Earl W. Bascom

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Earl W. Bascom (June 19, 1906 - August 28, 1995) was an American painter and sculptor, raised in Canada, who portrayed his own experiences cowboying and rodeoing across the American and Canadian West.

Contents

[edit] Childhood

Bascom was born in a sod-roofed log cabin on the Bascom 101 Ranch in Vernal, Utah. Bascom's father, John W. Bascom, had been a deputy sheriff in Utah, who chased Butch Cassidy and the Wild Bunch Gang. Both sets of Earl's grandparents (Joel A. Bascom and C.F.B. Lybbert) were Mormon pioneers, ranchers and frontier lawmen.

Earl Bascom's paternal ancestral background was a colorful aray of nationalities and ethnicities including Quaker, French Basque and Huguenots, as well as an American Colonial Governor, John Webster, and a Revolutionary War soldier, Oliver Greene.[1] His maternal family was of Norwegian, Danish, Dutch and German ancestry.[2] As a child growing up, he was sometimes affectionately addressed by his British-born aunts as "Lord Bascom - King of the Canadian Cowboys," as he was a descendant of European royalty back to Charlemagne.

While Bascom was still a child his family moved to the Bascom Bar-B-3 Ranch in Alberta, Canada. He quit school while in grade three to work on the Hyssop 5H Ranch. Although he was soon marched back to school by the Royal Canadian Mounted Police, Earl was reprieved to get the job of driving an old stagecoach each day to the surrounding ranches transporting fellow students to and from school.[3]

[edit] Cowboy of Cowboy Artists

Bascom was known as the Cowboy of Cowboy Artists due to his wide range of western experiences as a professional bronc buster, cowpuncher, trail driver, blacksmith, freighter, wolf hunter, wild horse chaser, rodeo champion, cattle rancher, dude wrangler, and Hollywood actor. Bascom was among the last of those who experienced the Old West before the end of free-range ranching. Bascom reminisced:

I worked for some of the big open-range outfits from Purple Springs to the Sweetgrass Hills and Kicking Horse Creek to the Milk River Ridge and the Canadian Rockies. On one roundup some 7,000 horses were gathered in one bunch a mile wide. And the Knight Ranch dipped 18,000 head of cattle. What a sight to see. The sight, the sounds, the smell I can still remember.[4]

[edit] Professional Cowboy

For Earl Bascom, cowboy life was his life. "The life of a cowboy and the West, I know," he stated. Bascom worked on some of the largest horse and cattle ranches in the United States and Canada - ranches that ran thousands of cattle on a million acres (4000 km²) of land. He broke and trained hundreds of horses. He worked on ranches where he chased and gathered horses, cows and even donkeys in Utah, Arizona, Colorado, Idaho, Wyoming, Montana, Mississippi, Washington, California and Canada. He worked on cattle drives out of the Rockies and horse drives through the Teton Range. He took part on large roundups of horses and cattle, and brandings. He made saddles and stirrups, quirts, chaps, spurs, bridles and bits, ropes and hackamores, and even patched his own boots. Earl's father, John W. Bascom, and Earl's brothers were all experienced ranch cowboys.

[edit] Rodeo Rider

Earl Bascom rodeoed from 1916 to 1940 in the rough stock events of saddle bronc riding, bareback riding and bull riding, and in the timed events of steer decorating and steer wrestling. He held memberships in the Cowboys Turtle Association, the Professional Rodeo Cowboys Association, the Canadian Rodeo Cowboys Association (now the Canadian Pro Rodeo Association) and the National Police Rodeo Association. An all-around rodeo champion, he has been inducted into several rodeo Halls of Fame in Canada and the United States. He received international acclaim for his rodeo equipment inventions and designs.[5] Earl's brothers - Raymond "Tommy" Bascom, Melvin "High Pockets" Bascom and Weldon "Preacher" Bascom - were also professional rodeo cowboys and Hall of Fame inductees.

[edit] Family of rodeo cowboys, champions and performers

Earl Bascom's rodeo relatives:

  • John W. Bascom - rodeo stock contractor
  • Raymond "Tom" Bascom - calf roper, roman racer, rodeo pickup man, rodeo arena director, 1990 Hall of Fame inductee
  • Melvin Bascom - rodeo champion, rodeo stock contractor, rodeo producer, 1989 Hall of Fame inductee
  • Weldon Bascom - rodeo champion, rodeo producer, 1988 Hall of Fame inductee
  • Texas Rose Bascom - trick rider, trick roper, 1981 National Cowgirl Hall of Fame inductee
  • Ron Bascom - 1989 Canadian Senior Pro Rodeo Bull Riding Champion
  • Chris Lybbert - 1982 All-Around Champion of the World, 1986 World Champion Calf Roper, 1982 Hall of Fame inductee
  • Sheri Saville - barrel racer, first Rodeo Queen of Alberta 1980, rodeo's first female pickupman
  • Deedra Lybbert - barrel racer, 1992 Miss Rodeo Canada

