Шеб Вули: Певец, актёр и автор "Фиолетовых людей"

American musician and actor (1921–2003)

Shelby Fredrick "Sheb" Wooley (April 10, 1921 – September 16, 2003) was an American singer, songwriter, and actor. He recorded a series of novelty songs including the 1958 hit rock and roll comedy single "The Purple People Eater" and under the name Ben Colder the country hit "Almost Persuaded No. 2". As an actor, he portrayed Cletus Summers, the principal of Hickory High School and assistant coach in the 1986 film Hoosiers; Ben Miller, brother of Frank Miller in the film High Noon; Travis Cobb in The Outlaw Josey Wales, and scout Pete Nolan in the television series Rawhide. Wooley is also credited as the voice actor who provided the Wilhelm scream and all of the other stock sound effects for Thomas J. Valentino's Major record label during the 1940s.

Sheb Wooley was born in 1921 in Erick, Oklahoma, the third son of William C. Wooley and Ora E. Wooley. Wooley claimed to be part Cherokee. He had two older brothers, Logan and Hubert, as well as a younger brother, William. The three of them left Texas in 1950 and moved to Hollywood, where Wooley hoped to establish himself as an actor or singer in film or in the rapidly expanding medium of television. He started his recording career in 1945. country, hillbilly, rock and roll, pop and novelty songs. This sequel was so successful that Wooley continued using the name Ben Colder, with one of his later recordings being "Shaky Breaky Car" (which parodied the song "Achy Breaky Heart"). In the late 1960s and early 1970s, Wooley became a regular on the television series Hee Haw and wrote the theme song for that long running series. On Hee Haw he often appeared as the character Ben Colder, playing him as a drunken country songwriter. The stock recording of the distinctive scream has been used by sound effects teams in over 200 films.

Wooley was married five times. His first wife was Melva Miller, whom he married in 1940. Six years later he married Edna Talbott Bunt in Fort Worth, Texas. His third wife was Beverly Irene Addington. He and Beverly remained together for 19 years and adopted one daughter, Chrystie Lynn. Then, in 1985, he married Deanna Grughlin and then his manager Linda Dotson, who already had a daughter, Shauna. Wooley was diagnosed with leukemia in 1996, which forced him to retire from public performing in 1999. After seven years of battling the illness, he died at the age of 82 at the Skyline Medical Center in Nashville, Tennessee, on September 16, 2003. He was entombed in Hendersonville Memory Gardens in Hendersonville, Tennessee.