Category Archives: FRONTIERADO

July 30, 2016 · 10:13 pm

WHISPERING SMITH: NEGLECTED GUNSLINGER

Frontierado is Friday, August 5th! 

whispering smith

Whispering Smith

WHISPERING SMITH – James L Smith, aka Whispering Smith, led an action-filled life that bore little resemblance to the squeaky clean image of the man depicted in the movie, radio and television series based on his law enforcement career. Smith was a relentless lawman whom I often describe as “the Dirty Harry of the Old West.”

Whispering Smith was born in 1838 and by 1860 was making a living as a riverboat gambler up and down the Mississippi, where he acquired his famous nickname. He had his first gunfight in the form of a duel with a gambler named Larry Boyle on the Belle of Memphis. When the Civil War broke out James joined the Union Army, as did other future gunfighters like Wild Bill Hickok, Bear River Tom, Long-Haired Jim Courtright and others.

After the war he next surfaced in New Orleans, LA, as part of the city’s Metropolitan Police Force in 1868. By 1873 Smith had made detective and married his sweetheart Anna Mannion. Continue reading →

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July 28, 2016 · 9:10 pm

POSSE(1993): FILM REVIEW

 Frontierado is coming up on Friday, August 5th!

POSSE is a terrific western about a gang of African American  gunfighters (plus the goofiest  Baldwin brother) involved in an action-packed epic journey across the American west. The Frontierado holiday is the perfect time of year to hunker down with this film while drinking a Cactus Jack or a Deuces Wild or two. I’ll review the recipes for those mixed drinks in a few days, for now we’ll focus on this movie on our countdown.

Posse stars Mario Van Peebles, who also directed, as Jesse Lee, the brooding, revenge-driven hero of the saga. He and all but one member of his gang, our titular posse, are soldiers fighting in Cuba during the Spanish-American War in 1898. A dangerous assault they carry out turns out to be Continue reading →

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July 26, 2016 · 11:50 pm

GUNPLAY MAXWELL: NEGLECTED GUNSLINGER

MASCOT COWBOY 2The Frontierado holiday is Friday, August 5th!

GUNPLAY MAXWELL – This neglected gunslinger was born in Boston, MA as James Otis Bliss circa 1860. When he was 15 years old he got into a fight with a friend at a Boston tavern and shot him to death. Fleeing authorities the young man headed west and began a life of using various false names, including Charles L Maxwell or “Gunplay” Maxwell as he is best remembered.  

Life on the run was bringing out both the dark violence AND the shrewd manipulative streak that would characterize the young man for the rest of his life. By late 1876 he was in Texas staying alive through assorted robberies, con games and increasingly frequent gunplay. Texas eventually became too hot for Gunplay Maxwell and by the late 1870s or early 1880s he moved north to Montana.     Continue reading →

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July 23, 2016 · 11:11 pm

BETH BASSETT AND HER BROWN’S PARK GANG

Beth BassettFrontierado is Friday, August 5th!

BETH BASSETT – Elizabeth Bassett, her husband Herb and their children were traveling by wagon toward California in 1877 when Beth was 22. They stopped off in Wyoming to visit Herb’s brother, who lived in a cabin along the Green River. Beth and her husband fell in love with the area and abandoned their plans to continue on to California.

The Bassetts established their home in a nearby valley originally called Brown’s Hole but renamed Brown’s Park by Beth. Unconventionally for the time period Beth oversaw the building and enlarging of the family’s ranch while Herb taught the children inside.

Browns Park WYIn September of 1879 the Ute Indians went on the warpath and the Bassetts, like all the other families in the region, temporarily relocated to Rock Springs while the U.S. Army and the Utes fought it out. By 1881 Beth and her family were back in Brown’s Park to pick up where they left off. Their ranch was becoming renowned for breeding some of the best horses in the West while also raising cattle, growing crops and establishing an orchard.    

The 1880s saw the crooked cattle barons of the Wyoming Stock Growers Association (of Johnson County War fame) move into the area, driving many of the families out through violence, money and political maneuvering. The Bassetts and others stayed, only to see the WSGA use even dirtier tactics. Continue reading →

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July 21, 2016 · 10:27 pm

FRONTIERADO POKER: BIGGER THAN EVER

"You're not goin' nowhere, ya bottom-dealin' Hombre," the gambler-gunfighter exclaimed, "We've got us a few apparent paradoxes and their effect upon contemporary religious thought to discuss!"

“You’re not goin’ nowhere, ya bottom-dealin’ Hombre,” the gambler-gunfighter exclaimed, “We’ve got us a few apparent paradoxes and their effect upon contemporary religious thought to discuss!”

The Frontierado holiday is coming up fast – on Friday, August 5th in fact. Today we’ll revisit the rules of Frontierado Poker for newbies to the holiday.

Here are the rules for Frontierado  Poker, the game that is Continue reading →

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July 20, 2016 · 10:20 pm

PISTOL PETE: NEGLECTED GUNSLINGER

Frontierado is Friday, August 5th! 

Pistol Pete

Pistol Pete

PISTOL PETE – Frank “Pistol Pete” Eaton was another of those real-life figures that some people mistakenly think are fictional characters. The elementary alliteration and the association of the name Pistol Pete with the mascot of the Oklahoma State University sports teams are part of the reason. That mascot was named after and was designed to look like the real-life Pistol Pete.

