BACK IN THE SADDLE? HE NEVER LEFT; GENE AUTRY'S PROLIFIC CAREER AS SONGWRITER, SINGING COWBOY RESONATES WITH NEW CD SET.

Byline: Holly George-Warren The New York Times

Seated behind an oak desk in his roomy, memorabilia-filled office, Gene Autry is thumbing through ``Western Classics,'' a 1947 bound volume of his 78-rpm recordings, most of them featured in his B-westerns of the 1930s and 40s.

He is dressed as usual in a tailored western suit and ornate cowboy boots. His white, 10-gallon Stetson hangs on a nearby hatrack. ``I'll be doggoned,'' Autry says in a warm voice as he inspects the set. `` `Red River Valley,' `Mexicali Rose,' `South of the Border,' what a great song! That was a dandy.''

When another title catches his eye, he begins to sing softly: ``I'm back in the saddle again ... '' He stops mid-chorus with a chuckle, explaining, ``I've done `Back in the Saddle Again' so darn long, I could go to sleep and sing it.''

The song, from 1939, may be a chestnut to Autry, 90, but it has lately been given new life. This month, ``Gene Autry: Sing Cowboy Sing,'' a three-CD boxed set featuring ``Back in the Saddle'' and 83 other Autry tunes, received a Grammy nomination for best historical album. In addition to the boxed set, four CDs featuring everything from his early blues recordings to his later children's music have been reissued since 1996, with more to come this year.

``If you stay out there long enough,'' says Autry, flashing the smile he made famous in the movies, ``it'll come back in style.''

Simplified sound

In fact, the western sound that Autry helped popularize has experienced something of a revival in the last few years. A recent front-page article in Billboard magazine described how the genre was thriving, thanks to a growing number of artists performing the music along with an increase in festivals and recordings featuring it.

The most prominent purveyors of western music include the groups Riders in the Sky and Sons of the Joaquin as well as Michael Martin Murphey, Don Edwards and Ian Tyson, half of the '60s folk duo Ian and Sylvia.

Movies have also capitalized on the trend: ``The Horse Whisperer,'' which will be released in May, showcases Edwards as both singer and co-star, and the 1993 hit ``Sleepless in Seattle'' included Autry's ``Back in the Saddle'' on its multiplatinum soundtrack.

There are several reasons for the renewed popularity of western music. Many fans come to it from country and folk, both of which are also rooted in an acoustic tradition. As pop has moved more toward electronics and indecipherable lyrics, some people yearn for songs with simple melodies and straightforward narratives. And western music can be an antidote for the complexities of modern life.

``The West is the American repository of fantasy - the illusion of independence, the fresh air and wide-open spaces,'' says Douglas B. Green, better known as Ranger Doug, the leader of Riders in the Sky, who is writing a book about the phenomenon of the singing cowboy. ``It's where we go when life gets too stressful. Gene Autry certainly exemplifies that. It's the whole appeal of his voice, lyrics and music.''

Autry's early recordings merged the western style with country music, then known as hillbilly, while his movies set the standard for the horse opera, with its white-hatted singing cowboy, heroic horse and bumbling sidekick, a format later taken up by Roy Rogers and others. Always playing himself, he projected an everyman quality to which fans could relate.

``There's something accessible about him,'' says Michael Stern, who with his wife, Jane, is the author of ``Way Out West.'' ``He could be your neighbor or your uncle or your dad or your brother or your pal.''

One of the hardest-working men in show business, Autry is the only entertainer to have earned five stars on the Hollywood Walk of Fame - for film, recordings, television, radio and live performance. His prodigious output includes 94 films, 635 recorded songs (200 of which he wrote or wrote with a partner), 91 episodes of ``The Gene Autry Show'' and 16 seasons as host of the weekly ``Melody Ranch'' radio show. (The boxed set consists of excerpts from the radio series, which was broadcast from 1940 to 1956.)

When he stopped performing in 1961, he had already begun amassing a fortune. He owned radio and television stations, real estate and oil wells in addition to the California Angels baseball team. In 1988, he founded the Autry Western Heritage Museum in Los Angeles, and in 1990 he was the only entertainer named to the Forbes 400.

Trail to success

How Autry went from small-town farm boy to multimillionaire is the stuff of Hollywood legend. He was born near Tioga, Texas, on Sept. 29, 1907, to a struggling livestock dealer and his wife. His grandfather, a Baptist minister, enlisted him in the church choir at age 5, and his mother taught him to play guitar when he was 12.

