Eddie Dean was a singer and actor, who specialised in cowboy songs, and was regarded by luminaries of the genre like Roy Rogers and Gene Autry as absolutely the finest of all the cowboy singers, famed for the purity of his baritone voice and his individual way with a song.

Born Edgar Dean Glosup in Posey, Texas, his schoolteacher father instilled in him a love of singing and he began his career performing gospel music. He joined his brother in Chicago, where they worked as a duet team on the WLS National Barn Dance, before moving to a station in South Dakota. Returning to Chicago, the pair starred in a radio soap opera before heading west to California. Supporting roles in the movies of both Ken Maynard and Gene Autry quickly followed, as did radio work with the hillbilly comedienne Judy Canova. By 1946, Dean received top billing on a series of low-budget films made for the PRC studio, starting with The Harmony Trail. Starring alongside leading ladies like Shirley Patterson and Jennifer Holt, Dean both wrote and performed the numbers featured in these largely forgotten pictures.

In 1948, the year of his last PRC film, Dean enjoyed his greatest success as a songwriter when his fellow singing cowboy Jimmy Wakely took One Has My Name, The Other Has My Heart to the top of both the pop and country charts. Over the years Dean recorded for a number of record labels and this 50-track collection comprises selected A&B sides from his releases during these years on Decca, Banner, Conqueror, Bel-Tone, Majestic, Crystal, Mercury, Capitol and Sage & Sand.

It’s an entertaining showcase for his talent both as a singer and songwriter, and underlines why he is regarded as perhaps the greatest singing cowboy of them all.

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