Two Amsterdam cowboys

By Bob Cudmore, Focus on History, Daily Gazette and Amsterdam Recorder

Amsterdam country music performer and radio host Dusty Miller, whose real name was Elmer Rossi, Sr, had a band called the Colorado Wranglers.

Miller's brother-in-law Barry Frank performed with Miller's band. Frank was a radio engineer well known in the Capital District. Miller had a day job stocking cigarette and other vending machines. In later years he delivered medicines from John Tag’s Guy Park Avenue pharmacy to local customers.

The Colorado Wranglers had a long run at Amsterdam's Bob's Tavern. Miller managed to fit an Amsterdam radio show into his schedule well into his eighties. On his radio shows Dusty sometimes played his own music including his band’s theme song, ‘The happy roving cowboy.” When I started in radio in 1962 I used to run the controls for Dusty’s radio shoed on WCSS. He was a great collector of radio memorabilia. When I returned to this area I was glad to get a cassette tape from Dusty that had my introductions to WCSS programs from the 1960s.

Miller's last radio program on WCSS featured interviews with Amsterdam's myriad characters, from bartenders to former talk show hosts to country singers.

"I like country music because it shows life as it is," Miller said.

When he died in 1998 Dusty Miller was buried in his colorful cowboy clothes.

JACK PATTON

Jack Patton described himself as the Polish cowboy. .

Patton was a musician, songwriter, health food advocate, actor and Amsterdam native.

The Web site HillbillyMusic.com reported that Patton's given name was Frank Aloysius Piecuch.

His father worked at Mohawk Carpet Mills and changed the family name to Patton because there were too many other factory employees named Piecuch. Jack Patton played traditional Polish music at local weddings and dance halls on violin and accordion.

HillbillyMusic stated Patton was a childhood friend of actor Kirk Douglas, who grew up in Amsterdam as Isadore Demsky. Patton had a cowboy band in the late 1930s which was called Pals of the Saddle. However, the band was referred to as Pals of the Range in newspaper advertisements.

He moved to Hollywood in 1939 because Columbia Pictures was going to use one of his songs. Patton was drafted during World War II. He had impaired vision and saw limited duty, repairing damaged planes in Biloxi, Mississippi.

Columbia Pictures apparently used Cowboy Polka, one of his songs, in the movie "Swing in the Saddle" which featured music by Nat King Cole's trio. Patton met a songwriter named Eden Ahbez and apparently helped convince Nat King Cole to record Ahbez's song "Nature Boy" which became a hit. Patton returned to the Capital District, opened a health food store, did radio shows and performed with his band. At one point, Patton had six health food stores. From 1949 to 1965, he operated a dude ranch called Sunset Ranch in Broadalbin.

A 1952 Recorder ad reported Patton was doing a show from Lansing Beach Ranch in Broadalbin over Albany radio station WROW. A 1955 ad from the Schenectady Gazette stated Patton then operated Lansing Beach Ranch, renamed Sunset Ranch, which was having a horse pull and a broadcast by Gloversville station WENT.

Roamin' Around, a 1976 column in the Leader Herald, reported Patton was appearing in a movie filmed mainly in Brazil called Inspiration: The Polish Cowboy Rides Again.

Patton was living in Nashville when he died in the 1990s or later. He had purchased a recording studio there.

OLD CARS

Reader William Bechtel of Burnt Hills enjoyed the photos archived online by Library of Congress showing pictures taken in 1941 in Amsterdam: “I actually was driven in cars as seen in the photos and remember them.”

Bob Cudmore is a freelance writer.

518 346 6657

bobcudmore@yahoo.com