Ken Griffis

The late Ken Griffis, officer of the John Edwards Memorial Foundation, contributor to its publication and official biographer of the Sons of the Pioneers, recorded hours of interviews in preparation for his history of the group, Hear My Song – The Story of the Celebrated Sons of the Pioneers . Unfortunately, the majority of these interviews are on reel-to-reel tape in fragile condition and unavailable to the public. Mr. Griffis did copy the Bob Nolan interviews for Calin Coburn but with the understanding that they would not be shared with anyone else. The tapes remain in Calin's archive.

The following comments from Mr. Griffis are taken from previously published work for the JEMF, the Sons of the Pioneers Historical Society Journal, radio interviews or personal correspondence to Elizabeth McDonald and reprinted here with his permission.

Mr. Griffis passed away on July 10, 2008 of cancer. He will always be remembered as the original Sons of the Pioneers historian. He was 83 years old.

Ken chose the music for his page - Lie Low, Little Dogies, performed by the Sons of the Pioneers. The song was written by Tim Spencer, featuring a solo by Lloyd Perryman and a recitation by Bob Nolan. Mr. Griffis said it was his favorite Sons of the Pioneers song.

Since his retirement, most of his time from snow-thaw to snowfall is spent up in the mountains of California. His wife, Clara, who he married in Las Vegas in 1941, realizes the importance of Bob’s getting away from it all, and patiently accepts his summer hiatus.

Music continues to play an important part in his life. Every morning he wakes at 5:00, props himself up in bed and writes for two or three hours. At any one time he may have several tunes going and writes songs of all types, few being western in content.

Nolan states that he enjoys writing and sings now only for his own satisfaction. When the songs are completed they are filed away to “await the time when conditions are right for them to be released.” Nolan is a soft spoken, thoughtful individual with a fine sense of humor who feels he has had a fully satisfying career.

Just returned from a very pleasant three-hour visit with Bob Nolan. His initial comments centered around his concern with his relationship with Christianity. He has a strong distaste for established religious tenets. He feels the accepted Church teaching is so much foolish talk. He does feel there is some power that established the universe. He remarked that his religious songs were a sellout – not his real concept of God. He reads Spinoza and believes that is closer to his belief.

He then indicated he is burned-out with his song writing. He stated he just can’t be productive because his music isn’t accepted anymore. I discussed this at length. I indicated that perhaps he just wasn’t willing to accept the fact that songs of the past were his forte. He indicated perhaps that was so – but he wasn’t too eager to acknowledge that fact or even spend much time discussing it.

He ended our visit with a beautiful reading of a composition concerning his death - about the desert being his mistress as a young boy. He went on to describe the desert as his mistress and ended with telling the pilot to scatter his ashes over the desert. Very moving. (February 23, 1980)

This affair began to unfold one Saturday morning when I received a call from Bob Nolan, asking if I had a saber saw. I replied in the affirmative. He asked if I had the time to come over with the saw. I had the time. Upon my arrival, Nolan asked that I drop the saw in an out-of-sight location in his back yard.

As we were engaging in small talk, I noted P-Nuts leaving through their ivy-covered gate. Bob stated, “P-Nuts [his wife] will be back within the hour. Get your saw and cut this damn thing off.” He was referring to an ankle to mid-calf cast, protecting a fractured ankle. I protested that I was not proficient in the least at such work. He replied that one of us was going to do it, so I 'volunteered'.

Some forty minutes later, as Nolan and I were admiring our handiwork, P-Nuts reappeared. As she walked toward the house, she noted the discarded cast. She gave Bob a disapproving look then turned to stare at me. Some ten seconds later, she proceeded on into the house. As I cleared my throat I remarked, “Robert, I think I’d better be going along.” Nolan replied, “Not a bad idea, Ken."

Late in the afternoon on Monday, June 16^th, I answered the telephone and heard the familiar voice of Buddie Perryman, widow of Pioneer great, Lloyd Perryman.

“Ken, I have some very bad news. I just received a call from Clara [Mrs. Bob Nolan]. Bob has suffered a fatal heart attack.”

There was no response from my end of the line. Buddie, sensing the reaction, remarked that she would call back later and hung up.

The thought that first came to mind was, “This is indeed the end of a fantastic musical group, the likes of which will never come again. Karl, Pat, Tim, Lloyd, Hugh, and now Bob.” In a short passage of time we saw an organization whose music is and will be heard around the world, bloom, blossom and fade into the pages of history.

Sitting in stunned silence, my mind rapidly retraced many pleasant encounters I had with Bob Nolan during the last ten years. The memory of my first meeting with this thoroughly unusual man was still vivid.

In 1970, as work slowly progressed on a book relating to the history of the Sons of the Pioneers, I was struggling with a difficult problem. How could I get an interview with Bob Nolan? From remarks made by Pat Brady, Hugh Farr, and Tim Spencer, it was evident such an interview would not come easily.

In desperation, I made a plea to Lloyd Perryman, Bob’s closest friend. Lloyd indicated that he would ask Nolan about the interview, but offered little encouragement. A few days later, he informed me that Nolan had suggested that Lloyd himself supply the needed information. While I appreciated his offer of help, it was, nevertheless, a keen disappointment.

At this point I sought the help of Nolan’s fellow composer, Stuart Hamblen , an individual who I hoped Nolan would not, or could not, refuse. Stuart and Bob had been closely associated since their radio days in the mid-thirties, and each greatly admired the other. Hamblen responded to my request with, “Stand by. I’ll have ol’ Bob up here within the hour.” In shock I hastily remarked that this was too soon; I would need a few days to prepare for such a momentous meeting. Hamblen suggested that I return the next day. True to his word, when I arrived Bob Nolan was there as were Tim Spencer and Lloyd Perryman. That meeting made an impression that lasts to this day.

It was extremely gratifying, in this initial contact with the legendary Bob Nolan, to find him a friendly, modest and unassuming individual, with a fine sense of humor. He was very easy to interview, his responses polite and to the point. This and the many visits that were to follow dispelled the “loner” myth to a large extent.

Due to certain unpleasant events in his career, it was my personal observation that he was leery of people and preferred to accept them on his terms. It is my firm belief that Nolan never took advantage of another over his long career. He was not afforded this same consideration by a few “friends.” To a large degree, it simply boiled down to a preference for privacy over public performances. It may come as a surprise to many of his fans to learn that, as his career developed, it became increasingly difficult for him to work in the movies and make public appearances. At one point, a studio offered him the opportunity to star in a western series, only to have Nolan turn it down flat.

From the first meeting with Nolan, I developed a deep respect for the man himself. He loved a good joke and could laugh at himself as easily as with others. He readily responded to the problems of others without qualification. Neither selfishness nor self pity played a part in his life.

His great disappointment, which he revealed to only a very few, was that he did not think he would live to see the acceptance of the music he had been writing over the past thirty years. He took a good deal of pride in this music but he found it difficult to push the industry or recording artists to consider it. In this regard he possibly did himself and others a disservice. But that was his way. Unquestionably, at some future point in time, this music and much of what he wrote in the past will be “discovered” and given proper acclaim

Although Bob Nolan took few people into his affection, he greatly enjoyed receiving letters from his many fans and admirers. When he received a letter, he would immediately put on his glasses and read it intently. He would remark, “I should answer that.” But he rarely did.

Some general observations: (from a radio interview by KLAC, A Tribute to Bob Nolan – the Quiet Man, 1980.

Bob was, by choice, very close with his personal thoughts and I felt it best to let it go at that. I always felt that was one of the reasons he accepted me as a friend. I never spent time asking about certain things unless he chose to bring it up. I got on the bad side of him a time or two by asking questions he had no interest in discussing and he made no bones about letting me know he was not interested in talking about it. He could get his point across in no uncertain fashion.

Bob Nolan really was a quiet person. He was a person who really did not like to mix with the public. As a result of that, people said he was a hermit, a recluse – that he did not like people. Possibly a little bit of that is true but Bob, by and large, had been in the public eye for so long and, through certain things that had occurred in his life, felt that he wanted to be by himself. He did allow people to visit him. He was very personable. He was a very friendly individual but he did not like the public eye. He did not like to go out in public.

He said that in his early days that he wrote for the school newspaper and he wrote poetry. Of course, I like to think of all his songs as poetry. I don’t really know if Bob wrote much of what we would call “music”. He wrote poetry and then he put music to it. I think Bob got his stimulation from his early days in the desert and he wrote poems about it and then later on this became music.

I was over to see him the Sunday before he passed away. (I was privileged to see Bob every three or four weeks and spend some pleasant hours with him.) We were trying to put together an album of the early Decca recordings and I wanted to get his clarification on the song Tumbling Tumbleweeds because it originally was written as Tumbling Leaves . I was fortunate to get it on tape. I guess it was the last thing that he recorded.

Bob says he wrote Cool Water from his days in the desert, his inspiration from the desert. And now the one thing that Bob mentioned many times is that he was so surprised that people think of Cool Water as a song about water. Really, it’s not a song about water, it’s the absence of water. He was trying to convey that there was no water. It’s all an illusion.

Bob was a very deep individual and he did not like to share his thoughts with too many people. I guess the closest friend that he had was Stuart Hamblen. Others were friends but Stuart and Bob shared an awful lot of background over the years.

I can just give you an interpretation of Bob Nolan as I knew him. Bob Nolan did not like notoriety. He did not like to appear before the public. I think that was one of the reasons that he left the group is because it got to be increasingly difficult for him to go out onto that stage and face the crowd. That may sound strange but I believe that was his big problem in the latter years with the group. He just did not like to go out on that stage and he had his own problems with meeting people – I mean as far as wondering what their motives may be and so forth. I think he felt that he should associate only with those people that he felt he had something in common with. And I believe he just liked to be by himself but, of course, that was not unique to this period. I know many of the Pioneers remarked that in the early days in the movie industry, they’d look around for Bob and he’d be setting on a rock somewhere off to himself, gazing off into the distance, writing a song in his mind. I just think he felt more comfortable by himself and why he felt that way, I really don’t know.

He was definitely a dreamer. Bob Nolan had some very deep thoughts. And he liked to pretend that he was as hard as nails on the outside but inside, Bob was just a very tender, respectful person. He had a great love of his country and I think he believed in The American Dream but he was certainly never gonna be found on the corner waving a flag. That was not Bob Nolan.

I believe one thing that did disturb him over the last few years was the fact that the music had changed so much and he felt he had a great contribution – he had some beautiful songs but this was jut not the era for the Nolan-type songs which was very unfortunate. But he accepted it. He was never happy about it but I think he accepted it and he was never one to complain. He never had a complaint or a bad word to say about anybody. He just took things one day at a time.

During a visit with Nolan, an unusual and hard to understand event occurred. We were discussing past Pioneer recordings that the group had made and I mentioned a Tim Spencer composition that was one of my favorites, "Lie Low, Little Doggies". I remarked that Nolan, Lloyd Perryman and Ken Curtis did a fine job on the recording. Bob commented that he couldn't recall the song and suggested that I put it on tape and bring it along for the next visit.

A couple of weeks later, during our visit, I played the song for him. He listened intently then remarked, "Ken I hate to disagree with the "expert", but that's not me in the trio, it's Tommy Doss. I asked Bob to stop kidding and give me his opinion of the Pioneer effort. Nolan said he wasn't kidding and that I had the two voices mixed up. After repeated playing of the song he was still unconvinced. I made the concluding remark that it might possibly be understandable if he was unable to recognize his own vocalizing but certainly not his speaking voice. (Bob did a short recitation on the recording.) He apologized for disagreeing but held firmly to his opinion. How strange!

For a year or so, during each visit with Bob Nolan, as he permitted, I would bring up the subject of his allowing someone to listen to the music he had been writing since his retirement. From an initial "Not interested, forget it" to "I'll think about it" to "Well, perhaps," he was finally convinced of the importance of the suggestion. I knew the battle had been won when he stated he would consider the suggestion if he could be convinced that some knowledgeable individual would be interested.

Marty Robbins was the agreed choice, but Bob said he had no way of contacting him. I countered with the statement that Marty knew me, somewhat, and there should be no difficulty in getting him to agree to a visit. I went on to tell Bob that very likely Marty was even in town now.

Bidding Nolan goodbye and with my hand on the doorknob there came a knock at the door. I asked Bob if he was expecting a visitor to which he replied "no." Opening the door, to my great surprise, there stood Marty Robbins and his West Coast manager, Bob Hinkle. Turning to look at Bob, the shocked look on my face was sufficient to convince Nolan that this was not a "put-up" job. Embarrassed, I left as quickly as possible. Nolan later informed me that he and Marty had a most mutually rewarding two-hour visit. Their first!

Johnny Bond, the great composer and vocalist, suffered a stroke that left him, at times, unable to complete his thoughts. I called Nolan and asked if he would care to pay Johnny a visit. He was most agreeable to the suggestion. During the visit with Johnny and his lovely, gracious wife, Dorothy, it became apparent that Nolan was paying close attention to Bond's inability to complete all of his thoughts. At times, it appeared that Bob was attempting to aid Johnny in the conclusion of a remark. I was impressed.

Not too long after our visit, this dear friend passed away. As we sat in the overflowing crowd, Nolan leaned over and whispered, "It would have pleased Johnny no end to know that in his final appearance he 'played' to a packed house."

As well as articles for the John Edwards Memorial Society and liner notes for countless albums, Ken Griffis has published several editions of "Hear My Song". He has also written other books of note:

[NB: Bob was never quite clear on his dates so we have added notes to correct or expand his statements. Also, in this interview, Bob’s mynah bird interjects words occasionally and rattles around in its cage.]

GRIFFIS: So, Bob, if I could begin the interview, I’d like to ask your complete and honest name.

NOLAN: Well, my name is Robert Clarence Nobles. That is an English name. And, I don’t know, after I got out of school, I just automatically changed it to my father’s name. He, in the meantime, had changed his name from Nobles to Nolan so I took that, too.

NOLAN: Now this I can’t tell you for sure, for certain. I’m not certain about the city. I know I was born in either Vancouver or Winnipeg, Canada.

NOLAN: 1908. Yes, April 1, 1908. The day. Let’s see, I had figured it out according to a table that someone gave me. I was born on a Thursday. [Editor's note: His actual birthday was on April 13, 1908 - a Monday - in Winnipeg, Manitoba, Canada.]

