under California Stars (1948), Melody Time (1948), Apache Rose (1947), The Lights of Old Santa Fe (1947), Home in Oklahoma (1946), Song of Arizona (1946), Under Nevada Skies (1946), Utah (1945), The Yellow Rose of Texas (1944), Song of Texas (1943), and Heart of the Golden West (1942).
Bob Nolan died on June 15, 1980 in Studio City, CA.
My ol' Lubbuck, Texas buddy Perry Williams informed me that Calin Coburn (Nolan's only grandson) and archivist Elizabeth Drake McDonald created a fine web site in memory of Bob Nolan. You will find it at: http://www.bobnolan-sop.net/index.htm .
This listing is far from complete and may contain errors.
Therefore, all Western entertainers and/or their agents
are requested to submit recommended changes by
contacting Stan Paregien through his e-mail address.
Lord, make me an instrument of Thy peace.
Where there is hate, may I bring love;
Where offense, may I bring pardon;
May I bring union in the place of discord;
Truth, replacing error;
Faith, where once there was doubt;
Hope, for despair;
Light, where was darkness;
Joy to replace sadness.
Make me not to so crave to be loved as to love.
Help me to learn that in giving I may receive;
In forgetting self, I may find life eternal.
--- St. Francis of Assisi (Giovanni Francesco Bernadone)
© 2003--2010 by Stan Paregien, Sr.
