Earl W. Bascom

Earl W. Bascom
Cowboy of Cowboy Artists - Father of Modern Rodeo
Born	Earl Wesley Bascom June 19, 1906 Vernal, Uintah County, Utah
Died	August 28, 1995(1995-08-28) (aged 89) Victorville, San Bernardino County, California
Education	Brigham Young University, Provo, Utah County, Utah and Victor Valley College, Victorville, San Bernardino County, California also University of California - Riverside, Riverside County, California
Occupation	Cowboy, rodeo champion, rancher, inventor, school teacher, western artist, international sculptor, Hollywood actor, historian, writer
Spouse(s)	E. Nadine Diffey (1939-1995)
Parent(s)	John W. B. Bascom and Rachel C. Lybbert
Awards	Studio Guild 1934 and 1936, elected Fellow of the Royal Society of Arts, London, elected member of Professional Rodeo Cowboy Artists Association, rodeo hall of fame inductee, National Day of the Cowboy Honoree

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

Childhood

Earl Bascom was born on June 19, 1906 in a sod-roofed log cabin on the Bascom 101 Ranch in Vernal, Utah, the son of John W. Bascom and Rachel Lybbert. His father had been a Uintah County deputy sheriff and a constable in the town of Naples in northeast Utah, who chased members of Butch Cassidy's Wild Bunch Gang and other outlaws including Harry "Mad Dog" Tracy.^[1]

Earl's grandfathers, Joel A. Bascom and C.F.B. Lybbert, were Mormon pioneers,^[2] ranchers and frontier lawmen. Joel Bascom was a cattle rancher and a member of the Utah Militia fighting in the Utah War of 1857 and the Utah Black Hawk Indian War of 1866. He also served as Chief of Police in Provo, Utah and as constable in Mona, Utah. C.F.B. Lybbert, who served in the Danish army before coming to America, was a rancher and blacksmith who served as constable of Levan, Utah and Justice of the Peace in Naples, Utah.

Bascom's paternal ancestral background was a colorful aray of nationalities and ethnicities including Quaker, French Basque and Huguenot, as well as an American Colonial Governor, John Webster, and a Revolutionary War soldier, Oliver Greene.^[3] His maternal family was of Norwegian, Danish, Dutch and German ancestry.^[4]

Three of Bascom's relatives were famous mountain men and explorers - Jedediah S. Smith, Doc Newell and Jonathan Warner. On the Warner side of his family, Earl Bascom was related to General George Washington, America's first president. Through his ancestor Major John Greene of Rhode Island, Earl Bascom was related to the Hollywood cowboy actor John Wayne.

As a child growing up, he was sometimes affectionately addressed by his British-born grandmother and aunts as "Lord Bascom - King of the Canadian Cowboys," as he was a descendant of European royalty back to Charlemagne.

In 1909, Earl and his two older brothers and their father were riding horseback near Lybbert Gulch, when a bee stung Earl's horse and it bucked across the meadow with him. Earl hung on until his brothers rode in and picked him off the horse like a rodeo pickup man. Earl was just three years old.

For entertainment, the Bascom boys rode anything on the ranch that "bucked, jumped, or crawled." The family was at the local Vernal rodeo where they saw the famous bucking horse "Steamboat" in the arena.

In 1912, when Earl Bascom was just six years old, his mother Rachel died, leaving five children - Raymond, Melvin, Earl, Alice and Weldon - ranging in age from 11 years to nine months. In 1913, Earl's father, who had cowboyed in Utah and Colorado and worked in sheepshearing crews in Wyoming and Montana, went to Alberta, Canada securing a job as a foreman on the Knight Ranch. John Bascom's brother-in-law, Ike Lybbert, was already working there as the ranch blacksmith.

In 1914, the Bascom family loaded their belongings into a covered wagon, traveled a week to the nearest railroad in Price, Utah and rode the train to Canada. After working for the Knight Ranches headquartered on the Milk River Ridge in Alberta, Canada and managing Ray Knight's Butte Ranch north of the town of Raymond, Alberta, John W. Bascom and his sons began ranching on their own using the Bar-B-3 brand. Over the following years, the Bascom family ranched at Welling along Pot Hole Creek, at New Dayton on the Fort Whoop-up Trail near Deadman Coolee, at Lethbridge on the Old Man River and at Stirling east of Nine Mile Lake.

By Canadian law, all minor children who emigrated to Canada before 1915 and whose parent became a naturalized citizen, then the minor children automatically became Canadian citizens. Earl Bascom's father became a naturalized Canadian citizen. Earl Bascom was technically an American Canadian. During the winter of 1916, the Bascom family moved back to Naples, Utah, returning to Canada in the spring of 1917.