NOLAN: Harry Byron Nobles. And then he changed it to Nolan. He didn’t like Nobles for some reason or other. I had nothing against it. [Editor's note: Harry changed his name so that neither his creditors nor his estranged wife would find him. He didn't want his wife to have any claim on his two sons.]

NOLAN: I don’t know. He was very fond of the Irish people. He liked the Irish people. He picked out an Irish name. [Editor's note: Harry's wife was born in Ireland.]

NOLAN: No, he was a Canadian. And up until World War I first broke out - and he was in the United States at the time so he just joined the United States Army instead of going back to Canada and that automatically made him a citizen….

NOLAN: I don’t know for sure. I don’t remember my mother at all. [Editor's note: Bob's mother's name was Flora Elizabeth Hussey Nobles.]

NOLAN: No. But there was four boys and five girls in my father’s family. That is, 5 sisters and 4 brothers, and all the girls were musical and the boys [laughs] couldn’t carry a note in a basket.

NOLAN: Earl. And he changed his name later on in life to “Michael” because it went better with the name “Nolan” than “Earl” did.

NOLAN: Well, he didn’t have much of a career of any thing in those days. He was a firefighter, professional football player and then, in World War II, he was a professional soldier, I think, because he went in the army as a Sergeant and came out as a Lieut. Col. He won this all in the field so he was a pretty fair soldier, I guess.

NOLAN: Yes. He’s the Assistant Fire Chief at Tucson, Arizona, now. [Editor's note: Michael Earle [Nobles] Nolan died April 6, 1991. He was 80 years old.]

GRIFFIS: What do you recall about your earliest days in Canada, Bob? Do you recall a number of things that made an impression on you as far as the country or the music of the day and so forth?

NOLAN: Oh, yes. I mean, my aunts and uncles who were then living in Boston, Massachusetts…. See, this is when they left the old homestead, so to speak. This is where I was living, incidentally, with my grandparents. My aunts and uncles would come back and visit the old folks, see, and as I said before we started this recording, that all the girls, all my aunts – there was 5 of them - were all musical and they impressed me no end. I mean we had one of those old-fashioned pump organs, you know, away in the backwoods in Canada there….. and we would all gather round that and I think they all played it. I know at least 3 of them were just wonderful. I would just sit in awe when that music was rolling out of that old organ. [Laughs.] They could all sing and really impressed me very much. I liked to sing, too, after I got acquainted with them.

NOLAN: Yes, there was Aunt Maud, Aunt Mabel, Aunt Matilda, Aunt Fannie [laughs] She was my favorite. Oh, she was a beautiful girl.

GRIFFIS: Yeah. [To bird] I was talking to Mr. Nolan, if you don’t mind. [Laughs] At what age would you have left Canada?

NOLAN: Well, let’s see. [Pauses.] Mmmm. I came to Boston first for a couple of trips during the school year to get some schooling, see. They didn’t have schools back there where I lived, see, in Canada[5]. [Editor's note: There was indeed a school at Hatfield Point and one at nearby Kars. Bob has stated at other times that he walked to school there. Perhaps he didn’t think the quality of education was good enough to mention.] We were just miles and miles from everything, way back in the backwoods. I left about when I was 14 and came to Boston with one of my aunts, and lived with her and went to school there for about 3 years. No, maybe it was only about 2. It seemed a long time to me. When you’re very young, you know, time just drags on you. And I stayed there… I would go back after the school period and go back to the old folks in Canada. And, finally, after the World War I was through – my Daddy was gassed in, I think it was the battle of Belleau Woods where they used that mustard gas, the Germans. [Editor's note: Harry, according to his discharge paper, saw no action during the war and spent the year of his enlistment in the United States. He was discharged as a Corporal.] And they sent him to Tucson, Arizona, see, to recuperate and he sent for me. I was the oldest of the two boys, see. I was about 14, I think, when he finally sent for me in 1920. [Editor's note: In 1920, Bob was 12. He was 13 when he was called to Tucson to rejoin his father because his school records state that he started school in the Fall of 1921.]

GRIFFIS: Prior to this time, Bob, had you had any non-professional interest in music, prior to going to Tucson?

NOLAN: Yes. When I was in the backwoods of Canada, I used to look forward to the camp meetings, see. About once or twice a year they would send a minister up the St. John River to where we were and they had these camp meetings and they’d bring a bunch of hymnbooks and the folks would sing. And I just loved that.

GRIFFIS: Would the music that you were interested in at that time been mainly church music?

NOLAN: Yes, well, that’s all I had a chance to hear, you understand. That’s all anybody ever sang up there.

GRIFFIS: I see. Did they have a country or a folk music to any degree in Canada at that time? Were you aware of a….?

NOLAN: No. But as I look back on it now, my Aunts and the family, they would sing songs like… that you recall – you remember the songs the Beverly Hillbillies used to sing like Nita, Juanita, and, well, songs of that type. Those were the songs that they sang. And actually they were considered folk music.

GRIFFIS: Did you think at that time did you think that you had a fairly acceptable voice? You know your voice is distinctive and I wonder, at that time, did you figure that you had a voice that you could do well professionally?

NOLAN: No, I never thought in terms of professional music even after I came to California. I was 21 years old when I first came over here to California. I was 21 years old when I first came over here to California. No, I just had affection for music and I never thought of it as a profession. Even when I was going to school – I joined all the glee clubs and studied music in my first two years of college. [laughs] My two and only years. I quit when I was a sophomore. But it was just my affection for music. As all I remember, I never even thought that I would finally pick it up as a profession. [Editor's note: Bob graduated from high school in 1928 and married a month after graduation. The next year he was a lifeguard in California. There was no time to go the university. His brother agreed that Bob had not attended university and there are no records at the University of Arizona to indicate that he had taken any subject at any time, even at night school, yet Bob stood by his college education statement all his life.]

GRIFFIS: Bob, if we could, let’s turn back to the Tucson days and that would have been about 1920?

GRIFFIS: And you would have gone out there to be with your father. What was he doing there at the time?

NOLAN: Yes, I first came across – I lived in the province of New Brunswick in Canada. I came across to Boston, Massachusetts and stayed a few years with my aunt - off and on for about 2 or 3 years. And then, from there, my Daddy got back from the war and was in the hospital for his lungs, and he sent for me about 2 years after he went to Tucson, Arizona. He had recuperated fine. His lungs were…. In fact, he’d had no repercussions of his lungs at all after about 2 years, see. They pronounced him well and he sent for me at that time. I had to make the trip all by myself and that was a long trip. I had the note stuck to my coat, you know, [laughs] which told the porters and everybody concerned where I was going, what to do when I changed trains. I was just in the hands of the railroad people. I didn’t know where I was going to end up. They got me to my destination. I was never so surprised in all my life when I got off the train - my dad was right there waiting at the door that I got out of the train. He wasn’t ten feet away from me when I got off the train.

NOLAN: Well, this is awfully hard to say because I was so impressed coming from the backwoods of Canada out to this – what looked to me – nothing. This flat desert land. It was very big and, actually, after I’d been there about 6 months I fell in love with the place because of the beauty I couldn’t see when I first came. It was just wonderful. I mean I spent so many hours out there on the desert all by myself. I mean, I’d walk right out into it and just stay there all day if I didn’t have to come home, when I was a kid, you know.

NOLAN: Yes, I do believe so. I’m glad I’m came while I was real young because it left an indelible impression that has lasted me all my life and will probably last until I kick the old bucket.

GRIFFIS: You know, if you go to the desert I would guess you see something or you see nothing.

NOLAN: That’s right. You have to look. And when you start seeing things on the desert, there’s so much to see. At first glance you see nothing. You’re right in that respect, but, oh boy, you start to looking closer and there’s things there you’ll never see any place else.

GRIFFIS: At this point, you start your schooling shortly after your arrival there?

NOLAN: Oh, yes. I’d already had - in Boston I’d started my schooling - and I think I picked up the equivalent of our 7^th grade now. I was 14 or 15 years old.

GRIFFIS: At this time, your father was working in Tucson and you were living basically in the city?

NOLAN: Yes. We were out on the outskirts. The city was only 25,000 people so you could imagine it wasn’t much of a town as compared to what it is today. It’s a metropolis.

GRIFFIS: Yeah, you lose track of the fact that it’s grown so greatly in the past few years. What do you think occasioned you to start to write songs of the west and songs of the soil? Did you ever analyze what it is that caused you to start writing, other than the location – do you think it was the impact of the country on you alone that did this or could you have gone to New York City and wrote songs of New York City?

NOLAN: No, I don’t think so, Ken. I think it was the impact of the country that made me…. You see, during my schooling I had been very impressed by a few of our most prominent poets - I guess you would call the 19^th C poets - modern poets - namely Keats and Shelley and Byron, Burns and those fellows. I even tried my hand at it – writing poetry – and, as I say and I believe, they were…. [pauses] I would try to write like Keats, say, but I would write about the desert and try to use his cadence and his rhyming. I copied. Let’s say it right out, I copied their style and wrote…. Although I was writing about a different topic, naturally – the desert – I think I was copying their styles.

NOLAN: Oh, yes. Sure. M-hmm. Even up until and during the time I was going to college.

NOLAN: The University of Arizona in Tucson. I had a column in the school paper – the Arizona Wildcat – called “Tumbleweed Trails”. And I wrote poems of the desert. Nothing but the desert. In later years, a lot of those poems ended up in some of my songs. [Editor's note: Tucson Senior High had (and still has) a school newspaper called “The Cactus Chronicle” and perhaps this is where we’ll find Bob’s early poetry.]

NOLAN: The Arizona Wildcat? No. I wished to the devil…I don’t know why I never saved any of those things. I think I, well, I know why I didn’t because every time I left town it was on a freight train and [laughs] you can’t carry much on a freight train.

GRIFFIS: So, you would say, then, that the music of Bob Nolan had its basis in a love of the poets and their words and then you tried….

NOLAN: M-hmm. And applying their style to my styles, or to what I liked best which was the desert. [pause] It’s a funny thing. Most of my poems had nothing to do with cowboys. It was just the desert itself. It was years later before I started writing with the cowboy flavour.

GRIFFIS: Whenever you started with your writing of what you might call poems, what was the earliest time you thought in terms of turning those into a song?

NOLAN: Oh, not until 1928. I was here in California… no, it was 1929 because it was directly after the Stock Market crash. And everything just went haywire, see. I lost my job – I was a lifeguard at the time – and I lost my job and it was awfully hard to get a job at that time and the Chautauqua players were going round all over the country, I found out later, not only here in California, actors out of work, you know, so they just got tents and made their own work.

GRIFFIS: What had you done prior to, say, 1921 or ‘22 – there was a period of 6 or 7 years there? Did you spend all this time in Arizona, did you leave to go anywhere?

NOLAN: Before I came to California. Well, I got all my schooling in Tucson, Arizona, see. I graduated from high school and went up to the U of A for about 2 years and then I decided things were moving too slow for me so I just quit and just took off myself.

NOLAN: No, not right away. I just went wherever I…. I think the first train I caught I ended up in Maryland someplace. I just traveled back and forth. If I was tired of going west, I’d go east.

GRIFFIS: Do you feel that was a part of the Bob Nolan need to learn of people and places and so forth?

NOLAN: Yes, I really do, Ken. There was something just within me that I just couldn’t stay still or stay in one spot when I was real young. I had to go and find out things my own way.

NOLAN: I had been to California while I was going to school. My dad used to come over to California during school vacation time, see, and he brought me and by this time my younger brother was living with us in Tucson, Arizona, and he brought us over to California and I liked California real well because of the ocean. This is where they were…they did more swimming in the ocean than anyplace else that I’d ever seen. I used to go out to Revere Beach in Boston and people… they were sitting on the beach but they weren’t swimming like they did here in California.

GRIFFIS: So you had made trips over here before but you had not engaged in any kind of musical activity while you were here?

NOLAN: No, I didn’t until 1929 and that was purely by accident. Like I say, I couldn’t find a job and these people that were running these tent shows, you know, during intermission they’d have amateur shows and most of them sang so I just got myself a guitar and learned a couple of chords and started writing a few tunes of my own so I’d have something fresh and I started going in for these amateur contests and I won a few.

NOLAN: I was in Venice at the time and that was like an entertainment capitol, you know, out there - amusements of all kinds. This was the right place to throw your tent up and have a show. You could always get an audience.

GRIFFIS: This would have been about the time that you would have taken up a temporary profession of lifeguard and would have met Slumber Nichols. Do you recall those days?

NOLAN: Oh, yes. Slumber was working in – he sold this ice milk, I think it was, that was very popular in those days. They would pour it out of a spigot, you know, and you could watch it being made. Slumber was working that concession. As fast as he would dish it out, boy, they were buying it. I’m telling you.

NOLAN: Oh, yes. The way I became acquainted with him…. er, he got acquainted with me because after dark I was moonlighting on the pier, see. You’ve seen this concession where the guy takes a great big wooden sledgehammer and he hits this doggone thing and he knocks it all the way up…. I was running that concession for a Japanese fellow on the pier and it was right across from the concession where Slumber was operating this ice cream stand. And, I don’t know, he was a beach bum during the daytime, see, because I could see him walking up and down in front of my guard stand. He came over one evening after work and he just introduced himself and we got acquainted.

NOLAN: No. Heck, no. It was later on in the year… I forget what season of the year the Stock Market crashed in 1929….

NOLAN: In the Fall? Yeah. I think so, too. It was after a full summer and things immediately got hard and I mean everybody lost their jobs and that was about the time that I, oh, it couldn’t have been over 2 or 3 months after I lost my job as lifeguard that – and, incidentally, Slumber lost his job, too, on the pier – that I saw this little advertisement in the paper, you know, that wanted a tenor singer. I’d already had about 2 or 3 Chautauqua dates [laughs] under my belt and I was a pro, as far as I was concerned, so I answered the ad and, as you know, the boy that was responsible for the ad in the paper was Roy Rogers. [Editor's note: The ad was placed in the September 30, 1931 edition of the Los Angeles Examiner newspaper.]

GRIFFIS: Now, prior to this time, you and Slumber – had you gotten together and done any informal singing, serenading…?

NOLAN: No, I happened to know that his mother – I’d gone to their home and his mother said that she had tried to get him to play the violin when he was a youngster and that he had taken lessons on it. So he got the fiddle out one time while I was at his house and, although he didn’t think he played real good, I thought he did, see? So I remembered that so probably one year later, when we had cause to have a new violin player, I… if I had guts enough to get into the business he did, too, I thought. So I called him up and he joined our group at that time, The Rocky Mountaineers.

