Gathering Gazette Voume 2, Issue 2 Volume 5, Issue 3 SILVER SCREEN COWBOYS Silver Screen Cowboys Editor Ival Secrest The 25 th version of the Cochise Cowboy Poetry and Music Gathering is only a few weeks away and many of us are wondering how the year 2017 arrived so soon. Time does pass quickly when you are having fun and the objective of all should be to have fun at the Cochise Cowboy Poetry and Music Gathering February 3-5, 2017 at Buena High School in Sierra Vista, AZ. This is the last edition of the Gathering Gazette before the 2017 Gathering, and I think you will be enlightened by the articles as they prepare you for the 2017 Gathering. I call your attention to the 25 th Anniversary Book that is detailed in the article by former Gathering Chairman, Steve Conroy. It s time to address the rumor wafting in conversations around Sierra Vista and maybe among the Artists that have come to the Cochise Cowboy Poetry and Music Gathering over the years. The rumor is that this will be the last Gathering here in Sierra Vista. I have not heard anyone on the board make that statement but most rumors have an origin, whether based on fact or fabrication, people will make an assessment and form a conclusion. Yes, there have been committee resignations scheduled to take place upon the conclusion of the 2017 Gathering. For this Gathering to continue, people must step forward and take leadership positions to do the planning and coordination necessary to have a Gathering. An event of this size just doesn t happen on the first full weekend in February without some significant planning and coordination. If you would like to see it continue then I recommend you say yes when you are asked to serve. This is the 25 th Anniversary of the Cochise Cowboy Poetry and Music Gathering with the theme being the Silver Screen Cowboy. Many of us heard our first western songs via the cowboy movies and we are apt to hear many of those songs again at the Gathering especially by the Sons of Pioneers. We are looking forward to seeing you at the Gathering.
Gathering Gazette 2 Gathering Co-Chairs Nancy Fusco George Wheat Here s wishing you a very prosperous and Happy New Year! 2017 is finally here which means the 25 th Annual Cochise Cowboy Poetry and Music Gathering, February 3, 4 and 5, 2017, is about to become reality. Our theme for this our Silver Anniversary celebrates those American heroes we affectionately know as Silver Screen Cowboys. The Gathering posse has again rounded up a great line-up of your favorite artists from the past 25 years along with some new talent for your listening and singing enjoyment. For a complete line-up of artists for the Headline and Saturday daytime performances, please check our website, www.cowboypoets.com. This year as a special treat for this milestone Gathering, we will bring you two special events. The first on Wednesday, February 1, 2017 at 6:00 p.m. in the Cochise College Student Union Community Room, where the Red Hot Rhythm Rustlers will present their Silver Screen Cowboy Show. It promises to be an educational as well as entertaining event. Tickets are $20 and can be purchased at all of our ticket outlets and online at www.cowboypoets.com. Then, on Sunday, February 5, 2017 at 1:00 p.m., the CCPMG will present the world famous Sons of the Pioneers in a special two-hour matinee headline show. Many of you may fondly remember going to the Saturday double feature to see Roy Rogers and the Sons of the Pioneers singing your favorite cowboy tunes on the silver screen. Tickets for this special event are $30 in advance ($35 day of the event) and $45 for VIP seating. Doors will open at 12:30 p.m. Tickets are on sale now at all of our outlets, Spur Western Wear, Sierra Vista Chamber of Commerce, City of Sierra Vista Visitor s Center, Safeway and The Mall at Sierra Vista. You can also purchase tickets over the phone with Spur Western Wear; toll free phone number is 1-866-458-2262. Our ticket prices for our Headline performances are $20.00 for adults; and $6.00 for students grades 1-12. Our headline performances start at 7 p.m. Friday and Saturday with the doors opening at 6:30 p.m. And, again this year we offer our very popular Saturday daytime events from 10:00 a.m. until 5:00 p.m. with over 30 artists and student poetry winners performing in various rooms at Buena High School. Each session is 50 minutes of wonderful western music and poetry. Adult entry fee is $10 at the door. Children and students in grades 1-12 are free. Doors open at 8:30 a.m. Our Consignment table will be open so you can pick up a variety of CDs, tapes, and books by our visiting artists. Also, available at the Trading Post under the big clock will be our Commemorative Art work which includes theme related merchandise: pins, belt buckles, hats and shirts. You can pick up a copy of our Saddlebag of Poems which is full of our student poets winning poems. The students will recite their award winning poems during the Saturday daytime event from 10:00 a.m. until noon. If you are a volunteer, we hope you will join us at our annual Volunteer Party scheduled on Sunday, January 