1995 Western Heritage Awards Show; Western Heritage Awards 1995 34th Annual 1995 Western Heritage Awards Show

. . . . . . . . . Welcome to the 34th Annual Western Heritage Awards, honoring excellence in western literature, television, music and film.

And now, please welcome the Executive Director of the National Cowboy Hall of Fame, Byron Price. . If you were lucky, it was something that you were born with, as natural as breathing, as basic as the color of your eyes, or maybe you discovered as the sun rose over Colorado, or in the final honing ballots. Maybe it happened in a page of an Owen Wester or Louis Lamour Novel, or maybe as Bonanza's Cartwright plan, banished the bullies for another week. Whereas you looked down at the foot deep ruts worn by thousands of Oregon-bound wagons, might have pricked your senses the first time you saw a Charlie Russell painting. Through a leg over your first saddle, or watched the intricate footwork of an eagle dancer, as old as time. Whatever this magic moment, whenever it came, this time, this place became bigger, and better, and grander than anything you could dream or imagine.

It was the moment you fell in love with the West. It's a real excited to get to meet you guys at the visit. And I grew up together in Hobbes New York. And I grew up together in Hobbes New York. What is it about that period in time that is still so exciting to people?

Well, I think most of us are little boys at heart, the Indian wars and wrestlers, and it was something about the West. It was pretty darn glamorous. It wasn't in reality. It was tough, hard, dirty work. But there's something about getting on a horse, taking off across free and easy, and it was a glamorous part of our history. That way, as I did cowboy a little and it's tough, long hours, four in the morning until 10 at night, but you liked it or you wanted to do it. There was no monetary reward. You just barely made a living. But there's something about it. Once you've done it, it's kind of hard to forget it. This is the cowboy hall of fame. So in the Western world, there are only two important Western awards you can get. One is the Golden Boot, and the other one is this one.

And there is nothing any bigger. And as far as comparing it to Oscars, I don't know. You don't buy this and you can play around and advertise enough. You can get yourself an Oscar, I think. This is a company of people that are absolutely when you really come down to it and look at what's happened, and what happened to cowboys, and they were the beginnings of the West, along with the Indians, of course. To me, paying them honor is to me the greatest of it all. And to me, I just can't, I don't have words enough to express myself really for the honor and the privilege of coming here just to say, hi, how are you? They have made a magnificent structure here, and they're paying homage to the Indians and to the cowboys and to this hall of fame that is so beautiful.

Unless you come here and you walk along in silence because you know they can hear. To me, to my way of thinking, I was fortunate enough to receive one of the awards three or four years ago, and it seems to me that this particular award is as important at least, maybe more important than any other awards ceremony in the country, because it encompasses the whole Western culture. Which is our myth as Americans. I'm not talking about just Oklahoma, Texas, New Mexicans, whatever, all of America. It's our myth, and it's also as vital as Greek mythology is to the world. I think it's what they know about us in Germany. They have Western towns in Germany. They have a town in Germany named after my hometown, Lubbock, Texas. And they dress up Western clothes, right? Horses and do all this stuff.

They're more Western than folks in Lubbock are. I'm proud of my awards that I've received from the Cowboy Hall of Fame and any other awards I've ever received, except for lifetime membership in the American Court of Works Association. Before the National Cowboy Hall of Fame had a building to call home, the brightest stars in Western music, film, and literature were coming to Oklahoma City for the Western Heritage Awards. The first were presented in 1961. The Hall's present home atop Persemin Hill wasn't completed until 1965. In the early years, honorees received a bronze replica of Charles Russell's The Night Herder. Today's Wranglers are a more contemporary design by John Free. Ladies and gentlemen, Mr. Richard Farnsworth. Thank you for that. Hope the home of welcome. That's all from us.

They've made a few changes in this place since I was here three years ago. I see a lot of old timers and a lot of familiar faces. I guess we're all getting a little older. My good friend, Pat Butchermus, to say when you get to be about my age, it's just nice to look out and see wall-to-wall liver spots. It's really great to be here, but that's as funny as that yet, so I better start. So let's welcome another legendary Texan, very Corbin.

