Sons of the Pioneers says goodbye to their “Trail Boss” Dale Warren.

Dale Warren, the man who had been the leader of the Sons of the Pioneers longer than any other member, passed away in Branson, Missouri, on August 9th, He had suffered from heart problems for some time. Joining in 1952, he was a long-time member of the famous singing group that itself has had a long and fascinating history.

The Smithsonian Institute in Washington, D.C. has designated the Sons of The Pioneers a national treasure. The greatest and most famous cowboy harmony act of all time, according to Wikipedia, “reached another historic landmark” in 2004 with “70 years of continuous entertainment.” Dale Warren was handed the reins of “Trail Boss” when Lloyd Perryman, a legend in his own right, passed away in 1977.

“King of the cowboys” Roy Rogers organized this unique western harmony group. Other famous “Pioneers” included actor Ken Curtis of Gunsmoke fame and singer and songwriter Bob Nolan, who was one of the founding members of this uniquely American form of close harmony singing that has come to be known as the “pioneer sound.”

The sheer harmonizing beauty of a Sons of the Pioneers composition is as pleasing to the ear as a Charlie Russell painting is pleasing to the eye. Both evoke the fiercely rugged independent nature of the American cowboy. It is the image of that American icon — the cowboy of the West — that gives this genre of music its uniqueness. Despite the fact that the great Western cattle drives barely spanned two decades, the legend of the American cowboy lived on through great showmen like Buffalo Bill Cody. Hollywood immortalized the G-rated cowboy, which began during the silent movie era and reached its climax during the John Wayne era. However, the singing cowboys had a uniqueness all their own. They had great looking clothes and wore their pants inside their boots, they rarely ever had their hats knocked off their heads no matter how hard they fought, and when the bad guys were locked up in jail they took out their guitars and sang a song about the trail. Hollywood had a lot full of these singing cowboys, but two stood out — Gene Autry and Roy Rogers. The Sons of the Pioneers would often provide the background vocals in many of the Republic Pictures that featured matinee idols riding across the silver screen.

To my ear, the quintessential cowboy trail songs are “Tumbling Tumbleweeds” and “Cool Water” sung by the Sons of the Pioneers. They gave these compositions both a vocal quality and a uniqueness of sound that is extremely difficult to match.

Dale Warren took over the singing duties from Ken Curtis in 1952 who departed the group to pursue an acting career. In 1977, Dale Warren took over the group’s management duties from Lloyd Perryman and then guided the group through the tough years when they had no national recording contract and when the band was mostly a road band. His vision and his leadership paid off when they started to play to packed houses — alternating between their home in Branson, Missouri, and the one in Tucson, Arizona, and filling up concert halls in between.

Warren obviously combined a love of this art form with a keen sense of knowing how to manage an act that is out of place in this world of the angry “Gangsta rapper” and a society that is too steeped in pop culture and modernism to take the time to listen in on “Autumn on the Trail,” which was one Dale Warren’s favorites.

According to the Sons of the Pioneers website, Dale Warren auditioned for the lead singer slot that had just opened up when Ken Curtis left the group to pursue an acting career. The audition went very well and Dale Warren became the latest member of the famous Western harmony group. In the world of Western harmony singing, the combination of Dale Warren, Lloyd Perryman, and Tommy Doss would measure up to the “gold standard” for a Western singing group established by Leonard Slye [aka Roy Rogers], Bob Nolan, and Tim Spencer. And some serious aficionados of the genre consider the Warren, Perryman, and Doss trio as the “most polished, and best blended ‘Pioneer’ trio of all time.” The online essay, “Pioneer Brand,” posted on the Sons of the Pioneers website, observes, in part:

“The Pioneers remain the longest continuous performing group of all time, and they have become the standard by which all other western groups are measured. The Pioneers have over three thousand compositions to their credit, have been inducted into the Western Music Association, National Cowboy, and Singing Cowboy Halls of Fame, their music has been inducted into the GRAMMY HALL OF FAME. They have been given a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame, appeared in 98 movies with such stars as John Wayne, Gene Autry, Bing Crosby, and 45 films with Roy Rogers, and have been designated as "National Treasures" by the Smithsonian Institute in Washington, DC, with two of their most requested songs, "Tumbling Tumbleweeds" and "Cool Water" having been placed into the National Archives.”

We offer our prayers and our condolences to the family of Mr. Dale Warren, and to those with whom he worked so close. May they continue painting vocal pictures for Americans with that beautiful “Pioneer” sound.

 

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