Ballad of the Alamo
It’s a good coincidence that March 2 falls of a Friday in 2012. Today we can feature one of my favorite songs, Ballad of the Alamo by Marty Robbins. John Wayne put up his own money to produce the movie, The Alamo. By hiring Dmitri Tiomkin as composer for the soundtrack to the movie, he hit a real home run. No, the movie wasn’t all that historically accurate, but I would have loved to be an actor on that set with John Wayne, Richard Widmark, Richard Boone and the others. They would surely have put my ulcers into high gear with all the strong drink that was probably involved. It is my all time favorite of any and all of the Alamo movies. I’ve worn out a CD or two of the soundtrack and used to play it in my classroom when I taught Texas History. I would put the soundtrack on when they were working on classroom assignments to put them all in the correct frame of mind.
Marty Robbins’ Ballad of the Alamo was always a favorite of the class…
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I was in High School in Uvalde at the time of the filming of the Alamo in Bracketville. John Wayne came to Uvalde to visit The Hon. John Nance Garner, former Vice President of the US and I and a few of my journalism class were privileged to sit in on the visit and report for the school paper. At that time John Wayne invited all us kids to come to Bracketville and see the filming of the main seige of the Alamo. What an experience that was! The numbers of actors, horses, and people involved was unbelievable. Those actors that were wearing the woolen Mexican uniforms must have been suffering in the hot South Texas sun as it took hours to shoot the seige to John Wayne’s satisfaction!
What an experience! John Wayne must have seemed larger than life!
I have just found out that I might have had some ancestors at the Alamo, I haven’t verified it yet, but John Blair and Samuel Blair could be my relatives.. My grandmother’s family were Blairs…