Earl W. Bascom

Early life

Bascom was born on June 19, 1906, in a sod-roofed log cabin on the Bascom 101 Ranch in Vernal, Utah, United States, the son of rancher and lawman John W. Bascom and Rachel Lybbert. His father had been a Uintah County deputy sheriff and later 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.

Both of his grandfathers, Joel A. Bascom and C.F.B. Lybbert, were Mormon pioneers, frontier lawmen and ranchers. Joel Bascom was a member of the Nauvoo Legion (the Utah militia), serving in the Utah War of 1857 and the Utah Black Hawk War of 1865. He also served as Chief of Police in Provo, Utah, and as the first constable in Mona, Utah. Lybbert, who served in the Danish army before coming to America, was a blacksmith who served as constable of Levan, Utah, and as justice of the peace in Naples, Utah.

Members of Earl's family include his grand uncle Ephraim Roberts who was a pony express rider, and grand uncle William Lance who was a soldier in the Mormon Battalion – Army of the West 1846–1848. Another Bascom relative was Wyoming rancher and Wyoming Governor Bryant Brooks who served from 1905 to 1911. He was also related to the Army Lieutenant George Bascom who arrested Apache Chieftain Cochise in 1861 which started the Apache Wars. Three famous mountain men, Jedediah Smith, Doc Newell, and J.T. Warner, were related to Bascom.

Bascom's paternal ancestors were French Basque and Huguenot. Bascom's maternal family was of Norwegian, Danish, Dutch, and German ancestry.

In 1912, when Earl Bascom was six years old, his mother Rachel died of breast cancer, 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 on ranches in Idaho, Wyoming, and Montana, went to Alberta, Canada, securing a job as a foreman on the Knight Ranch.

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 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 lived at Welling Station and ranched along Pot Hole Creek, ran cattle on the open range at New Dayton on the Fort Whoop-up Trail near Deadman Coulee, and Milk River Ridge, and ranched east of Lethbridge on the Old Man River and near Stirling east of Nine Mile Lake.

Cowboy career

Bascom was known as the Cowboy of Cowboy Artists due to his wide range of western experiences as a professional bronc buster, bull rider, cowpuncher, trail driver, blacksmith, freighter, wolf hunter, wild horse chaser, rodeo champion, cattle rancher, dude wrangler, and Hollywood actor. 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.

For Bascom, ranch life and cowboy life was his life. "The life of a cowboy and the West, I know," he stated. 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. 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."

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. 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.

Bascom has been inducted into several rodeo, cowboy and sports Halls of Fame in Canada and the United States. He received international publicity for his rodeo equipment inventions and designs. 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.

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, who had excelled in sports and became an Olympic champion. 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?"

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).

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.

Although Bascom was educated in one-room school houses and only completed one full school year, never finishing 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."

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." But as a BYU student, he was persistent, 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.

In the summertime between school years, Bascom was a rodeo contestant where he gained notoriety as a cowboy artist and rodeo champion. He interrupted his college education in 1934 with the intent to compete, along with his three brothers, at the World Championship Rodeo in London, England.

Employment

In 1917, Bascom saw his first Hollywood movie The Silent Man starring 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. Earl was one of the outlaws in the movie. Weldon was the sheriff and one of the stuntmen.

After graduating from college, Bascom and his wife moved to Southgate, 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. Earl worked on the Rex Ellsworth Ranch in Chino, California. Earl was a distant cousin on the Bascom side to Mitch Tenney who was Ellsworth's horse trainer. Earl worked on Al Hamblin's Flying V Ranch in the Beaumont area. Earl had his own cattle ranch in Ontario in San Bernardino Valley using the Two Bar Quarter Circle brand, before moving to the high desert, living in Hesperia, Apple Valley and Victorville.

During World War II, Bascom was a member of the International Brotherhood of Boilermakers, Iron Ship Builders, Blacksmiths, Forgers and Helpers union and worked as a shipfitter in the Long Beach shipyards building ships for the war effort.

Later, Earl Bascom and his son-in-law Mel Marion worked with Roy Rogers being filmed for TV commercials for the Roy Rogers Restaurant chain. The restaurant chain 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, Earl and his son John worked there wrangling horses and driving the hay wagon.

In 1966, after getting his teaching certificate from Brigham Young University and teaching art classes as a student teacher at the Springville (Utah) High School held in the Springville Art Museum, Bascom taught high school art classes in Barstow, California, at John F. Kennedy High School and at Barstow High School. 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.

International artist

Bascom became internationally known as a cowboy artist and sculptor with his art being exhibited in the United States, Canada, Europe, and Asia.

Bascom rounded up horses in the Sweetgrass Hills area of Montana along Kicking Horse Creek in the late 1920s. The Montana Historical Society Museum in Helena exhibited Bascom's cowboy gear and his art work, along with Charlie Russell's art work, in two exhibits titled "Riders Under the Big Sky" and "The Horse in Art."

In 1994, Bascom was commissioned by the Texas Longhorn Quincentennial Celebration Committee to produce his sculpture of what was deemed "the most authentic example of a classical Texas longhorn steer."

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 the 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. "It was an honor to memorialize Earl Bascom," said Steve Witt, vice-president of European Rodeo Cowboy Association. "The rodeo equipment he designed back in 1920s has had an influence on rodeo worldwide."

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

On July 24, 2014, Bascom was made the international honoree of the National Day of the Cowboy and given the "Cowboy Keeper" award.

In June 2015, Bascom was awarded the Order of Sport, marking his induction into Canada's Sports Hall of Fame, as the first rodeo champion ever honored and given Canada's highest sports honor as a "Canadian Sports Legend."

Death

Bascom died on August 28, 1995, at age 89, at his ranch in Victorville, California.

Tribute statements

The U.S. House of Representatives honored Earl Bascom as an "American Hero" in 1985 and gave tribute honor in the Congressional Record in 1995.

United States Congressman, the Honorable Jerry Lewis, said in 1995 in "A Tribute to Earl Wesley Bascom" as printed in the Congressional Record, that Earl Bascom was a "cowboy hero and a true inspiration...(who) lived one of the most interesting lives ever known in modern cowboy history."

Bascom was listed in Who's Who in American Art, Who's Who in Western Writers of America, Who's Who in the West, Who's Who in California, Who's Who in America and Who's Who in the World.

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."

The American Cowboy magazine and others have called Earl Bascom a "Renaissance Cowboy" – one who was a main contributor and participant in the renewed interest in cowboy life including the sport of rodeo and western art.

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."

"Earl Bascom's 2013 induction into the Rodeo Hall of Fame is one of the top honors bestowed upon a cowboy," said Pam Minick, president of the Rodeo Historical Society. He is credited with designing the first side-delivery bucking chute in 1916, and then the first reverse-opening side-delivery chute, the first hornless bronc saddle, and the first one-hand bareback rigging. A member of the Cowboys' Turtle Association, he won bareback and saddle bronc titles across North America."

Earl Bascom was honored as the 2014 International Honoree of the National Day of the Cowboy with these words – "As a rodeo pioneer, an all-around champion, an internationally known artist and a cowboy, Earl W. Bascom has been inducted into more halls of fame than any cowboy in the world."

Awards and honors

Rodeo innovations

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 rodeo held in the state of Mississippi

first Mississippi night rodeo held outdoors under electric lights (September 24, 1935), at Columbia, Mississippi

first use of brahma bulls in rodeo at Columbia, Mississippi, 1935

first permanent rodeo arena with bucking chutes and grandstands in the state of Mississippi (1936) at Columbia, Mississippi