Born: November 22, 1941- Hollis, OK
Died: March 17,1996 - Amarillo, Texas
Dugg Collins
Terry Stafford is best-known for his Top 10 1964 hit single, "Suspicion."As a friend, I will always remember him for his great talent and his easy going manner, almost to the point of being shy. He performed for me once during a Listener Appreciation Show in the mid 70's. He was scared to death, hometown audience and all you know. When I introduced him, he walked right out there like the pro he was, flashed that big smile and had 'em before he sang his first note.
Never did see Terry get upset about anything. He was a true friend, one I knew I could count on for anything and, there was never an ounce of ego in the mans makeup, even when he was riding high with "Suspicion" at # 3 in the nation, with the Beatles holding down the # 1, 2, 4 & 5 positions, according to Cashbox Magazine.
He was born in Hollis, Oklahoma, but was raised in Amarillo. He graduated from Palo Duro High School in 1960 and told his class mates he was leaving for California to make hit records. Those class mates who laughed at his dream were in for a big shock when "Suspicion" hit the radio stations nationwide and became a monster hit.
Stafford's voice resembled Elvis Presley's, especially on "Suspicion," which was originally recorded by Presley on his 1962 album Pot Luck. After "Suspicion" peaked at number three early in 1964, he had another Top 40 hit with "I'll Touch a Star" which reached number 23 in the summer of that year. Following "I'll Touch a Star," none of Stafford's singles made the charts. In the late '60s, he turned to professional songwriting and he continued writing songs into the '80s. Two of his best-known songs are Buck Owens' "Big in Vegas" and George Strait's "Amarillo by Morning."
Years before Strait cut "Amarillo By Morning," Terry recorded the song for Atlantic Records. It was the "B" side of a pop tune Terry was covering country called, "Has Anyone Seen My Sweet Gypsy Rose."[cover tunes were big in the 70's]Well, I can tell you, the "A" side of that record never saw the light of day with me and my radio station in Amarillo.It got such a response, the label soon gave up on "Gypsy Rose" and promoted "Amarillo By Morning."The tune only went to # 31, but a song great enough to get the attention of George Strait later on down the line.To this very day, the song that started in 1973, is a theme song for rodeos and cowboys.
Terry always loved coming back home to Amarillo to see his Mother, Father and all his friends.He madehis home in the Los Angeles area because he could find a great deal of work out there. Many young people, can't wait to be rid of their home town once they finish High School.Had the music opportunities been available in Amarillo that awaited him in Los Angeles, I know he would have never left.Getting back home, even for just a short visit, was always on his mind.He loved Amarillo, Texas.
Terry did return home late summer of 1995. I had open heart surgery in January of '95. Upon his return, he called me as he always did.He was very excited about a possible deal with a record label in Dallas and said he thought he could get us both on the label if I had any interest in that. Then we talked about how much fun we could have out there doing dates together.
I suggested we get together and he kept saying he was about to have some surgery to fix a problem he was having with his shoulder. We talked on a daily basis and the more we talked, I could sense there was something really bad going on with him. By the time October rolled around, mutual friends in the music business from Nashville started calling me asking about Terry's condition.He had been calling them as well, but remaining elusive about what was happening.
After hanging up from a call from Terry, I told my wife Joyce, "I know there is something serious happening here and he has come home to die." I called him right back and made him admit he was in trouble health wise. Problem was, his liver was about to stop working and, he had gained an enourmous amount of weight. He wouldn't see me in person because he didn't want me to see him in that condition.
By the first of March, 1996, he was hospitalized.I called for him at his Mother's house because I had not heard from him in several days. She told me he was in Intensive Care. I asked if he could have visitors and she said he probably would not know I was there. After a few days of waiting,I just drove to the hospital and found him. He was on a respirator. His eyes were closed as if sleeping and,I took his hand and spoke. He opened his eyes just a little and closed them again. I said, "Terry, I know you can't speak with that thing in your throat, but just wiggle your fingers to let Ol' Dugg know that you know, I came to see you." He did and, I laid his hand back down on the bed and had to walk away.
Terry Stafford died Sunday, March 17, 1996. He was laid to rest Tuesday, March 19, 1996 in Llano Cemetery. As I sat there in the Chapel that day, I really didn't hear what the Preacher had to say. I was thinking about that shy man who was my friend for so many years and just remembering all the great times we had together. His own words kept going through my mind. "I haven't got a dime, but what I got is mine, I ain't rich, but Lord I'm free. Amarillo By Morning, Amarillo's where I'll be."- Dugg Collins
Virginia Patterson Hensley
Born Sep 8, 1932 in Gore, VA
Died Mar 5, 1963 in Camden, TN
One of the greatest singers in the history of country music, Patsy Cline also helped blaze a trail for female singers to assert themselves as an integral part of the Nashville-dominated country music industry. She was not alone in this regard; Kitty Wells had become a star several years before Cline's big hits in the early '60s. Brenda Lee, who shared Cline's producer, did just as much to create a country-pop crossover during the same era; Skeeter Davis briefly enjoyed similar success. Cline has the most legendary aura of any female country singer, however, perhaps due to an early death that cut her off just after she had entered her prime.
Cline began recording in the mid-'50s, and although she recorded quite a bit of material between 1955 and 1960 (17 singles in all), only one of them was a hit. That song, "Walkin' After Midnight," was both a classic and a Top 20 pop smash. Those who are accustomed to Cline's famous early-'60s hits are in for a bit of a shock when surveying her '50s sessions (which have been reissued on several Rhino compilations). At times she sang flat-out rockabilly; she also tried some churchy tear-weepers. She couldn't follow up "Walkin' After Midnight," however, in part because of an exploitative deal that limited her to songs from one publishing company.
Circumstances were not wholly to blame for Cline's commercial failures. She would have never made it as a rockabilly singer, lacking the conviction of Wanda Jackson or the spunk of Brenda Lee. In fact, in comparison with her best work, she sounds rather stiff and ill-at-ease on most of her early singles. Things took a radical turn for the better on all fronts in 1960, when her initial contract expired. With the help of producer Owen Bradley (who had worked on her sessions all along), Cline began selecting material that was both more suitable and of a higher quality than her previous outings. "I Fall to Pieces," cut at the very first session where Cline was at liberty to record what she wanted, was the turning point in her career. Reaching number one in the country charts and number 12 pop, it was the first of several country-pop crossovers she was to enjoy over the next couple of years. More important, it set a prototype for commercial Nashville country at its best. Owen Bradley crafted lush orchestral arrangements, with weeping strings and backup vocals by the Jordanaires, that owed more to pop (in the best sense) than country.
The country elements were provided by the cream of Nashville's session musicians, including guitarist Hank Garland, pianist Floyd Cramer, and drummer Buddy Harmon. Cline's voice sounded richer, more confident, and more mature, with ageless wise and vulnerable qualities that have enabled her records to maintain their appeal with subsequent generations. When k.d. lang recorded her 1988 album Shadowland with Owen Bradley, it was this phase of Cline's career that she was specifically attempting to emulate.
It's arguable that too much has been made of Cline's crossover appeal to the pop market. Brenda Lee, whose records were graced with similar Bradley productions, was actually more successful in this area (although her records were likely targeted toward a younger audience). Cline's appeal was undeniably more adult, but she was always more successful with country listeners. Her final four Top Ten country singles, in fact, didn't make the pop Top 40. Despite a severe auto accident in 1961, Cline remained hot through 1961 and 1962, with "Crazy" and "She's Got You" both becoming big country and pop hits. Much of her achingly romantic material was supplied by fresh talent like Hank Cochran, Harlan Howard, and Willie Nelson (who penned "Crazy"). Although her commercial momentum had faded slightly, she was still at the top of her game when she died in a plane crash in March of 1963, at the age of 30.
She was only a big star for a couple of years, but her influence was and remains huge. While the standards of professionalism on her recordings have been emulated ever since, they've rarely been complemented by as much palpable, at times heartbreaking emotion in the performances. For those who could do without some of more elaborate arrangements of her later years, many of her relatively unadorned appearances on radio broadcasts have been thankfully preserved and issued.
Born-Virginia Wynette Pugh
May 5, 1942 in Itawamba County, MS
Died April 6, 1998
In many ways, Tammy Wynette deserves the title of the First Lady of Country Music. During the late '60s and early '70s, she dominated the country charts, scoring 17 number one hits. Along with Loretta Lynn, she defined the role of female country vocalists in the '70s.
