Roy Rogers Old Time Radio Program Show
1/2 hour western (sometimes variety) show
"King of the Cowboys"

Roy Rogers, known as the “King of the Cowboys” was born Leonard Slye in 1911 in Cincinatti. He passed away in 1998, just a few months before fellow singing cowboy legend Gene Autrey. The Slyes lived a somewhat vagabond life. Traveling around the country trying to find steady and good employment. The Slyes survived floods, factories closing, false employment leads, and other difficulties. Roy found himself traveling to California as part of the great Okie migration to find a job. Rogers later read John Steinbeck's 'Grapes of Wrath' and commented on its accuracy. In short, his early years were pretty rough. Deciding that his future in fruit picking and shoe factories (his job of choice to that point) was not for him, Roy turned to music. He had been entertaining his traveling companions with his guitar and voice all this time.

Roy's music career started in 1931 with a group called “Uncle Murray's Hollywood Hillbillies.” Deciding that no one in their right minds would listen to a band called that, Rogers played for several other cowboy music bands. Eventually Rogers settled in with a group called the “Sons of the Pioneers.” Then in 1937 due to a dispute between Gene Autrey and the bosses as Republic Pictures, Roy got his break in the movies, and changed his name from Slye to Roy Rogers. He went on to star in over 100 movies.

The early years of the radio show was basically a western variety/music show. Featuring Rogers and the Sons of the Pioneers singing such songs as “Tumbling Tumbleweeds, Cool Waters and, Don't Fence Me In.. But over the years the show lost more of the music and gained more of the typical western storylines. Every good cowboy needs a good horse, and Roy's was his Palomino horse called Trigger. Trigger was so popular in the 1950s that he would occasionally leave Roy and star in his own adventures. And sometimes Trigger would pair up with Roy's German Shepherd dog, Bullet. You would think that a cowboy with both a horse and a dog might not need a woman, but Roy teamed up with singer and cowgirl Dale "Queen of the West" Evans. Dale co-starred in Roy's movies, and played a similar girlfriend role in these radio programs. Dale was considered the most popular woman in Westerns and she wrote the couples theme song "Happy Trails". After Roy's wife Arlene died, Roy and Dale got married in 1947 and stayed together for the rest of his life, Dale passed away in 2001.

The episodes in this collection are mostly of the later years, relegating the music sometime to just a song at the end. But no matter the episode, they almost all end with

Happy Trails to You, Until We Meet Again...