Tex Ritter

Woodward Maurice Ritter was born on January 12, 1905, in Murvaul, Texas, to Martha Elizabeth (née Matthews) and James Everett Ritter. He grew up on his family's farm in Panola County, Texas, and attended grade school in Carthage, Texas. He attended South Park High School in Beaumont, Texas. After graduating with honors, he entered the University of Texas at Austin in 1922 to study pre-law and major in government, political science, and economics. After traveling to Chicago with a musical troupe, he entered Northwestern Law School.

An early pioneer of country music, Ritter soon became interested in show business. In 1928, he sang on KPRC in Houston, Texas, a 30-minute program of mostly cowboy songs. That same year, he moved to New York City and landed a job in the men's chorus of the Broadway show The New Moon (1928). He appeared as cowboy Cord Elam in the Broadway production Green Grow the Lilacs (1931), the basis for the musical Oklahoma! He also played the part of Sagebrush Charlie in The Round Up (1932) and Mother Lode (1934). In 1932, he starred in New York City's first broadcast Western, The Lone Star Rangers on WOR, where he sang and told tales of the Old West. Ritter wrote and starred in Cowboy Tom's Roundup on WINS in 1933, a daily children's cowboy program aired over two other East Coast stations for three years. He also performed on the radio show WHN Barndance and sang on NBC Radio shows; and appeared in several radio dramas, including CBS's Bobby Benson's Adventures.

In 1936, Ritter moved to Los Angeles. His motion picture debut was in Song of the Gringo (1936) for Grand National Pictures. He went on to appear in 70 movies as an actor, and 76 on movie soundtracks. He attracted special attention in 1952 for his rendition of "The Ballad of High Noon" over the opening credits of the celebrated film High Noon, and later sang it at that year's Academy Awards ceremony, where it won Best Original Song.

When television began to compete with movies for American audiences, Ritter began to make appearances on the new medium following 71 straight movie appearances. In 1953, he began performing on Town Hall Party on radio and television in Los Angeles. In 1957, he co-hosted Ranch Party, a syndicated version of the show. He made his national TV debut in 1955 on ABC-TV's Ozark Jubilee and was one of five rotating hosts for its 1961 NBC-TV spin-off, Five Star Jubilee.

Ritter became one of the founding members of the Country Music Association in Nashville, Tennessee, and spearheaded the effort to build the Country Music Hall of Fame and Museum into which he was inducted in 1964. He moved to Nashville in 1965 and began working for radio station WSM and the Grand Ole Opry, earning a lifetime membership in the latter in 1970. Ritter provided the voice of Big Al in Disney's Country Bear Jamboree, which opened in 1971 at the Magic Kingdom. Big Al sung Tex Ritter's Blood on the Saddle (song), which became an iconic and beloved moment in the show. The attraction would later open in 1972 at Disneyland and in 1983 at Tokyo Disneyland. While the Disneyland and Magic Kingdom versions of the original Jamboree would close in 1985 and 2024 respectively (Disneyland's being replaced by the Vacation Jamboree which closed in 2001, and Magic Kingdom's being replaced by the Musical Jamboree which still operates today), Ritter's performance as Big Al can still be heard in Tokyo to this day.

In 1970, Ritter entered Tennessee's Republican primary election for United States Senate. Despite high name recognition, he lost the nomination to United States Representative Bill Brock, who then defeated the incumbent Senator Albert Gore, Sr. in the general election.

Tex Ritter married movie actress Dorothy Fay on June 14, 1941. They raised their sons, Tom and John in Los Angeles, then moved to Nashville, Tennessee, in 1965, as Tex was focused on singing and recording. He died of a heart attack in Nashville on January 2, 1974, at age 68. Because his son John died at age 54 of an aortic dissection, which is known to be hereditary, the family now believes that Tex died of an aortic dissection.