29, 2017 from 1:00 p.m. to 3:00 p.m. at the Columbian Hall at 156 W. Kayetan, Sierra Vista. There will be some great food, entertainment and updates on our Gathering. It is very important that you RSVP. Please call (520-378-1289) or email (azmidge@cox.net) your RSVP to Midge Grieshop NLT 5 pm January 22, 2017. Nancy and I want to thank each and every volunteer for your continuing commitment to CCPMG. It would not be possible to bring this award-winning entertainment to Sierra Vista and Cochise County without you. We also want to thank our Committee Chairs and Executive Board for their dedicated leadership and hard work throughout the year that brings it all together in February year after year. Here s to a great 25 th Annual Cochise Cowboy Poetry and Music Gathering!! George Wheat Co-Chair
Gathering Gazette 3 Artist Liaison Co-Chairs Gene & Sharon Raymond Well, the 25 th Anniversary Gathering is almost here, and it is going to be a great one! Our Featured and Participating Artists are now all rounded up. We have 12 Featured performers for our Friday and Saturday evening Headline Stage shows on February 3d and 4 th at Buena High School. We have many of your favorites from the past twenty-five years such as Juni Fisher, Sue Harris, Carol Heuchan (all the way from Australia), Rena Randall and the Due West Trio, the Desert Sons, Susie Knight, Mikki Daniels, Jon Messenger, and Arvel Bird. In addition, we have an outstanding group of 28 Participating Artists, both returning and new, who will be performing during the Saturday daytime sessions on the 4th, also at Buena High School. Check them all out on the Gathering website at www.cowboypoets.com. In honor of this special milestone we are planning several special performances in addition to our regular schedule. On Wednesday, February 1 st, The Red Hot Rhythm Rustlers will present their two-hour Silver Screen Cowboys show starting at 6:00pm at the Cochise College Auditorium. This is an extra performance which is in addition to our regular Gathering schedule and tickets will be sold separately. Of course the primary special anniversary event is our Sunday Matinee Show on February 5th which will exclusively feature a group which for many of us represents the very epitome of the Silver Screen Cowboys, The Sons of the Pioneers! For over 75 years the Sons of the Pioneers have performed the music of the American West; celebrating the West, its awesome landscape, its people, its culture and the American Cowboy. This show will begin at 1:00pm on the 5 th at Buena High School. Tickets for this are also being sold separately (including a VIP option with several perks ). So start spreading the word to your pards and neighbors; it s never too early to start rounding up all the strays to get the biggest herd we can for our special Silver Anniversary Gathering! Tickets for all events can be purchased online at the Gathering website www.cowboypoets.com or at Spur Western Wear in Sierra Vista.
Gathering Gazette 4 Past Gathering Chairman and Present Gathering Executive Board Member PSA 25 th Anniversary Book The Gathering has published a 25 th Anniversary book that not only tells the history of the Gathering, but lists every performer by year of performance, every student winner by year, every committee chair by year and our volunteers throughout the 25 years. It is a very impressive story and will be a keepsake for any who have been involved in making this truly one of the superb Gatherings in the Nation. The artists are the true judges because they attend many other events and every one of them has said they most enjoy coming to the Sierra Vista Gathering because of how they are treated and appreciated. Each and every one of you volunteers make that happen and you make this Gathering a very unique experience. The book can be pre-ordered at our website (www.cowboypoets.com) for $12.00 (the price of the book is $14.95.) We have ordered 100 copies and we would ask the volunteers to order early so we can judge as to how many to order for the Gathering. Your name is probably in it! Committee Chairs needed! OK. You ve been a volunteer, sponsor or supporter for a few years and you love the Gathering. Well, we are at a crucial point in our career and we need 6-10 people to step forward to take a committee chair position. Let me put your mind at ease. The primary responsibility of a committee chair is to organize and direct the activities of that committee. Most of them will not take more than 100 hours throughout the year, to include the Gathering, to organize. Some do take a bit more time (e.g., Commemorative Art, Sponsorship and Advertising), but even there, with a good committee, it s making sure everything gets done on time. A number of the chairs are getting older (yes, older than you) and need to take a break. In your heart, you know it is your time to get more involved and help this Gathering survive. Without the leadership, one or two people cannot make this happen. It takes a core of leaders to direct traffic. I know you are ready. Talk with George or Nancy and let s go for another 25 years.
