They are one of the United States' earliest Western singing groups.
In the spring of 1931, Ohio-born Leonard Slye, the cowboy singer who would later change his name to Roy Rogers, arrived in California and found work as a truck driver and later as a fruit picker for the Del Monte company in California's Central Valley.
He entered an amateur singing contest on a Los Angeles radio show called Midnight Frolics and a few days later got an invitation to join a group called the Rocky Mountaineers.
In the spring of 1932, Slye and two other singers left the Rocky Mountaineers to form a trio, which soon failed. Throughout most of 1932, Slye and one of the others in the trio moved through a series of short-lived groups .
In early 1933, Slye formed a trio called the Pioneer Trio. Later that year, the trio became the Sons of the Pioneers through a radio station announcer's chance remark. Asked why he'd changed their name, the announcer said they were too young to have been pioneers, but that they could be sons of pioneers. The name was received well and fit the group, who were no longer a trio.
In 1937, Leonard Slye became cowboy star Roy Rogers in a deal that required him to leave the singing group. Between 1935 and 1984, the Sons of the Pioneers appeared in 87 films, several short films, and a television series. The late 1970s saw the passing of the founding members of the group.
