Herb Jeffries integrated the Old West as Hollywood’s first black singing cowboy, and while he may be better known for singing “Flamingo” with Duke Ellington, nothing gave him more satisfaction than his time in the saddle.
For three years in the late 1930s, Jeffries became The Bronze Buckaroo, the guy who wore the white hat in all-black films.
Ironically, Jeffries himself had such light skin that to be credible as a black cowboy, he had to wear makeup that darkened his tone.
His mother was Irish, his father of mixed blood that included Italian, Native American and black.
Jeffries got the idea of a black singing cowboy because he was a fan of popular white horseback crooners like Gene Autry and Roy Rogers.
At a time when movie audiences were often segregated, particularly in the South, there was a market for black “shadow” films in mainstream genres, and Jeffries sold the idea to Jed Buell, a white independent filmmaker.
Then he sold himself as the star, though he had relatively little acting experience.
In case any viewer might miss that the cast was all black, his films had titles like “Harlem Rides the Range,” “Harlem Rides the Prairie,” “Two Gun Man From Harlem” and “The Bronze Buckaroo,” which gave him his nickname.
“Harlem Rides the Prairie,” his first, was filmed in five days on a Nevada ranch. The Los Angeles Times notes that Jeffries was paid $5,000.
Despite their low production budgets and limited distribution, the films made Jeffries a cinema sex symbol — similar to Ralph Cooper, who starred in black melodramas, romances and cop movies in the 1930s.
Jeffries would later say he had no illusions about the quality of the films. But the fact they existed at all, he said, was enormously significant and helped prove to Hollywood that it should pay attention to black performers.
Jeffries also enjoyed the ride.
The Los Angeles Times noted that when he toured with the Four Tones, the group that backed him on many of his movie recordings, he drove between engagements in a Cadillac with steer horns on the front and his name in gold rope on the side.
On stage he would do rope tricks and spin his six-shooters when he wasn’t singing.
While Jeffries recognized the entertainment industry segregation of the 1930s, he later said he was always proud to call himself colored, and that in fact for his career it was an advantage — because even at the onset of the Depression, there was work for singers with black bands.
Gifted with a pure voice, originally a tenor, he started singing with local bands in his native Detroit. He moved to Chicago as a teenager and got his first big job singing with Earl Hines.
He started singing with the Ellington band in 1940, after he had made his last picture. He remained there for two years, scoring a signature hit with “Flamingo.”
A few years later he moved to France, like a number of American singers who found they were more popular there than in the States, and opened a club called the Flamingo.
He remained primarily a singer for the rest of his long career, though he co-starred with Angie Dickinson in the 1957 movie “Calypso Joe” and made guest appearances on television.
He moved back to Los Angeles in the 1960s.
He was well-regarded as a singer by fans of several genres, including pop, jazz, and rhythm and blues. His smooth baritone evoked the ambience of the wartime and postwar years.
Jeffries lived long enough to see his work appreciated, particularly after several of his “lost” films were discovered in Texas in 1992. He was featured on Turner Classic Movies and the subject of a 2007 biographical film, “A Colored Life.”
He was working on his autobiography with writer Raymond Strait when the Bronze Buckaroo rode off into the sunset.