GRIFFIS: So we can have it for this tape, would you like to recount your experience of going to see Roy Rogers? I think it is extremely interesting….

NOLAN: I think everybody has told this story about me having been a lifeguard and not wearing shoes, see. I hadn’t had a pair of shoes on, I don’t think, for 2 years when I was working on the beach. I was literally a beach bum. When I wasn’t working, I was on the beach. After I lost the job, I decided I’d better myself get a pair of shoes if I was going up into the big city of Los Angeles and hunt for a job, see, so I bought this pair of cheap shoes and I put them on but I never got to Roy’s with the shoes on. They were hurting too bad. Even my feet were bleeding. So, I just took them off and, after I got off the streetcar, I walked in my bare feet to Roy’s place or to the place where they were holding the auditions at that time. It was at….. I walked up on the porch and there was about eight guys there sitting out on the porch waiting to audition. On the inside, I could hear the music going on inside the house. When it come my turn….There was guys coming in all the time, see, waiting. So it come my turn and there was still some guys out on the porch. I did a few songs and I yodeled. This was the thing that put me over, I think. When Roy heard me yodel, he just stopped everything and he said, “Let’s go no further,” [laugh] because Roy yodeled, too, see.

NOLAN: Los Angeles, yes. Oh, I had one heck of a time finding the place because I’d never been up in the middle of Los Angles. Every time I came to California I headed straight for the beach. [chuckles]

NOLAN: Oh, yes. I hadn’t heard Roy sing until later on that evening because I stayed with them and started rehearsing with them that very day, after they got rid of all the other fellows.

GRIFFIS: Now do you recall who was there at the time you made your first entrance into the Rocky Mountaineers? Now they were officially known then as…?

NOLAN: This was the original Rocky Mountaineers, yes. After I got in the personnel begin to change. They were all very old, it seemed like. They were all old men. The guitar player – Shorty Schwartz was his name – and he was…. Now you’ve got to remember, Roy, I don’t think was 20 yet. I think he was about 17 years old. [Editor's note: Roy was born in 1911. In 1931, he was 20 years old.] I was just gotten into my 21^st or 22^nd year. I forget. I’d have to go back and figure out how old I was. [Editor's note: In 1931 Bob was 23.] And these fellows were all in their 60s, see. Old grey-haired men. There was a fellow played the 5-string banjo and his hair was snow white - Ebenezer Bowen. [laughs] He was the leader of the group. He was the youngest one outside of Roy. He was in his 40s. [Pause] Now you’re going to have to ask me another question. I’ve lost the train of what I….

NOLAN: Oh, yes. There was the fiddle player. I never knew him. Oh, I must have known his last name but

I’ve forgotten it now. We called him - Lefty. He played the violin on his knee. Left-handed. [pause]

GRIFFIS: Do I understand correctly that the Mountaineers, prior to the time that you and Roy joined the group, they’d been mainly just an instrumental group?

GRIFFIS: Wasn’t that just a bit unique? I’d never thought of a group being on the radio, and I assumed they’d appeared on the radio, without a vocal group….

NOLAN: No, they wanted to be on the radio, that’s what. They were hunting for singers, see, and they knew that this would get them on the radio, if they did have singers. They had Roy, of course, and he was more or less…. In those days we had the Toby comedian. This was Len, Leonard Slye or Roy Rogers. He was our Toby. You know, the black-up teeth, come the hair scraggly all down, part it in the middle, you know. They didn’t call him the comedian, they just called him the Toby.

GRIFFIS: Now, you and Roy, now would you have had another person that would have joined immediately…?

NOLAN: No, we went on as a duet for quite a long while before we found out that it was our harmony singing was what was counting. We finally got a job over at KFOX in Long Beach. All our requests that came in by mail were for Roy and I to sing, see, so we decided that we’d better get up another one and make it a trio instead of a duet, see. And that’s when I called Slumber because he played the fiddle, too, so this made him a two-thread man, a double thread man.

GRIFFIS: Did Slumber fit in fairly good? Do you feel the three of you have a good sound?

NOLAN: We didn’t have a good sound. No. Because I had to change from …. My voice was real high in those days. I sang tenor, yes.

NOLAN: Yes. And what we needed was a baritone and Slumber couldn’t cut it as a baritone so we just switched and he started singing tenor and I sang the baritone and eventually my voice just settled into a straight baritone voice. You’ll notice that my talking voice is much higher than my singing voice.

NOLAN: Oh, yes, and high, too. My favorite tenor was Eddie Bush of the Biltmore Trio and he sang in falsetto. I could almost reach his notes without going into falsetto.

GRIFFIS: Now you and Roy had been singing together and then you added Slumber. Do you recall whether or not prior to your joining Roy had you written your first song?

NOLAN: Yes, I’d written my first song shortly after I lost my job as a lifeguard. I didn’t know what to do with my time. I had nothing but time on my hands so it was just natural that I had to occupy myself with doing something while I wasn’t hunting for a job and this is what I did – was try to write songs. Of course, my big inspiration then at that time was Jimmie Rodgers, the original Jimmie Rodgers. America’s Blue Yodeler, I think they called him.

NOLAN: It was a Jimmie Rodger’s-style song called Away Out There. It was written about my freight train hoboing around the country, see. Evidently, Jimmie Rodgers was a professional hobo, too, before he finally started making records for, I believe, it was RCA Victor.

NOLAN: No, it was just a backdrop to… an excuse to do this train whistle yodel that I had written, see. I wrote about 8 short verses and at the end of which I would yodel like Jimmie Rodgers used to do. Jimmie used to write all his own songs and they were just short verses in order for him to yodel, see?

GRIFFIS: I noticed also the name appearing – MacWilliams or something – with Jimmie Rodgers – his sister-in-law or somebody – I’m trying to think of the name that appears with him in an awful lot of his songs. Rodgers and…. Somebody told me at one time that that was his sister-in-law….

GRIFFIS: So, at the time you had joined the group and you and Roy had then brought in Slumber, you had began to form a trio. At this time were you doing a flavoring of western songs mainly or were they just the general run of the mill…?

NOLAN: No, the Rocky Mountaineers - we was strictly what we called in those days “hillbilly”. We still hadn’t gone for the western tunes yet.

NOLAN: I stayed with them personally for about a year and a half and then I could see that we weren’t going to go anywhere with these elderly men and they just didn’t seem to have any ambition to get any better, see. I just didn’t have the power, I guess you would call it, to fire anybody – none of us had - because they were the original group - the old men, see. So if I couldn’t change the personnel of the act, I just quit myself, see.

GRIFFIS: So you would have joined the group about 1929 and stayed until about the middle of 1930. And at the time you left, Roy and Slumber were still there?

GRIFFIS: Now did you do most of your performing in the immediate Los Angeles area?

NOLAN: No. While I was with the Rocky Mountaineers? No. That’s what I meant. We were so limited with what we did that I just got disgusted with it.

NOLAN: Oh, yes, we were on quite a few different stations but I can’t remember all the call letters. I think most of them are defunct by now.

GRIFFIS: So, at the time you left the group, this is the time that Tim Spencer would have come in?

NOLAN: I went to caddying then. See, I’d known a few of the caddies. They used to hang around my place, my guard stand down at the beach when they weren’t working. I finally got in out of Bel Air. It was a very exclusive country club. It was the tops. I started at the top instead of the bottom. [laughs}

GRIFFIS: About how long was it after you had left the Rocky Mountaineers, Bob, that Roy Rogers would have come looking for you?

NOLAN: Well, it wasn’t too long because Tim was the boy that they got to take my place and where I was disenchanted with the boys not having any ambition, this boy was all ambition, see, so he saw to it that Roy got out from under the load of carrying these old fellas, see? So they broke away, the two of them. Now, wait a minute. How long was it before they finally got rid of Bill Nichols? He didn’t suit them at all, I mean, after Tim come in. Like I say, everybody had to carry their weight or there was no go. So they let Bill Nichols go, too.

GRIFFIS: So you had left the group probably in the middle of 1930, would this be about right?

GRIFFIS: So Roy would have come looking for you. Could we peg that fairly close to a date?

NOLAN: I would say it was sometime in 1931 when they finally got around to – this was Roy and Tim – came out to see me out in West Los Angeles where I was living. [Editor's note: Nolan, Spencer and Slye joined The Texas Outlaws in December of 1933.] They put this proposition to me. They didn’t paint a pretty picture at all. We were gonna have to just go by luck but they wanted me to come with them. They had a few dollars saved up and I had a few. We pooled everything we had. I should say that I went for it. Tim was a good salesman. He could sell you on anything. I went with them. I quit my job at caddying and I was making good money on it, too, out at Bel Air. I still wanted to get back in the business if I could possibly see that we was going to improve our positions. So I went with the boys and we got a place in Hollywood at a boarding house. I think it cost us $7 a week apiece and all our meals. Get this! [laughs] $7 a week, board and room! We rehearsed and we started finagling around going to the studios, trying to get auditions.

GRIFFIS: Now, at this time had you added any other of your songs to this? When the three of you were rehearsing, what were you rehearsing?

NOLAN: We was rehearsing mostly my tunes. Yes. We still had the song Way Out There which we had developed now into 3-part harmony yodel, see, and it was a sensational thing to listen to because we really pepped it up and the rhythm was just frantic, it was so fast. We had developed our yodeling breaks to where we could break real fast, you know, just like trip hammers. It was strictly a gimmick tune but it was so impressive to hear that every time we sang the doggone thing, we just knocked people off their stools.

GRIFFIS: At this point we have only mentioned the one song, Way Out There. Now what other songs…?

NOLAN: We had Tumbling Tumbleweeds. No, it wasn’t Tumbling Tumbleweeds at that time. It was still Tumbling Leaves. I had written the song out in West Los Angeles and also had also finished Cool Water and, oh, what were the songs we had in our audition repertoire? We’d go from fast to slow and then right back into one of these tearing tempo tunes. We had an audition repertoire of about 8 songs that lasted for about 20 minutes, see, and this was our audition. And we never did – at the time that we was accepted – we’d never get through the doggone thing. We’d get to this one song Way Out There and when we finished that, they’d say, “Well, you’re hired!”

NOLAN: That was in there, too. That was one of our fast tunes, yeah. I think they were all…yeah…they were all my songs. Every one of them.

GRIFFIS: Now can you reconstruct as best you can – were all of these songs written after you’d come to California?

NOLAN: Yes, they were written…. Tumbling Tumbleweeds was written while I wasn’t with the Rocky Mountaineers. Also, Cool Water - that would be after I was with the…. I wrote an awful lot of stuff while I was caddying, too. Yes.

GRIFFIS: At the time that you had written this Tumbling Tumbleweeds, I understand it was not the original intended song.

NOLAN: No, no. I got the idea from looking out my window one stormy day when there was nobody could play golf, you know. The leaves were all falling off the trees and just hightailing it down the street, you know, so I just thought it would make a good topic for a tune and started working on it. The title of the song was Tumbling Leaves at that time.

NOLAN: Oh, yes, it was after the Sons of the Pioneers were – as a group – which is, I guess it wasn’t too long but it seemed like a long time because we worked so long and it seemed so much work went into it before the Sons of the Pioneers were completely formed and we knew that this was the group that we wanted.

GRIFFIS: You think that you could nearly peg that these standards of yours were composed prior to the time that you fellows really formed your first trio, you and Tim and Roy…?

NOLAN: A lot of them were. During this whole period, I would say that I was almost as prolific as what’s this boy that….Rudolph Freml. This man was astounding. He wrote in his lifetime something like thousands of compositions. This meant that he had to write 2-3 songs a day, you know. And I was practically as prolific as that. I don’t think a day ever went by that I either completed a song or had one mostly completed.

GRIFFIS: So you would just sit down there, for instance, in the morning you’d get up and these things seemed to come to you….

NOLAN: Yes. It was not like work at all. Before I sat down I would have an idea for maybe 3 or 4 songs in the back of my head.

GRIFFIS: I think the one phrase you use, pledging their love to the ground….

NOLAN: Yes, this was the line that the professional singers never understood. Even Bing Crosby. When he first recorded it, he could not sing that line because he just didn’t know what it meant because he’d never saw a tumbleweed. He didn’t know what the line meant, see?

NOLAN: Yes it is, because this weed is a diabolical sowing machine. I mean harvest - for sowing seeds. It is built, and its whole cycle of life is built, for spreading its seeds after it forms its seeds. The pods - a mechanic couldn’t develop a seed sower as diabolically perfect as this doggoned machine if you get down with a magnifying glass and look at the thing. See, it’s built in this ball and it’s just like spring wire and as the wind breaks that one stem that it grows on, when the wind breaks it after it gets so dry and all these pods are out on the ends of these curled-up limbs, see, and there’s just one little hole open at the end, to let one seed out at a time, you see, and the stem breaks and the wind takes it off across the desert, bouncing every time it hits the ground, these little pods drop out, one seed at a time, as it goes.

GRIFFIS: Fantastic. I’d never thought of how it worked but I can see what you were trying to say with that phrase….

NOLAN: This is their reproduction dance, so to speak - pledging their love to the ground – as they go rolling off there. This is the way I saw it. The only way I could explain what they were doing.

GRIFFIS: It would have to be someone that has a knowledge of the time and the desert and so forth. I know Bill Ward who is younger than both of us at KLAC, I always bug him to play Sons of the Pioneers songs on the radio station… and they never did – they’re all young guys and they didn’t understand what the Pioneers were singing about. [Fades out until I can’t hear it.] I have to admit, the first time I… driving across Arizona…. Shadows on the Trail, Tumbling Tumbleweeds….. You really had to experience this to really comprehend what the songs are saying.

NOLAN: You see, when the sun goes down on the desert – that big, flat desert, if you’ve got cactus or something like that sticking up, you can see that shadow moving – it’s absolutely traveling across as the sun goes down, the shadow starts getting long, and you can watch it and it just crawls out across the desert.

GRIFFIS: It takes someone like you to see these things and to put them into words.

GRIFFIS: How long do you think that the 3 of you would have practiced before you had your first opportunity… the 3 of you, you and Roy and Tim? You were at the boarding house, how long would you have…?

