Fleming Allan

 

Fleming Allan was one of the early songwriters (in the 1930s) who facilitated the transition of Western music from the range to the silver screen, records and radio, and helped carve a place for it as a lasting American musical genre.
   He was from South Dakota but lived most of his life in California. He worked in Chicago at WLS at the same time as Gene Autry & Smiley Burnette, and moved to Hollywood about the same time as they did.
   His songs can be heard in the films of Gene Autry, Ken Curtis, Tim Holt, Rod Cameron, Bob Baker, George O’Brien, Roy Rogers and Dick Foran. And they were recorded by a number of singing cowboys. Roy Rogers recorded “I’ve Sold My Saddle for an Old Guitar” twice! One of Gene Autry’s best-known early recordings was one Fleming Allan wrote called “Old Buckaroo,” a song that is sometimes mistakenly credited to Johnny Marvin.  Carolina Cotton, Janet McBride & Jill Jones recorded Fleming Allan’s “Singing on the Trail.”
      Ray Whitley and Bob Baker sang a lot of Allan’s songs onscreen. The Cass County Boys, the Beverly Hill Billies and others recorded his songs and Eddie Dean recorded at least 12 of Fleming Allan’s Western songs, so, while his name was not well-known, it is evident that Fleming Allan made an important contribution to Western Music.