Well, thank you, Richard. And thank you. It's great to be back here. Well, I wouldn't miss being here to do this because this is the only chance, probably ever, that I've got a fighting chance of being the prettiest presenter there is. Now, Bill DeVane was going to be here, and I think I can beat him. Now, but now we've got some good-looking musicians. We've got Michael Martin Murphy and Red Steagall. I don't know if I can beat them because they wear their whiskers, and I don't know what they look like under there. But then we've got Ernie Borg-9 and Jack Helum, and they've made a living with their faces and scaring children. So I wouldn't miss this chance for the world. I'm pretty.

Anyway, our first award tonight for the outstanding art book of 1994, Charles M. Russell, sculptor. It is dedicated to Charles Marion Russell, who was born in St. Louis, Missouri in 1864, and died in Great Falls, Montana in 1926. But it's also dedicated to his greatest champion, Nancy Cooper Russell, who was born in Mansville, Kentucky in 1878, and died in Pasadena, California in 1940. And she desperately wanted this book. And more than 50 years after her death, we were finally able to give it to her.

What I'd like to do for folks here is to read what Will Rogers said about his very good friend, Charlie Russell, because it was Will Rogers that began the Amon Carter Museum collection. And I think Will Rogers is kind of well known around here. And this is what he wrote shortly after Charlie Russell died. He said, it's hard for any man to tell what we did lose when we lost this fellow. No man in my little experience ever combined as many really unusual traits, all based on one, just human, no conceit. You won't find a line or a spoken word ever uttered by him that would lead you to believe he had ever done anything that was the least bit out of the ordinary. I think every one of us that had the pleasure of knowing him is just a little better by having done so. And I hope everybody will get a little aid in life's journey by seeing how it's possible to go through life, living, and let live.

He not only left us great living pictures of what our West was, but he left us an example of how to live in friendship with all mankind. A real downright honest to God, human being, unquote. And thank you very much. It took six years to write and edit the Oxford history of the American West. So we do owe much thanks to our editors at Oxford, Linda Morse and Liz Sonneborn. And we also feel we should share this award with 25 other scholars, a marvelously talented group, who gave us some of their best writing and thinking. They would agree with the three of us that the American West is big, important, and complex. And that for the history of the West, there's no end in sight.

Finally, my father, Charles Milner, is here tonight. He was born in 1909 in Leesburg, Ohio, a small farming town several miles east of Cincinnati, Ohio, where in 1911, Leonard Sly was born. During the Great Depression, Lynn Sly would head West and become Roy Rogers. And my father, he settled in North Carolina. Now Charles Milner can't sing or ride like Roy Rogers, but whose father can. But I have to say his youngest son got to move out West. And I took with me the love of learning of books and of movies that my father gave me. Thanks dad for all your love and support. Much of what is best about the West was created not through rugged individualism, but through teamwork. And our book was produced in that great Western tradition. So I want to thank all the members of my team.

My generous co-editors are talented contributors. My colleagues at Amherst College back in the Pioneer Valley of Western Massachusetts. And my family, especially Bob, Adam and Sarah, bright Western spirits all. Thank you very much. The Hallows were built where they were invisible from the cliffs on either side. In making paths through the brush, they bent aside the twigs. Cutting or breaking them would have made the path much more conspicuous. Every evidence of the Indian's work shows the same unceasingly painstaking care to avoid detection. They have evidently learned to prize their liberty above everything else. Ishi and his family managed to remain undetected until the surveyors discovered their camp. When I moved to California in 1970, I was really surprised to understand and learn American Indians had been exterminated as part of a public policy. It wasn't what I was taught when I was in school in Texas. When I read the book Ishi in two worlds, I began to see how American Indians had the resilience to survive to this day.

And I think we have the end of the trail statue, which is one of the most important images of American Indians, and it's here in the front of this building. It's a powerful symbol. And Ishi was at the Panama Pacific Exposition in 1915 when they unveiled that statue as statues in our film. And I think what's remarkable is that American Indians are still here alive today. And the West is alive today. The cowboys are here today. The grizzly bear is here today. We're hanging on and we're not going to disappear. I think what makes this country great is what is out here in the West. I want to really thank the Cowboy Hall of Fame because it's the one place that honors the writer. You know that there are many, this documentary is won many, many awards. And this is the only festival and award that I have been invited to along with the producer and the director. Thanks first and foremost to the many retired Texas Rangers that I interviewed without whose wonderful reminisces the story could not have been written.

