In the late 1930s the world's first and only black singing-movie cowboy, Herb Jeffries, launched an acting career and starred in five Westerns and numerous stage, movie and television roles. Known as The Bronze Buckaroo, Jeffries will be inducted into the Hall of Great Western Performers during the 43rd annual Western Heritage Awards, April 17, 2004, at the National Cowboy & Western Heritage Museum in Oklahoma City.
Born September 24, 1911, in Detroit, Michigan, to a theater family, Jeffries grew up singing and acting. In his teens, he was taken on as a vocalist with Duke Ellington's orchestra. In those days he played to all-black audiences around the Midwest and South, sometimes in a theatre and sometimes in a tobacco shed. Renowned for his rich baritone voice, Jeffries said the hit song Flamingo for RCA Victor caused him to legally change his boyhood and movie name of Herbert Jeffrey to Herb Jeffries. He said the name stuck after the record company misspelled his last name on thousands of record labels. That recording eventually sold more than 14 million copies.
Jeffries was nearly always a jazz singer, but he was also the only black, singing movie cowboy in history. He orchestrated his own successful movie career when he persuaded a Hollywood producer he bumped into in a Chicago diner to make cowboy movies starring black actors. "He had a pile of scripts that were about to be thrown away and I talked him into reviving them," said Jeffries. "One of the scripts was titled Sunset Under Prairie, and we changed its name to Harlem on the Prairie." In the movie, Jeffries played a cowboy who helped a young woman save her ranch after her father was falsely accused of not paying the bills. Harlem on the Prairie was the first full-length musical cowboy film with an African-American as its hero that was nationally distributed. All of the black films played in segregated theaters in the South after being distributed by a Dallas company.
Jeffries was in the first class to be inducted into the National Cowboys of Color Hall of Fame in Fort Worth, Texas, in August of 2003. On August 24, 2003, Jeffries performed a concert in the Red Room of the White House for nearly 300 guests which included President George W. Bush and First Lady Laura Bush; Secretary of State Colin Powell; Secretary of Education Rod Paige; National Security Advisor Condoleeza Rice; the President of Panama; and the President of Pakistan.
Jeffries became a singing sensation and opened his own nightclub in Paris, entertaining many celebrities including Orson Welles, Ali Khan and King Farouk of Egypt. Although Jeffries enjoyed a lucrative nightclub career, he fondly recalls his experiences as a screen actor. "I am most fortunate that my career has been immersed in one line of work — music — where opportunity showed uncommon cordiality to ability," says Jeffries. "And to the extent I had another career, I took on the image of a legendary figure, The Bronze Buckaroo, described by the cowboy code of the early days as one who "didn't care if the feller was orange and had purple breath so long as he was in the right place horseback at the right time and had his head screwed on straight and his heart set in the right place."
Accredited by the American Association of Museums, the National Cowboy & Western Heritage Museum is located in the heart of central Oklahoma's Frontier Country and is one of seven attractions in Oklahoma's Adventure District at the junction of I-44 and I-35. Membership to America's Premier Western Heritage Museum includes year-round admission for six people.
Posted By: Richard Kigel
Saturday, April 30th 2011 at 7:56PM
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