Schooled mostly in one-room schools, Earl Bascom quit school while in grade three to work on the Hyssop 5H Ranch, east of Lethbridge. It was not long before a Canadian Mountie, who was visiting the Hyssop Ranch, thought that one of the cowboys was just too young looking to be a seasoned cowpuncher and bronc peeler. The Mountie asked Earl Bascom just how old he was - he was 13 years old. Earl was returned to school. Attending school felt better after Earl's father, who had a school district transportation contract, gave him the job of driving an old stagecoach pulled by a team of Bascom horses each day to the surrounding ranches transporting fellow students to and from school.^[5]

In 1918, Earl Bascom gained a stepmother and a stepbrother, Frank, when his Earl's father married Ada Romeril Dawley. To this new union was born five more children - Ada Bell, Charles, Luella, Grant and LaMona - making a total of eleven children in the Bascom family.

Cowboy career

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.^[6] 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.[7]

”

For Bascom, ranch life and cowboy life was his life. "The life of a cowboy and the West, I know," he stated.^[8] 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, Texas, Mississippi, Washington, California and western 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.^[9] Earl's brothers and their father, John W. Bascom, were all experienced ranch hands and professional horsemen who were known as the "Bronc Bustin' Bascom Boys."^[10]

A professional rodeo cowboy, Bascom followed the rodeo circuit internationally, rodeoing from 1916 to 1940, where he won several all-around championships. He competed 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.^[11] In 1933, he set a new arena record, a new world record time and won third place in the world standings in the steer decorating event. He also was a rodeo announcer, performed trick riding and competed in the rodeo events of wild cow milking and wild horse racing.^[12] He held memberships in the Cowboys Turtle Association, the Professional Rodeo Cowboys Association,^[13] the Canadian Rodeo Cowboys Association (now the Canadian Pro Rodeo Association), the National Police Rodeo Association and the National Old Timers Rodeo Association (now the National Senior Pro Rodeo Association).

Honored as a rodeo pioneer and as a rodeo champion, Bascom has been inducted into several rodeo, cowboy and sports Halls of Fame in Canada and the United States. He received international acclaim for his rodeo equipment inventions and designs.^[14] Earl's brothers - Raymond "Tommy" Bascom, Melvin "High Pockets" Bascom and Weldon "Preacher" Bascom, along with their father John W. Bascom - were also professional rodeo cowboys and Hall of Fame inductees. Rodeoing financed Earl Bascom's college education at Brigham Young University where he was given the title of "Rodeo's First Collegiate Cowboy" and from which institution he graduated in 1940.^[15]

Earl Bascom has been honored as the "Father of Modern Rodeo" and known as one of rodeo's greatest innovators and inventors.^[16] He is known in rodeo history for designing and making rodeo's modern bucking chute in 1916 and modified in 1919. He also made rodeo's first hornless bronc saddle in 1922 and rodeo's first one-hand bareback rigging in 1924, for which he has been called the "Father of Rodeo Bareback Riding." In 1926, he designed and made the modern rodeo riding chaps, and then in 1928, a rodeo exerciser made of spring steel.^[17]

Earl Bascom has been listed among Canada's greatest inventors and among the world's most famous excogitators and thinkers.^[18]

During his college years, Earl and his brother Weldon produced the first rodeos in Columbia, Mississippi in 1935, 1936 and 1937 while working for Sam Hickman's B Bar H Ranch near Arm, Mississippi. This first rodeo in Columbia is known in cowboy history as the first rodeo held outdoors at night under electric lights. The rodeo arena designed and built under the direction of Earl Bascom in 1936, was the first permanent rodeo arena built in Mississippi.

The bucking horses used in the rodeo were shipped in from West Texas and had colorful names of Yellow Fever, Dynamite, Mae West and Funeral Wagon.^[19] Sam Hickman and Earl Bascom went to New Orleans where they purchased brahma bulls for the rodeo bucking stock. This was the first recorded use of brahma bulls in rodeo.

Among those participating and assisting in these rodeos were Jake Lybbert, Mel Lybbert, Rose Bascom, Clyde Hatchell, Sam Jackson, Oliver Diffey, Ernest Buhrer, Ashel Evans, Tad Lucas, Horace Flake, Lester Flake, Don Pearce, Ferral Pearce, and Jasbo Faulkerson. Sam Hickman financed these rodeos through his Wild West Rodeo Company.