NOLAN: Oh, we spent about 2 weeks, nothing but practice, morning till night. Then Tim would go out for a couple of hours in the afternoon scouting places for contacts, see. Oh, I don’t know, we had auditions for different people. Although I thought we were excellent, there were people who just didn’t – like there is today, there were people in the profession who just couldn’t see rural music of any kind. It was the lowest thing on the totem pole. It made no difference if you were the most excellent singing group in the world, if you sang those songs you just wasn’t in. So we had to do many an audition for this sort of person, see, under this type of handicap. You had to hit the right person, if you wanted…. I have a strong suspicion that the music world was afraid of us because they knew that we had a built-in audience once they give us a chance to get on the radio. They had to take a back seat to us because there were more country people out there listening than there was sophisticates. [laughs] You could feel it that we were feared and it was hard for us to get a job.

NOLAN: I know our first actual job where we were put on a weekly wage – we went to KFWB. At this time, KFWB was hiring most any group - to name a few, was the Boswell Sisters, the Kingsmen and people like that and these turned out to be big-timers and we was hired about the same time as the Kinsmen and the Boswell Sisters was. We was put on their staff. I think we made something like – the opening wage was $27 a week a man. There was just the 3 of us, see. And, oh, at that time it was a lot of money. Oh, boy! And we was in high class company, the first job that we got and that was KFWB.

NOLAN: Oh, yes. Sure. Once you were on the staff of a radio, they had you working all day long.

GRIFFIS: My wife and I once went back and tried to locate the first time the Pioneer Trio were listed on the Radio Guide and it seemed to be sometime in about 1933. Would this be possible?

GRIFFIS: You would have been on staff then did you join Jack LeFevre and the Texas Outlaws?

NOLAN: Yeah. You see, the Outlaws were on there before we went on the station, see. So that’s where they placed us first, was with Jack LeFevre and the Texas Outlaws. And, although Jack LeFevre and the Texas Outlaws wasn’t on the staff – cuz they didn’t have any singing group and this was KFWB’s long suit – they didn’t like soloists because they had all the soloists they needed but it seemed like everybody was harmony conscious in those days. And that was right, too, because, by golly, when you think of the people that got started just about the time – in 1933 – the singing groups that started coming into being then. I was just trying to think of a few and now I can’t go beyond The Boswell Sisters and The Kingsmen, our own family.

GRIFFIS: Now I don’t know where you’d classify the Beverly Hillbillies in that same classification?

GRIFFIS: At the time you were with Jack LeFevre and the Texas Outlaws, were you known separately as The Pioneer Trio? Or were you a part of the band? Did they call you The Pioneer Trio?

GRIFFIS: While you were with Jack LeFevre and the Texas Outlaws do you remember any particular musician that was there at the time that made an impression on you with the Texas Outlaws?

NOLAN: Well, there was a lot of good musicians on the staff, yeah, if I could only think of their names. Eddie Eagan was the organ player – the staff organ player. A fine musician. There was this tall piano player and his… there was a piano-playing duo, a team, and I can’t think of either one of their names now but they were quite popular at that time.

NOLAN: No, no. Hugh Farr hasn’t come yet…. He and his brother were playing down at Long Beach at this time, during our formative years.

NOLAN: Oh, we would have stayed with them. I think KFWB got the idea that we were not in our element so they give us a program by ourself and that’s when we first got the name The Sons of the Pioneers. I think one of the studio - either the announcers or, one of the men around the studio – because they were interested in us and they wanted to see us get ahead because we worked so hard. And they gave us an evening program – one of the prime times – gave us 15 minutes in the evening, see, and they thought up this name for us, The Sons of the Pioneers.

GRIFFIS: Now this is historically important, and that is whether or not you had the title, The Sons of the Pioneers, prior to Hugh Farr joining the group.

GRIFFIS: Seemed to me that Hugh has indicated and I’ve heard other people make the statement. Of course, you know, everybody had to stretch their imaginations, it’s been so far back, but he seemed to think that the reason for the change of name was the fact that there was an addition to the group and they needed a new name. But I would take your word for it if you seem to recall that the three of you were known as The Sons of the Pioneers….

NOLAN: Oh, it was beautiful! Because we broke all the rules. You see, all the hillbilly and cowboy singing groups, they spent most of their time talking, you know, instead of singing. We did nothing but sing. Segue from one tune to another. We did more singing in 15 minutes than any other groups did in an hour at that time. And people would tune us in and freeze. Everything would stop and they’d listen from the time we come on the air until we were through. No eating dinner. If you ate at 7 o’clock, you changed to 7:15 when we got through.

GRIFFIS: Like Amos and Andy fans. They were quite popular. Now do you recall that the 3 of you were just playing guitars? 3 guitars?

NOLAN: And that’s about the time that we sent for the Farr boys because that was just one program too much. Like I say, once we was on staff they had us working all day long and then they give us this program and that’s when we decided we had to have help to carry the load.

GRIFFIS: Do you recall how it came about? Who did the actual contacting of Hugh?

NOLAN: I think Tim because he was handling all the promotion and anything that was done for the improvement of the organization, he saw to it.

NOLAN: I’d heard them over the radio. We kept track of all the competition throughout those years. We listened to everybody in order to gauge our own advancement. We heard these two boys and we had to have them. We made up our mind that this was going to be our instrumentation when we decided to expand.

GRIFFIS: As Hugh recalls, he thinks he joined the group shortly after the Long Beach earthquake and I think that was about 1933, as I recall. According to him, they were asked to join the group, which I guess would be historically correct, they were sought out by the Pioneers to join the group.

GRIFFIS: And then, at the time they joined the group you then made up the original group of the Pioneers which would have been Bob Nolan, Tim Spencer and Roy Rogers. Was Roy calling himself Leonard Slye still back in those days…?

NOLAN: Yes. It was in the late 30s when he got the name Roy Rogers. All the time he was with the Pioneers, his name was Leonard Slye.

GRIFFIS: So now we have worked up to the time the Farr Brothers had joined you. Do you recall where you did any recording as a trio prior to the Farr Brother joining you?

NOLAN: No, no recordings with the Rocky Mountaineers at all. But it was about this time, this same year, that we got on the staff at KFWB – everything happened right there in that year from our start as a trio to where, during that same year, we augmented it with the Farr boys, first Hugh and then his brother, Karl. We had a little trouble convincing Karl because they, evidently, had a pretty good job down at their station in Long Beach. Karl was a little… I don’t know who put the clincher on it, whether it was Hugh or Tim but….

GRIFFIS: They joined and that made up your original group. That would have been in 1933.

NOLAN: Yeah. See, I remember one thing. When Hugh came, we went to the station manager at the time and told him we had to get some help. Most of us had…. All three of us, at one time or another, there was constantly one of us had a sore throat because we was working so hard. [pause] I forget now what I was gonna ….

GRIFFIS: Once they had joined you and you had formed your original group, during this period of time, I know of the name the Gold Star Rangers being used. What was the purpose for that?

NOLAN: That was just for a sponsor that we had, see. That was about the same time, too. We was on all the staff programs and then we had this sponsor who paid the bill for an hour and then we had our 15 minute program in the evening and any specials during the week, we was on all, like the variety hours that they would have for all the staff. They had a program that lasted for 2 hours once. I remember Johnny Murray had the… hmm… what was the name of his program? It was a big bread - a bakery company that sponsored it. He took that program to another station and then KFWB formed the same thing with all their staff members and extra acts like Oscar and Elmer, the Kingsmen, The Sons of the Pioneers. We had…. Remember NePa, the old Indian remedy fella? He was one on the staff. Jane Jones, the big, big husky woman? Oh, how she could belt a tune! And we had a couple of opera stars on there. Alice Pringle? And, I forget all the people that was on there.

NOLAN: No, because once you were on staff you’re – except that we got paid more when Farley – because he paid on top of our staff pay. We got paid by Farley, see? Then we was really coining money. [laughs] And this was in the deep, dark Depression.

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GRIFFIS: So we’ll pick up here on Part Two of the Bob Nolan interview. Bob, I believe it was possibly not long after Hugh and Karl had joined your group that you made a series of transcriptions. They were referred to as Standard Transcriptions. Do you recall when and where they were made?

NOLAN: Yes, we was still at KFWB, of course, and it was the manager of KFWB’s brain child since he had all these groups who were making, incidentally, making national names for themselves, even though we were on a local broadcasting station. We didn’t have a network … at all. So the transcriptions were just coming into their own now – a brand new idea of radio broadcasting where you put them on transcription and get them…. in fact, all over the world these transcriptions were sent. Gerald King was the manager and he had the Kingsmen and the Boswell Sisters and the Sons of the Pioneers all about the same time, transcribe all their repertoire, their whole library, and he offered each one of us I think it was 20% in the business - 20% of our own library. And he would foot the bill for all the cost of production and distribution.

NOLAN: It was down on Western Avenue…. It was the same studio that we was recording for the recording company we were working for at that time which I believe was Decca. It was a freelance recording studio is what it was but everybody rented it….

NOLAN: Oh, gosh, we worked for, I would imagine, 2 or 3 months on this goldarned thing…. I guess from 10 or 20 a day. No, maybe not as many as 20. That was an awful lot…. We had the studio for over 2 hours and we’d….

NOLAN: Well, it was because there wasn’t enough studios to go around. There was so many artists in Los Angeles and recording studios were at a premium. You were lucky if you could get a studio for 2 hours.

NOLAN: We didn’t have to rehearse them. They were our own library. We had them all…You just walked in and however long we had the studio for, we kept singing steady until our time was up.

GRIFFIS: Do you recall how these were distributed across the United States, in other words, did KFWB…?

NOLAN: No, this was an individual project on the owner of, er, the manager himself. He didn’t even own the station. He had a few bucks saved up and he got the idea of investing it in transcriptions.

NOLAN: Gerry King. Incidentally, he’s a millionaire over that one thing. Once he had recorded all these 3 groups – the Sons of the Pioneers, the Boswell Sisters and the Kingsmen, he never… oh, yes he did. He recorded Oscar and Elmer. It was 4. He recorded all their back stuff. They saved all their scripts, you know, and put them on transcription. After he got these 4 groups all on wax, he never recorded another thing, he just opened up his company for about 4 years; he distributed these…. All the groups had a huge library. I know the Kingsmen could….. We had the biggest library. I mean the Sons of the Pioneers had a repertoire of something like between 3 and 4 thousand songs.

GRIFFIS: That many that you could do without… in other words, you could call on….?

NOLAN: That’s right. We had an immense library. All the time we were rehearsing, we were always doing research, too, for new songs. [pause] Now, let’s see, where was I?

NOLAN: Oh yes, Gerry King. He gave us a percentage of our own recordings, see. And then, after he got us on wax - oh, he was a finagler like everybody was in that day and age – he came to us and he said, “Oh, these things are not going as good [laughs] as I thought they were, see? How about me giving you a flat sum, say, about $600 apiece, see, a man?” That was more money that we’d seen for a long time in one hunk in a long time, you know, because it was still in the Depression. So we went for it. $600 for 5 men, that was $3,000, see? A lot of money, but we found out later that the five of us could have been [laughs] independently wealthy if we’d stuck with the 20%. Isn’t that something?

GRIFFIS: I guess it’s not too unusual in that day but at the same time he must have known how well it was going…

GRIFFIS: …and that was the purpose for renegotiation. It wasn’t in your favor….

NOLAN: No. And to this day I blame Tim for it because he was supposed to be so smart and he was, see. I’ve often brought it up to him, “Why wasn’t you smart enough to oversee – or tell - what this guy was putting to us!”

GRIFFIS: Well, I guess that’s true but, as you pointed out, when you talk to a man in those days, $600 was a lot of money.

NOLAN: You bet your life! And to boys who hadn’t in our past - in the history of our lives - we were all poor country boys, for gosh sakes, we never saw that much money and we never dreamed that we’d ever see that much money all in one hunk.

GRIFFIS: And of course you took his word that things weren’t good and you thought, perhaps we’d better take what we can.

NOLAN: Yes. It was a brand new proposition – transcriptions – at that time. It had the ring of truth in it.

GRIFFIS: Did you go back after the first 3 or 4-month period and do transcriptions for him later on?

NOLAN: No, that was all we did for him. We found out in a very short time that we had had the big britches put to us.

GRIFFIS: You had not really made your first recordings for any company prior to the transcriptions, is that correct?

NOLAN: That’s right. That’s the first recordings we ever did was the Gerald King….

GRIFFIS: What do you recall about your first contact by a recording company, Bob…what company came to you and…?

NOLAN: Yes, the old Brunswick, wasn’t it? I forget… The old Brunswick organization. Oh, he was a darling guy, too, this old man that was the R & I man, I guess you’d call it, out here for Brunswick. But that didn’t last long. They were a losing proposition at the time that we went to work for them. So we didn’t work over a year for Brunswick and a new company came along by the name of Decca and this is how they got into the business is that they bought out Brunswick, see?

GRIFFIS: Now do you recall the year you may have made your first Decca recordings in relationship to the Standard Transcriptions? Or what period of time had elapsed?

NOLAN: No, I think we went to work for another company before we went to work for Decca. I think it was Victor for about 3 years, I believe, and then when our contract was up with them, Decca. They ….to go under his label.

GRIFFIS: You think you went to Brunswick then you’d have gone on the Victor label then gone back to Decca?

GRIFFIS: Now do you recall where you made the first Brunswick recording? Was it made here in Los Angeles?

NOLAN: It was made here in Los Angeles. I don’t know at what studio. It was entirely a different studio than we ever worked on anything else.

GRIFFIS: What would you guess – realizing it was a long time ago – but how would you place it in relation to what period of time had elapsed from the time you did the transcriptions? Would you say you went to Brunswick within a year? Two years?

NOLAN: Yes, I’d say it was shortly after we got through with our transcribed library.

GRIFFIS: Then you could be talking about the first recordings for Brunswick being about 1936?

GRIFFIS: At this time, too, I believe you had an opportunity to go with Columbia Pictures for some movies.

GRIFFIS: Here’s the only point of reference. And, of course, all I can do is repeat to you what others have told me and they could be mistaken, too. According to both Roy and Lloyd, Roy made the first one or two pictures with Columbia before he went to Republic. So, if Roy left… I think he signed with Republic in September of 1937….

NOLAN: All right. It could be. Things happened so fast to us once they started to roll. I mean I’ve lost track of a lot of those things – their exact time that they happened because they all happened at the same time.