Thanks additionally to my editors editor in chief Greg Curtis and executive editor Paul Berka without whom the story might have been written but not written particularly well. And finally to the wonderful images you just saw by photographer Dan winners without whom the story may have been written perhaps even written well but perhaps also not even read. Thanks again very much. Well what a thrill as a street kid from Chicago. I was hooked very early on the history of the American West.

Unfortunately it was presented by Jack L. Warner and Harold Flynn and it was all wrong but I learned that only much later and my love never died. And one of the two in iron hand is a homage to a writer whom even the most dedicated Western fans have seldom if ever heard of when I was in Germany in 1987 on a book tour for my north and south novels. I came across a shelf about this long in bookstore after bookstore by a man named Carl May or my as the Germans pronounce it M.A.Y. My lived at the turn of the century he was a near to well at occasional jailbird but he found his metier writing novels about the American West which he never saw to the year before he died. He created two characters that are still revered outside of the United States around the world win a tube and old shatter hand. And my story was not a pastiche of my but attribute to a man who probably with the exception of William F. Cody did more to spread the magic and the myth of the American West than any other human being outside of the United States.

That's why the story was written and wherever Carl May is tonight in jail or in authors heaven he'll share the award with me. Thank you so much. There is a freedom out here that money can't buy. I give up $10 an hour job to come out here and do this for thousands of months and I wouldn't trade it for the world. Well, I mean it's beautiful day and it's days like this making our work. The old sage is Oklahoma's last best place.

There is a big wide world out there and most of us are pretty much aware of it. And you'd be surprised that the number of cowboys that's been to college and got degrees and they've come back to just to be back outside. I grew up in Oklahoma. I've always wanted to win one of these because let me tell you I was born in the West. I live in the West. I love the West. This right here folks is the West. Thank you all very, very much. This is a beautiful award. The biggest compliment I think that we received while we were there was from a cattle buyer and while Dave and I were sloshing around in the in the pens with the cattle we came out dragging our gear and other equipment and he looked at us and he said you know I've been a lot of ranches and I've seen a lot of photographers trying to do stories but I've never seen photographers lead the pens with as much manure on them as you two have. And I was hoping he was complimenting our effort as opposed to our clumsiness. Leave you with one more quick quote. Every man's life is a plan of God and what a wonderful plan God had for working cowboys. Thank you very much.

I know Barry for a photographer you can't get work either but I want to say our jobs is to capture the sounds and the pictures and I'm not sure if we did such a good job on the smell but I'm not sure we do it but I'd like to thank National Cowboy Hall of Fame for this honor. It's a true true honor and KWTV Channel 9 for giving us the opportunity to do this feature. Thank you. Very I'll guarantee you that that rancher was not commenting about that manure because of any of any reason other than he was accusing you of stealing fertilizer. I never look forward to the end of the day or the evening drab and melancholy gray or featureless shadows of purple to black or the work finished up or simply put back while the business of living slowly unwinds.

I was always waiting for sadly enough time though I've lived for this moment most all of my life. It's beginning not Indians but the edge on my life. I've cursed too damn much. I've never prayed well. Maybe that God means to send me the hell ride and drag through the devil to pay for my crimes but I'm damned if I'll go before sadly enough time. Sadly enough time is one of 20 or so poems in Charlie Goodnight, his life in poetry and song. It's the winner of this year's outstanding original music. Here to sing a song from his award-winning album is my friend Mr. Andy Wilkinson along with his producer Lloyd Mainz.

Thank you very much. Thank you very much. Thank you very much.

May the children of our children remember who I am. Remember Charlie Goodnight and the dangers of a man who took what God had given just to follow his own hand. Thank you very much. Well this year's honorees were writing, filming and recording their Wrangler winners. There's been work underway on Persemin Hill as well.

