Sheb Wooley faced off against Gary Cooper in the western classic High Noon and for years he rode with Clint Eastwood in Rawhide, one of the most successful western series on television. But it was with a novelty pop song about an alien who wanted to join a rock'n'roll band that Wooley had his biggest success.
Ignoring record company scepticism, he recorded Purple People Eater and took it to No 1 in the American charts in 1958, selling three million copies. The annoyingly catchy ditty about a ''one-eyed, one-horned, flying, purple people eater'' was also a British hit and was widely copied by other singers, including Ray Stevens.
Wooley, who has died from leukaemia aged 82, successfully pursued careers as an actor, singer-songwriter, and comedian. Purple People Eater laid the foundations for a string of comic songs, many of them parodies of other hits, such as Sunday Morning Fallin' Down, often recorded under the name Ben Colder.
Wooley helped Rawhide co-star Clint Eastwood develop the knockabout comedy he was to use to expand his career, in Every Which Way But Loose. During the Rawhide years, the two of them went out on the road as a double act, making personal appearances at rodeos, singing and telling jokes.
Born Shelby Wooley near Erick, Oklahoma, he grew up on the family farm, played with a local band, and worked as a cowboy and in the oil fields and local rodeos, before heading first for Nashville, where he had some early success as a country singer, and then for Hollywood, where he hoped to develop a career as a singing cowboy, like Tex Ritter.
But the fashion for western heroes who preferred yodelling to shooting was all but over. He made his screen debut as a heavy in Rocky Mountain (1950), with Errol Flynn, and quickly became a familiar face in westerns, including Apache Drums, The Fighting Seventh aka Little Big Horn, Distant Drums, and Bugles in the Afternoon (as General Custer).
High Noon (1952) gave him one of his most enduring big-screen roles, as Ben Miller, who is waiting for his brother to arrive on the noon train for a showdown with marshal Gary Cooper. Subsequent films included Rose Marie (1954), Johnny Guitar (1954), Seven Brides for Seven Brothers (1954), Man Without a Star (1955), and Giant (1956). He also appeared in TV series, including The Lone Ranger. His biggest small-screen success was as Pete Nolan in Rawhide, which ran from 1959 to 1965.
It was on Rawhide that Eastwood laid the foundations for the taciturn stranger he would play in the dollar westerns. ''We called him Mumbles,'' said Wooley. ''He didn't speak his words very loud. The sound man was always saying, 'Kid, speak up!' But he mumbled his way to a fortune.'' During his time in westerns, Wooley continued writing and recording songs. Interest in space travel and extraterrestrial life was at its height when he dashed off Purple People Eater in a matter of minutes. He recorded it only because he had some free time at the end of a session. It stayed at No 1 for six weeks and sold three million copies in the US.
Wooley developed an alternative persona, as drunken singer Ben Colder, in which guise he was named comedian of the year by the Country Music Association in 1968.
Wooley appeared less often in films and television, though he was reunited with Eastwood in The Outlaw Josey Wales (1976) and his later films include The War Wagon (1967), Silverado (1985), Hoosiers (1986), and Purple People Eater (1988), a children's film based on his song, starring Shelley Winters and Thora Birch.
He is survived by his wife, Linda Dotson, who was his manager, and two daughters.
Sheb Wooley, actor, singer, songwriter; born April, 1921, died on September 16, 2003.
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