AL SHELTON Designer of RICK NELSON'S HAND TOOLED GUITAR COVER

FROM OUR ARCHIVES ORIGINAL POST FROM 2008

Christine here.

The other day I stopped into a storefront art gallery and workshop of an artist named AL SHELTON. Al is famous for having designed and cast the statue of Gene Autry at the museum that cowboy star Gene Autry funded, once called the Gene Autry Western Heritage Museum but now called the Autry National Center of the American West.
AUTRY NATIONAL CENTER
He is also a renown designer of hand tooled guitar covers and other items and a painter and his life has been entwined with real and movie cowboys and cowgirls.
Al showed me a photo of Rick Nelson with a hand tooled guitar cover on his guitar that Al designed and worked years ago. He told me it went down on the plane that Rick was on when he died. He also did a lot of work that Nudie, a cowboy star costume designer subcontracted, including clothes for stars like Elvis.

Here's a NPR broadcast about Al...
NPR ON AL

Here is a link that shows Al with Matthew Nelson, one of Rick's sons, and some of the hand tooled work and art he's done.
ARTISANS LINK

This post updated September 2012

(434) MARTY ROBBINS : COUNTRY SINGER TURNED WESTERN ACTOR

Those of us who grew up with cowboy heros loved watching television Westerns that were so popular in the 1960's and when they were hiring actors, they liked the ones who could play a guitar and sing.

So while Johnny Crawford worked on shows like the Rifleman, Marty Robbins, famous for his recording of El Paso, which sold something like 10 million copies, one of my favorites (not to be confused with Trini Lopez who was also a friend and who we've blogged about before) got a job on a show called The Drifter.




Linking to Marty Robbins Official Site!

COWBOYS WERE MY IDOLS

Dover Free Images