Later Activities
In 1967, he was selected by the United States Department of Commerce to go to Europe as a "Cowboy Goodwill Ambassador" to introduce and promote the sale of denim jeans.
Later, he joined Montie Montana, Jr., to re-create Buffalo Bill's Wild West Show. With a cast of 125 cowboys, cowgirls, and Indians and 135 bison, longhorns, and horses, the show toured worldwide from London to Brazil to Singapore. The group was particularly well received in Japan, where it performed four to five shows daily for four months. The last wild west show performance was near Glacier National Park in northern Montana. Back in Texas, Robbins produced the Rudy Robbins Western Show and the All American Cowboy Get-Together, a two-day event of music, poetry, cooking, arts, crafts and demonstrations. He was also active in the "Keep Bandera Western" campaign.
Robbins formed The Spirit of Texas, a western harmony group, which in 1991 was named by the Texas State Senate as the "Official Cowboy Band for Texas". Modeled on the old Sons of the Pioneers, the band performed for such celebrities as Roy Rogers and Dale Evans Rogers, Johnny Cash and June Carter Cash, and Tom Selleck, as well as General H. Norman Schwarzkopf and Texas Governors Ann W. Richards and George W. Bush. Robbins and the Canadian yodeler Shirley Field co-authored How to Yodel the Cowboy Way. After the death of two members, the Spirit of Texas disbanded.
Robbins also wrote short stories for Cowboy Magazine. He is featured in the Museum of the Gulf Coast, which is administered by the Port Arthur Historical Society. He lived in Bandera in the Texas Hill Country.
Among his awards, Robbins was made honorary town marshal of Tombstone, Arizona, honorary deputy sheriff of Pima County (Tucson), Arizona, and "Outstanding Cowboy of the 20th Century" for Bandera County, Texas. He was commissioned an admiral in the Texas Navy by former Governor Bill Clements. He was awarded a plaque for excellence by the Texas Stuntmen's Association.
Robbins died of cancer at the age of 77. His graver marker reads, "A Western Showman Who Loved The Lord". He was survived by a son, Jody, who was born in 1956.
Much of Robbin's memorabilia is now in the Frontier Times Museum in Bandera and the Bandera Library.
Read more about this topic: Rudy Robbins
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