Sheb Wooley and Ben Colder: the American singer

The American singer behind Ben Colder

Ben Colder was not a real person. He was the drunken country-songwriter alter ego of the American singer and actor Sheb Wooley, and for a couple of decades the two of them shared a career. Sheb, born Shelby Fredrick Wooley in Erick, Oklahoma, on 10 April 1921, grew up riding his father's horses, worked as a cowboy and rodeo rider, and formed his first band, the Plainview Melody Boys, at fifteen. A string of rodeo injuries kept him out of the military in the Second World War, so he worked in the oil industry and as a welder before moving to Fort Worth in 1946 to make a living in country-western music.

In 1950 he moved to Hollywood, hoping for work in films or the new medium of television, and found both. His music ran from Western swing and hillbilly to rock'n'roll, pop and novelty records, and he kept recording and touring internationally until his death on 16 September 2003. He recorded his last song four days before he died.

The Purple People Eater, 1958

Sheb Wooley's biggest hit came from a child's riddle. A child in the family of his friend and fellow songwriter Don Robertson asked: what has one eye, one horn, flies and eats people? The answer, a one-eyed, one-horned, flying people eater, became a song Wooley later said took him under an hour to write and was undoubtedly the worst he had ever written. MGM Records first turned it down, but an acetate reached the label's New York office, where young staff played it at lunchtime, sometimes to an audience of fifty, and the front office changed its mind.

"The Purple People Eater" reached number one on the Billboard pop chart in 1958, staying there from 9 June to 14 July, topped the charts in Canada and Australia, and reached number twelve in the UK. Its creature's voice was a sped-up recording, in the same spirit as David Seville's "Witch Doctor", and a toy saxophone was recorded slowly to get its sound. In the song the creature comes to Earth because it wants to be in a rock'n'roll band.

Ben Colder and the country parodies

Ben Colder was born from a missed opportunity. In 1962 Wooley planned to record "Don't Go Near the Indians", but an acting job delayed him and Rex Allen scored the hit instead. Wooley answered with a sequel, "Don't Go Near the Eskimos", about a boy in Alaska named Ben Colder, a man who had never "been colder". It did so well that he kept the name for a run of country parodies, including "Almost Persuaded No. 2" and, much later, "Shaky Breaky Car", a take on "Achy Breaky Heart". On the television show Hee Haw, whose theme song he wrote, he often appeared as Ben Colder, the drunken songwriter. Under his own name he reached number one on Billboard's country chart in March 1962 with "That's My Pa".

One parody crossed the Atlantic in an unexpected way. Wooley's take on Tammy Wynette's "D.I.V.O.R.C.E." became an international hit when the Scottish comedian Billy Connolly covered it in 1975.

A French discography site keeps a full page on Sheb Wooley Ben Colder, with his singles listed under both names.

Rawhide, High Noon and the Wilhelm scream

Wooley's acting career would be famous on its own. He played Ben Miller, brother of the outlaw Frank Miller, in High Noon; Travis Cobb in The Outlaw Josey Wales; the school principal Cletus Summers in Hoosiers; and the scout Pete Nolan in the television series Rawhide, which is why "who sang Rawhide" and "Sheb Wooley" turn up together in searches, even though the famous theme was sung by Frankie Laine. He is also believed to be the voice of the Wilhelm scream, the stock sound effect used in hundreds of films.

Why the names get mixed up

Sheb Wooley and Shep Woolley share a profession, a first name that differs by one letter, a surname that differs by one more, and a habit of mixing songs with comedy. That is enough to send a search engine, and the occasional record-shop catalogue, the wrong way. Folk forums have run whole threads on whether the two men were related. They were not. Sheb was an Oklahoma cowboy who became a Hollywood character actor and a Nashville novelty star; Shep is an English sailor who became a Portsmouth folk entertainer. If a record has a purple creature on the sleeve, it is Sheb's. If it has a matelot on it, it is almost certainly Shep's.