How and When Mom Became Dale Evans

I just love all of the stories that I hear about different aspects of my parents’ lives. My good friend, Roy and Dale expert Larry Zwisohn, just emailed me a print version of how Mom became Dale Evans that I haven’t heard before.  This is how it goes:

LOUISVILLE IMPORTANT IN DALE EVANS’ LIFE by Joe Creason, Courier-Journal (Louisville, KY), May 15, 1943

Just day before yesterday, as those who thumb regularly to this space will no doubt recall, I became as worked up as a soapbox reformer over the fact that a recent magazine article on Dale Evans now heard on the Edgar Bergen–Charlie McCarthy NBC show, made no mention of the year she spent in Louisville as a singer at WHAS. I bemoaned this because the year she spent in Louisville probably was the most important stop in her career. In fact, if she hadn’t come here it’s likely that there would be no Dale Evans today. You see, “Dale Evans” was as much a character of fiction as Donald Duck or Jack the Giant Killer until a gal from Texas came to the Louisville scene years ago. Now before you send out a straightjacket and a uniformed cheering section from the nut house, listen, my children and you shall hear how “Dale Evans” happened to be.

Mom with Charlie McCarthy and Edgar Bergen

It all started back in 1936 when a pretty, young girl from Uvalde, Texas, named Frances Johns was hired by Joe Eaton as featured vocalist with the WHAS orchestra. But the label Frances Johns didn’t have the right ring for a radio singer, the girl thought, and before she ever had gone on the air, she began to look round for another name. She took her problem to Katherine Steele, Eaton’s secretary, and the pair started name-hunting together. It so happened that the night before Miss Steele had seen a movie in which Madge Evans had starred and, remembering her performance, suggested “Evans” as a last name. The foundation for the new name laid, they still were unable to hit upon just the right first handle.

They were unable to do this until Dale Butts, pianist and arranger with the star orchestra walked past. In a flash of inspiration, Miss Steele forwarded “Dale” as the solution to their headache. And so, since the names fitted together like ham and eggs, Frances Johns was made over into Dale Evans, and as such she has remained. But that isn’t all. To make the story even more unusual, Dale Evans and Dale Butts worked together for some months, fell in love and were married. He now does the musical arranging for her NBC program. In order to avoid confusion he has tacked a first initial to his name and remade it into R. Dale Butts.

Well, that is a version of how Mom got her name that I have never heard before! The one that Mom always told, and the one that Professor Raymond E. White, from Ball State University, in his definitive book about Mom and Dad, “King of the Cowboys, Queen of the West,” tells, goes this way:

A very young Frances Smith/Marion Lee/Dale Evans on WHAS Louisville, KY.

….After recuperation from an illness that had forced her to return from working in Chicago to Texas….Frances moved to Louisville, Kentucky, and gained her first full-time professional singing job a a staff vocalist at radio station WHAS in May 1935. The station manager, Joe Eaton, did not like her birth name, Frances Smith, or the professional name, Marion Lee, that she used when she auditioned for the job. He insisted that she change it to Dale Evans, a euphonious name that could be neither misspelled nor mispronounced. (Mom told me that he had a crush on a beautiful raven-haired movie actress named Dale Winters, she was also the mistress of gangster Big Jim Colosimo.)

Obviously, Professor White’s version agrees with Mom’s.

Also, in the Courier-Journal story, Mr. Creason said that Dale Butts, put the initial R. in front of his name. I’m sure that his parents would have been surprised by this as Mr. Butts’ given name was Robert Dale Butts. He used R. Dale Butts as his professional name and was one of the music arrangers on Dad’s movies for several years while he was married to Mom, during their divorce, and after Dad married Mom.