Rex Allen (born this day in 1920) is undoubtedly best to know to modern audiences as that highly recognizable narrator of Disney wildlife movies (and many other films and commercials. He started out as a vaudeville singer, moved on to radio, record albums and B movie westerns as a singing cowboy in the the 1940s and 50s. He primarily did voice-over work during his last decades, right up until his death in 1999.
Here he is now singing the perennial cowboy classic “I Ride an old Paint”:
To find out more about the history of vaudeville, consult No Applause, Just Throw Money: The Book That Made Vaudeville Famous, available at Amazon, Barnes and Noble, and wherever nutty books are sold.
