When he was a few weeks old, his family moved to the oil boom town of Drumright, Oklahoma, where they lived for a time in a tent.

Shortly thereafter, he and his grandparents joined his mother in the Los Angeles area, where he attended La Puente and Garfield high schools.

In 1934 they appeared in the Clark Gable film It Happened One Night, and in 1935 they were regulars on the Tom Mix radio program, also singing the commercial jingle for Shredded Ralston.

In 1938, Carson and The Ranch Boys did a promotion for one of their sponsors, riding 3,975 miles on horseback from Los Angeles to Chicago to New York.

He appeared on the radio in two episodes of The Great Gildersleeve and voiced the animated wise old owl in Disney's 1948 live-and-animated film So Dear to My Heart.

Carson was a skillful whistler, showing that talent on many recordings of Western songs, notably the Pioneers' Blue Shadows on the Trail.

Although retired from the national scene, he continued to entertain locally, performing a wide repertoire that included songs of George Gershwin, Cole Porter, Billy Joel, and Stevie Wonder, as well as Western music.