"I always remember one of our Bill Mack shows at Craterville Park, Lawton, Oklahoma, where the ‘star’ appearing with us was Smiley Burnett, who had been the comic Frog Millhouse in the old Gene Autry movies. He was actually a very talented pianist and vocalist, and one of his numbers on the show was a medley of songs that he had written for the Gene Autry movies. During intermissions between shows he told us that he never received writers credit for those songs because he had an agreement with Autry to sell all the songs that he could write to
Autry for $5.00. Smiley thought it was a good deal at the time because in their early, lean years, they drove to personal appearances by automobile and he wrote those songs primarily for something to do to fill the time traveling. My childhood hero Gene Autry was apparently already becoming an astute business man, which is probably why he died a multi-millionaire."

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[This message was edited by Gene Jones on 01 February 2006 at 12:03 PM.]

Actually, Jimmie Rodgers died before Gene Autry's career took off to any degree and for this reason alone I would believe that Rodgers might not even have taken interest in what Autry was doing.

Gene,

Gene's Republic movie career didn't really take off until his first movie for them, "Tumbling Tumbleweeds" in 1935.

Gene didn't think his audition went to well, so he headed back to Oklahoma and worked in a telegraph office. This is where Will Rogers heard him and told him to go back to New York and try again.
So in 1929 Gene returned to New York City where he cut his first record for Victor and went on to sign recording contract with American Record Corporaion ( a division of Columbia).
His first sesion was in December of '29, and his first major hit was just over a year later. That song was "That Silver-Haired Daddy of Mine" in 1932. In 1933 it became the first recording to be awarded "Gold Record" status for selling a million copies.

I have never heard anything about Gene "hi-jacking" Jimmy Rodgers career. They both started recording around the same time, and both were doing songs in the style of the current pop music.
Gene's records were cheeper than Jimmy's because Gene was on "American Record Corporaion"(a small Columbia sub label) and Jimmy was on Victor Records(the top label at the time). This was back before the labels used price-fixing tactics, so the small label sold records for less. I don't see it as any kind of competition or "hi-jacking".

I'm curious of the steel guitar/dobro playing on that disc you have. Is there a lot of it? I ask this because Gene Autry did a delightful little version of "That Silver Haired Daddy of Mine" along with a guy named Jimmy Long, around that time frame (1931, mabye?), which had some tasty acoustic steel playing.