Between rodeos of 1936 and 1937, Earl was a missionary for The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints (LDS Church) in Mississippi, serving under Mission President LeGrand Richards of the Southern States Mission. The Bascom brothers were honored fifty years later for being the "Fathers of Mississippi Rodeo" and given the "Key to the City of Columbia," along with a congratulatory telegram from President Ronald Reagan.^[20]

In 1939, Bascom married Nadine Diffey, who was part American Indian, Creek and Catawba. He met her in Mississippi while cowboying and rodeoing there. They were married in Salt Lake City, Utah in the Salt Lake LDS Temple, and raised five children. Later in life, Nadine Bascom became a sculptor in her own right, creating bas-relief sculptures.^[21]

Besides being a professional rodeo contestant, Bascom 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.^[22]

In 2014, Earl Bascom was honored posthumously during the tenth anniversary celebration of the National Day of the Cowboy, for his international contributions to cowboy culture and the cowboy way of life.^[23][24]

During his lifetime, Bascom personally knew and associated with such characters as old time cowboys, pioneers and homesteaders, outlaws and lawmen, gunslingers and bootleggers, prospectors and gold miners, Mormon Battalion soldiers and Civil War soldiers, Indian Chiefs and Indian War fighters, muleskinners and pony express riders, squatters and sheepherders, cattle rustlers and horse thieves.^[25]

Artist

Influences

While working for the Nilsson Rafter-E-N Ranch, Bascom happened to read a story in a western magazine about Native American Jim Thorpe. Thorpe had been 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 Bascom. "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?"^[26]

Wanting to be an artist since childhood, Bascom filled the pages of his school books in the one-room school house he attended with cowboy scenes. His 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 his father, John W. Bascom (Remington and Russell were both related to Bascom through their mothers, Clarissa "Clara" Bascom Sackrider Remington and Mary Elizabeth Mead Russell, respectively). Both Remington and Russell were artists that spent time in Canada producing art. In the late 1920s, Earl worked on a ranch south of the Sweetgrass Hills in Montana that was once owned by the artist Charlie Russell and only a few months after Russell's death.

Charles Russell was on the Knight Ranch when Bascom 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.^[27]

Although Bascom was educated in one-room school houses and only completed one full school year and never finished high school, 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," Bascom recalled. "In fact the only instructions I ever had in western art were from Remington and Russell."^[28]

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,” Bascom recalled. “I felt like a wild horse in a pen.”^[29] But he was persistence, taking every art course the college offered. He studied painting and drawing under professors E.H. Eastmond and B.F. Larsen, and sculpture under Torleif S. Knaphus. During his freshman year of 1933-34, Bascom won the Studio Guild Award for the best student artist, and he won that top award again in 1936.^[30][31] He graduated from BYU with a degree in Fine Art in 1940. Later he attended classes at Long Beach City College, Victor Valley College^[32] and the University of California Riverside.

Employment

In 1917, Bascom 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 a Roman race in the movie "The Calgary Stampede." Earl later worked in the movie industry with his brother Weldon Bascom in the 1954 Hollywood western, "The Lawless Rider", starring Weldon's wife Texas Rose Bascom.^[33] Earl was one of the outlaws in the movie.^[34] Weldon was the sheriff and one of the stuntmen.^[35]

Bascom worked as a miner in the Old Gray Mine, digging coal, near Maeser, Utah in the winter of 1930.

After graduating from college, Bascom and his wife moved to California. Retiring from rodeo after one last season, he pursued his art career and ranched. Earl Bascom and his brother Weldon Bascom worked on a ranch in Perris, California which was formerly owned by Louis B. Mayer of Hollywood's MGM Studios.^[36]

During World War II, Bascom worked as a shipfitter in the Long Beach shipyards building ships for the war effort.^[37] As such, he was a member of the International Brotherhood of Boilermakers, Iron Ship Builders, Blacksmiths, Forgers and Helpers. After the war, Bascom worked for the Flying V Ranch before entering the booming construction industry, first working in the plumbing trade and then the plastering trade, joining what is known today as the Operative Plasterers' and Cement Masons' International Association of the United States and Canada. As a plastering contractor, Bascom's most significant work was on the Los Angeles Mormon Temple atop of which stands a golden statue created by his former art professor, Torleif Knaphus.

Later Bascom and his son-in-law Mel Marion did TV commercials with Roy Rogers for the Roy Rogers Restaurant chain which was then owned by the Marriott Corporation. When the Roy Rogers Riding Stables operated in Apple Valley, California, managed by Mel Marion and later Billy Bascom,^[38] Earl and his son John worked there wrangling horses and driving the hay wagon.^[39]

Earl and his son John Bascom were in the television documentary "Take Willy With Ya," a tribute to the life of rodeo champion Turk Greenough and his rodeo riding siblings and family members.^[40]

In 1966, upon getting his teaching certificate from Brigham Young University and teaching art classes at the Springville (Utah) High School held in the Springville Art Museum as a student teacher, Bascom taught art classes in Barstow, California at John F. Kennedy High School and at Barstow High School.^[41] He also served as president of the High Desert Artists (now Artists of the High Desert), and later as president of the Buckaroo Artists of America.

