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Tumbling Tumbleweeds, the opening song to The Big Lebowski, was written by Bob Nolan, a Canadian-born singer, songwriter and actor. Nolan, along with Tim Spencer and a young singer named Leonard Slye, formed the Pioneer Trio in the early 1930s.
Side Note: Slye later changed his name to Roy Rogers. In many of his films and television episodes, he appeared with his wife, Dale Evans, his golden palomino; Trigger and his German shepherd, Bullet.
The group, with the addition of Lloyd Perryman and the Farr brothers, Hugh and Karl, became the Sons of the Pioneers in 1934 and dominated the Western music world through the 1930s and 1940s.
The Sons of the Pioneers appeared with Rogers in more than 150 Western movies and, according to Rogers, he, "screamed like a smashed cat" if he was told the group would not be able to perform in one of his films.
Although Tumbling Tumbleweeds is one of the most famous songs associated with the Sons of the Pioneers, it was composed by Nolan in the 1930s, while working as a caddy in Los Angeles. Originally titled Tumbling Leaves, the song was re-written with the title Tumbling Tumbleweeds. The Sons of the Pioneers first recorded the song for Decca on August 8, 1934. It enjoyed chart success that year (in 2010, it was selected by the Library of Congress to be part of the National Recording Registry, which selects recordings annually that are "culturally, historically, or aesthetically significant") and gained even greater fame in 1935 with the Gene Autry film of the same name.
Their 1946 version of the song was featured in the The Big Lebowski (though it did not appear on the soundtrack release).
More than 100 versions of the song have been recorded. We've provided links to some of them, below... enjoy!
Tumbling Tumbleweeds written by Bob Nolan instrumental
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Meeting Jerry Haleva in L.A. was pretty awesome. He was digging the attention and my wife and I were having fun talking with him about his career as a lobbyist and joking that every movie he's been in, he's played Saddam... ok, that's no joke...