Buck Page

Lifetime Reel Cowboy Member and Silver Spur Award Winner (2002) Buck Page, 'last of great singing cowboys,' founded the original Riders of the Purple Sage, a Western Music band whose music conjured up a bygone era of the open range and cowboys on horseback.

Buck, who sang and played 21 instruments, had his first solo compact disc, "Right Place to Start," released December 2006.   In July, 2006 Buck made his last 'official' performance before a crowd of several thousand in Scottsdale, Ariz., at a benefit celebration of the National Day of the Cowboy.  He was the last of the great singing cowboys and an amazing guitar player," Dave Moordigian, a musician friend, said.  "He played country, western, jazz, and swing."

When it came to the music of the Riders of the Purple Sage, Mr. Page made one thing clear,

"You're either Country or you're Western," he said in an interview with the L.A. Times in 2000. 

"We sing about the Grand Canyon, cows, and girlfriends back home. We don't sing about the girl at the corner bar. We don't cry in our beer, in other words."  Theirs was the kind of music, he said, that cowboys played on the range at night to calm their cattle.

"You want them to stay in one place," said Buck, who owned a number of ranches over the years.  "The music soothes them."

Born in Pittsburgh on June 18, 1922, Buck started playing string bass and rhythm guitar on the radio at age 11 with a Western band called the  "The Valley Ranch Boys."  In 1936, when Buck was only 13, he 'borrowed' the Zane Grey Western novel title, Riders of the Purple Sage and his group was hired as 'staff band' at radio station KDKA, the NBC affiliate in Pittsburgh.  The band did five hour long shows a week and were broadcast coast-to-coast for three years.

The original members included Bob Parker on guitar, Ken Cooper on accordion, Hal McCoy on string bass, and Buck on guitar, banjo, and fiddle.  The Riders later moved to New York City, where they did coast-to-coast broadcasts on WOR Radio and became regular performers at a nightclub called the Village Barn and toured.  During World War II, while Buck was in the Navy serving aboard a submarine chaser and his fellow band members were also in the service, singer Foy

Willing started a Western band on the West Coast called the Riders of the Purple Sage.  Willing's group, which was active until 1952, is the Western band that had a string of hit recordings and made numerous appearances in films. Those credits have often been incorrectly attributed to Buck's Riders of the Purple Sage by reporters in recent years, said Gary Bright, Buck's former manager, whose independent record label, RPS Records, recorded and released Buck's solo CD.  Bright is not sure when Buck became aware of Willing's Riders of the Purple Sage, but he said the two men later met.

By the early '50s, Buck had moved to the West Coast, where he played in various bands, worked as a studio musician (he played on shows such as "Wagon Train" and "Laramie" and played guitar and trained horses.  Buck owned and trained thoroughbreds and quarter horses and, in the 1960s, worked for the Baldwin Piano Co., where, among other things, he worked with engineers on the development of Supersound Amps.

Buck re-formed his Riders of the Purple Sage in the early 1960s. With various members over the years, they recorded three CDs and performed at major venues and Western festivals until a couple of years ago. One of the more famous line-ups included Cody Bryant (who nows continues the tradition, www.ridersofthepurplesage.com ).

Buck also received the Country/Western Living Legend Award from the North America Country Music Association, International in 2001.

Buck, who was 84, died of natural causes Aug. 21, 2006 in his apartment at the Burbank Seniors Artists Colony in Burbank, Ca.  He leaves his daughter, Christine Hanson.

Biography written by Dennis McLellan, Los Angeles Times, September 3, 2006 (edited by Danny "Ramblin' Jack" O'Connell)