Offered is a 1935 Tex Ritter-used turtle shell guitar pick with a Ritter-signed COA. The approximately 1¼-inch triangular “turtle shell” guitar pick features flecks of yellow, red, brown and black shell. Accompanying the pick is a 1½ x 5¼-inch blue paper cut signed by Ritter in blue pen with the typewritten note, “11-16-35 Frank, here is one of my guitar picks made from a turtle shell. Try it out and tell me how it sounds. T”. The signed cut is inscribed in the lower right “11-16-35” in blue pen. Ritter was an American country music singer and actor popular from the mid-1930s into the 1960s, and the patriarch of the Ritter acting family (son John, grandsons Jason and Tyler, and granddaughter Carly). He is a member of the Country Music Hall of Fame. Ritter’s career began with radio performances during the Golden Age of radio in the 1930s. He moved to Los Angeles in 1936 to make his screen acting debut in the film “Song of the Gringo”. Ritter's recording career was his most successful period. He was the first artist signed with the newly formed Capitol Records. In 1944, he scored a hit with "I'm Wastin' My Tears on You", which hit number one on the country chart and number 11 on the pop chart. An article in the trade publication Billboard noted 14 years later that with that song, he "reached the style of rhythmic tune that would assure his musical stature". In 1952 Ritter recorded “The Ballad of High Noon” for the film “High Noon”. He performed the track at the first televised Academy Awards ceremony in 1953, and it received an Oscar for Best Song that year. This item comes with a signed COA from Tex Ritter and a COA from JSA for Ritter’s signature on the COA (HH51472). 

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