Roy Rogers: King of the Cowboys
Some things you just don't outgrow. Take Roy Rogers. Yes, the idea of singing cowboys is about as silly as fried Spam sandwiches, but if you were 10 once and watched Roy, Dale, and Trigger cavort on the big screen (or, later, on television), there's probably still a part of you that can't hear "Happy Trails to You" without feeling a wee bit wistful. You'll feel more than that after browsing through this nostalgia-soaked photo-biography. Combining wonderful vintage photographs with a brief autobiographical narrative from Roy himself, the book chronicles the storybook life of one Leonard Slye, a Depression-era teenager when his family left their Ohio farm for a dust-bowl journey to California. Only a few short years later, Leonard had become Roy Rogers, "King of the Cowboys," and was launched on a career that would encompass 81 movies, a TV series, and hundreds of radio performances and recordings. The success of Roy Rogers says a lot about the U.S. during the Depression and throughout World War II, but it says even more about the wide eyes of kids everywhere at anytime. It's all here in this sparkling piece of Americana.Bill Ott