Biography
Born and raised in Kentucky, fiddler and vocalist Shelby David Atchison, known as Tex, performed with the Prairie Ramblers, a widely popular traditional country ensemble, throughout the 1930s before pursuing independent work as a sideman, vocalist, and composer. His talent for crafting humorous drinking songs proved especially suited to country music. One such number, the honky-tonk standard “Sick, Sober and Sorry,” emerged from his collaboration with Eddie Hazlewood and became a signature piece for Lefty Frizzell.
The Prairie Ramblers themselves originated with four Kentucky musicians—harmonica specialist Salty Holmes, bassist “Happy” Jack Taylor, mandolinist Chick Hurt, and Atchison—before engaging Patsy Montana as vocalist in the early 1930s. During the Depression years, Atchison’s left-handed fiddle supplied memorable passages on the group’s popular recording of “Nobody’s Darlin’ but Mine.” In her second year with the band, Montana achieved the first million-selling country record by a female artist with “I Want to Be a Cowboy’s Sweetheart.” The ensemble’s widespread appeal included a pronounced fascination with cowboy themes, evidenced by the members’ occasional mounted stage entrances, an entrance hardly challenging for the Kentuckian nicknamed Tex.
Western swing, a style closely identified with Texas, gradually shaped the Prairie Ramblers’ sound and later surfaced in Atchison’s own explorations. He also succeeded in rockabilly, an emerging genre whose rhythmic drive might have seemed distant from his established reputation as a leading pre-war country fiddler. For the independent Sage label in the 1950s he cut the rockabilly single “Tennessee Hound Dog” backed with “Mail Man,” supported by Roy Lanham’s incisive lead guitar. By the time of that release he had already accumulated more than ten years of solo recording activity on Crystal, King, Federal, Deluxe, and Imperial.
On the West Coast he contributed fiddle to numerous sessions, including dates with Johnny Bond in 1951 and with Johnny Horton soon afterward. From the mid-1940s into the 1950s he joined guitarist Merle Travis in the ensemble Tin Ear Tanner and his Back Room Boys; several of their broadcasts survive on the Country Routes anthology Cliffie Stone’s Radio Transcriptions 1945–1949. The pair co-wrote “I’m a Natural Born Gamblin’ Man.” Atchison further maintained his Western swing connections by joining fiddler Rocky Stone and additional players in Ole Rasmussen and the Nebraska Cornhuskers. Although Rasmussen himself lacked Texan roots, the bandleader’s two-year Capitol contract, begun in 1950, yielded more than two dozen sides. Standouts such as “Sleepy-Eyed John” and the jazz-derived “C Jam Blues” highlight Atchison’s fluid command of the Western swing idiom.
The Prairie Ramblers themselves originated with four Kentucky musicians—harmonica specialist Salty Holmes, bassist “Happy” Jack Taylor, mandolinist Chick Hurt, and Atchison—before engaging Patsy Montana as vocalist in the early 1930s. During the Depression years, Atchison’s left-handed fiddle supplied memorable passages on the group’s popular recording of “Nobody’s Darlin’ but Mine.” In her second year with the band, Montana achieved the first million-selling country record by a female artist with “I Want to Be a Cowboy’s Sweetheart.” The ensemble’s widespread appeal included a pronounced fascination with cowboy themes, evidenced by the members’ occasional mounted stage entrances, an entrance hardly challenging for the Kentuckian nicknamed Tex.
Western swing, a style closely identified with Texas, gradually shaped the Prairie Ramblers’ sound and later surfaced in Atchison’s own explorations. He also succeeded in rockabilly, an emerging genre whose rhythmic drive might have seemed distant from his established reputation as a leading pre-war country fiddler. For the independent Sage label in the 1950s he cut the rockabilly single “Tennessee Hound Dog” backed with “Mail Man,” supported by Roy Lanham’s incisive lead guitar. By the time of that release he had already accumulated more than ten years of solo recording activity on Crystal, King, Federal, Deluxe, and Imperial.
On the West Coast he contributed fiddle to numerous sessions, including dates with Johnny Bond in 1951 and with Johnny Horton soon afterward. From the mid-1940s into the 1950s he joined guitarist Merle Travis in the ensemble Tin Ear Tanner and his Back Room Boys; several of their broadcasts survive on the Country Routes anthology Cliffie Stone’s Radio Transcriptions 1945–1949. The pair co-wrote “I’m a Natural Born Gamblin’ Man.” Atchison further maintained his Western swing connections by joining fiddler Rocky Stone and additional players in Ole Rasmussen and the Nebraska Cornhuskers. Although Rasmussen himself lacked Texan roots, the bandleader’s two-year Capitol contract, begun in 1950, yielded more than two dozen sides. Standouts such as “Sleepy-Eyed John” and the jazz-derived “C Jam Blues” highlight Atchison’s fluid command of the Western swing idiom.