One night in 1927, while he was working as a telegraph operator for the Frisco Railroad, Will Rogers overheard him singing and strumming the guitar and encouraged him to try his luck in New York.

He took his savings and followed Rogers' advice. Nothing panned out, and a year later he took a job with a Tulsa radio station and became known as Oklahoma's Yodelin' Cowboy, a nod to the popular Singing Brakeman, Jimmie Rodgers.

``I learned a lot from Jimmie Rodgers when I started trying to yodel,'' Autry recalls.

He returned to New York and began recording Rodgers' songs as well as his own raucous originals about rambling hobos, bootlegging jailbirds and loose women. ``People have never given Gene Autry enough credit for the quality of his singing,'' says Lawrence Cohn, who produced ``Gene Autry: Blues Singer,'' a 1996 reissue. ``He had a magnificent voice and was an excellent yodeler.''

His first major success, ``That Silver-Haired Daddy of Mine,'' a sentimental pop ballad that he wrote and recorded with a railroad buddy, Jimmy Long, sold a million copies after its release in 1931. He became a featured performer on ``National Barn Dance,'' a hugely popular show broadcast on the Chicago radio station WLS, and cut a string of lush western ballads.

As the hits continued, he started a publishing company to retain the rights to his own songs and many of those he covered. His songwriting technique was as uncomplicated as the man.

``A lot of times, somebody will say something, and it will give you a good title,'' he says. ``So you carry a pencil with you and jot that down. You don't just write a song right quick, though. You fool around and work with it. You have to keep going over and over it and see if you can't write a song that means something. That's what I tried to write.''

In 1934, he went to Hollywood to sing one song in the movie ``In Old Santa Fe.'' His performance impressed studio executives who were looking for a gimmick to sustain the popularity of the B western. The next year, an Autry hit, ``Tumbling Tumbleweeds,'' inspired a western of the same title, which starred Autry. It became the prototype of the western movie musical. Until 1942, when he enlisted in the Army Air Corps and became a pilot, he starred in six to eight movies a year.

After he returned from World War II and as the B westerns began to wane, he started a film-production company and became the first movie star to get into television. Piloting his own plane, he continued to tour with his highly profitable western variety show and turn out hit records almost until he retired.

His 1949 version of ``Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer'' (which he re-recorded in 1957) remains the second-biggest-selling single in history.

Over the last three decades, he has largely stayed out of the limelight, managing his vast business empire. One of his chief preoccupations has been his baseball team. He still attends virtually every home game.

Trusted sidekick

Autry and his second wife, Jackie Ellam Autry, whom he married in 1981, live in the home he built in Studio City 50 years ago. She has gradually taken the reins of his business holdings, divesting many of them and recently selling 25 percent of the California Angels to Disney.

``My squaw, here,'' Autry says, pointing to his redheaded wife, ``she manages my business. She was born in New Jersey, and I roped her and brought her out here.''

``He's lying,'' Jackie Autry, 56, responds, ``because if he'd roped me, I would have been in diapers!''

In fact, she had been Autry's banker since the 1970s. After his wife of 48 years, Ina Mae Autry, died in 1980, Autry and Ellam began seeing each other socially. In 1984, she spearheaded the initiative to establish the $34 million Autry Western Heritage Museum.

The spacious museum, which celebrates its 10th anniversary this year, presents a multiethnic history of the American West and its impact on pop culture. An avid collector, Autry has donated paintings, sculptures and artifacts, as well as memorabilia and his colorful western wardrobe, to the museum.

Last September, the museum celebrated his 90th birthday with a benefit gala that featured performances by such admirers as Rosemary Clooney, Glen Campbell and Willie Nelson, who calls Autry ``my favorite of all the singing cowboys.'' Among the 1,200 guests were several generations of well-wishers, ranging from Billy Bob Thornton and Dwight Yoakam to Bob Hope and Dale Evans.

``As a performer, songwriter and guitar player, Gene Autry is a study in staying power,'' says Marty Stuart, the country artist and president of the Country Music Foundation. ``The trends have come and gone around him, but he's remained steady and true.''

CAPTION(S):

3 Photos

Photo: (1) A successful singer, songwriter, actor and business, everything Gene Autry touches turns to gold.

The New York Times

(2) The singing cowboy serenades Maris Wrixon in ``Sunset in Wyoming'' (1941).

(3) Gene Autry's ``Tumbling Tumbleweeds'' (1935) became the standard for western movie musicals.