Eaton was a man who LIVED what would eventually become a cliche of Wild West fiction:  the quest for revenge over the murder of a loved one, no matter how many years it takes. 

In 1868 young Frank was eight years old and living with his parents in Twin Mounds, Kansas. Frank’s father had served in the Union Army during the Civil War and was being harassed by several former Confederate Army men who had ridden with Quantrill’s Raiders for a time. One day six of those men shot our hero’s father to death right in front of him, setting the course for the rest of the young man’s life.  Continue reading →

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July 16, 2016 · 11:56 pm

SALLY SKULL: NEGLECTED GUNSLINGER

Frontierado is Friday, August 5th! 

Sally SkullSALLY SKULL – Sara Jane Newman, the future Sally Skull, was born in Illinois in 1817. In 1823 her family moved to Fayette County in Texas, which was then part of the area that Mexico had seized from Native Americans. 

Like all the other ranch families in the area, whether from Mexico or the U.S., Sally and her family lived a rough life managing their land and surviving periodic assaults from the American Indians in the area. Sally killed her first man – an attacking Indian, when she was 11, using a rifle. At age 12 Sally was proficient with all firearms and provided plenty of food for the family table by hunting. 

In 1831 Sally’s father died and she began running the ranch for her grieving mother, even registering her father’s old brand in her own name. 1833 saw the 16 year old married to a Texas Ranger named Jess Robinson and settled in Gonzalez, TX, still part of Mexico.   

Over the next 10 years, as Texans rebelled against the tyrannical Mexican government and broke away to form their own Republic, Sally and Jess had 2 children who survived – a son and daughter. In 1843 the couple divorced and 11 days later Sally married a gunsmith named George Skull (or Scull), whose last name she would keep throughout all her future marriages.  Continue reading →

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July 12, 2016 · 8:44 pm

KID RUSSELL: GUNSLINGER TURNED ARTIST

** I’M IN THE MIDDLE OF A CRISIS INVOLVING A LOVED ONE. THIS BLOG POST WAS PRE-WRITTEN. 

Kid Russell

Self-portrait by Kid Russell

Frontierado is Friday, August 5th! My most popular Frontierado articles over the years have been the ones about neglected gunslingers of the American West. Here is another neglected western figure whose life was at least as interesting as those of the bigger names.

KID RUSSELL – How cool is it that an authentic, acclaimed international artist spent some of his younger years wandering the Wild West, even earning the nickname Kid Russell? Charles Marion “Kid” Russell was born in 1864 in St Louis, Missouri. As with Klondike Kate Rockwell, most of this figure’s life story is outside the purview of this article.

Since Frontierado is about the myth of the Old West I’ll focus on the legends about Kid Russell’s wild, wandering younger years full of guns, ranches, saloons, cattle drives, bordellos and sketches drawn on any nearby flat surface, sketches that showed the nascent talent that would one day make Russell world-famous.  

Charles Marion RussellWhen he was age 16 Charles’ well-to-do parents gave up trying to force him to continue his schooling and let him move to Montana, where, clad in a brand-new buckskin outfit, he worked on a friend’s sheep ranch north of Helena. It took skill with a gun and a true survival instinct to live through encounters with rustlers, hostile cattlemen and their hired gunmen but Charles, already being called Kid Russell, thrived and felt more at home in this rough and tumble lifestyle than among his family’s hoity-toity friends in St Louis high society.     Continue reading →

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July 9, 2016 · 1:20 am

LEGACY OF THE INCAS (1965)

Legacy of the IncasFrontierado is coming up on Friday, August 5th! In keeping with the seasonal feel, Balladeer’s Blog has been showcasing various neglected westerns.

LEGACY OF THE INCAS (1965) – Guy Madison and Fernando Rey starred in this Llama Western which would be guaranteed to make some of the emotional cripples of the 21st Century faint at its “Colonialism Squared” plotline. To me the staggering tastelessness of it all makes it more funny than pernicious.

Rey plays President Castillo of late 1800’s Peru. He has a Jim West-style assignment for his  gunslinging agent, nicknamed Jaguar. His birth name is Wutuma, and he’s the last of “the proud and noble Incas”. His job is to eradicate a gang of Native Peruvian bandits and guerillas who are robbing and killing all non-natives as part of their bid to resurrect the ancient Inca empire to rule Peru! Continue reading →

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July 5, 2016 · 9:08 pm

THE MAN CALLED NOON (1973)

Man called NoonFrontierado is on Friday August 5th!

In the past Balladeer’s Blog has examined some of the big names among the fictional gunslingers of Spaghetti Westerns. I’ve covered the original Django, Sartana, the Holy Ghost, Dynamite Joe, Harmonica and even Tony Anthony’s character the Stranger. Here is a look at the Italo-Western hero Noon. 

The Man Called Noon (1973)

The Story: Long before Robert Ludlum’s amnesiac secret agent Jason Bourne came this film. Based on a Louis L’Amour story The Man Called Noon featured Richard Crenna as the title character, an amnesiac who has incredible abilities with a gun but no knowledge of his past.

Just like Jason Bourne in the later novel, our hero Rubal Noon must piece together who he really is, why he has access to some large sums of money  and why various dangerous factions want him dead. He also struggles to survive while all this chaos closes in on him. Luckily his instinctive skill at killing keeps him alive, albeit increasingly confused.   Continue reading →

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