Memories from the Homestead: Pioneer treasures—Tommy Nallie [Part 3]

Once again, another huge thanks to so many of you who have replied over the past month with comments, including cards and emails, sending condolences to Tommy's family and all of us in the Sons of the Pioneers.      

Tommy Nallie in 2010 as bass player and tenor vocalist with Roy Rogers Jr. and the High Riders. (Photo courtesy of the Sons of the Pioneers Museum)

Last week I left off with 1988, when Tommy stepped away from the Pioneers for a bit. I knew in my heart that someday he would return.

As the years passed by, I continued working hard following the Pioneers and other Western groups closely. It was during my high school years that I really kicked everything into overdrive. In 1993, I became acquainted with several dear folks in the used record business who were able to help me in purchasing nearly every Pioneers’ recording or old radio broadcast that existed. 

A gentleman in Brighton, Michigan, John Morris of Old Homestead Records was extremely helpful in helping me get my RCA collection rolling, and Burl and Diana Johnson from Frontier Records in Jenks, Oklahoma, were amazing, supplying me with cassette copies of the Pioneers' radio shows by the dozens plus album reissues from a record company in Germany. These fine folks became dear friends working with me closely for the next six years.

In November 1994, I got to see Tommy onstage for the first time since 1988, and we traveled a long way to catch him and all the SOP, but there was a lot more involved with this particular event that made it an absolute must. We drove cross country from Branson to Tucson, Arizona, for the official 60th Anniversary Sons of the Pioneers concert and reunion at Centennial Hall on the University of Arizona campus.

I'll admit, this trip was going to be difficult to pull off, mostly due to finances, but fortunately my high school principal gave me full permission to skip school for a week. Dad and Mom missed a week of work, and my sister was allowed to skip school as well. If it wasn't for my grandparents, we would never have been able to attend. The concert and reunion event was being billed as the last official performance of Roy Rogers-Dale Evans and the Sons of the Pioneers together. 

Tickets for the event sold out in four days. A few months before the event, the Sons of the Pioneers Fan Club approached me and asked if I would write a feature story on the concert event for the group's newsletter. I was excited! This was my first professional opportunity in journalism. Dad, Mom and my sister Julie looked at this event as a much needed vacation, while 16-year-old me felt it was an extremely important business trip.

Monday evening, November 14, 1994, was indeed a historic event. I'll have to describe it for y'all at a later time. For the reunion portion of the over four-hour concert, past and present members of the Pioneers joined Roy Rogers for several songs that brought an extended standing ovation, and that was just one of many. 

The event was filmed and later made available on VHS, and a little over twenty years ago, it was reissued as a DVD collector's set.

Again, years of hard work, rehearsals, record store visits, hundreds of dollars spent in collecting not only the records, but all the movie appearances, in an age when the internet was only available in the local library, it would all pay off. By 1997, the Sons of the Pioneers were coming to me to obtain the recordings and radio shows of their celebrated past! I was supplying photography and movie footage for their slide presentation during their concerts. I treasured every moment of it. The Pioneers all treated me as a member of their family, although Dale Warren was extremely hard to figure out and it would be years before we would truly become friends. 

Tommy and I would really become acquainted in the 1999 time frame going forward. We had exchanged email addresses and phone numbers and he was working full-time in Rosewell, New Mexico, in automotive but played music on weekends.  By 2002, we had visited several times, and we almost always talked about our collections of Sons of the Pioneers memorabilia and what we were looking for to complete our collection of commercially released recordings. There was one Pioneers album out there that both of us were missing—the extremely rare RCA LP from 1961, "Westward Ho."  One day in 2003, a copy of "Westward Ho" happened to show up on eBay.  It was located in Edmond, Oklahoma, just north of OKC. The seller had no idea what he had; he listed it for ten dollars! I had no idea Tommy would get involved in this auction too!

There's an excellent YouTube video we made recently that goes into greater detail about how this moment all unfolded. In your YouTube search, type the following: "Collecting Sons of the Pioneers Memorabilia - A Cautionary Tale."  I suggest you stop right here to watch this video and then continue!

I still remember my email and phone discussions with Tommy in 2006 when he finally grabbed his "Westward Ho" copy.  We both had now completed our collections of recordings, a library of almost 600 songs.  For a few years, time got away, but we visited again in the summer of 2009 when I received the awesome news from Luther, that Tommy was moving back to Branson! Looking through my emails I found a conversation from June 2009.  Tommy wrote, "Yes, moving back to Branson this fall. Will find you and say hello when we get settled in."

In the spring of 2001, I was asked to host a weekly cowboy music performance at a couple of Branson resorts. My "Western Round-Up" was born and the show series lasted seventeen years, ending just months prior to Tommy asking me to join the Pioneers. In the years 2005 to 2009, I was doing the Western Round-Up four nights a week and performing with the Horn Family's Riders of the Circle B at the Circle B Cowboy Supper Show six nights a week.  I averaged anywhere from 330 to 360 performances a year, performing in front of close to 30,000 guests yearly. 

In late 2009, our friend Dusty Rogers reached out to Tommy and I, giving us the opportunity to join his band the High Riders. I couldn't believe it. I was offered a vocal and guitar position and Tommy was offered a vocal and stand-up bass position.  On Friday morning, January 22, 2010, at around 9:30 a.m., Tommy and I met in the parking lot of the former Roy Rogers-Dale Evans Museum in Branson, shaking hands for the first time since July 1987 when I was nine.  We were about go into an audition to see if our talents were what Dusty was looking for.  Our adventures were just beginning. 

Dusty had made a decision to change his sound and go vintage with a vocal trio and band that honored his dad's roots, the strong harmony singing that Roy had developed with Bob Nolan and Tim Spencer in the fall of 1933 that led to the formation of the Sons of the Pioneers. 

That morning of January 22, along with Tommy and myself, several other notable musicians with wonderful talents participated in an hour-plus run through of some of Dusty's favorite Pioneers songs.  Seated on the stage with Dusty, Tommy and I were Nathan Agdeppa on fiddle, Dino Strunk on lead guitar and Greg Moody on steel guitar.

Right off, we ran through three songs.  None of us had ever played together before. I wasn't really sure how this was gonna go; I don't think any of us knew. Tommy took the tenor vocal part, Dusty had the lead vocal, and I had the baritone vocal, while driving the whole group with my rhythm guitar - my 1946 Gibson L-48, playing in the 1930s style of Roy Rogers and Karl Farr.  We did "Tumbling Tumbleweeds," "Along the Navajo Trail," and "Blue Shadows on the Trail."

I'll never forget the smile on Dusty's face.  He knew right then that he had the dream band he always wanted. It was really overwhelming! I was now in the presence of Western royalty—the family of Roy Rogers and Dale Evans, and here's this super wonderful man, my childhood inspiration—Tommy Nallie right there by my side, harmonizing together; we'd be standing in the front line with Dusty and his son Dustin for a true journey of happy trails.

On February 3, Tommy and I met with Dusty again, going through intense vocal rehearsals, and then full band rehearsals on February 9, 2010; from there we met daily, five days a week each morning. On Thursday, March 4, 2010, we made our debut at the Mickey Gilley Theater, and that season we played 180 shows.  

This amazing experience would continue for the next three years.  There's tons of stories with Tommy and I, a big 'ol mess of adventures that would bring us much national recognition.  Next week I'll go into greater detail with part four.  Happy trails!