[edit] Rodeo Innovations

Earl Bascom is known as an innovator and designer of rodeo equipment and rodeo gear. His inventions include:

[edit] Family of famous inventors

Earl Bascom is related by family bloodlines to other notable inventors:

[edit] Mississippi Rodeo

Mixed in during his college years, Earl, along with his brother Weldon, produced the first rodeos in Columbia, Mississippi in 1935, 1936 and 1937, while they both worked for Hickman's B Bar H Ranch near Arm, Mississippi. Ranch owner and businessman Sam Hickman financed these rodeos.

[edit] Marriage

Both Earl and Weldon married young ladies they met during their time in Mississippi. In 1937 Weldon married Rose Flynt, who was part Cherokee and Choctaw. Earl married Nadine Diffey in 1939, who was part Creek and Catawba. They each raised five children.

[edit] Rodeo Clown

Besides being a serious-minded rodeo contestant, Earl tried his hand as a rodeo clown and rodeo bullfighter during his rodeo career. Just after his 89th birthday, Earl was honored as the oldest living rodeo clown in the world.[6]

[edit] Artist Training

[edit] Jim Thorpe's Influence

While working for the Nilsson Rafter-E-N Ranch, Earl happened to read a story in a western magazine about Native American Jim Thorpe. Thorpe was working as a horse wrangler, but got fired. The camp cook gave him some advice - go to school. Thorpe took that advice, went to school, excelled in sports and became an Olympic champion.

Jim Thorpe’s life touched Earl Bascom’s. "I felt like I had walked in his boots," Earl said. "Like Jim Thorpe, cowboy life was the only life that I knew. But what about my art, what about art school?"

[edit] Russell and Remington's influence

Wanting to be an artist since childhood, Earl Bascom filled the pages of his school books in the one-room school house he attended with cowboy scenes. Earl Bascom’s desire to be a cowboy artist was greatly enhanced after seeing art works of the two great icons of Old West art, Charles M. Russell and Frederic S. Remington - both cousins to Earl’s father (Remington and Russell were both related to Bascom through their mothers, Clarissa Bascom Sackrider Remington and Mary Elizabeth Mead Russell, respectively). Charles Russell was on the Knight Ranch when Earl was working there, and had drawn a sketch on the bunkhouse wall and also finished a large oil painting of Raymond Knight on his favorite mount, Blue Bird, roping a steer. [7]

[edit] Correspondence Art Course

Earl only completed one full year of school and never finished high school, but he never lost his desire to be an artist. He subscribed to a correspondence art course wherein both Russell and Remington gave instructions on their drawing techniques. "Through those art lessons these two masters of western art were my first real art teachers," Earl recalled. "In fact the only instructions I ever had in western art were from Remington and Russell." [citation needed]

[edit] College Art Training

Even though he had no high school diploma, the Brigham Young University in Provo, Utah accepted him as a student in the fall of 1933. “There I was a 27 years old college freshman who hadn’t been to school in years,” Earl recalled. “I felt like a wild horse in a pen.” But his persistence was tough, taking every art course the college offered. He studied painting and drawing under professors E.H. Eastmond and B.F. Larsen, and sculpture under Torlief Knaphus. Earl graduated from B.Y.U. in 1940. Later he attended classes at Long Beach City College, Victor Valley College and the University of California Riverside.

[edit] Hollywood

In 1917, Earl saw his first Hollywood movie "The Silent Man" with William S. Hart. Earl and his older brother Melvin were extras in a silent movie in 1920 being filmed in Lethbridge, Alberta. In 1924, a team of palomino horses from the Bascom Ranch was used by Hoot Gibson in the movie "The Calgary Stampede." After graduating from college, Earl and his wife moved to California. Retiring from rodeo, he pursued his art career and ranched. He worked a bit in the movie industry with his brother Weldon Bascom in the Hollywood western, "Lawless Rider", starring Weldon's wife Texas Rose Bascom. Later Earl and his son-in-law Mel Marion did TV commercials with Roy Rogers for the Roy Rogers Restaurant chain. Earl and his son John Bascom were in the documentary "Take Willy With You" about the rodeo riding Greenough family. When the Roy Rogers Riding Stables opened up in Apple Valley, California, Earl and his son John worked there wrangling horses and driving the hay wagon.