With his classic cowboy look and dressed in his authentic cowboy attire, he was a popular art studio model. Other artists who associated with Bascom were Bill Bender, Charles LaMonk, Leslie B. DeMille, Glen Turner, Cecil Smith, Trevor Bennett, Ray Bennett and Grant Speed.

Earl Bascom was a published historian with his writings on cowboy and rodeo history printed in books, magazines and newspapers. His first-known published writing was in 1926 for the Cardston newspaper. ^[42] He was interviewed on radio and television. He was a popular lecturer on pioneer and cowboy history at schools and other academic centers. He also assisted his nephew Billy Bascom in teaching horsemanship, as well as cowboy and rodeo history at the Victor Valley College in Victorville, California. Earl Bascom was later inducted into the Victor Valley College Alumni Hall of Fame.^[43]

International artist

Bascom became internationally known as a cowboy artist and sculptor with his art being 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 since society's beginning in 1754.

In the summer of 2005, the week-long Earl W. Bascom Memorial Rodeo was held in Berlin, Germany during the German-American Heritage Celebration where his cowboy art was exhibited as an honor by the European Rodeo Cowboys Association for Bascom's worldwide influence upon the sport of rodeo.^[44]

Equestrian historian Kathy Young said, "Earl Bascom was noted for bridging two worlds, that of rodeo competition and western art."^[45]

Later years

Always one who had deep thoughts and religious leanings, Bascom was ordained a Latter-day Saint Bishop and Patriarch later in life.

Paul de Fonville, curator of the Cowboy Memorial Museum, gave tribute to Earl Bascom as "one of the great pioneers of rodeo - a cowboy through and through."^[46]

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.”^[47]

Bascom died at the age of 89 on his ranch in Victorville, California, August 28, 1995. During his funeral services on August 31, 1995, Bascom's emerald green coffin, decked with his ranch saddle and red roses, was transported by wagon and team to the Sunset Hills Memorial Park in Apple Valley, California for interment.

Awards and honors

Rodeo Championships

Year	Stampede	Award	Location
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	Lethbridge, Alberta
1933	Lethbridge Stampede and Raymond Stampede	Arena Record time, Steer Decorating	Alberta
1933	Rodeo Association of America	Championship of the World, Third Place in Steer Decorating
1934	Lethbridge Stampede	Bareback and All-Around Champion	Lethbridge, Alberta
1935	Raymond Stampede	Saddle Bronc, Steer Decorating and All-Around Champion	Raymond, Alberta
1936	Nephi Stampede	All-Around Champion	Nephi, Utah
1937	Pocatello Rodeo	Saddle Bronc, Bareback, Bull Riding and All-Around Champion	Pocatello, Idaho
1938	Rigby Rodeo	Bareback and All-Around Champion	Rigby, Idaho
1939	Portland Rodeo	Bareback, Bull Riding and All-Around Champion	Portland, Oregon
1940	Raymond Stampede	Saddle Bronc, Bareback and All-Around Champion	Raymond, Alberta

Honorary Titles

Award	Location	Year
Grand Marshal	Cardston, Alberta	1982
Grand Marshal	Raymond, Alberta	1984
Grand Marshal	Columbia, Mississippi	1985
Grand Marshal	Vernal, Utah	1989
Grand Marshal	Hesperia, California	1997

Tributes

Award	Host
"Earl Bascom - An American Hero"	Congressional Record, July 9, 1985
Bascom Brothers	50th Year Anniversary Rodeo, Columbia, Mississippi, 1985
Earl W. Bascom Award	Marion County Cattlemen's Association Rodeo, Mississippi, 1999
Earl W. Bascom Memorial Rodeo	Berlin, Germany, 2005[48]
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
Earl Bascom Memorial Scholarship	Rocky Mountain High School, Lovell, Wyoming[49]

Hall of Fame honors

Rodeo innovations

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

• first side-delivery bucking chute (1916) at Welling, Alberta (assisted by brothers Raymond, Melvin and father John W. Bascom)
• first reverse-opening side-delivery bucking chute (1919) at Lethbridge, Alberta (assisted by his father John W. Bascom)
• first hornless rodeo bronc saddle (1922) at Lethbridge, Alberta
• first one-hand bareback rigging (1924) at Stirling, Alberta
• first high-cut rodeo chaps (1926) at Raymond, Alberta
• rodeo exerciser (1928) at Raymond, Alberta
• first night rodeo held outdoors under electric lights (September 24, 1935), at Columbia, Mississippi
• first use of brahma bulls in rodeo in Columbia, Mississippi, 1935
• first permanent rodeo arena with bucking chutes and grandstands in the state of Mississippi (1936) at Columbia, Mississippi

Appearances in film and print

See also

• Other Canadian pioneers in early Hollywood

Notes

External links

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