After her father, who was a musician, died when she was just eight months old, Wynette was raised on her grandparents' home in Mississippi; her mother moved to Birmingham, AL, to do military work. As a child, Tammy taught herself to play a variety of instruments left behind by her father. When she was a teenager, she moved to Birmingham to be with her mother. At 17, she married her first husband, Euple Byrd, and set to work as a hairdresser and beautician. The marriage was short-lived, but it produced three children within three years. By the time her third child was born, the couple were divorced.
Tammy's third child had spinal meningitis, which meant she had several expensive medical bills to pay. In order to gain some extra money, she began performing in clubs at night. In 1965, she landed a regular spot on the television program the Country Boy Eddie Show, which led to appearances on Porter Wagoner's syndicated show. The following year, she moved to Nashville, where she auditioned for several labels before producer Billy Sherrill signed her to Epic Records.
"Apartment #9," Wynette's first single, was released late in 1966 and almost broke the country Top 40 early in 1967. It was followed by "Your Good Girl's Gonna Go Bad," which became a big hit, peaking at number three. The song launched a string of Top Ten hits that ran until the end of the '70s, interrupted by three singles that didn't crack the Top Ten. After "Your Good Girl's Gonna Go Bad" was a success, "My Elusive Dreams" became her first number one in the summer of 1967, followed by "I Don't Wanna Play House" later that year.
During 1968 and 1969, Tammy had five number one hits "Take Me to Your World," "D-I-V-O-R-C-E," "Stand By Your Man" (all 1968), "Singing My Song," and "The Ways to Love a Man" (both 1969). In 1968, she started a relationship with George Jones, which would prove to be extremely stormy. Beginning in 1971, Wynette and Jones recorded a series of duets the first was the Top Ten "Take Me" which were as popular as their solo hits. However, the marriage was difficult and the couple divorced in 1975; they continued to record sporadically over the next two decades.
Throughout the '70s, Tammy Wynette racked up number one hits. In the early '80s, her career began to slow down. Although she still had hit singles, she didn't reach the Top Ten as easily as she did in the previous decade. That trend continued throughout the rest of the decade and into the '90s. Even though she didn't have as many hits as she had in the past, Tammy remained a respected star and a popular concert attraction. Since the '80s, Wynette had suffered a variety of health problems, including inflammations of her bile duct. She was hospitalized several times during the mid-'90s before her death on April 6, 1998.
Born: Woodrow Wilson Sovine
July 17, 1918 in Charleston, WV
Died April 4, 1980 in Nashville, TN
Though he had a long, distinguished career in country music, singer/songwriter and guitarist Red Sovine is best remembered for his earnest, funny and, at times, highly sentimental odes to the life of the American trucker. Born to an impoverished family in Charleston, West Virginia, he was inspired as a child by WCHS radio musicians Buddy Starcher and Frank Welling. Sovine and his childhood friend Johnnie Bailes joined Jim Pike's Carolina Tar Heels and performed as "the Singing Sailors." It was not a particularly successful venture and Sovine later became a factory worker. He also continued to put on a local radio show while his friend Johnnie went on to form the Bailes Brothers.
Bailes continued to encourage Sovine to return to music, and in the late '40s, he finally began pursuing a radio career again. He landed a job at KWKH, Shreveport, but they gave him an early morning spot and his performances went unnoticed. Frustrated, he was ready to quit the business when Hank Williams helped him get a better position at WFSA in Montgomery, Alabama, where he soon developed a large following. With Williams' help, Sovine landed a contract with MGM Records in 1949, and over the next four years he recorded 28 singles, mostly honky tonk, that didn't make much of a dent on the charts but did establish him as a solid performer. When not recording, Sovine starred on Shreveport's Louisiana Hayride.
In the early '50s, Webb Pierce, one of his fellow Hayride performers, began a string of Top Ten country hits. Pierce convinced Sovine to lead his Wondering Boys band and also helped Red sign to Decca in 1954. He continued recording but had no hits until cutting a duet with Goldie Hill, "Are You Mine?," which peaked in the Top 15 in 1955. The following year, he had his first number one when he duetted with Webb Pierce on George Jones' "Why Baby Why." Also in 1956, Sovine had two other Top Five singles and started a brief stint on the Grand Ole Opry. After producing close to 50 sides with Decca by 1959, Sovine signed to Starday and began touring the club circuit as a solo act. It took him five years to produce a hit for the label with "Dream House for Sale," which reached number 22 in 1964, nearly eight years after his last hit.
In 1966, Sovine at last found his niche when he recorded "Giddy-up Go," his very first spoken-word truck driver song. The single spent six weeks atop the country charts and even crossed over to become a minor pop hit. Subsequent truck-driving hits included the ghost story "Phantom 309" and the tearjerking tale of a crippled child's CB-radio relationship with caring truckers, "Teddy Bear." The latter was his biggest hit since "Giddyup Go," spending three weeks at the top of the country charts in 1976 and reaching number 40 on the pop charts. He followed "Teddy Bear" with "Little Joe," the tale of a blinded trucker and his devoted canine friend, which became his last big hit. Sovine died in 1980 as the result of suffering a heart attack while driving his van. Sandra Brennan
The Singing Sheriff
Born February 25, 1932 in Shreveport, LA
Died December 10, 1996
Originally known as the "Hillbilly Heartthrob" and the "Singing Sheriff," Faron Young had one of the longest-running and most popular careers in , country music history. Emerging in the ea, rly '50s, Young was one of the most popular honky tonkers to appear in the wake of Hank Williams' death, paritially because he was able to smooth out some of the grittiest elements his music. At first, he balanced honky tonk with pop vocal phrasing and flourishes. This combination of grit and polish resulted in a streak of Top 10 hits including "If You Ain't Lovin'," "Live Fast, Love Hard, Die Young," "Sweet Dreams" "Alone With You" and "Country Girl" that ran throughout the '50s. During the '60s, Young gave himself over to country-pop, and while the hits weren't quite as big, they didn't stop coming until the early '80s. Through that time, he was a staple at the Grand Ole Opry and various television shows, including Nashville Now, and he also founded the major country music magazine, Music City News. Most importantly, he continued to seek out new songwriters including Don Gibson, Willie Nelson, and Kris Kristofferson thereby cultivating a new generation of talent.
Faron Young was born and raised outside of Shrevport, Louisiana. While he was growing up on his father's dairy farm, he was given a guitar, and by the time he entered high school, he had begun singing in a country band. Following high school, he briefly attended college, before he left school to join the Louisiana Hayride as a regular performer. While on the Hayride, he met Webb Pierce and in a short time, the pair were touring throughout the south, singing as a duo in various nightclubs and honky tonks. In 1951, he recorded "Have I Waited Too Long" "Tattle Tale Tears" for the independent label Gotham. After hearing the singles, Capitol Records decided to buy Young's contract away from Gotham in 1952. That same year, he was invited to perform regularly on the Grand Ole Opry.
Just as his career was taking off, Young was drafted into the Army to serve in the Korean War. Assigned to the Special Service division, he sang for the troops in Asia and appeared on recruitment shows; while on leave, he recorded his debut Capitol, "Goin' Steady." Upon its early 1953 release, it climbed to number two on the country charts and it was followed in the summer by "I Can't Wait (For the Sun to Go Down)," which hit number five. Young was discharged from the Army in November of 1954, releasing "If You Ain't Lovin," his biggest hit to date, shortly after he returned. The single was quickly followed in the spring of 1955 by "Live Fast, Love Hard, Die Young," which became his first number one hit, and the number two single, "All Right."
As soon as he returned to the States, Faron Young began turning out singles at a very rapid pace, and most of them charted in the Top 10. In addition to recording, he began appearing in films, starting with 1955's Hidden Guns. Over the next few years, he was in no less than ten films including Daniel Boone, Road to Nashville, Stampede, A Gun and a Gavel, That's Country and,Raiders of Old California was featured in many television shows.
Upon his first film appearance, Faron earned the nickname the Young Sheriff, which eventually metamorphasized into the Singing Sheriff. Young's career truly began to hit its stride in 1956, as "I've Got Five Dollars and It's Saturday Night" / "You're Still Mine" reached number four and three, respectively, during the spring, followed by the number two "Sweet Dreams" later that summer. "Sweet Dreams" not only was his biggest hit since "All Right," but it gave songwriter Don Gibson his first significant exposure. Soon, Young developed a reputation for finding promising new songwriters, bringing Roy Drusky's "Alone with You" to the top of the charts in the summer of 1958 and taking Willie Nelson's "Hello Walls" to number one in 1961; Young was one of the first artists to record a Nelson song.
Young continued to record for Capitol through 1962, when he switched labels and signed with Mercury. In general, Young's Mercury recordings were more pop-oriented than his Capitol work, possibly because "Hello Walls," his last number one for Capitol, reached number 12 on the pop charts. Throughout the early and mid-'60s, Young's music became more polished and produced, yet his audience didn't decline dramatically he may not have been hitting the every top of the charts with the same frequency as he was during the '50s, but he was still a consistent hit-maker, and singles like "You'll Drive Me Back (Into Her Arms Again)," "Keeping Up with the Joneses" and "Walk Tall" climbed into the Top 10.
Faron left the Grand Ole Opry in 1965, deciding that it , was more profitable for him to tour as a solo artist instead of being restricted to the Opry. Following his departure from the Opry, Young began to explore a number of different business ventures, including a Nashville-based racetrack and helping to run the country music publication Music City News, which he co-founded with Preston Temple in 1963. By the end of the decade, he began to return to honky tonk, most notably with the hit "Wine Me Up," which reached number two upon its summer 1969 release. For nearly five years, Young continued to reach the Top 10 with regularity, including such hits as "Your Time's Comin'," "If I Ever Fall in Love (With a Honky Tonk Girl), "Step Aside," and "It's Four in the Morning." During this time, Young continued to appear on television shows and he made the occasional appearance on the Grand Ole Opry. During the late '70s, his hits gradually began to fade away. In 1979, he left Mercury for MCA, but none of his singles for the new label reached the Top 40.
For most of the '80s, Young performed concerts, maintained his business interests and appeared on television in short, he was acting like the country music statesman he was. In 1988, he briefly returned to recording, signing with the small label Step One, and had two minor hits on the label. After that brief burst of activity, he retreated to semi-retirement, occasionally making concert appearances.
During the '90s, Young was stricken with a debilitating emphysema. Depressed by his poor health, he shot himself on December 9, 1996 and passed away the next day. Though he was under-appreciated toward the end of his career, Faron Young was a ground-breaking vocalist during the '50s, and he remains one of the finest honky tonkers of his time.
Formed July 4, 1940 in Knoxville, TN
Group Members:
Lonnie Ira Loudermilk
Born: April 21, 1924
Died: June 28, 1965
Charlie Elzer Loudermilk
Born: July 7, 1927
From the close-harmony brother acts of the '30s evolved Charlie and Ira Louvin, ranking among the top duos in country music history. With Ira's incredibly high, pure tenor and Charlie's emotional and smooth melody tenor, they learned well from the Bolick brothers (the Blue Sky Boys), the Monroe Brothers, the Delmore Brothers and other major family duos of the previous generation, preserving the old-time flavor, while bringing this genre into the '50s, when country music moved to a newer sound. Whatever type of songs they recorded gospel, folk, hillbilly, or '50s pop those songs became the Louvins. Add to the list the many Louvin compositions (for example, "If I Could Only Win Your Love," Emmylou Harris' first hit), and you have an act that is outstanding in country music history. Their career took a while to get going, partly because of interruptions from WW II and the Korean War. In the early '50s, after making a reputation for unexcelled gospel singing, the Louvins broadened their repertoire, recording "The Get Acquainted Waltz" (with Chet Atkins adding another guitar to Charlie's and to Ira's mandolin), a fair hit that showed success was reachable with non-religious music. The electric guitar, with the duo's unique harmony and Ira's exceptional tenor, created a sound that fans asked for in increasing numbers. In 1955, after ten unsuccessful auditions, they finally joined the Opry, where they performed to great acclaim until 1963, when they broke up. They had a number of hits, including the much-covered "When I Stop Dreaming" and "Cash on the Barrel Head." Following the duo's breakup, Ira and Charlie both pursued solo careers.
Born and raised in the Appalachian mountains in Alabama, both Charlie (born Charlie Elzer Loudermilk, July 7, 1927) and Ira (born Lonnie Ira Loudermilk, April 21, 1924; d. June 20, 1965) were attracted to the close-harmony country brother duets of the Blue Sky Boys, the Delmore Brothers, the Callahans Brothers and the Monroe Brothers when they reached their adolescence. Previously, they had sung gospel songs in church and their parents encouraged their songs to play music, despite the family's poverty. Ira began playing mandolin while Charlie picked up the guitar, and the two began harmonizing. After a while, they began performing at a small, local radio station in Chattanooga, where they frequently played on an early-morning show.
The brothers' career was interrupted in the early '40s when Charlie joined the Army for a short while. While his brother was in the service, Ira played with Charlie Monroe. Once Charlie returned from the Army, the duo moved to Knoxville, Tennessee where they received a regular spot on a WROL radio show; they later moved to WNOX. Around this time, they decided to abandon their given name for Louvin, which appeared to be a better stage name. (Their cousin John D. Loudermilk retained the family name.) Following their stint in Knoxville, they moved to Memphis, where they broadcast on WMPS and cut one single for Apollo Records. After their brief stay in Memphis, they returned to Knoxville.
In 1949, the Louvin Brothers recorded a single for Decca Records which failed to make much of an impact. Two years later, they signed with MGM Records and over the next year, they recorded 12 songs. Shortly after their MGM sessions were finished, Charlie and Ira moved back to Memphis, where the worked as postal clerks while playing concerts and radio shows at night. Eventually, they earned the attention of Acuff-Rose who signed the duo to a publishing contract. Fred Rose, the owner of the publishing house, helped the duo sign a contract with Capitol Records. The Louvins' debut single for the label, "The Family Who Prays," was a moderate success (it would later become a gospel standard), yet they were unable to capitalize on its success because Charlie was recalled by the Army to serve in the Korean War.
Upon Charlie's discharge from the Army, the Louvins relocated to Birmingham, where they planned to restart their career through appearances on the radio station WOVK. However, a duo called Rebe and Rabe had already carved out a close-harmony niche in the area, using several of the Louvins' own songs. When Charlie and Ira were reaching a point of despe, ration, Capitol's Ken Nelson was able to convince the Grand Ole Opry to hire the duo. Prior to joining the Opry, the duo had been marketed as a gospel artist, but they began singing secular material as soon as they landed a slot on the show, primarily because a tobacco company sponsoring its broadcast told the Opry and the Louvins "you can' sell tobacco with gospel music." While they didn't abandon gospel, the brothers began writing and performing secular material again, starting with "When I Stop Dreaming." The single became a Top Ten hit upon its release in the fall of 1955 and it would eventually become a country standard.
It was followed shortly afterward by "I Don't Believe You've Met My Baby," which spent two weeks at number one early in 1956. No less than three of the duo's other singles "Hoping That You're Hoping," "You're Running Wild," "Cash on the Barrel Head" reached the Top Ten that year, and they also released the albums Tragic Songs of Life and Nearer My God to Thee. The Louvins' success in 1956 was particularly impressive when considering that rock & roll was breaking big that year, sapping the sales of many established country artists.
However, the Louvins weren't able to escape being hurt by rock & roll. They had two relatively big hits in 1957, "Don't Laugh" and "Plenty of Everything But You," "My Baby's Gone" reached the Top Ten in late 1958, and their classic version of the traditional ballad "Knoxville Girl" was a moderate hit in early 1959, but those were those four hit singles arrived in the space of three years; they charted four songs in 1956 alone. , , , , , , ,, ,, , ,,, , , , , , , , So,, , on, the Louvins were receiving pressure from Capitol to update their sound. They tried to cut a couple of rockabilly numbers, but they were quite unsuccessful. Eventually, Ken Nelson suggested that the duo abandon the mandolin in order to appeal to the same audience as the Everly Brothers. The Louvins didn't accept his advice, but the remark did considerable damage to Ira's ego and he began to sink into alcoholism.
The Louvin Brothers continued to record during the early '60s, turning out a number of theme albums including tributes to the Delmore Brothers and Roy Acuff, as well as gospel records like Satan is Real as well as singles. "I Love You Best of All" and "How's the World Treating You" reached numbers 12 and 26 respectively in 1961, the first year they had two hit singles since 1957. However, the duo began fighting frequently, and Ira's alcoholism worsened. Following one last hit single, "Must You Throw Dirt in My Face," in the fall of 1962, the duo decided to disband in the summer of 1963.
Charlie and Ira both launched solo careers on Capitol Records shortly after the breakup. Charlie was the more successful of the two, with his debut single "I Don't Love You Anymore" reaching number four upon its summer release in 1964. For the next decade, he racked up a total of 30 hit singles, though most of the records didn't make the Top 40. Ira's luck wasn't as good as his brother's. Shortly after the Louvins disbanded, he had a raging, alcohol-fueled argument with his third wife Faye that resulted in a shooting that nearly killed him. He continued to perform afterward, singing with his fourth wife Anne Young. The duo were performing a week of concerts in Kansas City in June of 1965 when they were both killed in a car crash in Williamsburg, Missouri. After his death, his single "Yodel, Sweet Molly" became a moderate hit.