GRIFFIS: I think you do a remarkable job. I’m amazed at what you fellows do recall because I can’t remember much of what happened last week. Now about this same time, you had gone back to the Centennial in Texas. I think you were invited by….

GRIFFIS: Now, after you came back from there, then I believe Lloyd Perryman joined your group.

NOLAN: Oh, yes. He had a wonderful voice. And I guess he was even younger than Roy at that time. [Editor's note: Lloyd was 19 at the time.] He had this sweet tenor voice. Well, we was badly in need of a tenor at that time. Tim’s voice had lowered considerably during the years and he couldn’t sing tenor any more so we had to switch him to lead and get a tenor and here was this high tenor voice that we wasn’t going to have any trouble with at all. And he could go clean to the sky and he had quite a range, too, well over two octaves.

GRIFFIS: Would you think that it is correct to say that Tim did not have a strong voice?

NOLAN: We were - at the time that we went on the staff of KFWB - a lot of our voices was so overworked that it actually harmed Tim’s voice cuz he was singing high tenor, see, and naturally his voice was affected more than Roy’s or mine from the overwork and he just never got back into it again. Once his voice was strained so much from working so long hours and when you’re a staff musician you can’t get accompaniment to change key from the original that the music is written in, you know. A staff musician will not transpose the original music so you’ve got to sing it even if it’s 4 tones too high for you, you’ve still got to sing it in the original key.

GRIFFIS: You have the basis of a new group, now you’ve added Lloyd Perryman and Tim actually was with the group, it would appear that at one time, you could have had a quartette. You had yourself and Tim and Roy and Lloyd all at one time for a short period of time. And then Roy left the group and then it become you and Tim and Lloyd, really, as the trio and all this time, Hugh Farr could fill in on bass. Were you impressed with Hugh’s bass singing?

NOLAN: Oh, Hugh was singing bass long before Roy left the group. We was singing quartet with Hugh’s voice. Yes, we couldn’t let that voice go to waste and we’d quit singing trio entirely and made it all quartet, I think. Most of it. There was very few songs in our library that Hugh couldn’t sing bass to but those that he couldn’t – or didn’t lend themselves to bass - was the only time we ever sang trio after Hugh started singing bass which was quite early in the group after he came to us.

NOLAN: Yeah. But the only thing that worried us was when he was singing bass, he couldn’t play his fiddle and we wanted that violin in there so bad. That was probably the main reason why we ever sang a trio after he started singing bass. We wanted the violin more than we wanted his…. Because he was such an outstanding fiddle player. He always wanted to call himself the fiddle player. He never liked to say he was playing the violin. He’d say, “My fiddle.”

NOLAN: Oh yes, I wanted to tell you about Karl. Hugh came with us first. We got Hugh through the station itself. I mean the station manager said yes, he would put him on staff and pay his wages, see, but when we asked for Karl, he said, “No. I give you one man and hired one man for you.” He says, “I can’t afford to.” Well, the gist of it was that we all got together and took money out of our wages and hired Karl. And this is the only way we could get him to come up was to pay him more. He was earning more money than we were! [laughs] I think we was earning something like $47 a week and out of our money – the four of us – even his own money – he hated to do it. We took $10 out of each one of our paychecks and paid Karl $40. Now we were only making – we were making less money, see? [laughs] The thing that brought him in was that he was making more money than us and we were paying him out of our pockets.

GRIFFIS: Lloyd joins the group, Roy leaves to go to Republic Pictures, and Ray Whitley entered to represent you in your negotiations with Columbia Pictures.

NOLAN: Not right away. I think Republic and Tim had a falling out over something that brought Ray in. I’m not sure about this. Have you interviewed Ray yet? [Editor's note: A slip of the tongue. Bob meant to say Columbia.]

NOLAN: He’s probably got a better memory than I have. I’m pretty sure it was that. I think Tim was still handling all the negotiations and everything until he had a falling out. Oh, he sued Columbia! [laughs] because they used a song of his or something in one of their pictures without paying him, see? And they had an understanding that he was giving them the song and he said, “No, you had the wrong understanding.” He said, “I’m giving you nothing.” He sued them and he got paid for his song but he also got fired. [laughs]

GRIFFIS: During this period of time now, 1935-39, you were basically performing locally and in pictures?

GRIFFIS: I’ll say 1935-1940. Was this a very productive period for you and your songs?

NOLAN: Oh, yes, yes. Productive for me even before Roy left us because I was doing all the music for our series of pictures for Columbia. We were making 9 pictures a year and from 4-6 songs for each picture.

NOLAN: I did all of them. [Editor's note: He wrote all of the songs in the Columbia Starrett pictures from Cattle Raiders (1938) to Spoilers of the Range (1939) when Tim rejoined the Sons of the Pioneers. Except for one song (One More Hand on the Range), Bob wrote all the songs for these 11 pictures.]

NOLAN: I didn’t realize a thing for some reason or another. It was in the contract. This is where Tim fell out with Columbia was over the music. They took some of his songs, see. I understood that this was the package deal that I had to write the songs. And this is me – dumb me – I didn’t think nothing of it all. I thought it went with the package.

GRIFFIS: That’s fantastic. Today that would be worth a fortune, wouldn’t it?

NOLAN: I am, too. When I look back at the guy that was our immediate boss, Irving Briskin, he never let a trick get by him, boy. Yeah, I don’t see how he slipped up there! [laughs]

GRIFFIS: During this period were you still following the same theme as most of your songs because I’m not familiar with the order of your songs. Do you remember any of the hit songs from the 1935-1939 era that you would have composed for the movies?

NOLAN: Uh, golly whiz, there was so many of them, I can’t. I’m looking at one of the right now. Love Song of the Waterfall was one of the songs that we did in a picture although this was written with two other men.

GRIFFIS: So you were in pictures and performing locally and I would say probably about this time (1935-1940) era you were probably about the biggest name in the Los Angeles area.

NOLAN: That’s right, yes, and working everything from radio to stage to pictures. We just had a tremendous career about that time. It was really too much. I mean, they piled all of it on us all at once.

GRIFFIS: What about the general feeling of the group – as a group would you say you got along fairly good – was there the normal amount of…?

NOLAN: Yes, when work piles up on you like that, there’s bound to be tempers get away every once in awhile. This was one thing that made me realize that we were working too hard was that we begin not get along as well with each other, we didn’t enjoy our work the way we did before we were working too hard.

GRIFFIS: Knowing Hugh Farr pretty well for some time. He’s a little bit of a temperamental person.

NOLAN: Oh Karl was, yeah. Nothing ever bothered him. I think the tempers were all with Tim and Hugh and I. Tim was a feisty little one, too.

NOLAN: Oh, yes. Lloyd and Karl and…. Let’s see, Pat Brady was with us then….

GRIFFIS: Pat came in. Technically, if you want to be real historically correct about this, Pat was the replacement for Roy and we think of Lloyd as being Roy’s replacement but technically – although probably voice-wise he was - but physically when Roy left, that’s the time Pat Brady came in.

NOLAN: That’s right. After Roy left, it was awfully hard to replace him. It was just natural that we’d have to get another man because we were 5 until Roy left and we were 6 after that.

NOLAN: No, but the combination of being a comedian and a good bass man, a bass instrument man. It was a little deviation from the instrumentation that we’d had so far.

GRIFFIS: We come up now to about the beginning of World War II and I believe this is about the time you lost both Pat and Lloyd. Now, am I correct that Ken Carson – was he the first replacement?

NOLAN: Ken had been trying for years to get into the Sons of the Pioneers. Like Lloyd. He’d always wanted to be one of the Sons of the Pioneers. Same way with Tommy Doss. He eventually wanted to be a member of the Sons of the Pioneers and they made it. They kept themselves alive in our memory by periodically asking for a job. So that when we needed a man, why he was the natural one we’d turn to.

NOLAN: Ken Carson had done first with the Beverly Hillbillies, then with the Arizona Ranch Boys and that was a good group but he still wanted to become one of the Sons of the Pioneers. I don’t know whether the Ranch Boys were – no, I think Ken was doing solos then, about that time.

GRIFFIS: Now he did not record with you prior – now he would have joined you in about 1943 and all the recording had ceased at this time.

NOLAN: Yeah. M-hmm. It seems like…. Yeah, somewheres between 42 and 43, I think.

GRIFFIS: I don’t know if you recall whether or not you did any recording with him prior to the end of the war….

NOLAN: Oh, yes, we were doing a transcribed program for Dr. Pepper and that was an account we’d had for quite awhile and he started recording those.

GRIFFIS: Now were these made before…? Now here’s a thing that confuses me and I’d like to get it ironed out in my mind. On some of these transcriptions, there’s a Harry McMahan or somebody, now what series of programs were those? Were they the Dr. Pepper series?

NOLAN: Yes, but this is later on. This thing ran for a long time, ran through 2 producers. We had a different producer before we had Harry McMahan. We had, one time we had stars along with us, like Dick Foran was with the earlier transcribed Dr. Pepper show. And later we took it all by ourselves.

GRIFFIS: I’ve never heard any of the Foran things. Were you background for him?

NOLAN: Yes. No, he was just our – we had a ranch. We were supposed to be the personnel of the ranch and he was the boss. He did the solos and we did the group stuff and we backed him up.

GRIFFIS: Of course, I know that on some of these recordings Lloyd and Ken Carson are on them, too. You had both of them on there.

GRIFFIS: Would we be safe in saying this thing lasted through 1940-48? Would it run that long?

GRIFFIS: So during this time, also, after Lloyd had come back, you probably did your really first big series of records featuring some of your songs like Tumbling Tumbleweeds and Cool Water. That was called One Man’s, that’s not what it’s called. What did they call it? Your album. A group of them. They came out in one little package as I recall. Some kind of favorites. There is a title called some kind of Western Favorites or something. And this was that series of Cowboy Camp Meetin’, Tumbling Tumbleweeds with the big orchestra. Now would those have been made immediately after the war?

GRIFFIS: Were you particularly pleased with the style of Ken Carson’s singing? Did you think he was gonna ever make it with your group?

NOLAN: I knew we’d have to be satisfied somewhere along the line because we wasn’t going to get exactly what we wanted because by this time everybody was working and we had to take the ones that we could get. Ken was a fine singer but we just had a little trouble blending. The voice wasn’t what we was used to blending with.

GRIFFIS: He takes the high lead on Cowboy Camp Meetin’? He’s the high voice you hear, right?

GRIFFIS: And also during this time, Pat Brady went in service and Shug Fisher joined your group.

NOLAN: That’s right, of course, he played pretty fair bass fiddle along with it.

GRIFFIS: So after the war we come to the 1948-49 period, you were making tours around the country and so forth. I believe in 1949, you decided to hang it up. Would you like to tell us what thoughts went through your mind? What really went through your mind at the time you decided you were going to get out?

NOLAN: Well, I think the cycle had started to repeat itself like when I quit the…. It did in my mind, anyhow, that we wasn’t going nowhere. In fact, there was no place to go but down and I didn’t want to slip. We’d gone as far as we could, I felt. But I proved myself wrong because the boys have stayed right there, though.

GRIFFIS: Did you feel, though, at this time… Both you and Tim, I believe, retired about the same time…

NOLAN: But we was getting old by now and still working very hard. At the time that I quit I was home exactly 9 days that year. 9 days! And I was beginning to - the traveling, constant on the go - was beginning to get to me. One thing and another, I figured, well, I can write music for the rest of my life and I can’t sing for the rest of my life so I better quit now.

NOLAN: No, no. [laughs] I just…. Of course, I had to go to the boys and be sure that they knew what was going to happen – that I had it in the back of my mind that I wanted to retire – and for them to start looking for a boy to take my place. Of course, we didn’t have to go very far. Tommy Doss was right next door.

GRIFFIS: Tell us about your first encounter with Tommy and your impressions of his singing.

NOLAN: Well, Tommy, bless his heart, his voice was so close to mine that every job he got he was accused of copying my voice and he wasn’t. This was his voice and he couldn’t do anything about it, see! [laughs] I was real pleased when I did decide to retire that he was right there to take the job.

NOLAN: Tommy has a stronger voice than mine, although it blends. It wasn’t strong enough to cause any standout. I mean, he could still blend just as…. The blend was right there with Tommy but his voice, I think, was stronger than mine. It seemed to be heavier on certain ranges.

GRIFFIS: I found it really interesting – your comment that at times you had to really listen rather closely to….

NOLAN: Yes. Although his voice was heavier than mine, he started working on his placement of voice in order to retain the same blend that we had and he could, by golly, when he started to soften his voice down, I’d have to hear maybe 8 bars before I could know whether it was him recording or a recording of my voice.

GRIFFIS: Well, just to sort of finish up and go back and recount your years with the Pioneers, would you say that it is the happenstance of a grouping together of splendid voices and also the fact that Bob Nolan came along and furnished the springboard? Would the Pioneers have - I’m gonna put you on a spot – would the Pioneers have had a little more difficult time achieving the fame that they have if they hadn’t had the Nolan /Spencer compositions as a basis for their group?

NOLAN: I think so, Ken. It was just a lucky combination of everything we had going for us. Once we got on the road up, it just took off; it was no struggle at all. It was just getting our foot in the door. But I think you’re right. The Pioneers, as they were, would not have been the same group without this combination of the new songs coming in fresh from Tim and myself. This was part of the Pioneers. The Pioneers made the songs and the songs made the Sons of the Pioneers.

GRIFFIS: I would like to hear you to put on tape, Bob, what you told me earlier about the placement of yourself in relation to the other boys.

NOLAN: Yes, well, we was…. This was almost natural for us to do that because we strove for perfection and in order to get our blend, we…. From time to time we would change our position around the microphone so we could hear each other. In other words, we would put the lead voice in the middle and the other two on each side of him and try it that way and we’d switch from the lead to the offside, to the left side and the baritone to the right side and then we’d shift them. I was always on the outside, you see, and finally I took the middle and this was where we finally ended up and that was because they could hear my voice. What they were actually doing was using my voice as a soundboard for their voices and they could hear me better from the outside and hearing my voice would now reach both of them - equidistance. We noticed it right away that we had a much better blend when we recorded with me standing in the middle and I could see it in the boys’ eyes that they were listening more to me than they were to their own voice, see, and this is the way they could hear me better and form the blend.