[edit] Art teacher

In 1966, after getting his teaching certificate, Earl taught art classes at the John F. Kennedy High School and the Barstow High School. He also served as president of the High Desert Artists and later as president of the Buckaroo Artists of America. Among his art associates were Bill Bender, Charles LaMonk. Leslie B. DeMille, Glen Turner and Cecil Smith.

[edit] International Artist

Earl Bascom became internationally known as a cowboy artist and sculptor. His art has been exhibited in the United States, Canada and Europe. He was honored by the Professional Rodeo Cowboy Artists Association as the first rodeo cowboy to become a professional cowboy artist and sculptor. He was the first cowboy artist to be honored as a Fellow of the Royal Society of Arts of London. In the summer of 2005, the Earl W. Bascom Memorial Rodeo was held in Berlin, Germany where his cowboy art was exhibited as an honor by the European Rodeo Cowboys Association for Bascom's world-wide influence upon the sport of rodeo.

[edit] Family of Artists

Famous artists related by family bloodline to Earl Bascom include:

[edit] Later Years

Always one who had deep thoughts and religious leanings, Earl Bascom was ordained a Latter-day Saints Bishop later in life. As the late cowboy celebrity Roy Rogers, who worked with Earl Bascom in TV commercials and was a collector of Bascom art, once said, “Earl Bascom is a walking book of history. His knowledge of the Old West was acquired the old fashioned way – he was born and raised in it.”

Bascom died at the age of 89 on his ranch in Victorville, California, August 28, 1995.

[edit] Philosophy

A motivating factor that pushed Earl Bascom to excel in sports or fine art was the philosophy he expressed in these words: "If you want to be a champion bull rider, you have to ride the toughest bull."

[edit] Lifetime Honors

[edit] Rodeo Championships

  • 1930 3-Bar Ranch Stampede, All-Around Champion, Saskatchewan
  • 1933 Calgary Stampede, Reserve Champion, Steer Decorating, North American Championship, Calgary, Alberta
  • 1933 Lethbridge Stampede, World Record time, Steer Decorating, Alberta
  • 1933 Lethbridge Stampede and Raymond Stampede, Arena Record time, Steer Decorating, Alberta
  • 1933 Championship of the World, Third Place in Steer Decorating, Rodeo Association of America
  • 1934 Lethbridge Stampede, Bareback and All-Around Champion, Alberta
  • 1935 Raymond Stampede, Saddle Bronc, Steer Decorating and All-Around Champion, Alberta
  • 1936 Nephi Stampede, All-Around Champion, Utah
  • 1937 Pocatello Rodeo, Saddle Bronc, Bareback, Bull Riding and All-Around Champion, Idaho
  • 1938 Rigby Rodeo, Bareback and All-Around Champion, Idaho
  • 1939 Portland Rodeo, Bareback, Bull Riding and All-Around Champion, Oregon
  • 1940 Raymond Stampede, Saddle Bronc, Bareback and All-Around Champion, Alberta

[edit] Honorary Titles

[edit] Tributes

  • Congressional Record July 9, 1985, "Earl Bascom - An American Hero"
  • Bascom Brothers - 50 Year Anniversary Rodeo, Columbia, Mississippi 1985
  • Earl W. Bascom Memorial Rodeo 2005, Berlin, Germany
  • Earl Bascom All-Around Champion Award, Dillon Rodeo, Montana
  • Earl W. Bascom All-Around Champion Award, Hesperia Rodeo, California
  • Earl W. Bascom Bareback Champion Award, Dinosaur Roundup Rodeo, Vernal, Utah
  • Earl W. Bascom - Utah Heritage Award, Days of '47 Rodeo, Salt Lake City, Utah
  • Earl W. Bascom - Lethbridge Heritage Award, Whoop-Up Days Pro Rodeo, Lethbridge, Alberta
  • Earl Bascom Saddle Bronc Rookie Award, National High School Finals Rodeo
  • Earl Bascom Bareback Rookie Award, National High School Finals Rodeo

[edit] Legacy

  • Honored for the development of the first side-delivery rodeo chute
  • Honored as the designer and maker of rodeo's first hornless bronc saddle
  • Honored as the designer and maker of rodeo's first one-hand bareback rigging
  • Honored for producing the first outdoor night rodeo held under electric lights
  • Honored for pioneering the sport of rodeo in Mississippi
  • Honored as the designer and supervisor of construction of Mississippi's first permanent rodeo arena and grandstands
  • Honored as the first collegiate rodeo cowboy to graduate from Brigham Young University
  • Honored as the world's oldest living rodeo clown in 1995
  • Honored as a rodeo pioneer by Paul Harvey News
  • Honored as the first rodeo cowboy to become a professional artist and sculptor by the Professional Rodeo Cowboy Artists of America
  • Honored for world-wide influence on the sport of rodeo by the European Rodeo Cowboy Association
  • Honored as rodeo's greatest innovator by Canadian Cowboy Country magazine
  • Honored as one of the world's most famous excogitators and inventors of all time
  • Honored as Father of Modern Rodeo in documentary by Cowboy Country Television
  • Honored as rodeo pioneer, inventor and artist by National Public Radio "Word for the Wise"

