Stan Paregien, Editor
Eric Sorg
Eric Sorg was a professional fighter, then a TV repairman, a karate instructor, a carpenter and a bouncer before he decided to go to college. He earned a master's degree from the University of Wyoming, for which he wrote a thesis on, "William Cody: Myth/Symbol and Reality".
Eric Sorg is the author of and actor in a one-man play, "Cody: An Evening With Buffalo Bill," that he performs in the ballroom of the Irma Hotel in Cody, Wyoming nightly each summer. He has performed that role in other places, too, from Washington, D.C. to Dublin, Ireland.
Bruce South
Bruce South, cowboy poet and musician and re-enactor, was raised in northern Utah. He has called Red lodge , Montana home since 1992. His poetry and songs reflect his experiences from farm and ranch work, as well as from some of his younger years spent riding bulls.
Bruce South's shows are family oriented and bring audiences the experience of sitting around an old front porch or around the campfire of an old cattle drive.
He has had one book of poetry published: High Country Ramblins (1995). And he has produced a cassette tape of his original poetry along with some old time cowboy songs. That tape is title, Unbridled (1998).
Bruce South has appeared at Cowboy Poetry Gatherings and at Music Festivals throughout the west. He has been a featured performer and emcee as well. Bruce was honored in 2000 by "the Poets Corner" on the "Lonnie Bell Show" on KGHL radio 790am as "Poet Of the Year". He has also appeared in movies, stage productions, commericals and documentaries.
Bruce has in the past performed with a national award winning Old West Gunfight Re-Enactment Team and as a member won the 1998 O.W.L.H.F. National Championship and the 1999 Rocky Mountain Regional Championship. The team was also the Montana State Champions for both years. While performing with them he won the 1998 National Champion Stunt Award as well as winning the Poetry Shoot-Out during the Regional Championship Competition in 1999. His poetry has been printed in various local publications
Click Here to go to Bruce South's own web page and to find booking information.
W.W. Southard
(Deceased)
W.W. Southard was born on a farm on Cottonwood Creek at Lake Arthur, between Roswell and Artesia, in 1932. After a semester at Abilene Christian College, he joined the U.S. Navy in time to catch what he remembered as "the last act of the Korean War." He later earned a bachelor's degree in journalism and a master's degree in political science at Eastern New Mexico University.
Bill Southard worked on the copy desk at the Amarillo Globe-News for about 18 months in the late 1950's and then was city editor of the Artesia Daily Press from 1959 to 1965. He was editor of the Pratt (Kan.) Tribune from 1965 to 1968, and worked as editor of the Eastern New Mexico University News Bureau before moving to Clovis as managing editor of the Clovis News-Journal on Aug. 1, 1970. He remained there until he died of cancer at Lubbock (Texas) Methodist Hospital on May 23, 1984, at the age of 52. He was buried at Melrose, New Mexico.
In November 1980, W.W. Southard won a $25,000 prize when his novel, Season of Vengeance, was named winner of a western novel contest sponsored by Bantam Books and 20th Century Fox. He also had two other western novels subsequently published by Bantam, A Reckoning at Arrowhead and Bitter Pecos. At the time that he won the prize, Southard said he had been writing western stories for $25 years, but that it was not until 1976 that he got serious about it and set himself a goal of writing 10 short stories and a novel. The short stories came easily, but he felt intimidated at the idea of writing a 75,000 word book. But he tackled it, rewrote it, and won $25,000.
Of that rewrite job, he said: "I reread my book carefully and did some soul-searching. What I had written didn't look like a contest-winner, but did I really want to throw away 245 pages of beautifully typewritten manuscript and start over, on the very slim chance that I might win a national contest? I guess it boiled down to a question of...What do I have to lose?
"I spent the next five months rewriting the book--and picked up some valuable education along the way. I learned that a cooling off period can provide a crucial perspective on a novel; that words and phrases and sentences I thought couldn't be improved on, could; and that, if there's a magic ingredient to writing, it's rewriting. And that goes double for the title" (article in The Roundup, Feb., 1981).
Eastern New Mexico University presented him an Outstanding Alumni Award in 1983. WWA member Dale L. Walker wrote a tribute to W.W. Southard which was published in the June 17, 1984 edition of the El Paso Times. Walker said in part, "Southard, a lantern-jawed, husky newspaperman, bloomed late as a novelist. But he bloomed fully when his time came and was growing with every book when the cancer he suffered from finally claimed him."
Sissy Spacek
Sissy Spacek was born Mary Elizabeth Spacek on Dec. 25, 1949 in Quitman, Texas. Her brothers tagged her with that "Sissy" nickname as they were growing up. She led a normal childhood. She attended Quitman High School in Quitman, Texas, where she was homecoming queen.
Sissy first got into acting when she was visiting her cousin actor Rip Torn. She then studied drama at the Lee Strasburg Institute.
Her first major role came in the horror flick, Carrie(1976), for which she received an Oscar nomination. Four years later she won an Oscar for her role as Loretta Lynn in "Coalminer's Daughter" (1980). She sang the songs on the soundtrack in the movie, and nominated for a Grammy as "Best Country Vocal Performance, Female" for her singing of the title song.
Spacek also received Oscar nominations for her roles in Missing (1982), The River (1984), and Crimes of the Heart (1986).
Her Western roles have included starring opposite Tommie Lee Jones in "The Good Old Boys" (1995, TV), based on Elmer Kelton's novel by the same name. And she played in "Streets of Laredo" (1995, TV mini-series).
Sissy Spacek and her family live on a 210-acre horse farm in northern Virginia. Her daughter, Schuyler Fisk, is now following an acting career.
