Sheb Wooley

Shelby Fredrick "Sheb" Wooley (April 10, 1921 – September 16, 2003) was an American singer, songwriter and actor. He recorded a series of novelty songs including the 1958 hit rock and roll comedy single "The Purple People Eater" and under the name Ben Colder the country hit "Almost Persuaded No. 2". As an actor, he portrayed Cletus Summers, the principal of Hickory High School and assistant coach in the 1986 film Hoosiers; Ben Miller, brother of Frank Miller in the film High Noon; Travis Cobb in The Outlaw Josey Wales, and also had a co-starring role as scout Pete Nolan in the television series Rawhide. Wooley is also credited as the voice actor who provided the Wilhelm scream and all of the other stock sound effects for Thomas J. Valentino's Major record label during the 1940s. Early life Sheb Wooley was born in 1921 in Erick, Oklahoma, the third son of William C. Wooley and Ora E. Wooley. Wooley claimed to be part Cherokee. He had two older brothers, Logan and Hubert, as well as a younger brother, William. Federal census records for 1930 and 1940 identify Sheb's father only as a "Farmer", although the family's livestock holdings apparently included horses, for Sheb learned to ride at an early age and became a working cowboy and later an accomplished rodeo rider. Wooley married for the first time in 1940, wedding 17-year-old Melva Miller, a cousin of Roger Miller who would later become a successful song writer and actor himself. Wooley became friends with Miller when he lived in Oklahoma. He taught the boy how to play guitar chords and bought his first fiddle for him. When the United States entered World War II, Wooley tried to enlist in the military but was unsuccessful due to his numerous rodeo injuries. Instead, in the early 1940s he worked in the oil industry and as a welder. In 1946 he moved to Fort Worth, Texas, where he earned a living as a country-western musician recording songs and traveling for three years with a band throughout the South and Southwest. In Fort Worth he also married for the second time, to Edna Talbott Bunt, a young widow with an infant son named Gary. The three of them left Texas in 1950 and moved to Hollywood, where Wooley hoped to establish himself as an actor or singer in film or in the rapidly expanding medium of television.