The Louvin Brothers' reputation continued to grow in the decades following their breakup, as their harmonies and hard-driving take on traditional country provided the blueprint for many generations of country and rock musicians. The Everly Brothers were clearly influenced by the duo, while country-rock pioneer Gram Parsons drew heavily from the Louvins' deep catalog of classic songs, recording "The Christian Life" with the Byrds and "Cash on the Barrelhead" as a solo artist. They have now taken their rightful place in the Country Music of Hall of Fame. The Louvin Brothers and their music is truly legendary.
Carl Lee Perkins
Born April 9, 1932 in Tiptonville, TN
Died January 19, 1998
While some ill-informed revisionist writers of rock history would like to dismiss Carl Perkins as a rockabilly artist who became a one hit wonder at the dawn of rock & roll's early years, a deeper look at his music and career reveals much more. A quick look at his songwriting portfolio shows that he has composed "Daddy Sang Bass" for Johnny Cash, "I Was So Wrong" for Patsy Cline, and "Let Me Tell You About Love" for the Judds, big hits and classics all. His influence as the quintessential rockabilly artist has played a big part in the development of every generation of rocker to come down the pike since, from the Beatles' George Harrison to the Stray Cats' Brian Setzer to a myriad of others in the country field as well. His guitar style is the other twin peak along with that of Elvis' lead man Scotty Moore of rockabilly's instrumental center, so pervasive that modern day players automatically gravitate toward it when called upon to deliver the style, not even realizing that they're playing Carl Perkins licks, sometimes note for note. As a singer, his interpretation of country ballads is every bit as fine as his better known rockers. And within the framework of the best of his music is a strong sense of family and roots, all of which trace straight back to Carl's humble beginnings.
He was born to sharecroppers Buck and Louise Perkins (misspelled on his birth certificate as 'Perkings') and was soon out in the fields picking cotton and living in a one country shack with his parents, older brother Jay , and his younger brother Clayton. Working alongside Blacks in the field every day, it's not at all surprising that when Carl was gifted with a second hand guitar, he went to a local sharecropper for lessons, learning first hand the boogie rhythm that he would later build a career on. By his teens, Carl was playing electric guitar and had recruited his brothers Jay on rhythm guitar and Clayton on string bass to become his first band. The Perkins Brothers Band, featuring both Carl and Jay on lead vocals, quickly established themselves as the hottest band in the get hot or go home cutthroat Jackson, Tennessee honky tonk circuit.
It was here that Carl started composing his first songs with an eye toward the future. Watching the dance floor at all times for a reaction, Perkins kept reshaping these loosely structured songs until he had a completed composition, which would then be finally put to paper. Carl was already sending demos to New York record companies, who kept rejecting him, sometimes explaining that this strange new hybrid of country with a Black rhythm fit no current commercial trend. But once Perkins heard Elvis on the radio, he not only knew what to call it, but knew that there was a record company person who finally understood it and was also willing to gamble in promoting it. That man was Sam Phillips and the record company was Sun Records, and that's exactly where Carl headed in 1954 to get an audition.
It was here at his first Sun audition that the structure of the Perkins Brothers Band changed forever. Phillips didn't show the least bit of interest in Jay's Ernest Tubb-styled vocals, but flipped over Carl's singing and guitar playing. A scant four months later, he had issued the first Carl Perkins record, "Movie Magg" and "Turn Around," both sides written by the artist. By his second session, he had added W.S. Holland a friend of Clayton's to the band playing drums, a relatively new innovation to country music at the time. Phillips was still channeling Perkins in a strictly hillbilly vein, feeling that two artists doing the same type of music (in this case, Elvis and rockabilly) would cancel each other out. But after selling Elvis' contract to RCA Victor in December, Carl was encouraged to finally let his rocking soul come up for air at his next Sun session. And rock he did with a double whammy blast that proved to be his ticket to the bigs.
The chance overhearing of a conversation at a dance one night between two teenagers coupled with a song idea suggestion from label mate Johnny Cash, inspired Perkins to approach Sam with a new song he had written called "Blue Suede Shoes." After cutting two sides that Phillips planned on releasing as a single by the Perkins Brothers Band, Carl laid down three takes each of "Blue Suede Shoes" and another rocker, "Honey Don't." A month later, Sam decides to shelve the two country sides and go with the rockers as Carl's next single. Three months later, "Blue Suede Shoes," a tune that borrowed stylistically from pop, country and R&B music, is sitting at the top of all charts, the first record to accomplish such a feat while becoming Sun's first million seller in the bargain.
Ready to cash in on a national basis, Carl and the boys headed up to New York for the first time to appear on the Perry Como Show. While enroute their car rammed the back of a poultry truck, putting Carl and his brother Jay in the hospital with a cracked skull and broken neck, respectively. While in traction, Perkins saw Presley performing h, is song on the Dorsey Brother Stage Show, his moment of fame and recognition snatched away from him. Carl shrugged his shoulders and went back to the road and the Sun studios, trying to pick up where he left off.
The follow-ups to "Shoes" were, in many ways, superior to his initial hit, but each succeeding Sun single held diminishing sales and it wasn't until the British Invasion and the subsequent rockabilly revival of the early '70s that the general public got to truly savor classics like "Boppin' the Blues," "Matchbox," "Everybody's Trying to Be My Baby," "Your True Love," "Dixie Fried," "Put Your Cat Clothes On," and "All Mama's Children."
While labelmates Johnny Cash and Jerry Lee Lewis (who played piano on "Matchbox") were scoring hit after hit, Carl was becoming disillusioned with his fate, fueled by his increasing dependence on alcohol and the death of brother Jay to cancer. He kept plugging along and when Johnny Cash left Sun to go to Columbia in 1958, Perkins followed him over. The royalty rate was better, and Carl had no shortage of great songs to record, but Columbia's Nashville watch the clock production methods killed any of the spontaneity that was the charm of the Sun records.
By the early '60s, after being dropped by Columbia and moving over to Decca with little success, Carl was back playing the honky tonks and contemplating getting out of the business altogether. A call from a booking agent in 1964 offering a tour of England changed all of that. Temporarily swearing off the bottle, Perkins was greeted in Britain as a conquering hero, playing to sold out audiences and being particularly lauded by a young beat group on the top of the charts named the Beatles. George Harrison had cut his musical teeth on Carl's Sun recordings (as had most British guitarists) and the Fab Four ended up recording more tunes by him than any other artist except themselves. The British tour not only rejuvenated his outlook, but suddenly made him realize that he had gone through no maneuvering of his own from has been to legend in a country he had never played in before.
Upon his return to the States, he hooked up with old friend and former labelmate Johnny Cash and was a regular fixture of his road show for the next ten years, bringing his battle with alcohol to an end. The '80s dawned with Perkins going on his own with a new band consisting of his sons backing him. His election to the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame in the mid-'80s was no less than his due. After a long battle with throat cancer, Perkins died in early 1998, his place in the history books assured.
Born September 8, 1903 in Stephenville, TX
Died April 13, 1936 in Crystal Springs, TX
Milton Brown was one of the fathers of Western Swing, a vocalist and bandleader who was one of the first to fuse country, jazz, and pop together into a unique, distinctly American hybrid. Along with Bob Wills who he performed with at the beginning of this career Brown developed the sound and style of Western Swing in the early '30s and for a while he and his band, the Musical Brownies, were just as popular as Wills and his Texas Playboys. Tragically, Milton Brown's career was cut short in 1936 when he died in a car accident, just as he was poised to break into national stardom.
Born in Stephensville, Texas in 1903, Milton Brown moved to Fort Worth, Texas in 1918. After graduating from high school in 1925, he worked as a cigar saleman, but he lost his job when the Great Depression hit in the late '20s. Brown began his musical career in 1930, when he happened to meet Bob Wills at a local Fort Worth dance. The Wills Fiddle Band was performing at the dance and Brown joined the group on a chorus of "St. Louis Blues." Wills was impressed with Brown's voice and immediatelly asked him and his guitarist brother, Derwood, to join the band.
The Wills Fiddle Band played medicine shows around Texas and landed a regular radio spot on WBAP, where they played a show sponsored by Aladdin Lamp Company, who had the band change their name to the Aladdin Laddies. In early 1931, the group was hired by the Light Crust Flour Company which was run by Burrus Mill and Elevator Company to appear daily on the radio station KFJZ. The company, which was managed by W. Lee O'Daniel who also hosted the radio shows, had the group rename themselves the Light Crust Doughboys.
