Elliott West
Elliott West received his PhD in history from the University of Colorado in 1971. He is a history professor at the University of Arkansas in Fayetteville, AR. He won the Arkansas Professor of the Year, Carnegie Foundation for Teaching, in 1995. In 1995 he won the "Teacher of the Year" (Burlington Northern Award) as well as the "Master Teacher Award" in the Fulbright College of the University of Arkansas.
In 1989 he received the Caroline Bancroft Prize for the "Best Book in Western American History". He has won two Western Heritage Awards, each in the "Outstanding Nonfiction Book on the AmericanWest" category. He won it in 1990 for Growing Up With the Country: Childhood on the Far-Western Frontier (Albuquerque: University of NM Press) and in 1996 for The Way to the West: Essays on the Central Plains (Albuquerque: University of NM Press). He also wrote, Growing Up in Twentieth Century America: A History and Resource Guide (Westport, Connecticut: Greenwood Press), for which he received the Caughey Prize for the best book on the history of the West published in 1998.
In 1999 he received a Spur Award from the Western Writers of America for his book, The Contested Plains: Indians, Goldseekers and the Rush to Colorado. That was in the category of "Best Western Nonfiction--Historical".
Elliott West served on the Council of the Western History Association from 1993-1996. He was on the Editorial Board of the Western Historical Quarterly, from 1990-1993. He has been on the Editorial Board of Montana: The Magazine of Western History since 1985. And he has been on the Board of Trustees of the Arkansas Historical Association since 1991.
Omar West
Omar West, cowboy poet and web master, spent his youth reading Zane Grey, Luke Short, Mark Twain and Bret Harte. He was hooked on the cowboy way of life long before he actually experienced it.
He enlisted in the U.S. Army at the age of 18. He was stationed in Colorado, where he fell in love with the Rockies. Then he was stationed in the jungles of Panama, where he . . . remained in love with the Rockies.
After an honorable discharge, Omar West went to college on a GI bill. Then he worked his way up the corporate ladder until he could stand it no longer. He traveled America and then started his own restaurant, only to have it fail (along with a couple of marriages). He then found work as an electrician and, later, as a member of a banjo band. How's that for variety?
He now has a little spread, the Bar D Ranch, in Colorado. He spends most of his time writing cowboy poetry and riding herd over one of the finest cowboy web sites anywhere.
CLICK HERE to go to Omar West's Cowboy Poetry at the Bar D Ranch web site
Speedy West
“Speedy” West was born Wesley Webb West on January 25, 1924, in Springfield, Missouri. He was a breach baby, and his mother almost didn’t survive delivery. Little Wesley grew up on his family’s farm east of Springfield near a little town called Stafford.
When West was nine, some kids moved to Stafford from Kansas City, where they had a radio show. The Cline boys; Ralph, Dorrell, and Eldon, would take a break from ball playing and go inside to practice music. West was enthralled, especially by the steel guitar Ralph played. Mrs. Cline noticed Speedy could hardly take his eyes off of the steel and eventually found out where Speedy lived and told his parents about his preoccupation. West’s grandpa had given him a pig which he sold for $5 and he purchased a bicycle with it. Ralph didn’t have a bike, so when West offered to let Ralph ride his bike if he could play Ralph’s steel, it was a deal made in heaven.
“Ralph would ride that bike all over town and I would sit on his porch and practice the steel guitar on Ralph’s single-resonator National.”
One day West was at a pawn shop and saw a National with three resonators and a T bridge. It was love at first sight. He hurried home to tell his dad and mother about it.
“Son, we are in the midst of a depression,” his daddy told him. “There’s just no way we can afford $125 for a steel guitar.”
But Speedy couldn’t think of anything but that steel. His dad played guitar in the George and Sidney duet on KWTO and knew his son was “eat up” with the bug to play. He went to the pawn shop and traded his Gibson flat-top in for the National guitar of his son’s dreams. When Speedy’s dad walked in carrying that National, Speedy began practicing. For the next few years he practiced and took lessons from Ralph Cline, “...as long as I had my bicycle with me,” he chuckled.
