Carson Jay Robison’s father was a champion fiddler; his mother played the piano and sang. Robison became a professional musician in the American Midwest at the age of 14, backing Wendell Hall on the early 1920s music hall circuit. He worked as a singer and whistler at radio station WDAF (Kansas City, Missouri).

With a continuous studio career from 1924 to 1956, Carson J. Robison is probably the most recorded singer-songwriter in country music history. He was also one of the first full-time country writers.

In 1924, he moved to New York City and was signed to his first recording contract with the Victor Talking Machine Company.

That year he started a professional collaboration with Vernon Dalhart, accompanying Dalhart on guitar, harmonica, whistling, and harmony vocals.

In one of their first collaborations, Robison accompanied Dalhart on the landmark recording of “Wreck of the Old ’97” b/w “The Prisoner’s Song” (1924), regarded as country music’s first million-seller. It sold over 7 million copies.

Dalhart reportedly treated Robison like a sideman and demanded one-third of his songwriting royalties. When this escalated to one-half of Robison’s royalties, the songwriter severed the partnership.

Robison immediately teamed up for duets with Frank Luther, who could sing almost exactly like Dalhart. They had an instant hit with “Barnacle Bill the Sailor” and followed it with four sequels. With Luther’s wife, fiddler Zora Layman, they also aped Dalhart’s trio records. The Luther-Robison partnership lasted until they parted amicably in 1932.

ROBISON

Next, Robison reinvented himself as a cowboy singer. He traveled with his group to Great Britain and Ireland in 1932, 1936 and 1939, becoming the first act to take country music overseas. Stateside, he starred in a string of national radio series for CBS and NBC throughout the 1930s. During this phase of his career Robison wrote such cowboy classics as “Carry Me Back to the Lone Prairie.”

According to Billboard, his 1942 reworking of the standard “Turkey in the Straw”, with new lyrics relating to World War II, was that year’s most popular song.

In the late 1940s and early 1950s, he appeared on the Grand Ole Opry. His most famous recording was 1948’s “Life Gets Tee-Jus Don’t It”, a worldwide hit for MGM Records.

Although he played country music for most of his career, he is also remembered for writing expurgated lyrics for “Barnacle Bill the Sailor” with music by Frank Luther.

Ever alert to changing tastes, he wrote and recorded “Rockin’ and Rollin’ with Grandma” in 1956, the year before his death.