We all love a good comeback story. Seabiscuit’s recovery from a ruptured suspensory ligament captivated the nation. Mariah’s Storm inspired the movie Dreamer because she returned to the races after fracturing her cannon bone. More recently, White Abarrio’s win in the $3 million Pegasus World Cup marked his comeback from an illness and lengthy layoff.
These stories are well-documented but many others are lost to history. When we uncovered an unbelievable comeback story in a 75-year old-magazine – a tale of a 𝑇ℎ𝑜𝑟𝑜𝑢𝑔ℎ𝑏𝑟𝑒𝑑 triumphing over a Quarter Horse in a 220-yard dash after he broke down at the age of eighteen – we knew that we had to share it. This is the story of the swift and resilient Noo Music.
Noo Music was foaled in 1931. He was by Madder Music, a United States Remount Service stallion, and out of Noo, by Barney Lucus. He made 32 official starts on Thoroughbred tracks. The rest of his countless races were run on the short tracks. In 𝑆𝑝𝑒𝑒𝑑 𝑎𝑛𝑑 𝑡ℎ𝑒 𝑄𝑢𝑎𝑟𝑡𝑒𝑟 𝐻𝑜𝑟𝑠𝑒: 𝐴 𝑃𝑎𝑦𝑙𝑜𝑎𝑑 𝑜f 𝑆𝑝𝑟𝑖𝑛𝑡𝑒𝑟𝑠, author Nelson C. Nye put Noo Music, a Jockey Club registered Thoroughbred, in the same category as Hard Twist, Miss Panama and Shue Fly. Nye wrote “those old bangtails were 𝑟𝑒𝑎𝑙 𝑟𝑢𝑛𝑛𝑖𝑛𝑔 ℎ𝑜𝑟𝑠𝑒𝑠, sound, hard-knocking, indomitable and enduring, brought on slow and stepped-up gradually to where they could stand the grueling pace eventually adopted to win the big features and what stakes were available. Old friends, these were, in the public mind, and this fondness was reflected in the handles that went through the mutuels.”
Perhaps the most complete account of Noo Music’s beloved career appeared in the August 1949 issue of The Quarter Horse, a publication of the National Quarter Horse Breeders Association. Here is the entire article titled 𝑁𝑜𝑜 𝑀𝑢𝑠𝑖𝑐… 𝐻𝑎𝑠 𝐻𝑒 F𝑖𝑛𝑎𝑙𝑙𝑦 𝐵𝑒𝑒𝑛 𝑆𝑡𝑜𝑝𝑝𝑒𝑑? by David Woodlock:
It was a 440-yard race on last March 20th Tucson’s Rillito Race Track. As the thundering horses neared the finish line, the lead horse suddenly faltered and nearly fell. There was a gasp of distress from the stands and the field pounded past the lame horse. Interest shifted from the finish line to where the dark brown cripple was being led off the track. A few minutes later lumps rose in many throats and tears came to many eyes when it was announced over the loudspeaker that the horse had pulled a tendon and in all probability would never race again.
It was sympathy for an old, old friend that the crowd felt that day at Rillito, that turf followers throughout the Southwest felt when they heard the news. For the brown horse was Noo Music, the dependable gelding who more than once had given his backers at the pari-mutuel windows taxi fare home from an unlucky day at the track. Noo Music had become a tradition as well as a phenomenon of the straightaways from Arizona to Texas.
This spring Noo Music was celebrating his eighteenth – yes, that’s eighteenth – birthday! And he was celebrating it in a style fit for a flashy five-year-old rather than a gentleman of his venerable age. The race in which he pulled the tendon (and in which he was leading at the time) was his eighth start this year. In his seven other starts he had won two, placed in four and was third in one – not once out of the money! Pretty fair running for an old boy who has had to work for his oats almost all of his eighteen years.
Foaled in the spring of 1931, Noo Music was bred by H. P. Sanders, Jr. and H. M. Dow of Roswell, New Mexico. His sire was Madder Music who was by Leonardo II by Sweep by Ben Brush. His dam was Noo by Barney Lucas by Dr. Curtis by Magnificus. Second dam was a Trammell mare, Aunt Nan-Noo by Abe Frank by Hanover. He was raced from the time he was a two but didn’t make his first appearance on recognized thoroughbred tracks until 1935 when he was four years old. In that year he ran unplaced four times and finished second once, to Milady Cohort in a 5/8-mile claiming, race at Houston’s Epsom Downs. Thoroughbred records don’t show him starting again until 1940 when he was nine and that year was his best official year. In eight starts (from Arizona to Canada and Chicago) he won three and placed twice. At Phoenix on March 9, 1940, Noo Music reached what might be called the peak of his distance racing career when he set a new track record of :59-3/5 for 5/8 mile. That record stood intact for seven years until the good Three Bars lowered it in 1947.
