“Cowboy Slim” King of Border Radio

Nolan Rinehart, known to his many fans as “Cowboy Slim,” finally relented on Oct. 21, 1948 and agreed to his first ever recording session. The Comanche County native was just another guitar playing hillbilly singer in 1937, when he decided to try his luck on XEPN, the “outlaw” radio station in Piedras Negras on the other side of the Rio Grande from Eagle Pass. The so-called “border blaster” gave him a huge national audience and a fastpass to music stardom.

The United States and Canada had only themselves to blame for the birth and phenomenal growth of border radio. They divided long-range radio frequencies between their two countries leaving Mexico completely out in the cold.

Ambitious Americans, who had been denied broadcast licenses by their own government, approached Mexican officials with an audacious proposal. Let the gringos set up powerful transmitters that could reach as far north as Canada and both coasts of the United States and share in the profits from the incessant sales pitches in the round-theclock programming.

With nothing to lose and a lot to gain, not the least of which was the satisfaction of thumbing their noses at Washington, the Mexicans went along with the daring idea. The result was the first “border blaster” with the call letters XED located in Reynosa within shouting distance of the Texas town of McAllen.

“Blaster” was not an exaggerated description of the souped-up stations that packed as much as a 500,000-watt punch. When operating at full power they covered most of North America and under certain conditions knocked weaker stations in the U.S. clear off the air. According to the Handbook of Texas, “Sometimes listeners claimed to hear broadcasts without a radio, receiving the powerful signal on dental work, bedsprings and barbed wire.”

A pioneer in border broadcasting as an original owner of XED was Will Horwitz, one of the most colorful and popular personalities in Houston during the Twenties and Thirties. Arriving in the Bayou City not long after The Great War, he bought his first theater in 1919, renamed it the Iris and added a second, The Texan Theater, a couple of years later.

Horowitz was a maverick with a flamboyant sense of humor. When he refused to raise ticket prices, his supplier threatened to stop sending him films. He responded in true Horowitz fashion by putting live hogs in the lobbies of his theaters with signs that read “Movie Hog Trust.”

In 1928 the Democrats held their national convention in Houston, the first in the South since the Civil War. Capitalizing on the party’s symbol, Horowitz presented each and every delegate with a live donkey transported by train from the Rio Grande Valley.

Horowitz did not, of course, try to make light of the hard times Houstonians had to endure during the Great Depression of the 1930’s. He served free meals in his “grubstake restaurants” that he operated at his own expense.

Out of the blue in 1939, the federal government charged Horowitz with violating U.S. law by advertising the Mexican lottery on his border radio station. He was tried, convicted and sentenced to a year and a half in Leavenworth. Released after six months. two thousand supporters welcomed him home in a heart-warming rally at the City Auditorium.

Will Horowitz was 45 years old when he suddenly died from a heart attack on Christmas Day 1941. His last words were said to have been “The show must go on.”

Meanwhile, “Cowboy Slim” Rinehart was the hottest thing on border radio. He regularly shared the airwaves with Patsy Montana, whose theme song was “I want to be a cowboy’s sweetheart.” They even toured the eastern U.S. together drawing capacity crowds at every stop.

During the “singing cowboy” craze of the late Thirties and early Forties, a Hollywood studio tried to talk Rinehart into saddling up. But the lucrative deal fell through after he refused to change his last name to something that sounded “less German.”

For years Ernest Tubb and other friends tried to convince “Cowboy Slim” that a recording contract would be a smart career move. He always shook his head at the suggestion and gave the same two reasons. First, records were bound to hurt the sales of his “songbooks,” a big part of his income. Second, he wanted nothing to do with disc jockeys whom he blamed for the elimination of live studio performances.

In October 1948, “Cowboy Slim” gave in at long last and reluctantly scheduled a session at a Michigan recording studio. More to get everybody off his back than anything else, he would cut a couple of records and be done with it.

But tragedy intervened and “Cowboy Slim” Rinehart missed the appointment. He was killed in a car wreck on his way to the recording studio.

Bartee welcomes your comments and questions at HYPERLINK “mailto:barteehaile@ gmail.com” barteehaile@ gmail.com or P.O. Box 130011, Spring, TX 77393.