The first two phases of a four part thirty million dollar construction project at the Cowboy Hall of Fame were completed in 1994. Knowing that the hall almost left Oklahoma City about seven or eight years ago, it has been preserved and to be standing here in 80,000 square feet of phase one and two of the new structure. It's pretty exciting. It's a good thing for Oklahoma City. Visitors to the National Cowboy Hall of Fame now use a grand new entrance highlighted by the end of the trail sculpture which was moved here from an outbuilding. There's also a new suite of offices for the museum staff, but the centerpiece of this new construction is a huge meeting room intended to replace the founder's hall which was often filled to overflowing as when former president Bush appeared here to dedicate the expansion project.

This room itself has become already one of the most popular places in Oklahoma. We're getting calls from all over the city as well as outside of Oklahoma City for people just to come and rent this facility. The room is framed by huge landscapes by New Mexico artist Wilson Hurley. Each of them took a year to complete. Perhaps most important to the curatorial staff is a new secure and climate controlled storage area for the 70% of the museum's collection that's not on display. Some of these artifacts and art pieces will find homes in the third and fourth phases of the construction project, which will add more gallery space. Please welcome Red Steagle and Michael Martin Murphy. More Michael, what do you think of this house that Byron built?

I think it's just beautiful. It's easy to tell he's a cowboy. He made the ceiling high enough at the hay looks for. What a beautiful facility. Western stuff and Western culture has pretty much always been relegated to the movies. Hollywood, Louis Lemur, and that's how most people think about it. This event elevates it to its true cultural importance as a folk culture that is equal to any other folk culture around the world. And the literature it's produced, the art it's produced, is far more important than all the commercialization that's been done. And that's why I come because it's one of the few times that I feel people recognize it for its true historical and cultural importance. Our next award goes to the outstanding factual narrative, Poacher's Paradise. Poaching has reached alarming levels in our national parks.

In the last 10 years, thousands of animals have been killed illegally. Yellowstone was the country's first national park. It was created more than 100 years ago to protect and preserve the grandeur of America's wilderness. This park is as big as the states of Rhode Island and Delaware combined. It is a place where guns are banned. A place where animals like charger are supposed to be safe. In Yellowstone, there are hundreds of animals a year that are taken by Poachers. You, especially while I have service experts, would tell you that somewhere between 30 and 50 animals are killed, poached for everyone that you find out about. Yellowstone has 55 full-time rangers, 55 rangers to prevent poaching across 3,000 square miles. It happens on our boundary out in the backcountry in 30 miles away from the nearest road. In my case, it means an enormous amount. I grew up in a foreign country. I grew up in Manchester, which is in England.

When I was going up watching cowboy movies, learning about the myths of the West, in a way this is more important than an Emmy. I've won an Emmy. And to win something like this, it's really significant in my life. I mean, if my dad has passed away, but if my dad could ever have seen me, he'd stand on a stage here and get this award, he'd have been thrilled a bit, because he would never have heard of an Emmy, but he certainly heard of the West. And to get something from the cowboy old frame is one of the most significant things that's happened to me in my career. In my terms, anyway. And I thought I would read you the first poem from the red drum and express my feelings that way.

The poem is called Hyroglyphs, and it's really me in this poem, I think. From this high up, you were the first to see the sunrise, to watch the mountain rocks turn crimson in the dawn. A river flowed in the valley then. It caught the light and hurled it, brilliant fragments from wind rumpled mere. Now, standing in your place, I know your ecstasy. I know that driven by a need you hardly understood, you dipped your fingers into paint and trembling, drew the rising sun, ripples of water, a figure, arms outstretched, dancing on the edge of years. Thank you all so very, very much.

We hold the knee. We hold the knee. Here I will stay.

The white population was growing up as a young woman on the reservation among the Native American women and men, and she had a tough life until she found her way through the politics and religion of that period. So, I want to tell you now about my first fan letter, that to me represented everything that came afterwards. I was about a month after I published the rounders, I received a letter beautifully handwritten. I was thrown off by that. It was from Shamrock, Texas, and I could tell when I read the first words, it was from a working cowboy.

And he was thanking me for writing about those old cowcamps where he spent several wonders, like I wrote about there. And every old cowboy that ever lived, or ever will live, is going to find no outlawed grown horse, or no outlawed gray horse, somewhere down the line, and he explained that. And I thought, how can this man have lived through all those wrecks and keep his hands together to write this beautiful script. At the end of this letter, my first fan letter of my life, he thanked me. I said, thank you, Mr. Evans, for reliving my life for me. He said, my 60-year-old daughter wrote this, and she also read me the book because I've been stone blind for 15 years, and I'm not a year old. Thank you. In addition to honoring writers, musicians, and filmmakers, the cowboy hall of fame annually honors less famous, but no less extraordinary people who have made significant contributions to Western culture.

