Thursday, July 25, 2019

THROWBACK THURSDAY: Walter Brennan's Musical Legacy



Dag nabbit, it's Walter Brennan's birthday! He was born 125 years ago today in Lynn, Mass,

Happy birthday, Walter!

He was one of the country's best -known character actors starting back in the 1930s, winning his first Oscar for his role as Swedish lumberjack Swan Bostrom in a film called Come and Get It. 

He's become best-known for being the crusty sidekick of cowboy heroes like Gary Cooper (The Westerner and others) and  John Wayne (Rio Bravo and others). And I first knew him as Grandpappy Amos in a TV sitcom, The Real McCoys, which ran from 1957 to 1963.

But he also was a recording artist, a pioneer of white rap (or maybe, in Brennan's case, we should call it "clip-clop" music

Here are some of his tunes:



Mel Tillis wrote it, Kenny Rogers made it a hit. But Walter nailed it:



You have to have known that Walter would have at least one maudlin mama song


And this one actually was a huge hit in 1962:



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