Fess Parker is dead

Fess Parker, who became my generation's first celebrity idol when he starred as Davy Crockett in the very first TV mini-series and later portrayed Daniel Boone in the conventional series of that name, died today at 85.

Every kid of my generation wore a coon skin cap back in 1956, when Disney's Davy Crockett aired, and it would be hard for younger Americans to imagine what a big star he was. The Ballad of Davy Crockett (below, in its entirety) topped the recording charts, and Crockett-mania seemed to permeate every aspect of our popular culture.

While he looked nothing like the real Crockett, he was stuck with that identity in the minds of the American people. That's doubtless the reason why he was cast as Boone, another coonskin hat-wearing hero. Hopelessly type-cast, he didn't appear all that often on either the large or the small screen once the Boone series was canceled, and sort of faded from the public eye. But there's not a person of my generation who doesn't remember him.