Elton Britt and Rosalie Allen

Who was Elton Britt and Rosalie Allen?

Rosalie Allen was born Julie Marlene Bedra on June 27, 1924, in Old Forge, Lackawanna County, Pennsylvania and died September 24, 2003. Allen grew up the daughter of a Polish immigrant chiropractor in a large, impoverished Pennsylvania family. Inspired by the singing cowboys of the 1930s, she taught herself to sing and play her brother's guitar, then began working on the radio in Wilkes-Barre, Pennsylvania and later performed on Denver Darling's Swing Billies pseudo-western radio show in New York City.

Allen's first hit came in 1946 with RCA Victor with a yodeling update of Patsy Montana's "I Want to Be a Cowboy's Sweetheart." Allen's final hits paired her with yodeler Elton Britt. Their first single, "Beyond the Sunset," hit number seven in 1950. They also recorded "The Yodel Blues" and "Quicksilver."

In 1944, she took up a job as a disc jockey. Her half-hour program, Prairie Stars on WOV in New York, was so popular that Country Music magazine named her the most famous country music personality in Manhattan. She stayed with the show until rock music bumped her off the air in 1956. In the 1960s, she ran a country western record shop called Rosalie Allen's Hillbilly Music Center in New York City. Allen retired to Alabama to raise a family.