I was 12 when I ordered my first guitar out of the worn and discolored pages of a Sears, Roebuck catalog. The story that I bought it on the installment plan is untrue, the invention of a Hollywood press agent. Local color. I paid cash, $8, money I had saved as a hired hand on my uncle Calvin's farm, baling and stacking hay.
Gene Autry
I honestly never considered myself an actor. An actor would be someone like Paul Muni or Spencer Tracy. I was more of a personality.
My friends kidded me about going so far on such modest talent. I always agreed with them. I had no illusions about my films, nor did I consider myself anything special as an actor or a singer.
I've done 'Back in the Saddle Again' so darn long, I could go to sleep and sing it.
You know who first started calling me 'The Cowboy' - Paul Richards. He loved to play golf and when he came to Los Angeles he used to call me up and I'd arrange for him to play at Lakeside and when he saw me, he always called me 'Cowboy' and everybody else in baseball picked it up.
I remember Chicago well. That's where I started in radio in 1930 and it snowed a lot that year, too.
Oh, I fooled around with baseball, but I never really took it serious.
When he was a player, I was always close to Jim Fregosi.
I learned a lot from Jimmie Rodgers when I started trying to yodel.
A lot of times, somebody will say something and it will give you a good title. So you carry a pencil with you and jot that down. You don't just write a song right quick, though. You fool around and work with it. You have to keep going over and over it and see if you can't write a song that means something.
I try to treat all of them the same; I try to be a friend to the ballplayers. I treat them like human beings, like I would want to be treated.
My movies were always clean. There was never anything obnoxious in them that might offend anybody.
In the movies, I never lost a fight. In baseball, I hardly ever won one.
