Getting ready for Equiblues (and thinking about Roy Rogers)

By Ruth Ellen Gruber

I'm gearing up for Equiblues, the annual rodeo and country music festival in St. Agreve, in the Ardeche region of south-central France... Equiblues starts Wednesday and lasts through next weekend. Concerts, line dancing, rodeo, competitions, "western market" etc, all in a charming little French town. The last time I was there -- a local winery even produced "Equiblues" wine....a merlot....

Meanwhile, doodling on the internet here in France, I came across this article about Roy Rogers, the American Singing Cowboy .... I was a huge Roy Rogers fan when I was a kid; I used to watch lots of westerns on TV -- Gene Autry, of course. And Hopalong Cassidy. Then the Range Rider, Cheyenne, Sugar Foot, Gunsmoke, Have Gun Will Travel, Bonanza, Maverick.... etc etc. Roy Rogers was one of my favorites, especially in my, ahem, earliest youth. And Davy Crockett, which was sort of a western. My brother had a coonskin cap that he took off only with the greatest of reluctance. And I wore a fringed leather jacket and led a pack of kids racing about as if we were on horseback....(in the suburbs of Philadelphia)....

Music -- Different approaches to Don't Fenc(ing) Me In

By Ruth Ellen Gruber

"Don't Fence Me In" is one of the iconic songs of the Wild West; the quintessentially Singing Cowboy's ode to the open range and all the aspirations and cliches that that embodies.... it was popularized by Roy Rogers (my biggest childhood TV cowboy crush) years before I was born. Here's Roy (and Trigger) introducing it in the 1944 movie "Hollywood Canteen."



Far from originating on the prairies, the song was an early offering by the ultra-urban, ultra-urbane Cole Porter, who wrote it in 1934 for a movie that was never produced.

Over the years, there have been a zillion covers of the tune -- including this, on German TV, by Ken Curtis -- in his costume from his days as "Festus" on Gunsmoke.



Gunsmoke, and the Festus character, were popular in Germany -- one of the folks I would see at country and western festivals in Berlin affected the Festus look and went by the moniker Festus Junior.

Festus Junior at Berlin Country Music Messe 2008. Photo (c) Ruth Ellen Gruber

Below -- a different take on the song by another ultra-urbanite, David Byrne: