JIMMY WAKELY & BOB NOLAN
Left (left to right): Jimmy Wakely, Wayne Burson, Ted French, Oliver Drake, Johnny Bond and Bob Nolan.
Right: (left to right): Inez and Jimmy Wakely, Bob Nolan, Johnny and Dorothy Bond. Front: P-Nuts Nolan.
(Calin Coburn Collections
© 2004)
When Calin Coburn found these 2 pictures among his grandfather's effects in 2000, we contacted Lindalee Wakely for the story behind them -
“The party was to celebrate Mom (Inez) and Daddy's 40th Wedding anniversary. It was held on their anniversary date (December 13) in 1975 at our home in Toluca Lake, California. I had planned this party for three years and my two sisters (Deanna and Carol) worked with me to make it a reality. It was a complete surprise.
“Some background: Wayne Burson trained his own race horses in Washington state and was racing one in San Francisco the weekend of the party but made it to the party anyway. I don't know if he is still living or not. The rest of the men in that photo are gone.
“Ted French was in hundreds of westerns. He was a lovely man and we grew up with Ted and his family. One of his sons was Victor French (whom we knew from childhood as "Eddie.") Victor played "Mr. Edwards" on "Little House on the Prairie" and he came to the party with Ted. It really was like old home week.
“Oliver Drake was a screenwriter. He wrote "26 Men" for TV and literally hundreds of westerns. He also was a director and directed most of Daddy's movies.
“You apparently know the identity of Johnny Bond and, of course, Bob Nolan.
“I love that photograph. To me, it represents an entire western movie. The star, the stunt double, the "bad guy" (heavy), the director, the sidekick, and the very gifted writer of the most wonderful western songs in the world, Bob Nolan.” (Lindalee Wakely to EM, Wednesday, August 09, 2000)
Linda's father, Jimmy Wakely, loved Bob Nolan's compositions, particularly "Love Song of the Waterfall". When he interviewed Bob Nolan twenty-five years later, after the Walk of Fame ceremony in 1976, he told Bob -
"My first acquaintance with the Sons of the Pioneers was when you were with Charlie Starrett at Columbia Pictures and your transcriptions come out on Standard Transcriptions and the little radio station that Johnny Bond and I were working for in Oklahoma City – we weren’t together then, we were working on our own separate shows on KTOK there - we started digging the Sons of the Pioneers and your songs.
"Then we went out and bought a songbook of yours which was published by a company in Portland Oregon by a company called Cross and Winge and in the book and on your transcriptions was a song that was to draw me to the Sons of the Pioneers and specifically to Bob Nolan, the songwriter, because you had done such a great job writing a song called Love Song of the Waterfall."
Then, for Bob, Jimmy played a recording he had made with two of his children and Charlie Hodge. That is the recording you hear as you read this page.