When Ringo Starr remembers the music that first moved him, it doesn’t begin with rock and roll. Long before The Beatles, before the hysteria of Beatlemania and the stadium tours, his story starts with a singing cowboy.
In a 1977 interview – at Inner-View – Ringo was asked about his earliest influences, and his answer came without hesitation. “Gene Autry was the most,” he said. “It may sound like a joke – go and have a look in my bedroom. It’s covered with Gene Autry posters. He was my first musical influence.”
For Starr, the connection went deeper than simply liking a few songs. He described vividly how one cinematic moment sparked something inside him: “He sent shivers down my spine when he put his leg over the horn on the saddle and sang, ‘South of the border, down Mexico way’ in a movie. My first musical experience was that.”
Known as “The Singing Cowboy,” Gene Autry was one of the biggest stars in American entertainment across the 1930s and 40s. He made over 90 films, recorded hundreds of songs and became a household name with his mix of Western storytelling and country music.
His warm voice and clean‑cut cowboy persona made him a favourite for families, and his performances blended traditional folk sounds with popular balladry of the era.
Autry’s film career turned him into a multimedia phenomenon. At a time when cinema was one of the few windows into American culture for overseas audiences, his cowboy musicals travelled far beyond the United States.
Songs like ‘South of the Border (Down Mexico Way)’, first recorded in 1939, stood the test of time, while his renditions of ‘Back in the Saddle Again’ and holiday favourites like ‘Rudolph the Red‑Nosed Reindeer’ gave him status as a cultural icon.
For British children growing up in the post‑war years, Autry’s films provided more than just entertainment. They offered a sense of adventure and escape – vivid images of the American West paired with music that felt both accessible and exotic.
That early influence stayed with Starr when he joined The Beatles. Ringo was often given the group’s most country‑tinged numbers to sing, including their covers of Carl Perkins’ ‘Honey Don’t’ and Buck Owens’ ‘Act Naturally’. Even Lennon and McCartney’s original compositions occasionally borrowed from the style, like ‘I Don’t Want to Spoil the Party’ and ‘I’ll Cry Instead’.
After The Beatles split, Ringo took his appreciation for the genre a step further with Beaucoups of Blues (1970), a full country album recorded in Nashville with some of the industry’s leading session players. It was a project that directly echoed the inspiration he’d felt decades earlier watching Autry on the big screen.