A Memorial Tribute To Texas Ruby And Curly Fox - 1940's Grand Ole Opry

Issued on the Bronco Buster label , #9016



Tracklist



1 Rock My Cradle (Once Again)

2 Whoa Mule

3 Just One Little Kiss

4 Listen To The Mocking Bird (Inst.)

5 I Don't Love Nobody

6 You'll Remember And Be Blue

7 Blue Love (In My Heart)

8 The Old Home

9 Ain't You Sorry That You Lied

10 Nobody Else But You

11 I'll Take Back All I've Said About You

12 Would It Make Any Difference To You

13 Have You Got Someone Else On The String

14 Travelin' Blues

15 Even Though I'll Shed A Million Tears

16 The Letter That Broke My Heart

17 We Live In Two Different Worlds

18 With Tears In My Eyes

19 Hometown Blues (Inst.)

20 Casey Jones (The Brave Engineer)



Ruby Agnes Owens (June 4, 1908 – March 29, 1963), professionally better known as Ruby Texas, was a pioneering country music female vocalist and musician of the late 1930s through to the early 1960s.

Ruby was born on a ranch in Wise County, Texas, near Decatur. When she was three years old she started to sing, often together with her two brothers. Her career began when a radio station owner in Kansas City radio station heard her sing in Fort Worth, Texas. In early 1937, she made her debut recording for Decca Records. Later that year, she met fellow musician Curly Fox in Fort Worth. They were married in 1939. The couple was invited to be members of The Opry in the late 1930s.

Ruby was dubbed "radio's original cowgirl". The husky voice star was something of a cross between Sophie Tucker (whom she was often compared to) and Dale Evans and with her husband, fiddler Curly Fox was an enormously popular radio and personal appearances star in the 1940s although she failed to have any hit records. Her best-known song, "Don't Let That Man Get You Down" predates Loretta Lynn's famous stand-up-to-your-man hits by twenty years. This sassy persona was adopted on most of Ruby's recordings, "Ain't You Sorry That You Lied" and "You've Been Cheating on Me", songs perhaps too trailblazing to have been record hits in that very conservative era of country music. Most of Texas Ruby's recordings were done for the King Records and Columbia Records labels. Her first sessions were in Dallas for Decca Records in February, 1937.

Texas Ruby made her first breakthrough in the music industry working with country bandleader Zeke Clements but by the mid forties she and husband Fox had developed their own stage act and were much in demand, including a stint as regulars on the Grand Ole Opry from 1944 to 1948. The Foxes left the Opry and in late 1948 moved to Texas, where most of their concert dates were. The move seemed to push national stardom further away from the duo, who in the early 1960s moved first to Los Angeles (appearing on the Town Hall Party country music television series) and then back to Nashville in attempts to return to the limelight.

Fox, widely considered one of country music's greatest fiddlers, worked the Opry more frequently as background instrumentalist than as a star. As he was appearing on the Opry on March 29, 1963, Ruby was killed in a fire at home. It was the most grim month in Opry history as Ruby was the fifth Grand Ole Opry star to die that month, following Patsy Cline, Hawkshaw Hawkins, Cowboy Copas, and Jack Anglin. Fox was reinstated as an official Grand Ole Opry member shortly afterward but he retired by 1970

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Arnim LeRoy Fox (November 9, 1910 – November 10, 1995), better known as Curly (or Curley) Fox, was an American old-time and country fiddler, singer and country musician.

Fox was born in Graysville, Tennessee as the son of a barber. He learned to play the fiddle with some help from his father and from James McCarroll, (a member of the Roane County Ramblers). Fox first played professionally on the traveling Indian Medicine Show with Chief White Owl; later, he played with Claude Davis and the Carolina Tar Heels in Atlanta, Georgia. Fox founded the Tennessee Firecrackers in the 1930s, performing on WSB-AM in Atlanta. For a time, he worked for promoter Larry Sunbrock on his "fiddling contest" show. Sunbrock would travel around the country with his fiddlers and arrange "world championship fiddling contests" in towns along the way. Fox played with the Shelton Brothers on recordings they made for Decca Records between 1934 and 1936, in addition to recording a few of his own singles.

In 1937, Fox met singer Texas Ruby (Ruby Agnes Owens), sister of Tex Owens, while playing in Fort Worth, Texas. They married shortly thereafter in 1939, and began playing together professionally on the Grand Ole Opry, where they performed from 1937–1939 and 1944-1948. From 1940-1944, they became a regular feature on Boone County Jamboree over WLW-AM in Cincinnati, Ohio. The couple was invited to be members of The Opry in the late 1930s.They occasionally recorded together, including a session for King Records in 1947. In 1948, Curly and Ruby moved to Houston, Texas, where they remained for over a decade, working in radio and television.

In 1960, the pair returned to work on the Grand Ole Opry, but Ruby often fell ill and Fox frequently performed solo. An album was recorded together for Starday Records in 1963, but 72 hours after the recording sessions, Ruby died in a mobile home fire. After her death, Fox played solo for several years but eventually moved to Chicago to live with family. Though he ailed in his old age, he sporadically performed live; he returned to Graysville in the mid-1970s, performing with a local bluegrass outfit before retiring