Tex Ritter – Have I Stayed Too Long

Tex Ritter joined Capitol Records in 1942, the year the label opened for business. A Western film star only slightly less successful than Gene Autry, he helped stake territory for Capitol in the country field with hits such as “I’m Wastin’ My Tears On You” and “Rye Whiskey”. In the years during and after World War II, when California artists dominated the charts, Ritter was up there with Gene Autry, Merle Travis, Bob Wills and Spade Cooley.

To put it kindly, the college-educated Ritter had considerable technical limitations. Like Ernest Tubb, he often approximated pitch, at times sliding a half-step one way or the other from the right note. Also like Tubb, Ritter made those weaknesses into virtues, using them to put across a lyric with undeniable warmth and humanity. He could, in fact, sing in an animated, even ebullient manner, as he did on “Rye Whiskey” and “Boll Weevil”.

As Capitol’s top country act, Ritter was quickly recruited for the label’s Electrical Transcriptions series. Subscribing radio stations receiving the material sold ad spots around each 15-or-30-minute stand-alone show, which came with spoken song intros by Ritter (not included here). Travis, the Coonhunters (a Travis/Wesley Tuttle collaboration) and, later, Tex Williams all recorded transcriptions for the label. For the most part, Capitol’s transcription efforts never caught on.

In 1946-47 alone, Ritter recorded 96 numbers, the bulk of the material on this package. Some of the selections reprised commercial releases for Capitol or songs he sang in films. But given the sheer volume of material required, he also ventured into western standards (“Ridin’ Old Paint”), traditional folk (“Billy Boy”), blues (Lead Belly’s “Honey Chile”), pop hits (“Wave To Me My Lady”), and honky-tonk (“Careless Darlin'” and “It Makes No Difference Now”).

No one ever thought at the time that these transcriptions would be commercially released on a comprehensive package. Therein lies the rub: this much Ritter inevitably spotlights both strengths and limitations. He took nearly every song at a slow or medium tempo, resulting in samey performances, sometimes painfully so.

While the backup bands include such first-rate musicians as Merle Travis and the Fiddlin’ Linvilles, their accompaniment was spare and rudimentary. Indeed, the three jazz instrumentals recorded on the 1945 session (never issued until now) liberate the band.

A voice as limited as Ritter’s requires a more vibrant, varied background and production to mask those limitations. That didn’t happen with the 1946-47 material. To his credit, annotator and Ritter authority Packy Smith doesn’t mindlessly praise everything here. Examining certain tunes Ritter commercially recorded, at times he flatly proclaims the transcribed versions inferior to the Capitol single versions.

Smith is also candid about the strongest material: the dozen tunes Ritter recorded in 1951-52 for World Transcriptions that close the collection, which he deems possibly “the very best recording session Tex Ritter had in his forty year career as an artist.” The results bear him out. The backing musicians, including Travis and the cream of Capitol’s studio band, Speedy West on steel, and accordionist Billy Liebert, sweep away the sameness of the early material, creating effervescent versions of tunes such as “Dear John” and “Oklahoma Hills”. A year later, Ritter recorded the now-standard theme of the film High Noon, a pop hit that never even charted country, at least not in Billboard.

Even after relocating to Nashville, Tex Ritter remained an American icon, revered more for his topical, dramatic (and at times politically conservative) recitations than for his singing. These transcriptions are a worthy part of the puzzle, even if best sampled in limited doses.