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Based on his record sales, Smiley Burnette wasn't more than a footnote in the annals of recorded country music. However, thanks to his appearances as a sidekick to Gene Autry in dozens of Republic Pictures Westerns before World War II, and with Charles Starrett and Roy Rogers later on, he was one of the most familiar country & western performers in movies, and a beloved performer on stage and radio.
16 February 1967 (aged 55) Lester Alvin Burnett (March 18, 1911 – February 16, 1967), better known as Smiley Burnette, was a popular American country music performer and a comedic actor in Western films and on radio and TV, playing sidekick to Gene Autry and other B-movie cowboys. He was also a prolific singer-songwriter who could play as ...
Smiley Burnette, said his longtime partner and boss Gene Autry, "couldn't read a note of music but wrote 350 songs and I never saw him take longer than an hour to compose one." Arguably the most beloved of all the B-Western sidekicks and certainly one of the more prolific and enduring, Burnette had been a disc jockey at a small radio station in Tuscola, IL, when discovered by Autry.
Smiley Burnette worked in a variety of genres and built up a diverse and reputable career. Burnette began his acting career with roles in such films as the western "In Old Santa Fe" (1934) with ...
Smiley Burnette. Lester Alvin Burnett (March 18, 1911 – February 16, 1967), better known as Smiley Burnette, was an American country music performer and a comedic actor in Western films and on radio and TV, playing sidekick to Gene Autry, Roy Rogers, and other B-movie cowboys. He was also a prolific singer-songwriter who could play as many as ...
Musician, Actor. Born Lester Alvin Burnett, in Summum, Illinois, he began his career at a local radio station and in Vaudeville Theatre. A talented musician, he played 100 instruments proficiently and worked with singer Gene Autry on the radio show The National Barn Dance. In 1934, with Gene Autry, he made his debut in...
In the summer of 1934, Gene and his wife, Ina (Jimmy Long’s niece), and his friend Lester “Smiley” Burnette, musician-composer-comedian with the Autry radio troupe, drove to California, where the singing cowboy made a guest appearance in the Republic Pictures western movie, In Old Santa Fe.
