Tex Ritter parlayed his prolific career as a Hollywood singing cowboy in the 1930s and ’40s into a stretch as one of country music’s earliest consistent hitmakers, enshrining the sound of early Western cinema and radio onto what was then known as the folk charts. Tex, who earned that nickname by actually being born and raised in East Texas and getting his start on Houston radio, had been playing cowboys on the radio, Broadway, and the silver screen before signing with a then-new Capitol Records in 1942. The Western swing-inflected “I’m Wastin’ My Tears on You” was Ritter’s first hit, reaching No. 1 in the very first year of the Billboard country chart’s existence. His “You Two-Timed Me One Time Too Often” was the first No. 1 country song written by a woman (Jenny Lou Carson), and “I Dreamed of a Hill-Billy Heaven” was an early exercise in country canon-making. Ritter’s Hollywood immortality ultimately came not from his dozens of Westerns, but from the theme song to the classic Western High Noon, which he sang and ultimately won the Academy Award for Best Original Song.