West got better and eventually was playing with the local band at a pie supper. He had been Wesley West, until that night, when “Slim” Wilson introduced him to the crowd, saying, “Ladies and Gentlemen, I’d like you to meet the newest member of our band, Speedy West.”
West had no idea where Slim came up with the name or that he was even going to introduce him as such. Later that year, he was playing with the same group at the Pepsi office in downtown Springfield, when a sailor passing by heard the music. The sailor approached Speedy, asking “What are you doing here?”
“I’m a farmer,” Wesley replied. “I milk 33 cows every morning and evening.”
The sailor said, “You could make $25 a night playing your steel guitar in San Diego!”
West almost punched him in the face, but thought better of it and within a month sold his share of the family livestock and took his infant son and wife to Los Angeles. Along the way, he thought, “Nobody knows me in California. I’ll call myself Speedy West.” And the moniker was born.
Finding a place to live in L.A. was difficult, but he found a one-room apartment, went to work at a dry-cleaning plant, and started playing music at night. At the time, he was playing a homemade doubleneck steel through a crude amplifier, obtained by trading his prized National. An acquaintance had an amplifier made in the back of a radio repair shop in Fullerton, California, by a fellow named Leo Fender. West liked the amp and ordered one, complete with wooden handle.
On delivery day, he and his family drove to Fullerton, but because Leo was a bit slow building the amp, they had to wait for several hours while Leo finished it.
“I damn near got a divorce over that,” West recalled. Finally, at about 1 a.m., the amp was ready, and the Wests drove back to Los Angeles.
The first band he played with in California was that of Ray Hahn & The Missouri Wranglers. Speedy was very much influenced by Joaquin Murphy, a tremendous steeler whose solos enlightened many recordings by Spade Cooley, Tex Williams and Smokey Rogers among others. But, unlike Murphy who thought pedals on a steel guitar were useless, Speedy wanted a pedal steel and asked the renowned Paul Bigsby to build one for him. By 1948, Speedy West had taken delivery of it and began playing with the likes of Spade Cooley and Herbert 'Hank' Penny,
In ’48, West met another figure who was to become prominent in his life. He was working a beer joint called Murphy’s, and Jimmy Bryant was playing guitar down the street at the Fargo Club. Bryant walked in on his break and heard West play.
“Hey, cat, I like what you’re playing. I’m at the Fargo Club. When you get a break, come dig me,” Bryant told him.
West did, and was blown away with the licks Bryant played. Jimmy Bryant was the best guitar player he’d ever heard.
Soon, West was scheduled to cut a song with Tennessee Ernie Ford and Kay Starr. They cut two; “Ain’t Nobody’s Business But My Own,” and “I’ll Never Be Free.”
As can happen, the intended A side didn’t go anywhere. But the B side, “I’ll Never Be Free,” was a runaway hit. Lee Gillette at Capitol called West and offered Speedy a recording contract with free reign over song selection, which was highly unusual. West requested Bryant play on his first recordings, so they teamed up and eventually recorded under both names, doing so until the mid ’70s, shortly before Bryant’s passing Bryant died of cancer in 1980).
In the late ’40s, Speedy West was gaining his reputation as a steel player. Merle Travis had been singing his praises all over the country. West was playing at the Riverside Rancho when Billy Liebert and Harold Hensley came to listen. They then recommended West to Cliffie Stone and Capitol Records.
“I owed a lot to those guys, they’s the ones who got me in the door [to Capitol].”
The song was “Candy Kisses,” recorded in 1948.
CLICK HERE
TO READ PART 2 OF THE LIFE OF SPEEDY WEST
Johnny Western
Johnny Western is a fine musician, singer and composer. When Johnny Bond left Gene Autry's band, Johnny Western signed on as Gene's lead guitarist. He traveled the world with Autry for many years.
Some of his more famous songs, composed for TV shows, include: Bonanza and The Ballad of Palladin.
Stan Paregien with Johnny Western
at Gene Autry, Okla., in Sept., 1998.