[edit] Hall of Fame Honors

  • Canadian Rodeo Hall of Fame
  • Utah Sports Hall of Fame
  • Raymond Alberta Sports Hall of Fame
  • Marion County Mississippi Cattleman's Hall of Fame
  • Cowboy Memorial Museum
  • United States Sports Academy Walk of Fame
  • Fellow of the Royal Society of Arts, London
  • California Rodeo Hall of Fame

[edit] See also

[edit] Sources

  • Who's Who in American Art
  • Who's Who in Western Writers
  • Who's Who in California
  • Who's Who in the West
  • Who's Who in America
  • Who's Who in the World

[edit] Footnotes

  1. ^ "Earl's ancestors Herodius Long was a Quaker, Gilbertus Bask'omme was a French Basque nobleman and Robert Bascom was a Huguenot"
  2. ^ "Earl's maternal grandmother, Antonette Marie Olsen Lybbert, was from Oslo, Norway; his maternal grandfather, C.F.B. Lybbert, was from Flade, Denmark but was of German, Prussian and Dutch ancestry"
  3. ^ "Earl's father got the contract to drive the school district's coach wagon using a team of horses from the Bascom Ranch"
  4. ^ "American Hero Earl W. Bascom". (Fall 1995), United Lumbee Nation Times
  5. ^ "Bascom's influence on European rodeo is acknowledged by the European Rodeo Cowboys Association"
  6. ^ "world's oldest living rodeo clown and bullfighter dies"
  7. ^ "The bridle headstall shown on C. M. Russell's depiction of the horse, Blue Bird, was the same one that Raymond Knight gave to Earl as payment for breaking a horse for him"

[edit] References

  • Brigham Young University "Banyan" (1934)
  • Brigham Young University "Banyan" (1940)
  • J.O. Hicken "Raymond Roundup 1902 - 1967" (1967)
  • Van Lybbert "C.F.B. Lybbert and Family History" (1975)
  • Cardston Historical Society "Chief Mountain Country" (1978)
  • Stirling Sunset Society "Stirling History" (1981)
  • Lyle Lybbert "Memories I Could Do Without - and Other Short Stories" (1983)
  • Kristina Fredriksson "American Rodeo - From Buffalo Bill to Big Business" (1985)
  • Christopher Payne "Animals in Bronze" (1987)
  • Billie R. Bascom "The Single Years" (1987)
  • Lela Nickell Christian "Elias Willard Williams, Jr. and Ida Jane Bascom and Their Posterity" (1988)
  • Sunnyside Historical Society "Sunnyside Area History, Royal View and Hyssop" (1988)
  • W.L. Bascom "I Remember - Early Days of Raymond" (1990)
  • Leonard Bloom "Journal of the Societ of Basques in America" (1993)
  • Bob Jordan "Rodeo History and Legends" (1993)
  • Lawrence Turner "Settlers, Sugar and Stampedes: Raymond Remembered" (1993)
  • Gail Woerner "Fearless Funnymen: The History of the Rodeo Clown" (1994)
  • Ron Carter "The Youngest Drover: A True Story About Growing Up on a Cattle Drive" (1994)
  • V. Dallas Merrell "Wild Promise - Grandfather's Story of a Boy and a Horse" (1994)
  • John Swisher "Bits and Pieces" (1995)
  • Thomas Earl Diffee "The Diffee Family in America" (1996)
  • Nina K. Johnson "Legacies of Faith" (1997)
  • Gail Woerner " Belly Full of Bedsprings: The History of Bronc Riding" (1998)
  • Ray Davenport "Davenport's Art Reference" (2001)
  • Norma Smith "Our Town 2002: Raymond Stampede Centennial" (2002)
  • E.M. Hughe "Arists in California, 1786-1940" (2002)
  • Mike Graham "Old Cowboy Saddles and Spurs: Identifying the Craftsmen Who Made them" (2003)
  • Sylvia Mahoney "College Rodeo From Show to Sport" (2004)
  • Katie O'Rorke "The History of Apple Valley" (2004)

[edit] External links

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