The Light Crust Doughboys were an instant success, and soon O'Daniel moved them first to another radio station, then syndicated the program statewide. The Doughboys were playing cowboy songs, jazz, blues, and popular songs a repertoire so diverse that the band's audience continued to expand. In February of 1932, they recorded a single for Victor under the name the Fort Worth Doughboys.
The band was playing dance music and they wanted to play at dances, but O'Daniel was reluctant to let the group play outside of their radio shows. He also was hesitant to pay them much money, which greatly angered Milton Brown. In September of 1932, Brown left the band after he had a argument about money with O'Daniel. After leaving the Light Crust Doughboys, Brown formed the first Western Swing band, the Musical Brownies. The first incarnation of the Brownies featured Brown, guitarist Durwood Brown, bassist Wanna Coffman, Ocie Stockard on tenor banjo, and fiddle player Jesse Ashlock. Shortly afterward, pianist Fred Calhoun and fiddle player Cecil Brower (who replaced Ashlock) joined the group. Like the Light Crust Doughboys, the Musical Brownies played a mixture of country, pop, and jazz, but the Brownies had a harder dance edge than their predecessors.
Almost immediately, Brown and His Musical Brownies were a huge success. The group had a regular spot on the radio station KTAT and drew large crowds at Texas dances. In April of 1934, the band recorded eight songs for Bluebird; they recorded another ten for the label in August.
Toward the end of 1934, the Brownies added an electric steel guitarist called Bob Dunn the first musician to play an electric instrument in country music. In January of 1935, the band signed with Decca records and recorded 36 songs for the label. Released as singles over the course of 1935, the songs helped establish the band as the most popular Western Swing band in Texas. In March of 1936, the Brownies travelled to New Orleans to record their second set of sessions for Decca. By this time, fiddler Brower had been replaced by Cliff Bruner. At these sessions, the Brownies cut about 50 songs, which were issued throughout 1936 and 1937.
In April of 1936, Brown suffered a major car accident. Although he wasn't killed on impact, he died five days after the crash, from pneumonia. Following Milton's death, Durwood Brown kept the Musical Brownies together for two years, recording a dozen sides for Decca in 1937. At the time of his death, Milton Brown rivalled Bob Wills in popularity. Although he never became as famous as Wills, he was equally important in the development of Western Swing without him, the genre as we know it wouldn't exist. Stephen Thomas Erlewine
Formed 1931
Group Members Milton Brown, Herman Arnspiger and Bob Wills
One of the original Western swing bands, the Light Crust Doughboys once featured the combined talents of Western swing's two most renowned figures, Bob Wills and Milton Brown. That lineup was unfortunately short-lived, due in large part to issues with the group's overly controlling manager, W. Lee "Pappy" O'Daniel (who would later become governor of Texas). However, even after all three of those figures were gone, the Light Crust Doughboys soldiered on, becoming one of the most popular pre-war Western swing bands in Texas; versions of the group continued to perform, off and on, right up to the turn of the millennium. The group that became the Light Crust Doughboys was formed in 1929 as the Wills Fiddle Band, when Bob Wills joined up with guitarist Herman Arnspiger in Fort Worth, TX. The duo began playing dances and radio shows, and hooked up with singer Milton Brown in 1930. Brown's brother Durwood soon joined the band as a second guitarist, and banjoist Clifford "Sleepy" Johnson arrived not long after.
The group landed a regular radio gig in Fort Worth sponsored by the Aladdin Lamp Company, and accordingly changed their name to the Aladdin Laddies. That didn't last long, however; in 1931, the band landed their own morning show on a rival station, sponsored by Burris Mill, the makers of Light Crust Flour. Pappy O'Daniel managed the company at the time, and he convinced them to adopt Light Crust Doughboys as their new name. Still, O'Daniel disliked the group's music, dismissing it as "hillbilly"; he attempted to cancel the show after just two weeks, but popular demand kept the group on the air (as well as a deal with O'Daniel whereby the band members agreed to work in the flour mill).
With their regular radio show and wide-ranging musical repertoire (country, blues, jazz, pop, gospel, and more), the Light Crust Doughboys became one of the most popular and widely exposed bands in Texas. Musicians like singer/yodeler Leon Huff, steel guitarist Leon McAuliffe, and banjoist Johnnie Lee Wills began playing with the group. Realizing he had a good thing on his hands, O'Daniel became the Doughboys' manager and sometime songwriter as well as the show's announcer; he first moved the Doughboys to a new station, and then landed their show on a syndicated radio network that spread their sound across the Southwest. But his refusal to allow the band to play gigs outside the radio show was frustrating to its members, who felt they weren't seeing enough money. Wills, Johnson, and the Brown brothers recorded a single for Victor in 1932 under the name the Fort Worth Doughboys, which was a precursor to Milton Brown leaving the group several months later.
Wills replaced him with Tommy Duncan, but clashed frequently with O'Daniel, and wound up leaving himself in the summer of 1933, taking Duncan with him. Undeterred, O'Daniel reorganized the Doughboys and brought them to Chicago later in the year for a recording session with Vocalion. However, his days with the band were numbered as well; disputes with the Burris Mill Company led to his being fired in 1935. O'Daniel put together a new band called the Hillbilly Boys, and thanks to his radio exposure, he made a successful run for governor of Texas in 1938. Meanwhile, the Light Crust Doughboys' new lineup had solidified by 1937: fiddle players Kenneth Pitts and Clifford Gross (plus Cecil Brower on occasion), banjoist Marvin "Smokey" Montgomery (who would remain with the group right up to his death in 2001), lead guitarist Muryel Campbell, rhythm guitarist Dick Reinhart, pianist John "Knocky" Parker, and bassist Ramon DeArman. This lineup's recordings were among the biggest selling in their hometown, and were quite popular across the region thanks in part to their continued radio exposure, which now reached over 170 stations.
Their success continued right up to World War II, at which point most of the members joined either the Army or the defense industry. The Doughboys' radio show was thus canceled in 1942; Burris Mill attempted to mount a new version of the program in 1946, featuring Jack Perry as the leader of the band (a post Smokey Montgomery took over in 1948). But despite a series of new recordings for King, interest had dissipated, and the radio show was canceled for good in 1950. While Montgomery kept the band going in some form, off and on, during the remainder of his life, the first large-scale revival of the Light Crust Doughboys took place during the '60s, featuring Montgomery (now on guitar as well as banjo), guitarist Billy Hudson, fiddler Johnny Strawn, bassist Artie Glenn, and steel guitarist Paul Blount. During the '90s, when the band began recording again, the lineup featured Montgomery, guitarist Jerry Elliott, bassist Art Greenhaw, fiddlers John Walden and Jim Baker, and pianist Bill Simmons. Montgomery passed away on June 6, 2001, after a bout with leukemia. Steve Huey
Born January 25,1924 in Springfield, MO
Died November 15, 2003
Instruments Guitar (Steel), Pedal Steel
One of the greatest virtuosos that country music has ever produced, Speedy West bridged the western swing and rockabilly eras with eye-popping steel guitar. Besides contributing to literally thousands of country sessions, West cut many of his own instrumentals, as a solo act and with his guitarist partner Jimmy Bryant.
In 1951, Speedy signed to Capitol Records and made his debut on the Grand Ole Opry. That year he enjoyed his first single record, "Stainless Steel/Railroadin'," and in 1954, the album "Two Guitars, Country Style," with Jimmy Bryant. It is estimated that Speedy played on over 6,000 recording sessions during the fifties with 177 vocalist. These included sessions with Frank Sinatra, Bing Crosby, Phil Harris, Dinah Shore, Ernest Tubb, Tennessee Ernie Ford, Johnny Horton and Jim Reeves. In 1960, he produced the first record on Loretta Lynn, "I'm A Honky Tonk Girl."
Adept at boogie, blues, and Hawaiian ballads, West played with an infectious joy and daring improvisation that, at its most adventurous, could be downright experimental. It's doubtful whether anyone could collect all of Speedy's solos under one roof, but it was his sessions of the 1950s and early '60s especially those with Jimmy Bryant that found his genius at its most freewheeling and dazzling. In 1975, Speedy got together with Jimmy Bryant, after having not worked together in sixteen years and recorded an album which released in 1990 as "For The Last Time."
In 1981, Speedy was struck down by a stroke which made it impossible for him to play again. He contemplated suicide, but then considered all the positive things that had happened in his life and decided to put up with the pain.Through the 90's, he was emceeing and talking on music, although in retirement in Broken Arrow, Oklahoma. His son Gary plays steel as Speedy West Jr around the Oklahoma area.