Some of his albums include Heroes and Cowboys, Gunfight at O.K. Corral , The Gunfighter, Johnny Western, and Have Gun, Will Travel.
At this writing Johnny Western makes his home in Wichita, Kansas. For years he has held down a morning drive show on a local radio station.
Ronald P. Westmoreland
Ronald P. Westmoreland was born in Texas on Aug. 14, 1934. Raised in Fort Worth, he married Betty Ann Stewart in 1951. Westmoreland is retired from 27 years as the Program Manager at Rockwell International. In that position, he traveled to almost every state in the U.S., and to Europe, South America, Canada and the Mid East.
He had this to say when he joined Wesern Writers of America in late 1989: "The reason I write about cowboys, horses and the west is because it has been, and still is, my life. I have rodeoed all my life and still rope calves and steers on a regular basis. My career at Rockwell was where I made our living, and my life has been with family and horses."
Ron Westmoreland is the author of The Wild Horses of Hidden Valley, a young adult Western novel published by Eakin Publications, and of a nonfiction book, "Remember That Ol' Horse?", a collection of short stories from the authors personal experiences with horses and cowboys (Texas A&M Press, 1990).
Dr. Jack Weston
Dr. Jack Weston is a professor of English at the University of Massachusetts, where he teaches a course on Western fiction and movies. He is the author of The Real American Cowboy (Schocken Books, 1985).
Richard S. Wheeler
Richard S. Wheeler is a former editor of traditional Westerns for Walker and Company. He is the author of Sam Hook (Walker & Co., 1986), Bushwack (Doubleday), Beneath the Blue Mountain (Doubleday), and Winter Grass (1983, 1986) and Richard Lamb, both for Walker & Co. His articles have appeared in Roundup and Trails West.
In 2001 the Western Writers of America bestowed on Richard Wheeler its highest honor, the Owen Wister Award, for his lifetime contributions to Western literature.
Richard S. Wheeler lives in Livingston, Montana.
CLICK HERE to see a bibliography of Richard S. Wheeler's books.
Sessions Wheeler
Sessions Samuel "Buck" Wheeler was born on April 27, 1911 at Fernley, Nevada. He received his B.S. (1934) and M.S. (1935) degrees from the University of Nevada. He worked as a patrolman for the U.S. Forest Service during the summers of 1930-35, then returned to his birthplace as a high school biology teacher for one year. From 1936 to 1966, he taught in the high schools of Reno, Nevada. He also served as the Executive Director of the Nevada State Fish and Game Commission while on leave from school from 1947-50.
Sessions Wheeler served as a trustee of the Nevada State Museum from 1955 to 1960, and as a member of the Nevada Indian Affairs Commission from 1965 to 1968. In 1962 the National Association of Biology Teachers named him the Outstanding Biology Teacher of Nevada. He received the University of Nevada Distinguished Nevadan Award in 1963. In 1965, he was presented with the Conservation Education Award by the National Wildlife Federation and the Sears Roebuck Foundation; and he won the Fire Prevention Award from the U.S. Forest Service and the National Association of State Foresters. And in 1978, he received the State Conservation and Education Award from the Nevada Historical Society Board of Trustees.
Buck Wheeler holds memberships in Western History Association, Phi Kappa Phi Honor Society, Westerners International (Sheriff of the Nevada Corral in 1978), and numerous sportsmen's clubs and conservation organizations.
Sessions Wheeler is the author of Paiute (reprinted by University of Nevada Press in 1986), Gentleman in the Outdoors: A Portrait of Max C. Fleischmann (1985), Desert lake: The Story of Nevada's Pyramid Lake (1967), Nevada's Black Rock Desert (1978) and Nevada Desert (1970). See his article in the Feb., 1979 issue of The Roundup for insights about how he researched and wrote his books.
Your decrees are the theme of my song
wherever I lodge.
In the night I remember your name, O Lord,
and I will keep your law.
--- Bible: Psalm 119:54-55
© 2003 by Stan Paregien, Sr.