Colorado cowboy Tom Dorrance is the recipient of this year's Chester A. Reynolds Memorial Award. Dorrance's calm, gentle style with animals has earned him a significant following among horsemen. Two men are being inducted into the Hall of Great Westerners this year, former Wyoming Governor and US Senator Cliff Hanson, and artist and author Tom Lee. Western music is as much a part of Texas as long horns and big sky, and it's the heart of this year's outstanding traditional music. This winning album is called My Home It Was in Texas. It's performed by one of the most talented human beings I've ever known, and one of the people in my life that I am very proud to call my friend Mr. Buck Ramsey, and it was produced by Lannify. For my home it was in Texas. My past you must not know. I seek a refuge from the Lord, where the sage and a pagan go.

For the brand they'll see I run. Sleeper cares on their side. All on the hip side and shoulder when I grow older. Zapatero don't tend my high. Blue mountain your measure. Blue mountain with side so steep. Blue mountain with horse head on your side. You have won my heart for the King. I run with let it go. I drink in blue goose alone. I dance at night with the Mormon girls and ride home beneath the moon.

I trade in monsoon store. The bullet holes in the door. It's calico treasure. My horse can measure when I'm drunk and feeling sore. Blue mountain your measure. Blue mountain with side so steep. Blue mountain with horse head on your side. You have won my heart for the King. My home it was in Texas.

I love it. For the outstanding motion picture. Some people hear their inner voices with great clearness and live by what they hear. Such people become crazy. Or they become legends. So begins the critically acclaimed film Legends of the Fall. She's to be your brother's wife. Yes, though you might better remind him of that fact. He's not here to defend himself. No, he's not, but I see you are here to defend him and what is his. Even though he's abandoned her and you and I won't even speak of who else he abandoned. Don't you believe my son. Some of your toes to be a soldier and soldiers die since they're slaughtered by men and government parasites like you.

You leave her on us. He used her and he deserted her. You're darling Tristan. I love her. And he stole her from me. Hell, if you want to know the truth of it, he stole her from Sam. You will before the war. God help me. There's a library. I've forgotten where it is now. But on its walls and grave in stone are these words. Whatever a culture truly honors its artists will strive to produce. I believe that. So I'd like to say a special thank you to the cowboy Hall of Fame. Not only for collecting and making available to all of us.

The best of our national past as we see in these halls. But also for such occasions is this which by honoring current good works serves also most importantly to I believe. The high purpose of inspiring the future is personified by our artists. Towards longer thoughts. Deeper feelings. And greater works. And I thank you. Tonight we present a special directors award to men who continue to carry on a very proud tradition. Please welcome the sons of the pioneers. Thank you.

To my lonely summer home. Carry me away. From these skies of grey. Though I'm feeling blue. I'm along with you. To the ocean. The head for lasting hymns of Oklahoma. They hold the middle temperatures to be fine. The golden grain on hills of green. Wave to valley school and theme. Too bad some folks have never seen the ever lasting hymns of Oklahoma.

The head for lasting hymns of Oklahoma. The living names of men she claims are wrong. The sun were right and the sun were wrong. In history's pages, fools and songs. Oh, will them now. For they all belong. To the everlasting hills of Oklahoma.

All day I face a narrow place without the taste of water. To water. To water. To water. To water. To water. To water. To water. To water. To water. To water. To water. To water.

To water. To water. To water. To water. To water. To water. To water. To water. To water. All that started with the four fellas, the Royal Rogers and Bob Nolan, Tim Spencer and Hugh Far, the four of them, they became the sons of the pioneers in 1934 and it was a foundation that they set and then Hugh's brother Carl joined and a kept on going like that. One member would leave, they'd have another one come in and we just kept their tradition that they started and we still do.