CLICK HERE to see the complete filmography of Sissy Spacek.
Hal Spencer
Hal Spencer is chairman of the Western Music Association Advisory Board. He is the son of the late Tim Spencer, noted Western composer and member of the original Sons of the Pioneers.
Tim Spencer
Deceased
Tim Spencer, singer and musician and songwriter, was born as Vernon Harold Spencer in Webb City, Missouri on July 13, 1908.My friend, Jim Bob Tinsley, describes Tim Spencer's early life this way: "The Spencer family was large enough to have two male quartets, which often performed together as a single group. Their father was a musician who played the violin in a local symphony orchestra and played the same instrument as a fiddle at country dances. Two years after Tim's first public singing performance at the age of three, the family moved to northern New Mexico and homesteaded a section of land near the Sangre de Cristo Mountains. The pioneer living conditions in the rugged unspoiled backcountry made a lasting impression on young Spencer.
"Within two years, the majority of the Spencer family moved back near Tim's birthplace, this time to the small community of Picher in the Oklahoma hills... The ever-present hills inspired Tim to write what he considered his finest composition, 'The Everlasting Hills of Oklahoma'."(For A Cowboy Has to Sing, pp. 264-65).
Spencer left Oklahoma in 1931 to try to get a job as a musician. He lived for a time with his brother, Glenn Spencer. Remember, this was in the depths of the depression. In the fall of 1932 a young singer-musician named Leonard Slye hired him to assist him with vocals in a band called "The Rocky Mountaineers". That band fell apart, as did the next one they created.
So in September of 1933 they hired Bob Nolan away from his caddying job at a country club to form "The Pioneer Trio". The world of Western music has not been the same since. The Pioneer Trio got a job with KFWB radio in Los Angeles. And their popularity soon had them on the radio for three hours a day. The three singers, none especially adept at playing, decided to hire a top-flight musician to reenforce their sound and to give their voices an occasional break. They hired a Texas-born fiddler named Hugh Farr.
One day the KFWB announcer introduced them as the "Sons Of The Pioneers" --because they looked too young to be "The Pioneers" themselves-- and the name stuck. The group recorded "Tumbling Tumbleweeds" at its first commercial recording session in 1934 for Decca. About then they added Hugh Farr's younger brother Karl on guitar, and began appearing in movies.
Tim Spencer is at far left.It was also in 1934 that Tim Spencer wrote his first song, "Will You Love Me (When My Hair Turns to Silver)." Jim Bob Tinsley says, "The great songwriting team for the Sons of the Pioneers was composed of Tim Spencer, his brother Glenn, and Bob Nolan. Their original songs and the inimitable singing style of the performing members established the identity of an organization often referred to as 'The Aristocrats of the Range'" (For A Cowboy Has to Sing, p. 265).
In September 1936 Tim Spencer temporarily left the group, being replaced by Lloyd Perryman, a guitarist and singer who had grown up in Zion, Arkansas before the family moved to California in 1928. Perryman would be with the group longer than anyone else, a total of 41 years.
In 1949 Tim Spencer's song "Room Full of Roses" went to #1 on the Billboard Pop chart. And twenty-five years later, with Mickey Gilley singing, it again hit #1 on the Billboard Country chart. That song has been recorded by dozens of artists including Sammy Kaye, George Morgan (1949), Dick Haymes, Lawrence Welk, Mills Brothers, Sammy Kaye, and Perry Como.
From 1949 to 1955 he managed the Sons of the Pioneers and continued writing songs. And he started several successful publishing companies. During this time he and his wife, Velma, founded the non-denominational "Hollywood Christian Group" that included Roy Rogers and Dale Evans.
Tim Spencer wrote such hits as "Room Full of Roses," "Cigarettes, Whiskey and Wild, Wild Women," "Everlasting Hills of Oklahoma" (1947), Blue Prairie" (1936, with Bob Nolan), "The Timber Trail" (1945), "Over the Santa Fe Trail" (1935), "We've Got a Great Big Wonderful God," "Ride 'Em Cowboy" (with Roy Rogers), "Bunkhouse Bugle Boy," "Careless Kisses," "Yippi-Yi, Yippi-Yo" (with Glenn Spencer), "Will You Love Me (When My Hair Turns to Silver)," "Westward Ho!," "That Pioneer Mother of Mine," "The Circuit Ridin' Preacher," "Cowboy Camp Mettin'," "Lie Low, Little Doggies," and "Cowboy's Sunday Prayer".
Tim Spencer was inducted into the Nashville Songwriters Hall of Fame in 1971.
In 1974 the Sons of the Pioneers got their own star on the famous Hollywood, Calif., Walk of Stars.
The Original Sons of the Pioneers were elected to the Country Music Hall of Fame in 1980. In 1985 the original Sons of the Pioneers were inducted into the Gospel Music Hall of Fame, as well as the National Cowboy Hall of Fame. And that same year he was inducted as a songwriter into the Western Music Hall of Fame.
In 1986 Tim Spencer was inducted into the Grammy Hall of Fame as the performer of "Cool Water". And in 1989 the Western Music Hall of Fame inducted Spencer as member of Sons of the Pioneers.
Tim Spencer died April 26, 1974 in Apple Valley, Ca., which was also the adopted hometown of Roy Rogers.
CLICK HERE to go to Tim Spencer's page on the "Nashville Songwriters' Hall of Fame" web site.
CLICK HERE to see the complete filmography of Tim Spencer.
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.
I will sing to the Lord all my life;
I will sing praise to my God as long as I live.
--- Psalm 104:33
© 2003 by Stan Paregien, Sr.
