JERRY IRBY AND THE TEXAS RANCHERS

  

           


                                             
             


                                             
                

Gerald « Jerry » Irby’s career in Country music spanned almost forty years. The list of artists he worked with during that time reads like a WHO’S WHO of Western Swing. It ranges from the likes of Ted Daffan to lesser known Western swing performers such as Bill Mounce And The Stars Of The South. In 1937 Irby was « pickin’ and singin’ » with the Bar X Cowboys, a first rate Houston based outfit which featured among its number Elmer and Ben Christian, and singer/guitarist Chuck Keeshan, the latter having worked with Leon « Pappy » Self, and who is to found, along joined Ted Daffan’s band, The Texans. Irby also spent sometime, in the late thirties ans early forties, with another Houston based ensemble, The Texas Wranglers. This outfit comprised of a number of noted Western swing musicians, including steel guitarist Bob Dunn, bassist Hezzie Bryant, vocalist/guitarist Dickie McBride, Leo Raley (mandolin), Gary Hester (fiddle) and Johnny Thames (banjo). These boys, at one time or another, had played alongside the likes of Floyd Tilman, Aubrey « Moon » Mullican and Cliff Bruner.globe 113 irby

During his tenure with the Bar X Cowboys and the Texas Wranglers, Irby recorded with those outfits for DECCA. He was also the featured vocalist on at least one of Bill Bounce’s BLUEBIRD releases.

America’s entry into the Second World War in 1941 heralded the end of an era. A number of Western swing outfits disbanded as members of those bands were drafted. The recording ban of 1942 further compounded matters. However, all was not gloom and doom. With industry on a war footing the economy boomed. The public at large, having shrugged of the last vestiges of the depression, wanted to be entertained. As the war drew to a close the recording industry, which hiterto had been monopolised by a handful of record companies, started to grind in action again when the recording ban was lifted. Small independant record companies sprang up across the country to challenge the monopoly that major labels like DECCA and RCA-VICTOR had once enjoyed. It was these small idependant companies who more or less set the trends in the post war years.

One of the first record companies to be set up in Texas was Bill Quinn’s GULF label. Based at 3104 Telephone Road in Houston, GULF made its debut on the scene in the fall of 1945. Quinn, who later ran the legendary Goldstar studio, and label of the same name, recorded a number of fairly well known Western swing acts, including Al Clauser, Moon Mullican and Jerry Irby. It was Irby’s waxing of his self penned ditty career. « Nails In My Coffin », a classic song which is now a standard number in Country music, was a regional hit, albeit a modest one, for Irby. « Nails In My Coffin » has been recorded, with varying degrees of success, over the years by countless Country singers.

By Bopping