To quote Speedy, "I used to get high, higher than a kite, just playing my guitar. You don't have to use drugs and drink if you love your instrument enough." Speedy was inducted into the STEEL GUITAR HALL OF FAME in 1980. He spends his time with wife Mary and despite his illness, remains chipper and is a wealth of information. He remembers, with affection, his years in music.There were several copy-cat players, but none ever really duplicated the great Speedy West style.
Speedy is no longer with us and what a loss to our music business. I knew Speedy had been very ill but still that November afternoon when I walked on stage at Cains in Tulsa to get ready for opening night of Hank Thompson's "Sunset Tour," my friend Curley Lewis came straight to me and told me we lost Speedy that morning - November 15, 2003. There was considerable conversation about him all night with fans, other musicians and record company folk who came to honor Hank. Dugg Collins
Born January 11, 1911 in Hillsboro, TX
Died July 25, 1967 in Tulsa, OK
As the lead singer for the classic lineup of Bob Wills' Texas Playboys, Tommy Duncan was the definitive western swing vocalist. Crossing the smooth croon of Bing Crosby with the twang of Jimmie Rodgers and the bluesy inclinations of Emmett Miller, Duncan had a warm, distinctive and welcoming voice that helped the Playboys crossover to a wider audience. Not only was he a wonderful, trend-setting vocalist, Tommy also wrote many of the Texas Playboys' biggest hits, including "Time Changes Everything," "Stay A Little Longer," "Take Me Back to Tulsa," "New Spanish Two Step," and "Bubbles in My Beer." Throughout the '30s and '40s, he was remained with Wills, leaving in 1948 when tensions between the two musicians became too great. Following his departure, Duncan launched a solo career that resulted in one major hit single, "Gamblin' Polka Dot Blues."
Throughout the '50s, he sang both as a solo artist and a member of the Miller Brothers Band. In 1960, he and Wills patched up their differences and recorded several albums. Following his reunion with Wills, he began touring as a solo artist, and he remained on the road until his death in 1967.
Tommy Duncan was hired by Bob Wills in 1933 to fill the vacant spot left in the Light Crust Doughboys by vocalist/pianist Milton Brown, who had left the band when W. Lee O'Daniel, the sponsor of the group's radio show, refused to let the band play dances. Wills auditioned a total of 67 singers before hiring Duncan. Later that year, Wills was fired from the radio station by O'Daniel for showing up drunk, Duncan chose to join Bob's new band, the Texas Playboys, instead of staying with the Lightcrust Doughboys. Once the Texas Playboys settled in Tulsa in 1934, Duncan moved to permanent lead vocalist, leaving the piano to Alton Stricklin.
Over the next eight years, the group had a regular show on Tulsa's KVOO and recorded a number of hit singles for the American Recording Company, including "Right or Wrong" and "New San Antonio Rose." In 1942, Duncan left the band to join the Army and fight in World War II. Tommy's departure began a wave of defections from the Playboys, as many of the members enlisted in the service. The Playboys' popularity crumbled with the absence of so many key musicians, yet they bounced back up the charts once Duncan and several other members rejoined following the end of the war.
Duncan stayed with Wills until 1948, when the fiddler fired the singer, believing that Tommy was commanding too much attention. Upon leaving the Playboys, Duncan formed a Western swing band with several former members of the Texas Playboys and signed to Capitol Records. "Gamblin' Polka Dot Blues," his debut single, was a hit upon its summer release in 1949, peaking at number eight on the charts. After touring with the band during 1948 and 1949, Duncan joined the Miller Brothers Band in the early '50s.
Over the course of the early '50s, he recorded with the Miller Brothers on Intro Records, as well as solo for Coral. During the latter half of the decade, Tommy recorded for a variety of small labels, including Cheyenne, Fire, and Award. Despite his constant touring and recording, Duncan failed to have much success, primarily because western swing had fallen out of favor with many contemporary country fans.
Wills and Duncan patched up their differences and reunited in 1960, recording a number of sessions that were released as albums and singles over the next two years. One single, "The Image of Me," became a minor Top 40 country hit in early 1961. Following his brief reunion with Wills, Tommy continued to tour as a solo artist throughout the rest of the decade, usually employing a house band as his supporting group. In 1966, Duncan released his last single, "I Brought It On Myself" / "Let Me Take You Out," on Smash Records. The following year, he suffered a major heart attack and died in July, leaving behind a legacy of classic recordings and songs. Stephen Thomas Erlewine
Born William Leon McAuliffe
March 1, 1917 in Houston, TX
Died September 20, 1988 in Tulsa, OK
During the heyday of western swing, the immortal words "Take it away, Leon" nearly became a household phrase in the south. Spoken by Bob Wills, they referred to Leon McAuliffe, one of the best and most famous steel guitarists in the world; though most associated with Wills' Texas Playboys, he also had a respectable solo career. A native of Houston, Texas, McAuliffe began playing both Hawaiian and standard guitar at age 14.
He began appearing on a local radio station as part of the Waikiki Strummers in 1931. Two years later he joined Lee O'Daniel's Light Crust Doughboys, with whom he recorded on ARC in Chicago. He learned to electronically amplify his National resonator guitar from Houston's Bob Dunn, a member of Milton Brown's Brownies.
Jesse Ashlock invited the 18-year-old McAuliffe to join the Texas Playboys in 1935. He remained with the band for a number of years, recording many classic songs before moving to California, where he appeared in a few motion pictures. His signature song was "Steel Guitar Rag," a tune he adapted from Sylvester Weaver. During World War II, McAuliffe was a flight instructor. After the war he founded a big band, the Cimarron Boys. By this time western swing was all the rage, so he combined the styles to create something new and unique.
After working on a Tulsa radio station he and his band began recording; one of his most famous tunes, "Panhandle Guitar," became a Top Ten hit in 1949. By the 1960s, western swing had fallen out of vogue and McAuliffe began only playing locally. He also recorded a couple of albums, and later in the decade he purchased radio station, KAMO in Rogers, Arkansas. Western swing music was rediscoverd in the early 1970s and in 1971 he and Wills made a reunion recording. After Wills died a few years later, McAuliffe occasionally staged reunions of the Texas Playboys. He also recorded a few solo albums. Sandra Brennan
Born: Donell C. Cooley
Born December 17, 1910 in Grand, OK
Died November 23, 1969 in Vacaville, CA
A musician and actor whose often sordid private life tended to overshadow his career as an entertainer, Spade Cooley was the self-proclaimed King of Western Swing, an innovator who at his peak led the largest band ever assembled in the annals of country music. The product of a multi-generational family of fiddle players, Donnell Clyde Cooley was born in Oklahoma in 1910, and at the age of four, his family moved to Oregon. Despite his impoverished background, Cooley was a classically trained fiddler, and by the time he was eight years old, he was performing professionally at square dances with his father John. In 1930, Cooley (who received his nickname thanks to his poker skills) moved to Los Angeles, playing with a number of western-oriented acts. By the mid-'30s, he was working as an actor, with bit parts in several Westerns; for Republic Studios, he served as Roy Rogers' stand-in. He also toured with Rogers as a fiddle player, and handled vocal duties with the Riders of the Purple Sage.
Cooley did not begin a recording career until 1941, when he entered the studio while a member of Cal Shrum's band. A year later, he took control of bandleader Jimmy Wakely's group, the house band at Santa Monica, CA's Venice Pier Ballroom, and their Western swing music began attracting thousands of fans each Saturday night. The densely populated band, home to as many as three vocalists and fiddlers at a time, featured singer Tex Williams and guitarists Joaquin Murphey and John O. Weis. In 1945, Spade Cooley & His Orchestra's first single, "Shame on You," lasted nine weeks atop Billboard's country charts. The first in an unbroken string of six Top Ten singles (including "Detour" and "You Can't Break My Heart"), "Shame on You" would remain Cooley's theme song for years to come. Also in 1945, he married his second wife, Orchestra backup singer Ella Mae Evans.
Ultimately, the Orchestra's success led to the dissolution of its most popular lineup; by 1946, Williams, the vocalist on all of the group's hits, was demanding more money, and Cooley refused to pay it. As a result, Williams quit, taking much of the Orchestra with him to form the Western Caravan. In 1947, Cooley began a career in television, hosting a program in Los Angeles titled The Hoffman Hayride. The show's popularity grew quickly, and within months an estimated 75 percent of all televisions in the L.A. area tuned into the show each Saturday night. He also resumed his film career, this time with much higher visibility; in addition to significant roles in a number of Westerns, he also starred in two 1949 short subjects, King of Western Swing and Spade Cooley & His Orchestra.
