Sheb Wooley

Shelby Fredrick Wooley (April 10, 1921 – September 16, 2003) was an American singer, songwriter, and actor. He recorded a series of novelty songs, including the 1958 hit rock-and-roll comedy single "The Purple People Eater", and under the name Ben Colder, the country hit "Almost Persuaded No. 2". As an actor, he portrayed Cletus Summers, the principal of Hickory High School and assistant coach in the 1986 film Hoosiers; Ben Miller, brother of Frank Miller in the film High Noon; Travis Cobb in The Outlaw Josey Wales; and scout Pete Nolan in the television series Rawhide. Wooley is also believed to be the voice actor who provided the Wilhelm scream and all of the other stock sound effects for Thomas J. Valentino's Major record label during the 1940s.

Wooley was born in 1921 in Erick, Oklahoma, the third son of William C. Wooley and Ora E. Wooley. Wooley claimed to be part Cherokee. He had two older brothers, Logan and Hubert, and a younger brother, William. Federal census records for 1930 and 1940 identify Sheb's father only as a "farmer". Sheb learned to ride his father's horses at an early age, became a working cowboy, and later an accomplished rodeo rider.

At 19 years-old Wooley married 17-year-old Melva Miller, a cousin of future chart-topping singer, songwriter, and actor Roger Miller. Wooley became friends with Miller when he lived in Oklahoma, teaching the younger child how to play guitar chords and buying him his first fiddle. The Wooleys subsequently divorced.

When the United States entered World War II in the early 1940s, Wooley tried to enlist in the military, but was unsuccessful due to his numerous rodeo injuries. Instead, he worked in the oil industry and as a welder. In 1946, he moved to Fort Worth, Texas, where he earned a living as a country-western musician, recording songs and traveling for three years with a band throughout the South and Southwest. In Fort Worth, he also married for the second time, to Edna Talbott Bunt, a young widow with an infant son named Gary. The three of them left Texas in 1950 and moved to Hollywood, California, where Wooley hoped to establish himself as an actor or singer in film or in the rapidly expanding medium of television.

At the age of 15, the musically talented Wooley formed a band called the "Plainview Melody Boys", that periodically performed on radio at station KASA in Elk City, Oklahoma. He started his recording career in 1945. His music encompassed Western swing, country, hillbilly, rock and roll, pop and novelty songs. At the start of the 1950s, Wooley began fusing Western swing with rhythm and blues, but later in his career, his music shifted to the more commercial Nashville sound.

Biography summary from English Wikipedia, photograph via Wikimedia Commons.