And that's why it just keeps going. Gary Cooper, Tom Nick's, Moreno Harrah and the great Duke himself. The stuff of legends and tonight, Roy Rogers and the late Carl Far, Hugh Far, Bob Nolan, Tim Spencer, Pat Brady and Lloyd Perramon. The founding members of the sons of the pioneers joined more than 40 larger than life heroes and the hall of great Western performers. It all began at station KFWB in Los Angeles in 1934.

A fresh-faced group called the Pioneer Quartet was introduced by the announcer as the sons of the pioneers. Tim Spencer, Bob Nolan, Hugh Far and the young man named Len Sly, who would become known as Roy Rogers, were on their way. The rest is music history. In 1935, the same year Carl Far joined the group. The boys landed their first movie role.

It would be the first of many. As the cowboy took up permanent residence on the silver screen, so did the pioneers. You see, he's in a gym, and I knew you boys wouldn't mind helping out an old timer, so I told him as long as his daughter was only going to be here for a few days at his daughter. Say, what is it? What goes on? Well, what I'm trying to tell you is that she thinks he owns a ranch and she's coming to visit him. Well, he does know him once, so I told him he could sort of use this. The pioneer credo made sense to a World War II audience. And even after a cowgirl named Dale stole Roy's heart, the group continued to ride the trail of success. And to the hearts that made him the winning of the win, he sings her sweetest song, and holds them gently to the bridge.

Of the same smooth harmony that tamed a frontier and turned a nation onto cowboy crony, the sons of the pioneers are Western music, and have been for 60 years. Tonight, the National Cowboy Hall of Fame is proud to add the founding members of the sons of the pioneers to the Hall of Great Western performers. From 1945 to 1940, in Hollywood, there was a motion picture company called Hoppalong Cassidy Productions. This company produced six pictures a year, Hoppalong Cassidy Pictures starring William Boyd. The controller auditor of that company was a fellow by the name of Jack Helum. I'm very proud to tell you that after three years of very close association with Bill Boyd,

he was not just my boss, but he was my friend. He was a good guy in black, an understated hero with enough charisma to lasso film audiences across the United States and then to to step a corral television generation decade later. A hero for ever known by everyone as Hoppy. I'm Cassidy, Hoppalong Cassidy. In case you want to take this up later, you'll find me at the bar 20. Cassidy's the name. I'll remember. My friend called me Hoppy. Hoppy, why should we keep down your encyclicality? His was the only Western character to overcome the actor. To millions of fans around the world, William Boyd was Hoppalong Cassidy, and the bad guys didn't stand a chance. I'm left in the hurry.

Maybe to smell, girl, Boyd. Hello, Greg. I'll let you out of jail, huh? Yes, and I've got you to thank for putting me in there. Lay off, Gregor. That's a good advice. Either way, it's your move. Oh. You know what you've done? Yeah, put it up, Polk Hat. I got more than sure as you would. I'll give you one. Stop that, it's done. Neither did a young actress named Grace Bradley. In his one act of banditry, Hoppy stole her heart. His larger-than-life image threw young Americans into an unprecedented state of hero worship, first in the theaters, and then on the TV screens of their homes. Next to my dad, I guess Hoppalong Cassidy's the greatest film I ever heard of. You know, I bet Cassidy would be also happy if he knew you felt that way about him. It's only fitting that Hoppalong Cassidy should join the ranks of inductees into the National Cowboy Hall of Fame's Hall of Great Western performers.

Let's go on the sway, down the moon, the trail to where Cowboys reign. Hoppalong Cassidy. Hoppalong Cassidy. Here we turn, soon again. There's beliefs to say goodbye unto them. Hoppalong Cassidy. So long Hoppalong. His strength of character, the wit, the wisdom, and all the values that he stood for. I know Levin and the hearts of all of them, and all those who only knew him through the films. So I thank you very, very much. And my Cowboys, Westerns, and the Cowboy Hall of Fame live forever.

Thank you. Thank you. Thank you, dear love, to the ground. I know that life is just where the trail will rise. Drifted along with the dumpling and dumpling, I know when night has come, that anew was born at dawn.

I know he broke it along, deep in my heart as a song. Here on the range I belong, drifting along with the dumpling, tumble away. For more information on the National Cowboy Hall of Fame and Western Heritage Center, call 1-800-937-8871.