Wild Horses

The Frontiersmen & Joanie

Wild Horses

Louise Lewis-E. Whenham

Skyway Records Music Pub. Co.
Hollywood, Calif. 90028

Red Fox Records RFR 104

1964

The Horsemen and Joanie Hall

Leader of The Horsemen was Hi Busse, original member of the legendary "Frontiersmen" and "The Riders of the Purple Sage", Hi Busse left an indelible mark upon Western music.   Busse's career spans seven decades, playing with Roy Rogers and "Gunsmoke's" Ken Curtis, acting in Hollywood westerns in the 1940's and making countless radio and music hall tours.


Joanie Hall started performing at a young age with Marian, her older sister, as the Saddle Sweethearts  :

Joanie played standard guitar, Marian had an Oahu lap steel with “mother-of-pearl” finish and matching amp, and they both sang.   They did shows on “pioneer television,” back when the makeup was orange and the director was also the janitor that swept up at the end of the day. There were TV antennas on about every fourth house then.

Joanie got her recording career started back in 1955 with Sage and Sand Records. Woody Fleener had started the Sage and Sand record label and also signed a top vocalist, Eddie Dean. Also signed at that time was the Frontiersmen and Marian Hall as a featured steel guitar player. Joanie was called in to sing in a chorus or play rhythm guitar. But she began to get noticed.

As the story goes, Eddie Dean told her one day to practice up on her singing a bit as he would soon tell her some good news. Later on, he called to tell her that he wanted her to do a duet record with him. They recorded "Open Up Your Door" b/w "Sign On The Door". After that session, Woody Fleener knew talent when he saw it and signed her to a contract and told her she had just made her first record.

Joanie Hall Discography

The Red Fox label was a subsidiary of Skyway Records. Louise Lewis and Everett Whenham, writers of Wild Horses, owned Skyway.  For some reason, the Red Fox subsidiary was launched in 1964, showcasing Miss Louise Lewis herself with Blimp, Whimp & Skimp.

How Louise Lewis and Everett Whenham managed to convince The Frontiersmen to record two singles for their Red Fox label, that's one more mystery surrounding the story of Skyway Records and the intriguingly elusive biographies of its owners.