Country Music Hall of Famer he might be, but Tex Ritter (1905-1974; inducted into the Hall in 1964) was a showman first, and Bear Family’s second Ritter boxed set makes the point abundantly, if not painfully clear. Every kind of recording you can imagine is here: children’s songs, patriotic recitations, honky-tonk songs, folk songs, cowboy songs, gospel songs — and, of course, “High Noon”, from the movie of the same name, which went nowhere on the country charts but was a big hit on the pop ones.
The Texas native came by this polyglot naturally enough. Growing up on western music, he was singing cowboy songs on the radio in Houston by the mid-1920s, but by the time he made his first recording in 1932, he was working in Broadway musicals and had established himself as a minor radio personality in New York.
From there, he moved to the opposite coast and settled into the role of singing cowboy movie star, making 85 movies from 1936-45. When Billboard began tracking jukebox play of “folk” records in 1944, Ritter emerged as a first-rate chart presence, scoring big hits with numbers such as “There’s A New Moon Over My Shoulder”, “You Two-Timed Me Once Too Often”, and “When You Leave Don’t Slam The Door”.
Still, by the time this set begins, at the end of 1947, Ritter’s biggest charting days were behind him, and this perhaps accounts, at least in part, for the grab-bag nature of the material. What ties it together, if anything, is Ritter’s voice, a low, resonant baritone that retained a fair measure of down-home warmth and sincerity despite his more than occasionally stilted pronunciation.
Most of the sessions were done in Hollywood with the early Capitol Records gang — Speedy West (steel guitar), Merle Travis, Wesley Tuttle and Jimmy Bryant (guitars), and Cliffie Stone (bass) — who provided skilled and appropriate backing no matter what the material. On the other hand, they’re often in the background, while everything from electric organ to strings is pushed up in the mix.
There’s a lot here that, if not dross, is of interest only to serious, completist fans of Ritter or the other participants. These recordings are for the most part neither of particular historical interest — they weren’t especially influential or popular — nor rootsy and raw enough to qualify as “authentic” hillbilly music in modern terms. For everyone else, the now-deleted Vintage Collections (Capitol) or Curb’s Greatest Hits is most likely sufficient.
