Singing Guns

Singing Guns' legacy is helping 'Mule Train' - sung to a Sedona backdrop - shoot to the top of the music charts. But using singer Vaughn Monroe as a gunslinger ultimately misfired.

Horse opera was not an elective at the New England Conservatory of Music. But that didn't stop Republic Pictures from trying to turn one-time student Vaughn Monroe - a virtuoso trumpet and trombone player, big-band leader and chart-topping sophisticated pop vocalist - into a rough-edged hombre who could effortlessly carry both a melody and a six-shooter in a tumbleweed flick called Singing Guns. Despite the title, this 1950 production - which breezed in and out of Sedona in 48 hours in 1949 and is frequently missing from local filmographies - was no musical; it's an old-fashioned shoot-'em-up with three

Monroe recorded "Mule Train" for the Singing Guns soundtrack and it was released well in advance of the movie in late 1949. Instantly recognizable by the cracking whip sound that punctuates its choruses, the song hit the Top Ten, and Republic moved quickly to capitalize on its success by heavily promoting Monroe's performance of the song in the film. To stage the song in the movie, a mule team and wagon were sent to Sedona especially for a second unit crew to photograph, along with traveling backgrounds of the red rocks to be projected behind Monroe as he performed the tune on a Hollywood soundstage (no crude painting would risk tarnishing this now-pivotal scene, apparently). These were most likely filmed with a stand-in after Monroe had left town. As The Hollywood Citizens-News quipped, "Republic should be given some sort of award for self-restraint in not naming the picture after the song."

Text © 2006 Sedona Monthly

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