GRIFFIS: I never thought about listening to each other. That’s how little I know about it but I never thought of them listening to another voice as they sang.

NOLAN: Oh, yes, and the minute I took my position between the boys I could tell. Oh, it was just…. You could hear that big round pear-shaped tone just all-enveloping our heads. It was there right away and the boys noticed it, too. I could hear from both ears. They had only one ear to listen out of.

NOLAN: No, no. That’s the way we had it - with one mike. We were striving for one voice. Naturally we took one mike.

NOLAN: Oh, yes. Let’s see now. Tim just had to retire as an active performer in the group because his voice was getting very, very tired. I’ll tell you. It was a real chore for him to sing for any length of time so we got Ken to take his place and Tim then devoted his full time to managing and negotiating.

NOLAN: A new voice never did impress me. It was always a chore to get back to that blend again. It meant more work but Ken had a wonderful voice. True - he was just like a pitch pipe.

GRIFFIS: Now how about Dale Warren? What is your impression of Dale Warren’s voice?

NOLAN: Dales’ voice has been changing down through the recent…. Well, ever since he’s been…When he started, his voice was rather thin and then it started taking on body and it’s been getting heavier and heavier ever since. I don’t know. I like his voice now better than when he first came with the group.

GRIFFIS: Just a final question. I understand that you still devote a good deal of your time to writing. Could you tell us what you do and when you do it?

NOLAN: Well, this is a funny thing. Somewhere along the line I heard of some writer who always worked in bed and I tried it about 7 or 8 years ago and it worked fine for me if I did it in the morning instead of in the evening. You see, I used to go to bed and read and I tried to make that my working hours. But I wake up now in the morning religiously at 5 o’clock and start writing before I get up until 7:30 or 8 o’clock. I’ll spend about 3 hours working in bed. It just works fine. My mind seems to be sharper and I can….

NOLAN: I work differently than I did when I was younger. I used to get on a song and I wouldn’t quit until that song was finished. Now I may have as many as a dozen different projects going at the same time.

NOLAN: Yes. M-hmm. I find if I have numerous things - a variety - 3 or 4 things going at the same time, you know, it … [pauses]

NOLAN: [interrupts] I’m thinking right now. What happens as you grow older and you work longer, you do start to run a little dry. You find yourself going in circles and once you start doing that you’ve either got to quit or do something else, see. So, in order to get in 3 hours a time every day, I have to stop some things I’m doing and the minute I find myself repeating or going in a circle, so to speak, I have to drop that and maybe pick up something else. And that’s why, like I say, I may have a dozen things I can pick up on any place and start work on.

NOLAN: I have an awful time finding good inspirational topics. They’re awfully hard. They come very hard now. Where it used to… my gosh, I could just close my eyes and reach up in the air and bring one down. I can’t do that any more.

NOLAN: No, I don’t try to handicap myself or… “handicap” is the word - because once you start and say, “I’m not going to do anything but westerns”, that’s a handicap. You just open up your mind and do anything that you think is good, that comes to you.

NOLAN: Oh, yes, sure. I’ve got one now that I think no singer could possibly do besides Andy Williams. It’s strictly “pop”.

NOLAN: No, I like to live with them for awhile and I mean when I say “live with them”, I mean from six months to a year and six months, to find out if they’re good. If they wear well for a year then I could risk and go and face anybody to tell them that here is something they need and convince them, I think.

NOLAN: No, outside my religious things, I’ve been a little reticent to do it on account of the music that is selling today. I mean it’s strictly for the teenagers. They’re doing the biggest part of the buying, see, their records and the tapes and stuff …. Elvis Presley and The Beatles and….

NOLAN: I had to listen for quite awhile before I could see whether they had and they did have…. Some of their stuff is just absolutely great. Here’s an odd thing and I hope it doesn’t get back to the boy himself. But this Burt Bacharach has still got to sell me. I know his music is good or he couldn’t go as far as he is but I still can’t give him “Excellent”.

NOLAN: Too sugary. I mean it was fine but nowadays the trend is… I feel something in the good music that’s coming along today. I mean things like Softly as I Leave You. I mean, oh, you can look into the depths of these songs and see and feel the heart of the man that wrote it. And even in our Country, the music like By the Time I Reach Phoenix [sic]. When you look into these lyrics, it’s just like looking into the heart of a real artistic writer. And you feel it as you hear it the way he felt when he wrote it, see? Now this is good stuff.

By the time I get to Phoenix she'll be rising
She'll find the note I left hangin' on her door
She'll laugh when she reads the part that says I'm leavin'
'Cause I've left that girl so many times before

By the time I make Albuquerque she'll be working
She'll prob'ly stop at lunch and give me a call
But she'll just hear that phone keep on ringin'
Off the wall that's all

By the time I make Oklahoma she'll be sleepin'
She'll turn softly and call my name out loud
And she'll cry just to think I'd really leave her
Tho' time and time I try to tell her so
She just didn't know I would really go.

GRIFFIS: Do you ever listen to music yourself? Do you ever put on records? Do you find yourself listening to any kind of music at all?

NOLAN: Records? Oh, [laughs] I have a beautiful set my daughter gave me and I hardly ever use it.

GRIFFIS: Do you have a desire to hear Pioneer music? Do you ever put on a record and listen to your old songs?

NOLAN: No, the old stuff - I’ve heard it and I don’t want to hear it again. I‘d like to hear something new. That’s why I get a little disenchanted nowadays with the music that is prevalent. I’m not saying that all of it’s this way - where there’s nothing to listen to but a beat. Now when you get to that where there’s….. This is the question they ask themselves and this is not music. They say, “Where is the beat?” And that’s all you’re hearing is nothing but the beat. They get maybe a line of lyrics. There’s nobody writing good lyrics except a very few and they’re having the devil to pay getting the music before the public because the only thing that’s selling…. Now Kristofferson – his story material is just marvelous.

NOLAN: No, I’ve still got the same favorites I’ve had for years. Eddie Arnold. The fact that he’s going more for pop worries me a little bit.

GRIFFIS: I was always a great Tommy Duncan fan. I don’t know whether you ever cared much for Tommy Duncan.

NOLAN: Tommy, yeah, but it’s entirely a different style. You couldn’t look at Tommy’s voice and say, “This is a real beautiful voice.” It wasn’t. When you heard Tommy sing, you heard the personality of the man and that’s all you heard and that was part of it….

NOLAN: I think so, I think so. I think it’ll all go in cycles. Before it gets to us you’ll be warned ahead of time. It’ll pick up with…. You will go back to the old-fashioned… You’ll hear some songs that will probably come out of the Gay 90s and they’ll start picking them up there and the cycle will begin. Songs like…hmmm…. Yeah, they might even go back as far as Carrie Jacobs Bond or something like that. Start picking up those old love songs of hers. When they start singing When You and I Were Young, Maggie, you’ll know the cycle has started again.

GRIFFIS: Well, let’s hope so because one of the greatest eras is the Pioneer era and the music of Bob Nolan and Tim Spencer. I’m awaiting that return because that was my music and….

NOLAN: I think that will be the kick-off for it when they go for those things that came out in the 90s like, I’d say, When You and I Were Young, Maggie. That was the first big popular tune, you know, out of that era.

GRIFFIS: Bob, we want to thank you very much. It’s been extremely nice of you to take the time. I know it’s quite a drag to be able to have to sit down go back so many years but it’s been very gracious of you to take the time. We certainly want to wish you the very best for the future and hope that sometime in the future we’ll begin to hear some new Bob Wills, er, Bob Nolan compositions come on the market and we’re certainly looking forward to that.

NOLAN: Well, Bob Wills wrote a few, too, you know. [laughs] Yes, I hope so, Ken. Gosh, I do, with all my heart and soul. I’d like to see our type of music come back, updated, of course. Which it would have to be, you see.

GRIFFIS: Thank you so much and we hope we will be able to get to see you gain some time and see what’s new in the music of Bob Nolan.

Another undated bit on the same taped recording (sound poor – I could hardly hear Ken’s questions)

NOLAN: I know when I wrote the tune and the original date. Drifting along with the leaves. Tumbling Leaves.

GRIFFIS: Was that a few years before you wrote Tumbling Tumbleweeds? Was it quite some time before you…?

NOLAN: Tumbling Tumbling Leaves. The Tumbling Leaves. I’m sorry. That was the title.

NOLAN: Yes. I wrote Tumbling Leaves, words and music. Let’s see. I never even thought of making it Tumbling Tumbleweeds. But Tumbling Leaves. I was just sitting in my little cottage out in West Los Angeles. My girl, Mickey, was working at the Old Soldier’s Home and I was working up in the hills in Bel Air Country Club, caddying. It was on a Sunday afternoon when I started to work on this song and Mickey was in the kitchen. Oh, she was going to do a cuisine for our Sunday evening dinner. Have I ever told you? Oh, yes, I did, too! I decided I was going to tell Snuff Garrett the same thing. He wants me to write out the music to this, I mean the whole thing in my handwriting – the notes and the music and the words….. Instead of going through all that, I’d like to give him… did I explain it to you? Then you know about it. That’s where it was written – out in West Los Angeles sometime in the year 1930. I think that was the same time of the year that the boys were trying to get me to come back….

NOLAN: Same melody. Only one note was changed. Instead of drifting along with the tumbling leaves it was along it was drifting along with the tumbling tumbleweeds. Well, I had to do something if I was going to change it from leaves to tumbleweeds but I had to because everybody that requested the doggone song, see we sang it and My God the requests coming in for Tumbling Leaves, see. “Sing that Tumbling Weeds song.” I didn’t think of it first. Our damn engineer thought of it. Why don’t you change it to Tumbling Tumbleweeds?

GRIFFIS: Did you ever copyright Tumbling Leaves? Did you ever think of copyrighting it?

[1] Lloyd was 19.

[2] A slip of the tongue. Bob meant to say Columbia.

[3] He wrote all of the songs in the Columbia Starrett pictures from Cattle Raiders (1938) to Spoilers of the Range (1939) when Tim rejoined the Sons of the Pioneers. Except for one song (One More Hand on the Range), Bob wrote all the songs for these 11 pictures.

[1] His actual birthdate was April 13, 1908, Winnipeg, Manitoba - a Monday.

[2] He changed his name so that his ex-wife wouldn’t find their boys and reclaim them.

[3] His mother’s name was Flora Elizabeth Hussey Nobles.

[4] Michael Earle [Nobles] Nolan died April 6, 1991. He was 80 years old.

[5] There was indeed a school at Hatfield Point and one at nearby Kars. Bob has stated at other times that he walked to school there. Perhaps he didn’t think the quality of education was good enough to mention.

[6] Harry, according to his discharge paper, saw no action during the war and spent the year of his enlistment in the United States. He was discharged as a Corporal.

[7] In 1920, Bob was 12. He was probably 13 when he was called to Tucson to rejoin his father because his school records state that he started school in the Fall of 1921.

[8] Bob graduated from high school in 1928 and married a month after graduation. The next year he was a lifeguard in California. There was no time to go the university. His brother agreed that Bob had not attended university and there are no records at the University of Arizona to indicate that he had taken any subject at any time, even at night school.

[9] Tucson Senior High had (and still has) a school newspaper called “The Cactus Chronicle” and perhaps this is where we’ll find Bob’s early poetry.

[10] The ad was placed in the September 30, 1931 edition of the Los Angeles Examiner newspaper. (Hear My Song, p. 1 with a facsimile of the ad.)

[11] In 1931, Roy was born in 1911. He was 20 years old.

[12] In 1931, Bob was 23.

[13] Nolan, Spencer and Slye joined The Texas Outlaws in December of 1933. (Phillips p 13)

               Went over last Saturday and spent a couple of hours with Bob Nolan. Any visit with Bob is an experience. He has a very active mind and is in apparent excellent health. Bob enjoys talking about the present more than the past. While he fully appreciates his years with the Pioneers, he spends very little time reliving those years. As he says, "Let it lie."
                When he does choose to speak of the past, it's usually to recall some funny incident and hardly ever about his contribution. To hear him talk, one would come away feeling that his part in the group was marginal to say the least. That of course will come as a big surprise to the Pioneer-Nolan fans. Most of his words of compliment are directed to the contribution Lloyd Perryman made in his long years with the Pioneers. One might say that Nolan was and is a Lloyd Perryman fan.
                Bob seems to be fairly well pleased with his new album. Whether or not it makes money is of little importance apparently. He just hopes that the fans enjoy it. If it does well, I feel he can be talked into doing another.
                As I was leaving, Bob had to show me his new pickup truck. He seemed very pleased with it. He will put it to a good test as he leaves to spend September and October up in the mountains.
                Yes, Bob Nolan is quite an individual. (Ken Griffis, The Pioneer, Vol. 3, No. 3, Summer, 1979.)

Interviews for Ken's book, "Here My Song, the Story of the Celebrated Sons of the Pioneers"

GRIFFIS: This tape is being recorded Friday, November 1, 1968 in the TV studio of Mr. Ken Curtis. This recording is being made under the auspices of the John Edwards Memorial Foundation and will be used by the Foundation for the non- profit activities of this organization only. So, if we can started, Ken, and ask you, first of all, to give us your full name.

CURTIS: My full name is Curtis Wayne Gates.

[Spelling is confirmed]

GRIFFIS: That comes as a surprise! And would you be good enough to give us the date of your birth?

CURTIS: Born July 2, 1916.

GRIFFIS: And where would this be?

CURTIS: In Colorado. Out south of Lamar, Colorado, down in the southeast portion of Colorado.

GRIFFIS: Was there a city? An actual city…?

CURTIS: Lamar. I was born out south of Lamar on the old homestead.

GRIFFIS: Fine. Could you give us the name of your mother and father?

CURTIS: Dan Gates is my father. My mother is Nellie Gates.

GRIFFIS: What was her maiden name?

CURTIS: Her maiden name was Sneed. [Spells the word.]

GRIFFIS: And do you have brothers and sisters?

CURTIS: Yes, I have two brothers. I have Carl – my oldest brother is Carl. My next brother is Chester Kenneth and that’s how I derived my name. In fact, Tommy Dorsey changed my name from Gates to Curtis because we, at that time, were doing a lot of radio broadcasting and he was afraid it would be misunderstood so he took my brother’s first name and my first name and made my name out of it. So Tommy was responsible for that.

GRIFFIS: Wonderful. Was your parents or grandparents musically inclined?