Throughout the early '50s, Cooley continued to record, but the group's popularity waned as public tastes changed; after a time, he even fired the Orchestra to replace its members with an all-female band. A heavy drinker, Cooley descended into alcoholism as his career declined, and he suffered a series of minor heart attacks. Furthermore, he was facing financial ruin as a result of problems with a planned water theme park to be located in the Mojave Desert. In 1961, his wife Ella Mae left him; after an argument on April 3, he stomped her to death while the couple's 14-year-old daughter Melody looked on in horror.
The resulting trial, a media circus during which Cooley suffered another heart attack, culminated in a sentence of life imprisonment. Throughout his term, he was a model prisoner, and thus was allowed to perform at a sheriff's benefit in Oakland, CA, on November 23, 1969. After playing in front of a crowd of over 3,000, Cooley returned to his dressing room, suffered yet another heart attack, and died. Jason Ankeny
Sol Williams
Born Aug 23, 1917 in Ramsey, Fayette County, IL
Died Oct 11, 1985
Although not nearly as well known as figures like Bob Wills, the Maddox Brothers, and Merle Travis, Tex Williams was an important western swing performer. Like all of the aforementioned musicians, he helped develop country music from its rural, acoustic origins to a more danceable, citified, and electrified form with a much wider popular appeal. At his peak in the late '40s, he also recorded some of the most enjoyable country swing of his time, distinguished by his talking-blues vocal delivery. Much of his style can be heard in the western swing-influenced recordings of revivalists like Asleep at the Wheel, Commander Cody, and Dan Hicks.
The singer and guitarist caught his first big break after moving to Los Angeles in 1942. At that time California was populated by many former Texans and Oklahomans working in the defense industry, creating a need for western swing entertainment in a region not noted for country music. One of the musicians on this circuit was fiddler Spade Cooley, who employed Jack Williams as his singer, nicknaming him "Tex" to ensure easy identification by the many Texans in their audiences. Several of Cooley's mid-'40s Columbia singles featured Tex on vocals.
Capitol offered a contract to Williams as a solo artist, which strained the relationship between Tex and the tempestuous Cooley to the breaking point. Cooley fired Williams in June 1946, a move which backfired badly, as most of Cooley's band opted to follow Tex rather than remain with their difficult boss. Cooley achieved his greatest subsequent notoriety when he was convicted of beating his wife to death in a drunken fit in 1961.
Tex's renamed backing band, the Texas Caravan, was one of the best units of its kind. Numbering about a dozen members, it attained an enviable level of fluid interplay between electric and steel guitars, fiddles, bass, accordion, trumpet, and other instruments (even occasional harp). At first they recorded polkas for Capitol, with limited success. They found their true calling when Williams' friend Merle Travis wrote most of "Smoke! Smoke! Smoke! (That Cigarette)" for him, emphasizing Tex's talking-blues delivery and heavier boogie elements. The song was a monstrous commercial success in 1947, and indeed one of the biggest country hits of all time, making #1 on the pop charts.
That set the model for several of Williams' subsequent hits: hot western swing backup, over which Tex would roll his deep, laconic, easygoing narratives of humorous, slightly ridiculous situations. As enjoyable as these were, they were just one facet of the Texas Caravan's talents. The outfit were also capable of generating quite a heat on boogie instrumentals and more straightforward vocal numbers in which Williams actually sang rather than spoke.
Williams' commercial success began to peter out in the early '50s, and he left Capitol in 1951. He continued to record often in the 1950s, mostly for Decca, without much success; in 1957, the Western Caravan disbanded. He pressed on, however, returning to Capitol in the early 1960s, and recording a live album that included Glen Campbell on guitar. He had one final country hit, the memorably titled "The Night Miss Ann's Hotel for Single Girls Burned Down," which entered the Top 30 in 1971. Richie Unterberger
Willie Nelson began his legendary musical career as a young boy in Abbott, Texas. After his father passed away, his mother left Nelson and his sister Bobbie in the care of grandparents, who encouraged both children to play instruments. Willie had a quick affinity for the guitar, and by age seven was writing original songs. After paying his dues as a rambling honky tonk singer and sometime DJ, Nelson wound up in Nashville during the 1960s where he quickly attracted the notice of top country stars who recorded his compositions. Ray Price ("Nite Life"), Patsy Cline ("Crazy"), Faron Young ("Hello Walls"), and BillyWalker ("Funny How Time Slips Away") made huge commercial hits with songs that are still country standards today.
Nelson's writing success gave him entrée to record his own music--though not a commercial success these early singles earned him a small but devoted following. In the early '70s, Nelson and Waylon Jennings became central figures in a blossoming "outlaw" country movement-a rock and folk influenced style that challenged the overly produced "Nashville Sound" embraced by the country music industry at the time. Nelson's commercial breakthrough came in 1975, when his album Red Headed Stranger was a giant hit for Columbia Records. His bittersweet rendition of Roy Acuff's "Blue Eyes Crying in the Rain" put Nelson on the map for good.
Nelson remained at the top of the country charts through the 1980s, when rebellious public antics and an infamous battle with the IRS brought about a temporary demise in his popularity. During the '90s, Nelson climbed back into the limelight with a steady stream of recordings both traditional and progressive, which became popular among a younger audience seeking an alternative to the homogenized pop sounds of contemporary country music. Now in the fortieth year of his musical career, Nelson remains a vital icon for alternative country and new traditionalist movements. His repertoire of classic songs and new recordings offer an essential legacy for generations to come. +++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++ Willie Nelson
Can you describe the kind of music you heard growing up? Well, I heard everything. We lived just across the street from two houses of Mexicans, they played their music day and night with their radio. So I was educated early in life on "south of the border" music. Most of the people that I lived and grew up with around there in Abbot [Texas] were Czechoslovakians. I learned a lot of polkas and waltzes. And from working in the fields with a lot of the black folks there, I learned a lot of blues. And working and going to church, I learned gospel. So I was pretty educated on a lot of different kinds of music while I was still pretty young.
That's great. In Texas, there's a kind of theme of dancing all Saturday night and praying all Sunday. People were all dispersed on the ranches, and they would come in and make community by having dances and so forth because the people were way out in the forests. Is that something you experienced?
Well, the town that I grew up in was a dry county, so if anyone wanted a beer they had to drive six miles south to a town called West Texas. Now down there, they danced and partied, and I'm sure a lot of those, you'd see them in church on Sunday morning. Because I played a lot of those bars down there in the early part of my life, I saw a lot of people from Abbot down there on a Saturday night, and I'd see them again on Sunday morning. So it wasn't that unusual. How did you come to start playing music? My grandparents raised me from the time I was sixth months old, and they were both music teachers, so they started out giving us voice lessons. My sister didn't really take to singing that much, but I enjoyed it, so I took all the lessons that I cou, ld from them. And they taught me to play, they taught my sister to play. My grandmother played the organ, piano a little bit, so she got a piano and an organ for our house early. My granddad got me a guitar when I was six years old. So from that time on, we were picking.
Where'd you get those early guitars? Guitars were just being mastered then, right? Mostly there were Harmonies and Stellas back in those days, and I had a six dollar Stella for my first guitar. When did you decide to become a musician, and what influenced you? I think I always thought I was. I never even thought about doing anything else. I take that back. There was a while when I thought maybe I might want to get a law degree or something, so I went to Baylor University in Waco. I decided pretty quickly that I'd rather stay in music.
Can you describe your relationship with Johnny Gimble and who he was for somebody who wouldn't know? Well, I first met him when he was playing with Bob Wills. And he left Bob's band and came back to his hometown in Waco and put together a band. I played with him on a few dates when he would be looking for a guitar player or a vocalist. And he turned me on to Django Rheinhart and to some great music and musicians. Johnny Gimble was and is one of the greatest musicians, violinists, fiddle players, whatever you want to call him. We played a lot of music together around Waco and Texas. He played on my "Spirit" album, he played on the "Night and Day" instrumental album, and we've played on maybe eight or ten albums together over the years and an incredible amount of shows. Now he turned you on to Django, and Django's been a big influence on you for a long time.
Yeah, Johnny Gimble gave me some Django tapes back in those days. And after listening to Django and his music, I began to see where a lot of other music had come from, including a lot of the Western Swing. I could see that a lot of guitar players had heard of Django, and fiddle players like Johnny Gimble had definitely heard of Stephan Gripelli. So there were a lot of things there that I had seen in the Django tapes that I had heard before. And my dad played pretty good fiddle and pretty good guitar, but he sounded a little bit like Django and the rhythms that Django and his brother played. Before I really knew it, I had been introduced to Django.
