Entertainer, rodeo performer, four-time world champion and musician. He grew up on a working cattle ranch near Pampa, Texas, and later spent his teen years in Beaver, Oklahoma. He may have started to compete as a teenager by observing his father, who roped in local rodeos for fun. He entered his first local amateur rodeo in 1945, and by 1946, he was a member of the Beaver, Oklahoma Rodeo Club and was placing and winning in bull riding contests for youths aged 14 to 18 throughout Oklahoma, Texas, and Arizona. He originally focused on bronc riding. He also rode bulls and competed in bulldogging and calf roping. Prior to competing in the 1948 professional rodeo events, he joined the Rodeo Cowboys Association (now PRCA). His RCA member permit card number was 376. His first major win as a pro came in February 1948 at the Tucson, Arizona rodeo, where he won $931.00 in the Bareback Riding Championship, followed by All-Around Cowboy at the Siskiyou County, California Sheriff's Posse rodeo. With that title, he won a gold and silver belt buckle and $310 in prize money, and at the Elgin, Oregon, rodeo, he won a $215 Hamley saddle for the all-around competition. During his career, he won 13 Bareback Riding Championships, four All-Round Championships, the International Rodeo Association (IRA) Bareback Riding Championship, and the four World Bareback Rider Championships (PRCA) for the years 1953, 1954, 1955, and again in 1961. He remarked in a 2010 interview that as an amateur rodeoer, he expected to win wherever he went, and when he turned pro, he expected the same thing. During his 20-year professional rodeo career, rodeo was his primary source of income, and he never had a serious slump. In the early 1950s, he sustained a potentially career-ending knee injury. Ignoring his physicians' advice to retire from rodeo, he went on to have his best season ever. He then reinjured his knee and was forced to retire. At the same time, he resigned from his position as bareback riding director on the PRCA Board of Directors. He wore a steel knee brace for two years. Then, in 1959, he decided to try for a fourth world title. He took off the brace, fought through the pain, and won his fourth world title in 1961. He was also a musician who sang and played the guitar in his hotel room after a long day at the rodeo. It quickly evolved into something more. Everyone would come to his room for the music, and no one would go to the bar, so he was invited to perform for money by the hotel. Between 1956 and 1963, he recorded 10 known singles. Among the songs recorded were "What Can I Do," "Consolation Prize," "Handcuff Our Hearts," "The Higher You Fly, Harder You Fall," "Featherbed's," "After Being Your Lover," "You're Still The Shadow," "I Can't Stop," and "Thinking Of You Again." Only one reached the top 50 list on the national chart, and that was "One-A-Day Multiple Heartache" in 1963. He went on to pursue a music career after retiring from rodeo in 1970, moving to Las Vegas and becoming a regular on the strip. He headlined at numerous hotels, such as the Hilton, Stardust, Desert Inn, Tropicana, and Hacienda Hotels with the "Gold Buckle Band." The band would go on to entertain at the National Finals Rodeo (NFR) Welcome Committee Party from 1985 to 1994 and at the World Championship Awards Banquet from 1985 to 1992. He also became a casino baccarat dealer, and later a casino host for over 15 years with the Golden Nugget, Frontier, and Sahara Hotels. After retiring from the casinos in the mid-1990's, he worked at numerous golf courses, such as Angle Park, SilverStone, Piaute Golf Resort, and finally at Sienna Golf Club, working as a counter jockey. He was inducted into the Prorodeo Hall of Fame in 1979, the National Cowboy Hall of Fame in 1999, the Texas Rodeo Cowboy Hall of Fame in 2002, and the Ellensburg Rodeo Hall of Fame in 2010. In 1991, he was selected "Man of the Year" by the Women's Professional Rodeo Association and, in 1995, Gist Buckle Company presented a tribute to him commemorating "American Rodeo Legends."