His Records Sell Better Than Gracie Fields's

Radio Record, Volume XII, Issue 33, 27 January 1939, Page 3

His Records Sell Better Than Gracie Fields's

But Hamilton Once Asked Tex Morton To Leave

PROPHET may be without honour in his own country, but not, apparently, a yodelling cowboy. Nelson-born Tex Morton, now touring: his home country with the Will Mahoney revue company, makes gramophone records of hill-billy songs whicn sell on an average, 10,000 a month. His sales in New Zealand and Aus tralia are claimed to exceed those of any other artist in the world. Yes, even higher than Gracie Fields, George Formby and Babby Breen. it has all happened so quickly and unexpectedly to Tex Morton that he’s stili a trifle dazed by his success. That’s not surprising. Just over two years ago he was earning a precarious living singing on the streets in New Zealand towns-Hamilton considered him a nuisance and asked him to leave-and now he is very definitely a personality in the entertainment world. Except when away on tour he has beer on the air in Austvalia five nights a week for about the past two years; he has been on tour with Jim Davidson and his band for the ABC, and both Davidson and Gladys Moncrieff, also featured on the progzamime, have ac knowledged that at many of the concerts Tex- Morton’s reception was the greatest; and he has also appeared with the Comedy Harmonists. That by no means exhausts the list of thig 22-year-old artist’s achievements; but it is enough to indicate that he has made a success of his own sphere of work. How did he become a yodelling cowboy-or rather, a yodelling boundary-rider, as he is better known in this part of the world? Tex Morton isn’t quite sure of the answer to that question, except that yodelling always seems to have been a habit with him. And guitar-playing he learnt from his American father. As a boy in Nelson-he’s not so much more than a boy now-he seems to have had a passion for running away from home. He did jit about once a year; and sometimes he was hauled back, and sometimes. he went back of his own accord because he was hungry. But he managed to see a lot of New Zealand. He travelled with a fleacirens round the show rounds: be.

was a tent hand with Wirth’s Circus. And, of course, he did. that street singing which the city fathers. of Hamilton didn’t. al*ogether appreciate. Then he went to Australia, and tackled a variety of joys, including more street-singing in backcountry towns, shearing, drovingin fact, almost anything that came along. It was at a community sing in Brisbane that Tex Morton was heard by an official of the Columbia Gramophone Company, and given an audition. And from that time, more or less, Tex Morton was in? Tex Morton doesn’t only yodel cowboy songs, he also composes them-in fact, most of the numbers in his repertoire came out of his own head. He can’t write

music, but he gets the, words and the tune in his head, memorises them, sings them--and then very often somebody transcribes them and they are published. . Sharp-shooting skill, Tex Mortom picked up very largely from Lionel Bibby, Australian ballistics expert, and one of the best shots in the world. Bibby gave him a good many hints on how to use a gun, and then Tex Morton went into the back country and practised them : naa OL Ne Te