Tex Ritter

 Tex Ritter (January 12, 1905 – January 2, 1974)

Ritter was a country music singer and movie actor popular from the mid-1930s into the 1960s, and the patriarch of the Ritter family in acting (son John and grandsons Jason and Tyler). He is a member of the Country Music Hall of Fame. In 1936, Ritter moved to Los Angeles. His motion picture debut was in Song of the Gringo (1936) or Grand National Pictures. He starred in 12 B-movie Westerns for Grand National, including Headin' for the Rio Grande (1936), and Trouble in Texas (1937) co-starring Rita Hayworth (then known as Rita Cansino). After starring in Utah Trail (1938), Ritter left financially troubled Grand National. Between 1938 and 1945, he starred in around forty "singing cowboy" movies. He made four movies with actress Dorothy Fay at Monogram Pictures: Song of the Buckaroo (1938), Sundown on the Prairie (1939), Rollin' Westward (1939) and Rainbow Over the Range (1940). Ritter then moved to Universal Pictures and teamed with Johnny Mack Brown for films such as The Lone Star Trail (1943), Raiders of San Joaquin (1943), Cheyenne Roundup (1943) and The Old Chisholm Trail (1942). In 1944, he scored a hit with "I'm Wastin' My Tears on You", which hit No. 1 on the country chart and 11 on the pop chart. Fourteen years later, an article in the trade publication Billboard noted that with that song "Tex reached the style of rhythmic tune that would assure his musical stature." "There's a New Moon Over My Shoulder" was a country chart No. 2 and pop chart No. 21.

In 1945, he had the No. 1, 2, and 3 songs on Billboard's Most Played Jukebox Folk Records poll, a first in the industry. Between 1945 and 1946, he registered seven consecutive top five hits, including "You Two-Timed Me One Time Too Often" (No. 1) written by Jenny Lou Carson, which spent eleven weeks on the charts. He moved to Nashville in 1965 and began working for WSM Radio and the Grand Ole Opry, earning a lifetime membership in the latter in 1970. In 1974, Ritter had a heart attack and died in Nashville, Tennessee ten days before his 69th birthday. He is interred at Oak Bluff Memorial Park in Section 8 in Port Neches in Jefferson County, Texas .