Gathering Gazette 5 Western Heritage and Schools Outreach Program Co-Chairs David Walker and Eileen Ahearn The Western Heritage Schools Outreach Program team has been very busy. In November and December we hosted the student poetry judging and selected 34 student winners to include two scholarship winners. Kudos to the wonderful judges who dedicated their time, energy and smarts to judging the 400 plus poems submitted to this year s Western Heritage Student Poetry Contest. In addition to our regular fabulous WHSOP volunteers (David, Sue, Marie, Byron, Sally, Nancy, Marty, Jerry and Eileen), our judges included Steve Conroy, Midge Grieshop, Fran Knowles, Fred Thomson, Amanda Telles, Gerald Bessler, Irene Close, Jim Daglish, Patricia Dillingham, Elizabeth Patten, Jeffrey Gott, Linda Kelly, Terry Rothery, and Joan Strom. The poems this year covered a wide range of themes to include the Silver Screen and were from schools throughout the Cochise County. Our Educator of the Year, Amy McCormick, is from Col Smith Middle School on Fort Huachuca. She has been supporting our Western Heritage program since 1994 and her school has had poetry winners almost every year since the program started. Check out our website for a full listing of the winners. Upcoming activities with the student poetry winners include the CowPie Party on 7 Jan, rehearsals on 25 & 26 Jan and the actual Gathering 3, 4 & 5 February 2017. Three students will recite their poems at each of the Headliner performances and all the student winners will recite their poems on Saturday, 4 Feb from 10AM to noon. We encourage you to come listen to, enjoy and be amazed at the talents of our student winners. If you would like to volunteer in support of the WHSO Program, there is still time. We need volunteers during the Gathering to sell raffle tickets for our quilts. Last year we raised $1100 raffling our two quilts. This year we again have made two quilts (see pics below) and will raffle them off to raise funds to reimburse travel for all student winners who participate in WHSOP activities and reside more than 20 miles from Sierra Vista. As in past years, our goal is to raise at least $1000, so please come volunteer to help us sell raffle tickets and/or come buy your ticket to help us reach our goal. Burro Quilt is a wall hanging @ 40 X40. The Boot Quilt covers a queen size bed and is approximately 80 X 80.
Gathering Gazette 6 TICKETS Howdy! Our ticket sales are up and running. This year, we have some special performances for your enjoyment to will help us celebrate our 25 th Silver Anniversary Gathering! This February brings a full year of work by the volunteers of Cochise Cowboy Poetry & Music Gathering. We want to bring you the best Gathering ever. How can we go wrong with the kick-off event with The Red Hot Rhythm Rustlers Silver Screen Cowboy Project on Wednesday, February 1, 2017 at the Cochise College Student Union Hall? Our Gathering continues with old friends and new on Friday, February 3 and February 4, 2017 at the Buena Performing Arts Center. Of course, don t forget our fun-filled Saturday day event, starting at 10 a.m. to 5 p.m. But hold on, our Sunday Matinee is our grand finale with the Sons of The Pioneers! They are the only group other than our student poetry winners that will perform. The performance starts at 1 p.m. The Sons of The Pioneers have never performed at our Gathering or in Sierra Vista, so this is a grand experience and the best way we could think of celebrating 25 years! It s gonna be a great time. Tickets are available at the following outlets in Sierra Vista: Spur Western Wear, The Mall at Sierra Vista, Sierra Vista Chamber of Commerce, Safeway and Sierra Vista Visitor s Center at Oscar Yrun Center. You can also purchase tickets on-line at www.cowboypoets.com or you can call Spur at 866-458-2262/520-458-2262. All tickets ordered on-line or through Spur will be available for pick-up at our Will Call booth at Buena High School. A big thank you to all our outlets! The prices are: Thursday, February 1, 2017, The Red Hot Rhythm Rustlers at the Cochise College Student Union, doors open at 5:30 pm., performance starting at 6 p.m. are $20.00. Friday and Saturday, February 3 & 4, 2017, Headline shows at Buena Performing Arts Center, doors open at 6:30 p.m., performances starting at 7:00 p.m. are $20.00 and $6.00 for students (grades 1-12) Saturday, February 4, 2017, daytime performances starting at 10:00 a.m., entrance fee is $10.00. No pre-event sales, payment is at the door. Sunday, February 5, 2017, Matinee performance, The Sons of The Pioneers and student poetry winners only, general admission is $30.00, day of event general admission ticket is $35.00 and our VIP ticket is $45.00 (includes VIP parking, special seating and early admittance to the theater).