The following year, 1941, Noo Music ran 11 races of which he won two, one at Wheeling, West Virginia, and the other at Hamilton, Ohio, both at 5/8 mile. He was second in two other starts at Wheeling Downs and ran unplaced seven times. 1943 was the next year the brown gelding ran on recognized tracks, starting five times and winning and placing once each in 5/8 mile races at Phoenix. Official records show 1945 to be the last year he was raced when he won one of two starts at Phoenix, In the ten-year stretch between 1935-45, Noo Music had won seven out of 32 starts at recognized tracks, placed six times and ran unplaced 19 times. His total winnings were $2,420.00.
Most southwestern turf men were familiar with Noo Music in 1944 and most of them had decided that the thirteen-year-old gelding was just about through, A young racing enthusiast from San Antonio named John L. Peppard, Jr., didn’t agree with them. He had watched Noo Music race, he knew that he loved to run, that he had a heart as big as a circus tent and that he had the indefinable “will to win” that is a fundamental quality in every great race horse. He saw that Noo Music held his own to the quarter or 3/8 before his ageing legs began to tire. Quarter racing was just then becoming popular at the big tracks and John Peppard decided to give Noo Music a crack at the shorter distances. He bought the gelding from Prankie Figueroa in September of 1944. Noo Music has never given him cause to be sorry.
That fall of 1944 at Albuquerque, Noo Music ran second to the very good Revenue in one hotly contested 440, and second to the speedster Dee Dee in another 440 in which Revenue finished third. From then on Noo Music ran against all comers including many of the best on the short tracks of the southwest.
Twice in match races he beat the fast Rumpus, he nosed out Texas Lad at 300 yards, he beat Blue Stone by three lengths at 350 yards, he whipped Silver and Honey Boy at the quarter, he was beaten a length by the great Miss Banks at 350 yards, he daylighted the speedy Hill Country in a quarter at Eagle Pass and he was a head behind the renowned Chain Lay in a quarter at Tucson. Among others who have fallen victim to his driving speed are White Socks, Orphan Annie, Little Buddy, Sleepy Boy, Kilroy, Lovely Ellen, Draw Poker, No Cat, Wampus Kitty, Lucky Sunday, June Wing, Bailey Boy, Blue Bird and Waelder Girl. Twice he has run and won two match races in the same afternoon, once against Rumpus and Anita both at 350 yards. Noo Music will pretty consistently run 3/8 mile in :35.0 or :35.1, the quarter in :23.3 and 330 yards in :18.0.
In the five years of Peppard’s ownership, Noo Music has won a total of 47 races, not including dead heats, and has never been out of training. The two have traveled together from Tucson to Texas and back again, stopping wherever a meet was being held or a match could be made. In the thousands of trailer miles he has traveled, the gentle gelding has remained unruffled through more than one catastrophe. Once, when someone failed to latch his trailer gate, he tumbled out on the highway while traveling at 50 miles an hour. He was racing again a week later. On another occasion his trailer slid into a ditch and turned over, pinning him on his back. It took 45 minutes with a crow bar to free him and the entire time he calmly watched the workmen without kicking or struggling.
It’s anybody’s guess how long Noo Music would have gone on running or how great a year his eighteenth would have been for him, if it hadn’t been for the pulled tendon. Knowing his past history, the announcer at Rillito may well have been wrong – it may be that Noo Music will once again do what he loves to do best – run. His legs may understandably be weary from the many miles of giving their best, but until the day he dies he will have his tremendous heart and his indomitable will to win.
– The Quarter Horse, Official Publication of The National Quarter Horse Breeders Association, August 1949
About three months after that article was published and exactly eight months after he broke down, Noo Music defeated Lucky Sunday in a 220-yard race at Stutts Track in San Antonio. We don’t know if he continued racing through his nineteen-year-old season. If anyone has additional information about Noo Music, we would love to see it!
The Western Thoroughbred 