CURTIS: Yes. My father very much so. He played just about every string instrument. Couldn’t read [music], of course, but it was just a natural talent. And all of us sang to some extent.

GRIFFIS: What instrument did you first pick up?

CURTIS: I first started on saxophone. I used to play sax and clarinet many, many years ago.

GRIFFIS: Is that right? And later on did you take up the guitar when you got interested…?

CURTIS: No, I never did play guitar. You know, I play a few chords but I never did really play a guitar.

GRIFFIS: But your brothers and sisters, were they musical? Did they play musical instruments, too?

CURTIS: Well, my brother Dudley – we call him Dudley – Chester, he used to play banjo and play with Dad. In fact, my early childhood was with the old square dances back in Colorado. We used to have, you know, just the ranchers get together and have a Saturday night dance, of course, and Dad played the fiddle. Mom used to chord on the organ, the old pump organ, and Dud played banjo. And I used to sleep on the benches around the side of the room, you know.

GRIFFIS: You were too young at this time to take part in….

CURTIS: Too young, yeah. All I could do was a little clog dance. Chuckles.

GRIFFIS: What is your earliest recollection or first interest in music? In other words, at what age did you first take up the instrument - the saxophone or whatever?

CURTIS: Oh, that was in, I would say, that was around the 6th or 7th grade in grammar school.

GRIFFIS: What was your first exposure to recordings? In other words, was it with the Pioneers or was it with Dorsey?

CURTIS: No, my first experience with recordings … of course, the record that I made – a test record that I made out here, was actually just a demo with Carl Fisher. Do you remember Carl? He was at that time the arranger for Frankie Laine. He has since passed away. A wonderful musician and a great songwriter and he asked me to do some demo records for him, which I did. And Jo Stafford, who was at that time with the Pied Pipers, happened to hear this demo and wanted to take it back to Dorsey, so that was how I was sent for by Tommy Dorsey.

FEMALE VOICE: Your first recordings were not Country and Western, they were….

CURTIS: No, they were Pop. See, when I first started out here, after I got out of college, when I started my singing career, I’d come out to publish some music that I’d written in a musical show in college. And I got to singing this music and everybody didn’t care too much about the tunes but they were listening to me sing so I got a deal with NBC out here where I used to do sustaining shows with Gordon Jenkins and Bud Dant. That was really my start in the entertainment business.

[Spelling confirmed.]

Charles Dant, I think, but everybody called him Bud Dant and I used to do sustaining shows with he and Gordon Jenkins on NBC out here.

GRIFFIS: Well, let’s go back and regress just for a moment and we can go fast since we do have a shortage of time … could you give us, from Lamar, at what age you had moved where and so forth and bring us up to this period you’re speaking of?

CURTIS: Well, from the old homestead, we moved into a little town called Las Animas when I was about 5 or 6 years old.

GRIFFIS: This is in Colorado?

CURTIS: In Colorado, also. And then – we didn’t stay in town too long – we moved out to a ranch outside of Las Animas. My Dad was always a cattleman. A stockman. Rancher. And then, later on, we moved back into Las Animas where my Dad became sheriff. And we used to live in the jail there – lived in the bottom of the jail and, of course, all the prisoners were upstairs and Mom cooked for all the prisoners and I was a turnkey at the tender age of about 12, I guess.

GRIFFIS: How old would you have been when you moved from Lamar?

CURTIS: Well, we never did live in Lamar. See, our ranch was outside of Lamar.

GRIFFIS: Well, this Las Animas.

CURTIS: Las Animas? Well, I stayed in Las Animas until 1935 when I went away to college. I went up to Colorado Springs to study medicine, actually. I took three years of Pre Med.

GRIFFIS: Did you do any singing or any entertaining prior to going to college, in the early days, in your teens?

CURTIS: Oh, yes. Sure. In fact, we had a little trio. We used to campaign for my Dad when he was running for sheriff. There was a kid by the name of Kenny Schuman – Kenneth Schuman – and a kid named Dale Schutts who never liked his name so he changed it to Sloan. Dale Sloan.

GRIFFIS: Did either of these pursue a musical career?

CURTIS: Yes, Dale did. Kenny is a banker now. He was always more inclined toward the financial end of it whereas Dale did become a musician. He has since passed away, too. So that was really the start of kind of getting into it when we had our little trio.

GRIFFIS: All right, then, in school. Did you get into the musical activities in school?

CURTIS: Oh, I sang quite a bit. I used to – of course, with the fraternity we had quite a male chorus, you know. I started singing a little bit in college, just here and there, and used to do a few of the music things around college. And, as I say, I wrote this musical show in college.

GRIFFIS: Can you recall the name of it?

CURTIS: I can’t remember what it was. It’s been a long ago.

GRIFFIS: Is this the one that you took out to have somebody…?

CURTIS: Yes, I came out to California then. At the end of my third year of pre med I came out here to try to publish these tunes during the summer months and that’s when I got sidetracked and never went back to medicine. You know ignorance is bliss. I came directly to Los Angeles and, as a matter of fact, Dale Sloan and a friend of mine by the name of Tommy Clelland who just happened to be a fraternity brother and a very dear friend of mine. In fact, we were roommates in college. So the three of us came out. They all felt, well, these [songs Curtis had written] were great and we’ll go out and set the world on fire. It turned out that I wasn’t the new Cole Porter, by any means.

GRIFFIS: Then what was your next contact in music…?

CURTIS: Well, we got out here and Dale formed a….

GRIFFIS: Excuse me. Could we establish the year this would have been that you came…?

CURTIS: This would have been 1939. I came out at the end of…. In 1939 Dale formed a group called “The Katsnjammers”. A small group. I believe there were 7 members of it. And we started doing a few little acetate recordings around, as a matter of fact, with Al Jarvis when he had his make believe ballroom here. And Al made these records and started playing them and the group kinda caught on around town and, if fact, so much so that at that time UCLA used to have a program, a monthly program, called “All You Sing”. They used to invite their favourite group or band out to entertain, you see. I believe it was monthly. Anyway, we had cut these few records and they seemed to like our efforts so they invited us out for “All You Sing”. It was during that performance at UCLA that a lady by the name of Ida Koverman was in the audience. Well, Ida Koverman was at that time the executive secretary for Louis B. Mayer.

[Spelling of Koverman confirmed.]

And a lovely, lovely lady. She happened to be in the audience. Well, after the show, she came up on the stage and said, “Would you like to come out to MGM tomorrow and sing?”

GRIFFIS: Speaking to you personally or the group…?

CURTIS: To me. And I said, “Of course. I’d love to.” Of course, I’d had so many false excitements about the career up until that time, I thought well, I don’t imagine it’ll really happen. But sure enough, the following day here comes this big black limousine to take me out to MGM where I sang for Louis B. Mayer and Roger Edens was there and, oh, all the top folks out at MGM including a man named Wynne Rockemorra. And you’ve probably heard his name. He for years ran the Hollywood Bowl here. Booked all the talent and set up the shows. Well, Wynne Rockemorra at that time was the head of talent for NBC, he booked the talent for NBC, and that is how I came into my contract as staff singer at NBC with Gordon Jenkins and Bud Dant.

GRIFFIS: Was this about 1940?

CURTIS: Around ’40, yes. ’39 and ’40.

FEMALE VOICE: Those first recordings you made, were they on a commercial label?

CURTIS: No. They were just little acetate pressings that Al got together.

GRIFFIS: And then you were on the staff of NBC for a period of time. What did you do in this capacity?

CURTIS: Well, I would do these sustaining shows each week, one with Bud Dant and one with Gordon Jenkins. They used to have a boy and a girl singer. One of the singers at that time was a girl by the name of Kay St. Germaine who was at that time, married to Jack Carson. Do you remember her? Kay was on several of the shows with me.

GRIFFIS: You would just appear on the hour, half hour program, and you were one of the singers….

CURTIS: Yes, I’d do several songs during the half hour or hour. I’ve forgotten just how long they ran. At that time still my name was Curtis Gates, you see, because it was never changed until I went back to join Tommy.

GRIFFIS: How long were you on the staff?

CURTIS: Well, it wasn’t too long because I kinda got itchy to go back to New York. I thought, well, maybe I can really break in and do something. I really wanted to do big band work rather than just staff work and I went back thinking that I might be able to latch onto a band job in New York but as it turned out it wasn’t that easy.

GRIFFIS: Was this about ’41 again?

CURTIS: This would have been been still around ’40. And I went back and found out it wasn’t that easy and I wound up being a sand hog.

GRIFFIS: In a tunnel.

CURTIS: In a tunnel, yes. From upstate New York they were building a tunnel down in New York City and I wound up working in this water tunnel. That made me more determined that I wanted to get into the singing business again!

GRIFFIS: And how long would you have pursued this back there..?

CURTIS: Well, I worked there through the Summer months and up into the Fall.

GRIFFIS: This could have been ’41?

CURTIS: Well, now let’s see, I’m trying to think. I joined Tommy in September and the war started in December of ’41 so this would have been going into ’41, probably the early part of it, and I decided to come back out to California. My brother Dudley, was with me and, of course, he pursued the construction work so this was right down his line. I came back out here and again started in construction just to keep beans on the table. And it was during that time that I made this test record with Carl Fisher and after Jo Stafford heard that she asked me if she could take it back to New York and play it for Tommy because Tommy and Frank Sinatra were not getting along too well in those days and he had been wanting to leave the band. So Tommy asked me to come back as a replacement for Frank.

GRIFFIS: Oh, you actually would have been a replacement for Sinatra.

CURTIS: Yes, so I went back in September of ’41 and stayed with Tommy until, it seems to me, around the first of November and Frank had stayed on. They had me rehearsing with the band and the Pipers and I did some recordings with them….

GRIFFIS: Do you recall the first recording you might have made with them?

CURTIS: With Tommy?

GRIFFIS: Yes.

CURTIS: The first song I did, I did a thing called “Love Sends a Little Gift of Roses”. I have a copy of it at home with the Pied Pipers and I, of course, sang the solo on it. Then I did a thing called, seems to me, “The Anniversary Waltz” but it wasn’t the one that later became so popular – you know, out of “The Jolson Story”. It was another one called “The Anniversary Waltz” and I don’t have a copy of that. I don’t know. I’ve lost most of my old records. But I do happen to have “Love Sends a Little Gift of Roses”.

GRIFFIS: I’d love to get a copy of that. Now, you were with him approximately 2 months?

CURTIS: Yes. I travelled with the band, rehearsed with the band and, like I said, did this recording and when Sinatra decided he would stay on with the band. Tommy kept me under contract and sent me with Shep Fields who had at that time just formed a new all-reed band. It was a very interesting band because the reeds were playing brass licks, you see, and it was a very interesting band but I think it was a little bit before its time because it was just a little too wild for the folks and, of course, he’d just come out of the success of Rippling Rhythm. So I went with Shep and, of course, war was declared and I’ll never forget standing on the bandstand and seeing these young guys coming up in Navy uniforms. So I said, “I can’t stand it, I’m gonna enlist.” So I enlisted in the Army and they took me in…

GRIFFIS: This would have been in what year?

CURTIS: That would have been in ’42. They finally took me in in June.

GRIFFIS: And you went into the Army.

CURTIS: I went into the Army in Anti-Aircraft and I was sent back out here to California. And then, career-wise, the funniest thing. A real kind of a coincidence. When I came out of the Army in 1945, the first people I ran into were the Pied Pipers – Jo Stafford, and at that time she was married to one of the members of the Pipers named John Huddleston. And I ran into Jo and John and Chuck Lowry who was one of them, Clark Yokum was another member. They were doing a show with Johnny Mercer called the Chesterfield Music Shop – a little 15-minute show 5 nights a week. Jo had just recorded a wonderful – had made a wonderful record of “Tumbling Tumbleweeds”. A beautiful arrangement. So they said, “Why don’t you come on Johnny’s show and do a guest spot?” which was great with me. So I went on the Chesterfield Music Shop and I sang Jo’s arrangement of “Tumbling Tumbleweeds” which happened to be in my key and Columbia Pictures heard me and signed me then to do a series of musical westerns.

GRIFFIS: This would have been in ’45?

CURTIS: Yes, as I remember it was around ’45. Yes, ’45. So I started doing these musical westerns. That was my introduction into the acting bit. My first time.

GRIFFIS: What – do you recall your first picture?

CURTIS: Hmm. Well, I was starring along with the Hoosier Hot Shots in it. I was the hero and Big Boy Williams was my sidekick and my leading lady, I believe, was – my first picture – it might…. [End of tape]

18:43
GRIFFIS:

CURTIS: It would have been – as near as I can recollect, and as I told you, Shug and I were together yesterday trying to figure it out. It would have been ’47, right after I left Columbia. It would have been in ’47 because I was with them about 6 1/2 years. ‘47, ‘48, 49, ‘50, ‘51 and I left them in ’52.

GRIFFIS: You just filled in for Lloyd for just a few days the first time?

CURTIS: Well, I never left after that time.

GRIFFIS: I see. You actually stayed with them. I see.

CURTIS: Now, this is as near as I remember. I’ll tell you, I haven’t even tried to think about those days, it’s been so far back, but anyway, both Shug and I joined the group. Shug played bass, of course, and I also sang. We used to, not only sing with the group and perform with them, but Shug and I had our own little act – a little comedy thing that we would do when we were doing a program, you see.

GRIFFIS: Can you recall the members of the group at the time that you made contact with them?

CURTIS: Oh, yes. There was, of course, Bob Nolan, Lloyd Perryman, Tim Spencer and the Farr Brothers.

GRIFFIS: Had Pat Brady left them?

CURTIS: Pat Brady. I believe Pat had left. Yes, I believe he had. I believe he had gone with Roy Rogers then. So that was the group at the time that I joined them. And then, it seems to me, Bob stayed about…. Do you know exactly when he retired?

GRIFFIS: He left about ’49.

CURTIS: Yeah, I was thinking about 2 years after I joined the group, Bob retired and Tommy Doss came into the group.

GRIFFIS: Do you recall the first recording session you had with the Pioneers?

CURTIS: Oh. Yes, I think my first recording session was, I believe, “Room Full of Roses” was the first thing that we did and “Ghost Riders in the Sky”.

GRIFFIS: Would you be good enough to pick up that “Room Full of Roses Album” and tell us which one of those that you would have sang on?