Gathering Gazette 7 Historian Bob Levline The Silver Screen Cowboys At the turn of the 20 th Century, short and silent movies that were usually only a minute or so long began production. The first western, The Great Train Robbery, was made in 1903. It was 12 minutes long. The first feature length western was Lawrence McGill s Arizona in 1913. During this time real cowboys from the cowboy era, and rodeo performers were available and used in the production of films. Wyatt Earp appeared in The Half Breed (1919). The Silver Screen, B western movies got their start after the first western, Old Arizona, was produced with sound in 1929. In the 1930 s and 1940 s Hollywood churned out B-western movies by the thousands; a B-movie was a very low-budget, black and white motion picture with a running time of around 70 minutes or less. A silver screen, is a type of projection screen that was popular in the early years of the motion picture industry and the term silver screen comes from the actual silver (or similarly reflective aluminum) content embedded in the material that made up the screen's highly reflective surface. During the Golden Age of Hollywood, the term B-movie identified a film intended for distribution as the lesspublicized, bottom half of a double feature. Many theaters in the `30s and `40s ran B-western double features on Saturdays. There kids could come and see their heroes, who they had only heard on the radio, come to life. Tom Mix, Rex Allen, Gene Autry, Roy Rogers, Hopalong Cassidy, and The Lone Ranger were some of the many that were featured. The Singing Cowboy began in the 1930 movie Montana Moon, starring Joan Crawford and Johnny Mack Brown. Gene Autry made his debut with In Old Santa Fe (1934). The Sons of the Pioneers began their career in the movies with Rhythm of the Range in 1936. This was Bing Crosby s only western, and Leonard Slye, later Roy Rogers, was part of the Sons. Founding members of the Sons, Bob Nolan and Tim Spencer, wrote many great cowboy songs that are featured in almost, if not all, cowboy gatherings being held. It is therefore in this tradition that the Sons of the Pioneers have been invited to this year s Gathering to be the featured performers for the Sunday matinee. Housing Co-Chairs Jane Chambers and Lang Secrest The Housing Committee is busy matching host families and artists. Letters with artist information along with the vouchers for the host families have been sent. If you are a Host Family and did not receive your vouchers, please call one of us. If anyone wishes they had decided to be a host family, please contact one of us. Things often happen that we need a host family at the last minute so feel free to contact us at 458-6698 or 678-0809. We d love to have you as a part of our committee.
Gathering Gazette 8 Sponsorship Chair Ollie White CRUNCH TIME FOR SPONSORSHIP: December is a time for good cheer and for looking forward to Christmas gifts, it also crunch time for donations to Cochise Cowboy Poetry and Music Gathering. As chairman, I ve crunched the spreadsheet numbers and believe that unless things change in the next few weeks, we are getting a lump of coal in our stocking this year. Our fund raiser was lackluster, donations are coming slower, and at a lower level, than projected and we have only sold 16 raffle tickets (by this time last year we had sold at least 150 raffle tickets); the only Silver Lining in this cloud of doom and gloom is advertising in our program, which thanks to Steve Conroy and Zia Bischoff has been outstanding. If you haven t donated, or you would like to increase your donation, it s not too late to get that all-important tax deduction for this year. We will be at the Sierra Vista Farmers Market the last two Thursdays in January and the first Thursday in February, please come out and give us a hand promoting the Gathering. Please take the time to pass this on to all your friends. We need money and we need volunteers if our 25 th Anniversary shows are going to be a success. And of course, come out and enjoy this year s shows on February 3,4, & 5, 2017. With a very special show on Sunday the 5 th with the Sons of the Pioneers. SEEKING VOLUNTEERS knowledgeable of the Gathering to man our Information Booth for three hour shifts. Your responsibility is to provide assistance and information to our patrons and artists about the Gathering activities, locations where performances will be occurring, and, sign up new volunteers in order to keep this premier entertainment event going for another 25 years. Shifts are: Friday, February 3 rd, 5:00 p.m. to 8:00 p.m.; Saturday, February 4 th, 8:00 a.m. to 11:00 a.m.; 11:00 a.m. to 2:00 p.m.; 2:00 p.m. to 5:00 p.m.; 5:00 p.m. to 8:00 p.m.; and, Sunday, February 5 th, 12:00 noon to 3:00 p.m. If you are able to assist us, contact either Nancy Fusco (520-249- 2511 / nanobejammin@cox.net) or George Wheat (520-508- 9359 / buckwheat4@cox.net) to request your desired shift. THANK YOU!!!
Gathering Gazette 9 Social Events Chair Midge Grieshop The excitement is building toward our 25th CCPMG anniversary. The social events involved are varied from most years. The Columbian is the venue of choice for the Volunteer Reception on January 29th from 1:00 pm to 3:00 pm. This reception is for all volunteers and is a nice thank you for the many volunteers who make the events and the Gathering possible. Some artists volunteer to go to schools where they give a living history of cowboy poetry and music to the students and interested faculty. To show our appreciation for their effort, there will be a luncheon for those artists on Friday February 3, 2017 at the Outback Steakhouse starting at 11:00 AM. The Friday and Saturday nights jam sessions are always terrific! This year they will be happening at the Garden Canyon Suites, which is a new venue for these sessions, usually starting around 9:30 pm.! The Columbian is the venue for our special sponsors and donors breakfast. The doors will open at 8:30 am and breakfast will be available at 9:00 am. I hope to see all of you at The Gathering; it is a special year!!! Please contact me via email ( azmidge@icloud.com) or telephone (520 378-1289) to RSVP for the Volunteer Party. Here are Roy Rogers, The Sons Of The Pioneers and a turkey ready to sit down and enjoy a Thanksgiving feast. Well, I guess the turkey s not enjoying it so much. This is from Utah (1945.) From Toby s Blog 50 Westerns From The 50s