Frank Luther

Frank Luther (born Francis Luther Crow, August 4, 1899 – November 16, 1980) was an American country music singer, dance band vocalist, playwright, songwriter and pianist.

Born on a farm near Lakin, Kansas, 40 miles from the Colorado border, he was raised on a farm near Hutchinson, Kansas, where his father, William R. Crow, and mother, Gertrude Phillips Crow, dealt in livestock and trotting horses.

He began to study piano at age six, improvising his own music when repetitious exercises bored him, and began vocal instruction at 13.

When he was 16, he toured the Midwest as tenor with a quartet called The Meistersingers.

He began studying at the University of Kansas, but attended a revival meeting conducted by evangelist Jesse Kellems and accepted an offer to become his musical director.

During a subsequent stop in Iola, Kansas, Crow was ordained, despite his never having studied for the ministry.

Returning to Kansas, he married vocalist and musician Zora Layman on May 8, 1920, and the couple eventually relocated to New York City.

By 1921, Crow was in the pulpit of the First Christian Church in Bakersfield, California.

There, he organized a 30-voice children's choir, an 80-voice adult choir, and two church orchestras.

Writing and delivering his weekly sermons proved more problematic, and the Boy Preacher, as he was known locally, resigned to devote his creative energies to the world of music.

In 1926, he was seriously pursuing further vocal training when he was invited to join the DeReszke Singers, as tenor/accompanist.

They declared his surname, Crow, to be un-musical, and so he dropped it and became Frank Luther from that day on.

The quartet toured with humorist Will Rogers, with whom Frank spent considerable time while on the road.

Luther joined a popular quartet, The Revelers, as tenor in 1927.

They toured the British Isles, where Frank met the future Queen of the United Kingdom and did a set accompanied on the drums by the Prince of Wales.

In 1928, with his singing only gradually returning to top form, Frank met and became acquainted with fellow Kansan Carson Robison, who had teamed with tenor Vernon Dalhart to make many dozens of top-selling recordings of rural American favorites, shortly to be known in the trade as hillbilly music.

Robison and Dalhart were severing their recording partnership, and it was suggested that Luther listen to some Dalhart records and seek to approximate his style.

From 1928 to 1932, Frank Luther recorded country music with Carson Robison.

Their recordings, made for several record companies and issued on a variety of labels, were extremely popular.

"Barnacle Bill the Sailor", "When Your Hair Has Turned to Silver", "When It's Springtime in the Rockies", "When the Bloom is On The Sage", "Little Green Valley", "Down on the Old Plantation", "I'm Alone Because I Love You", "The Utah Trail", "Goin' Back to Texas", "Left My Gal in the Mountains", "In the Cumberland Mountains", "An Old Man's Story, "Little Cabin in the Cascade Mountains", and "The Birmingham Jail" sold a great many copies and influenced future generations of country singers.

In his recordings for Victor Records, he also used the alias Bud Billings.

The UK Zonophone label used these masters as well, with the Bud Billings name.

From 1928 until the outbreak of World War II, he recorded hundreds of vocal choruses with popular dance bands of the day.

The High Hatters, Victor Arden and Phil Ohman, Leo Reisman, Russell Wooding's Red Caps, Joe Venuti, and many other recording bands featured Frank's jazzy tenor vocals.

He was also tenor with a number of pop trios and quartets, performing not only on records but on radio broadcasts—often as many as five different programs per day.

He also made a series of movie shorts in New York, several of which were released by Educational Pictures.

When Robison formed his own cowboy singing group for a British tour in 1932, Frank Luther assembled a new trio with his wife and baritone Leonard Stokes.

They recorded some sides for RCA Victor, but 75-cent country records were not selling very well in the Depression which was just getting underway.

Art Satherley, legendary producer for the American Record Corporation, began to record the Luther Trio on 25-cent chain store discs.

Coincidental with their first ARC releases came the group's debut on the NBC radio series, Hillbilly Heart-throbs in 1933.

Created and written by folklorist/writer/performer Ethel Park Richardson, the network series dramatized old Appalachian ballads as well as newer country music narrative songs.

Well-known radio actors played the dramatic roles, with the musical bridges between scenes furnished by the Frank Luther Trio.

Richardson, whom Luther would refer to forty years later as a wonderful woman, introduced him to many mountain songs and influenced his repertoire.

While on her show, Zora Layman became the first country female singer to have a major hit record with Bob Miller's "Seven Years With the Wrong Man".

Her debut performance caused the NBC switchboard to light up for two hours.

Frank scored hits with "Rocking Alone in An Old Rocking Chair", "When the White Azaleas Start Blooming", "The Old Spinning Wheel", "Home on the Range", "New Twenty-One Years", and "Seven Years With the Wrong Woman".

In 1936, he starred in his only full-length Hollywood feature, a story about radio entertainers called High Hat.

Frank Luther's star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame represents what was to become his chief claim to fame.

In 1940, Luther sang on I'll Never Forget, a radio program on the Mutual Broadcasting System.

While Frank Luther's role in the early development of country & western music is significant, he regularly performed many other types of music.