Rex Trailer
When it comes to singin’, ridin’ and ropin’ cowboys in the Boston area, there haven’t been a lot of them but Rexford “Rex” Trailer was the undisputed king. The Texas native is best known around New England for hosting the Western-flavored kids variety show Boomtown, which ran Saturdays and Sundays on WBZ-TV from 1956 to 1974. But Trailer had bucketloads of experience before landing that gig.
Musical beginnings
Born in 1928, Trailer grew up just outside Fort Worth. He did some trick riding and worked with ropes and bullwhips on the rodeo circuit as a teen. A cowboy named Bob Layman taught him how to play guitar and call square dances, and Trailer soon formed a band called the Ramblin’ Rustlers, covering the country hits of the day.
When he was 18, while performing with a rodeo in New York City, he met a Western character actor, Gabby Hayes, at Madison Square Garden. Hayes became a mentor, first having Trailer entertain kids at his summer camp, then suggesting that if he was set on a career in business, then he should stick with performing for kids because it seemed to come so naturally. A brief time as a Saturday morning cowboy host in New York on the Dumont network led to a five-year stint hosting and singing songs on a number of Western shows for Westinghouse Broadcasting in Philadelphia.
Move to Boston, The Charles River Valley Boys, Songwriting
A job offer in Boston led to the creation of Boomtown. As those of a certain age will recall, Trailer opened each show by riding in on his white-maned palomino Goldrush (his horse in Philadelphia was named Bamboo), and he always had time to sing a song or two, accompanying himself on his Gibson SJ-200. He was already well acquainted with country music, but was turned on to bluegrass when he discovered the Boston-based Charles River Valley Boys, whose mandolinist, Joe Val, became a regular Boomtown guest.
Trailer also wrote a lot of songs, among them the theme song for Boomtown, “Lovin’ You Is Like a Rodeo,” “It’s Your Dog,” “Hoofbeats” “and “Cowboys Don’t Cry.” Those last two were the A and B sides of an ABC-Paramount 45 Trailer recorded in 1955.
Post-Boomtown years, Halls Of Fame inductions
After Boomtown’s 18-year run, Trailer briefly hosted the TV show Earth Lab, then went on to create Rex Trailer Video Productions in Waltham and teach television performance and production at Emerson College. In 1960, he cut the album Country and Western on the Crown label. Trailer was inducted into the Massachusetts Country Music Hall of Fame in 2000 and the Massachusetts Broadcasters Hall of Fame in 2007.
Trailer passed away in 2013. Comedian and television show host Jay Leno, an Andover, Massachusetts native who watched Boomtown as a child, eulogized his boyhood hero: “I’ve met a lot of people, a lot of important people,” he said, “but no bigger star than Rex.”
(by Ed Symkus)
