Texas Ruby

Texas Ruby, born Ruby Agnes Owens (June 4, 1910 (some sources say 1907 or 1908) - March 29 1963) in Wise County, Texas was a pioneering country music female vocalist of the 1930s through the early 1960s. The husky voice star was something of a cross between Sophie Tucker (whom she was often compared to) and Dale Evans and with her husband, fiddler Curly Fox was an enormously popular radio and personal appearances star in the 1940s although she failed to have any hit records. Her best-known song, "Don't Let Your Man Get You Down" predates Loretta Lynn's famous stand-up-to-your-man hits by twenty years. This sassy persona was adopted on most of Ruby's recordings, "Ain't You Sorry That You Lied" and "You've Been Cheating on Me", songs perhaps too trailblazing to have been record hits in that very conservative era of country music. Most of Texas Ruby's recordings were done for the King Records and Columbia Records labels. Her first sessions were for Decca Records in 1937.

Texas Ruby made her first breakthrough in the music industry working with country bandleader Zeke Clements but by the mid forties she and husband Fox had developed their own stage act and were much in demand, including a stint as regulars on the Grand Ole Opry from 1944 to 1948. The Foxs left the Opry and moved to Texas, where most of their concert dates were, in late 1948. The move seemed to pushed national stardom further away from the duo who eventually in the early 1960s moved first to Los Angeles (appearing on the Town Hall Party country music television series) and then back to Nashville in attempts to get back into the limelight.

Fox, widely considered one of country music's greatest fiddlers, worked the Opry more frequently as background instrumentalist than as a star and tragedy struck one night as he was appearing on the Opry in 1963, Ruby fell asleep smoking in their mobile home and was killed in the resulting fire. It was the most grim month in Opry history as Ruby was the fifth Grand Ole Opry star to die that month, following Patsy Cline, Hawkshaw Hawkins, Cowboy Copas, and Jack Anglin. Curly Fox was reinstated as an official Grand Ole Opry member shortly afterwards but he retired by 1970.

Texas Ruby was the sister of Tex Owens, who composed Eddy Arnold's hit "Cattle Call".

External links

* http://www.rootsweb.com/~txrober2/TexasRubyCurlyFox.htm