LOS ANGELES (CelebrityAccess) – Warner Chappell Music has acquired the 1,500-plus songs of the Gene Autry Music Group.
The “Singing Cowboy’s” catalog includes the holiday standard “Here Comes Santa Claus,” as well as tracks like “You Belong To Me,” “Just Walkin’ In The Rain,” Autry’s signature song, “Back In The Saddle Again,” as well as his recording of “Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer,” though he did not write the latter.
Over the course of his nearly seven-decades-long career, Autry recorded more than 640 songs — nearly half of which he wrote or co-wrote — starred in 93 feature films, 91 TV episodes of “The Gene Autry Show” and the weekly radio show “Melody Ranch,” which ran for 16 years. He also owned radio and TV stations, MLB’s California Angels and became the only entertainer to make the Forbes’ list of 400 richest Americans in 1990.
The terms of the deal were not disclosed. Autry died in 1998 at the age of 91.
