Popular Culture Review Vol. 13, No. 1, January 2002 | Page 139

I’m Movin’ On:
The Wanderings and Musings of
Clarence Eugene “Hank” Snow,
The “Singing Ranger”
That big eight-wheeler rollin’ down the track
Means your true-lovin’ daddy ain’t cornin’ back
I’m movin’ on
I’ll soon be gone
You were flyin’ too high for my little old sky
So I’m movin’ on '
Hank Snow had one of the most unusual and inspiring careers in the history
of twentieth century music in general, and country music in particular. He was an
active performer for more than sixty years and worked under the same label, R.C.A.,
for forty-five years. In 1951, he was voted by fans of Cowboy Song Round-Up as
their favorite country singer (Peterson, 1997, p. 182) and, in 1979, was voted into
the Country Music Hall of Fame (Ellison, 1995, p. 7). He recorded 100 country
music albums, sold over 70 million records, and made clear that '‘good ole country
music” was really the only kind of music for him (Cantin, 1999; Wolfe, 1994, pp.
535-540). That would be a good enough career for any performing artist, making
him prominent enough to be worth of scholarly attention. However, Snow was
much more.
His influence transcended his mere playing and singing. He was distinctive
enough to be a subject (one might say a victim) of Robert Altman’s Nashville. In
that 1975 film Henry Gibson played a self-centered patriarch whose resemblance
to Snow was uncanny. Snow’s songs were recognizable enough to show up on
popular television shows and commercials. A band-aid company used his hit, 'T
Don’t Hurt Anymore” while Johnny Cash rumbled a version of his 'T v e Been
Everywhere” in a Citgo advertisement. His song, 'T m Movin On,” was recorded
scores of times by leading popular and country artists and appeared on many network
television programs shows such as the "Perry Como Show” (The Country Music
Foundation, 1994. p. 166).
The artist known first as the "Yodeling Ranger,” then, after his voice
deepened, as "The Singing Ranger,” wielded enormous influence in country music
in many ways: by recording a wide-ranging catalogue, as though reminding younger
singers that every song they made need not sound like their last one; by sticking to