CURTIS: Out of this, let’s see, I’m not sure; I might have sung on this “Have I Told You Lately that I Love You”. “Let Me Share Your Name” I’m pretty sure I sang on. “Room Full of Roses” I know I did because I did the solo on that. “Wedding Dolls” I also sang on. “Roses” I sang on. And I’m not sure about the others. I think Lloyd Perryman did “The Three of Us” and I probably sang in the background on it.

GRIFFIS: Lloyd says that’s one of his favorites.

CURTIS: Yes. It’s a great song and Lloyd did a great job on it.

GRIFFIS: Do you ever listen to any of these recordings?

CURTIS: You know, I’m ashamed to say that I’ve lost my albums, just through the years and….

GRIFFIS: Do you have any real interest in country music any more?

CURTIS: Oh, yes. Very much so. Especially, I just love to hear the Pioneers’ later recordings. I have those because Lloyd, when a new one comes out, always tips me off and gets me one of them but I sure thoroughly enjoy hearing them sing.

GRIFFIS: We have a sort of Discography here and if you would just run down right fast and see. You remember the first label you would have recorded? Would it have been RCA?

CURTIS: With the Pioneers, you mean?

GRIFFIS: Yes.

CURTIS: Yes. RCA.

GRIFFIS: Can you just run down the list here and see if you can recall any of these, starting right there.

CURTIS: Let’s see. “The Everlasting Hills of Oklahoma”. I sang on that. I don’t know whether it’s this particular record but I did sing that at one time. “Blue Prairie” I’ve sung with them. “The Timber Trail”. See, I don’t remember whether we recorded that or not.

GRIFFIS: Were you on the record they put out…Lloyd said they put out a “Cowboy Classics”. They were 45s. He said they sold them in a box, a group of them together. You could buy a box called “Cowboy Classics”. They were 45 [rpm] records. You recall that name?

CURTIS: I’ll tell you, Ken….

GRIFFIS: That name doesn’t ring a bell with you?

CURTIS: No, it doesn’t.

GRIFFIS: Well, it’s the recording of “Tumbling Tumbleweeds” and “The Everlasting Hills of Oklahoma”. And “Cool Water”, “Cowboy Camp Meetin’”….

CURTIS: And this is the one that was done after the original “Tumbling Tumbleweeds”.

GRIFFIS: Yes.

CURTIS: Well, I could have been. Very possibly might have been. I’m sorry to be so vague but I just can’t really remember.

GRIFFIS: Well, Lloyd made the statement that you sang with the group and he thought that while you were with them they put out their finest quality records. That’s why I thought you probably did.

CURTIS: Well, I think that I might have been. I just could say without really…

GRIFFIS: …hearing them.

CURTIS: Hearing them, you know.

GRIFFIS: Would you recognize your voice immediately if you were to listen to the record?

CURTIS: Oh, yes. Very definitely. Well, let’s see….

GRIFFIS: As I mentioned to you before, Lloyd had some very flattering things to say about you. He thought that you had a real outstanding voice.

CURTIS: Well, thank you, Ken. I think the same about Lloyd. Those were some great years and I suppose that he told you about our doing a concert at Carnegie Hall.

GRIFFIS: No, I don’t think that neither he nor Tim mentioned anything about it.

CURTIS: Really? Yes, we did a concert at Carnegie Hall and it seems to me it was around, could have been around ’50. I’m not just positive but it was around that time. I, of course, thought that was one of the highlights of my career with the Sons of the Pioneers. It was quite a thrill.

GRIFFIS: This is the importance of talking with different people because neither of them thought that was important enough to mention. I think it’s very important.

CURTIS: Yes, sure. I’ll never forget that. It was a great thrill for us.

GRIFFIS: I would think so. Now you joined them in roughly 1947 and did you do most of your recordings here in Hollywood?

CURTIS: Yes. We did a few back in New York. We recorded, I believe, twice with Perry Como. Seems to me we did it twice.

GRIFFIS: As a background for him on a record?

CURTIS: Yes and, as a matter of fact, we did “You Don’t Know What Lonesome Is” with Perry Como. We did the Perry Como Show and then we went down to record.

GRIFFIS: Is see. And you would have remained with the Pioneers up until about 1952.

CURTIS: That’s right.

GRIFFIS: Now, did you make the religious album with them? Do I recall Lloyd saying you did a religious album?

CURTIS: Yes. I did some religious things with them.

GRIFFIS: I don’t know if …. I have one religious album there and I’m not certain that’s….

[Search for the album without success.]

CURTIS: Apparently it isn’t here. Is that the one that included “Little White Cross”? Yes, I did the solo on “Little White Cross” and also….

GRIFFIS: And “Wagons West”. See if you recall the names on that.

CURTIS: “Land Beyond the Sun”, I believe I sang on that. I didn’t sing on “Santa Fe, New Mexico”, I didn’t sing on. “Teardrops in My Heart”. No, that was before I joined, too. “Wagons West” I sang on. “Cowboy Camp Meetin’” was before me. “Moonlight and Roses” I did. “Waltz of the Roses” I did. I also, as I remember, did “The Whiffenpoof Song”.

GRIFFIS: Now, this one I know very definitely you were on.

CURTIS: “Crazy Arms”. Oh, yes.

GRIFFIS: You did the solo on that one, as I recall.

CURTIS: “Blue Eyes Crying in the Rain” I did the solo on. And “Does Your Conscience Ever Bother You” and “Hang Your Head in Shame”. Oh, yeah. I was very definitely on this session.

GRIFFIS: Now do you recall any particular song on there that made an impression on you? You would say, “If somebody wants to play a record of mine, this is Curtis at his best.” Could you single out one that you would …? I like “Crazy Heart”.

CURTIS: “Crazy Heart”? Let’s see. “It’s a Sin” is one I sang on, I very definitely remember. And I haven’t heard these in so long that I’d be afraid to say whether it would be my best effort. But I think that “Little White Cross” is one of the prettiest things that I ever sang.

GRIFFIS: Did you have a solo on that?

CURTIS: Yes. It’s in the religious thing. It’s one of the most touching and beautiful songs I’ve ever heard, I think. And carries a beautiful message, too.

GRIFFIS: Right. Now during the time that you were with them, what members joined them and left that you recall?

CURTIS: Well, Bob was the only one who left. Tim, of course, was managing the group. And I did this “Cool Water” with Vaughn Monroe, too, right here. [Singling out a recording.] Remember that? I remember we were in – where was it? - Philadelphia, I believe, and recorded…. I can’t remember if it was New York or Philadelphia. Let’s see. “Wagon Wheels”, yeah, I sang on that. “Last Roundup” I sang and Lloyd sang on that. There’s that “Little White Cross” I was speaking of. “America Forever” I sang on that. “Room Full of Roses” I did. “Riders in the Sky” I was on that. Bob did the solo. “So Long to the Red River Valley” I did that, too. “Wedding Dolls”. Well, there’s a whole bunch of ‘em here that I see. Forgotten a good deal of ‘em, too.

GRIFFIS: Well, you see, we try to collect all of these records and we have to break the Discography down and say who was on a particular record. It’s quite a detailed project.

CURTIS: You bet. You’ve got your work cut out for you, I’d say.

GRIFFIS: During the period of 1950 you said you left, I mean Bob Nolan left the Pioneers and Tommy Doss joined the group at that time.

CURTIS: Yes, we were on a tour, a rodeo tour and we’d gone up through Eureka and, it seems to me we did a couple of dates in Washington and up to our last date in Canada – we’d gone up into Canada and our last date was Edmonton, Alberta. Bob left us there. And we picked up Tommy back in Helena, Montana.

GRIFFIS: Would you like to compare his talents with that of Bob? The good and the bad. He fitted in very well with….

CURTIS: Yes, I thought Tommy did an excellent job. Of course, you know that the quality of their voices is very similar. And I’ve heard Tommy sing just recently and I think he’s singing better than he ever did.

GRIFFIS: I think so. Do recall the last recording session you may have made with the Pioneers? And about what year that would have been?

CURTIS: Well, let’s see. I think it might have been that [indicates the album “Good Old Country Music”] yes, I believe that could have been the last real session. I think it was originally titled “One Man’s Songs”. I think there’s an album called “One Man’s Songs”.

GRIFFIS: Yes, that’s right but I took the title to Tim Spencer and they cannot find an album released under that name, strangely enough.

CURTIS: Is that right?

GRIFFIS: I went back there and told him I’d found that name listed in the record of songs but he researched it and he thinks they changed the title to this.

CURTIS: Well, now, as I remember the first time I saw that album it was called “One Man’s Songs”. They’re all Fred Rose numbers, I believe.

GRIFFIS: Strangely somehow the title got changed. During the time you experienced with the Farr Brothers, would you like to comment on the singing quality of Hugh Farr?

CURTIS: I thought that Hugh had a magnificent quality, bass quality. I never heard a more beautiful, round bass singer in my life. I think he was just fantastic.

GRIFFIS: We were very much impressed with Hugh.

CURTIS: You bet. He had a quality that I never heard in another bass singer. You know, sometimes they can get kinda raspy but Hugh’s was always very round, very beautiful.

GRIFFIS: His fiddling was magnificent, too.

CURTIS: Oh, yeah. He’s quite a fiddler.

GRIFFIS: During this period of time were …did Ken Carson sing during the period of time that you were with them?

CURTIS: No. You see, Ken came in to take Lloyd’s place when Lloyd went into the service. So I never sang with Ken. He had already left the group when I came in.

GRIFFIS: With the exception of Bob Nolan or Tim Spencer, did any other person leave the group or join the group during the period of time you were there? Shug Fisher and Pat Brady – any changing there?

CURTIS: No, Shug was with them all the time that I was with them. And then, after Shug and I left the group in ’52 – and Shug later rejoined them. He was with them off and on for many years. Have you talked to Shug yet?

GRIFFIS: No. We hope to talk to him. We want to talk to every member of the Pioneers and then put the whole thing together. Do you think there’s a possibility we might get to talk to him?

CURTIS: Oh, yes! I don’t know whether…. Shug has been shooting here out on the lot. He was working yesterday. I don’t know whether he’s working today or not. If so, they might…. No, I don’t believe he’s working today. He’s said that he’d probably finish yesterday.

GRIFFIS: About the only person that we may not get to talk to, of course, excepting Karl Farr, would be Bob Nolan. I don’t know if I’ll ever get a chance to talk to Bob Nolan. Both Tim and Lloyd say that he just doesn’t talk.

CURTIS: He is pretty hard to get to, I’ll tell you. He’s too busy fishing! Laughs.

GRIFFIS: According to them, he just doesn’t like to talk to people.

CURTIS: No, he’s strange in that respect. I enjoy talking to Bob when you get a chat with him. He’s a great guy.

GRIFFIS: Now, a couple of other questions. Is there a specific reason why you left the Pioneers?

CURTIS: Well, yes. Mainly it was – I was pretty tired of traveling. And they had a chance to go out and do more rodeos and I had a chance – Shug and I had the opportunity to stay on this program we were doing called “Lucky U”, a local show in town here we were doing five days a week.

GRIFFIS: That was a radio program?

CURTIS: No, it was TV and radio. It was a simo-cast for Planter’s Peanuts so we had the chance to stay on and form a new group and stay here and do this show which I decided to do because I just wanted to stay in town. I didn’t want to travel.

GRIFFIS: Do you recall the name of the group? Did you form it or did you join it?

CURTIS: Well, I just got two other fellows to come in and sing with me – a boy by the name of Rex Dennis and Buddy Dooley. You know Buddy Dooley?

GRIFFIS: M-hmm, I’ve heard that name.

CURTIS: Fine singer. So Rex and Buddy and I formed our trio and then, of course, Shug sang with the group at times.

FEMALE VOICE: What network…?

CURTIS: We were on Channel 9 here.

GRIFFIS: Did you play any instrument during the time that you traveled with the Pioneers?

CURTIS: No. No, I never….

GRIFFIS: Then, how long did this program last?

CURTIS: Well now, let’s see. It seems like we went on for maybe a year and a half or two years on this show. I’ve forgotten just what the length of time was.

GRIFFIS: What was your next move?

CURTIS: Well, then I got into the …. I had a chance to go into some features with John Ford and John Wayne. I did several features then. They started out small. I sang a thing in “The Quiet Man”. Sang a couple of songs in “The Quiet Man” and played a little character – a very small part. And each one of those progressed into bigger things and ….

GRIFFIS: Then you made your contact with “Gunsmoke”?

CURTIS: Finally, came a picture called “The Searchers” where I first used the dialect I now use as “Festus”. And it was off of that feature, that part, that a writer came along by the name of Jay Simms and Jay wrote a story for “Have Gun Will Travel” and I was a mangy little character called “Monk” in there. I just smelled so bad that Mr. Paladin couldn’t stand me, you know. The skinner that followed the trail herd. Do you remember that? And I smelled so bad that they’d tie me off up on the hill every night so they could get some….

"Ken is to be admired for a number of reasons. Ken was on the board of the John Edwards Memorial Foundation which was housed at UCLA. As far as I can tell, he was the first person to write a book about a musical group. Not an individual, a group. That's a tough assignment especially when there were so few sources to turn to since, I don’t believe, any of the guys had kept any clippings, memorabilia or anything. The only exception being a scrapbook Roy kept from the first year or two after the Pioneers were formed. This didn’t deter Ken and he did enormous research to document their story.

"Thanks to Ken's diligence he was able to interview all of the members of the Pioneers except for Karl Farr and Pat Brady who had passed on. Ken’s book is important for a number of reasons. First, the Pioneers' story is of great importance and Ken's hard work and dogged determination allowed him to document the facts. This took enormous research on Ken’s part. Although there is a large music press today, there was no such thing during the Pioneers years. Ken was able to meet, interview and get the stories from each of the Pioneers including the very private Bob Nolan. The second reason Ken’s book is important was an unexpected one. It gave Bob, Tim, Lloyd, and the rest of the guys a greater appreciation of what they had accomplished. Believe it or not, they really weren’t aware of the importance of what they had created.

"During the years JEMF was in Los Angeles it was a very well meaning organization that, nonetheless, had great difficulty in raising money. Noble objectives, excellent publication, beginnings of an important collection of country music materials but no financial support from anyone or any organization. The only reason it lasted as long as it did was because of Ken’s very active leadership in organizing fund raising benefits. Without the money he raised it would have passed from the scene much earlier."