Jazz singer and actor Herb Jeffries, the first African-American singing cowboy to grace Hollywood screens, died of heart failure May 25, 2014, in West Hills, CA, reported the LA Times.  He was 100. Jeffries was born Umberto Alexander Valentino in 1913 to an Irish mother and a father of Sicilian, Ethiopean, French, Italian and Moorish descent.  A singer with the Duke Ellington band and other pop orchestras in the 1940s, the blue-eyed Jeffries embraced his mixed heritage and played up his African-American roots.

He made his screen debut in 1937's Harlem on the Prairie, the first of many “sepia movies” he would star in aimed at black audiences.  In 1939's The Bronze Buckaroo he warbled tunes like “I’m a Happy Cowboy” and established himself as Hollywood’s black Gene Autry. He also starred in low-budget Westerns Harlem Rides The Range and Two-Gun Man From Harlem, and starred opposite Angie Dickinson in 1957's musical romance Calypso Joe. Television credits include runs on the Hanna-Barbera animated football sitcom Where’s Huddles? and multiple guest roles on Hawaii Five-O. Jeffries played himself in the 1996 comedy Western The Cherokee Kid. He was inducted into the Hall of Fame  at the National Cowboys of Color Museum in 2003  and Western Performers Hall of Fame at the National Cowboy & Western Heritage Museum in 2004.

As a Blue Star Museum, the National Multicultural Western Heritage Museum and Hall of Fame is part of a national appreciation program for military families as a way to say "thank you." Blue Star Museums is a collaboration among the National Endowment of the Arts, Blue Star Families, the Department of Defense, and more than 2,000 museums across the United States. The program runs through Labor Day (Monday, Sept. 1, 2014).