Bob Wills was also a big influence, right? Can you describe him? Bob Wills was my hero in those days. He was a bandleader; I wanted to be a bandleader. He had an incredible,association and relation with his band. They watched him all the time, and he only had to nod or point his fiddle bow, and they would play. And they respected him a lot, and it was mutual respect. So I always thought that he was the greatest bandleader that I had seen.
His music's a real American music, a real combination of different sounds. For somebody who's not familiar with it, can you kind of break it down? Well, the Bob Wills music, Western Swing music, is a combination of jazz and blues and that's about it, I think. Can you talk about the kind of music that came out of the honky-tonks? Well, again, I think it was the blues connection that made these songs - the blues and the jazz that made even the country songs that we were all playing. We played them with that Bob Wills-Django influence whether we knew it or not. So it came out different. I think that had a lot to do with it. Now when we play 'Blue Eyes Crying in the Rain,' it still has a little blues feeling to it.
Were there certain blues artists when you were growing up that were significant? Well, I loved Ray Charles and Satchmo (Louis Armstrong), and Louis Jordan. As far as blues were concerned, the first blues that I remember hearing, other than what I heard in the cotton fields and the juke boxes around West Texas, was the Bob Will's music - the 'Milk Cow Blues,' and 'Basin Street Blues,' and all this blues that was coming from Western Swing. He borrowed a lot of stuff called hokum blues. I don't know if you're aware of that - that was coming out of the black community, kind of bawdy stuff. Could you talk at all about that? Well, it was obvious that he was getting it somewhere. He was getting that blues feeling, and it was showing up in his music. That's why his music, I think, was so danceable. He was one of the biggest, greatest club bands, dance hall bands ever. I promoted him one time when I was fourteen years old, me and my brother-in-law. What does that mean?
Well, I bought him and put on a show in Whitney, Texas. And Bob showed up, and he played, and we paid him, and it was a hell of a deal. How important was radio to him and his audience in that circuit that he played in the Southwest? Didn't radio kind of determine the touring circuit that he was on? Well, radio and jukebox. Plus, he had a radio show in, I think it was Dallas or Fort Worth and he played music daily there. Two different times in his career he had a radio show there in Dallas and Fort Worth. He came back years later when he opened up what later turned into Dewey Grove's Lawn-mowing Club - it used to be Bob Will's Lawn-mowing Club. And he had a radio show there, daily, from Arlington, Texas. I went over a couple times and sang with him on his radio show. I'd sing 'San Antonio Rose,' and my phrasing was a little different from Tommy Duncan's, so he didn't really know where to come in and "Ah-ha" at.
The honky-tonk scene, how did that develop in the dance scene in Texas? Early in life, I wound up in the beer joints in Texas, in West and Waco and different places, because that's where I earned my money. I learned to play Lefty Frizzell and Bob Wills and Ernest Tubb and Roy Acuff, and whoever was hot at the moment on the jukebox.
Did you play that Jacksboro Highway? Can you describe what that is? Well, I played a lot in Fort Worth in those early days, and I played a lot out on the Jacksboro Highway, which was the location of a whole lot of beer joints. Back in those days, Fort Worth itself was a pretty wild place, so naturally all the beer joints were subject to be wild at any given time.
When did you first become aware of Ernest Tubb? I listened to Ernest Tubb on the radio when I was a kid growing up. He had a radio show in Fort Worth, and he came on every day and did a fifteen-minute radio show. I couldn't have been over 6 or 8 years old. So I was turned on to his music real early. I learned most all his songs, 'Walking the Floor Over You.' Back there in the war he did 'On My Way to Italy.' Remember that? I don't. Floyd Tillman did a song called 'Each Night At Nine.' It was about a soldier. I was turned on to Ernest Tubb, Floyd Tillman, Leon Payneback in those days those were the folks that I really listened to.
Do you remember when you started hearing the electric guitar in Ernest's music at all? Well, I heard some guitar... naturally in Bob Wills's music, he had electric guitar in there. Ernest Tubb had electric guitar in his music. So I was hearing electric guitars in country music pretty early. Do you think the music was played a little louder in these dance halls because people were dancing? One time I was flying on an airplane, and I just happened to sit next to Bill Anderson. He says, "You do pretty good in those clubs in Texas. I just can't seem to catch on down there. Can you give me any pointers?" I said, "Well, I think they drink beer louder than you sing." And he laughed a little and said, "You're probably right." What about Ernest's vocal style? Can you describe that? It's a little different. I was one of the few guys who could do a pretty good Ernest Tubb imitation. He had, to me, the perfect Texas voice. I thought that he personified what I thought someone from Texas should sound like. He was a gentleman, he could talk well and intelligently, and I just loved his voice. Later you joined up with him, and when you went into Nashville you had a role on his TV show.
Ernest and I did about, I don't know, a hundred and fifty television shows together. With Jack Green and Cal Smith and the Johnson Sisters and Wade Ray, and that was probably some of the best times of my life. You sang a lot of gospel songs on that show, right? Well, I had written some songs, 'Family Bible,' and two or three different songs, 'Kneeling at the Foot of Jesus.' So I did them occasionally on those television shows. Can you tell us how you got to Houston from the circuit that you were playing? Well, I was playing around Waco and decided to go to Houston and play. I went down there to look for a job, stopped at a place called Esquire Club, it was a Monday afternoon, I went in, and there was a band rehearsing. And it was Larry Butler (not the Larry Butler from Nashville but the Larry Butler from Houston, it's a different Larry Butler). And I listened to them rehearse and drank a beer, and after they took a break I introduced myself to Larry, and told him I wanted to sell him some songs. And he said, "Well, OK, play me some of them." I played him two or three of the songs, and he said,
"Well, I love the songs. How much you want for them?" I said, "Ten dollars a piece." He said, "No, they're worth more than that, but I'll loan you some money and give you a job if that'll help you." So he did. Some of those songs were 'Night Life,' 'Crazy.' 'Mr. Record Man,' 'I Gotta Get Drunk, I Sure Do Regret It,' 'Hello Walls,' no, 'Hello Walls' I hadn't written yet When did you meet Billy Walker?
Well, I met Billy first in Waco. He was called the Traveling Texan, the Masked Texan, and he played the guitar and sang, and went up and down the highway, and played the Big D Jamboree in Dallas. I got to meet him one time when I played the Jamboree. And then later on in life I found myself in Springfield, Illinois, and it just so happened that Billy Walker was on the Springfield Jamboree up there with Red Foley and all the guys. I wanted to try out for a job there, so I looked up Billy Walker, and he took me to his house and took care of me and tried to get me a job with a publishing company there. I stayed around a few days and couldn't really find a job and moved on South down to Houston.
When you were growing up, Lefty was somebody that influenced you. Can you talk about him, what made him special? Well, I heard his music on the jukebox all the time in Texas. He had songs like 'If You Got the Money, I Got the Time,' 'Always Late,' 'I Love You a Thousand Ways,' 'Blue Quiet Thoughts Will Do,' and these were all very hot tunes in Texas. I didn't get to meet Lefty until years later when we were both in Nashville, but I was a big, huge fan of his. Did a tribute record to him? Yes, I did. Also, Hank Williams was probably coming into prominence as you were emerging? Yeah, well, Hank and Lefty were moving along about the same time there. And Hank had big hits like 'Lovesick Blues,' and 'Move It On Over,' and 'I'm So Lonesome I Could Cry,' and I knew all those songs because they were always requested. They were on the jukebox, and I learned everything on the jukebox.
What made him special as a writer? He could really deal with pain and loneliness. Well, that's exactly right. He knew how to write about it, and write about life in terms that all of us can understand. With both those guys, their careers were kind of cut short. Can you talk about that? Hank died, I think, when he was 29 years old. Lefty Frizell lived longer than that. They both lived pretty hard and fast. When did you decide to go to Nashville? I was living in Houston, and I had a song called 'Family Bible,' that had been recorded by Claude Gray. It had become a number one song, and I decided that if I was ever going to, it was time to make a trip to Nashville and check it out. So I left my family in Houston and drove up there and again ran into Billy Walker, and he took me in again. My family got up there, and he took them in. And we lived with him for a couple of three weeks.
Billy describes you meeting him in a barn. I guess you were in a car because you had just come up and you were trying to get established, and he invited you to live at the house. Is that right? That's right. It was a nice period. I went up there not knowing anything hardly, or anybody, and pretty quick I happened to sort of get inside thanks to guys like Billy Walker and Faron Young and people like that. One of the first guys I met there was Charlie Dig who happened to be married to Patsy Cline. What was the music business like in Nashville? When you went there, what did you find in terms of the way the writers and the artists were controlled and how records were made?
Well, I don't think there's any difference today than there was then. Whoever puts up the money wants to call the shots. If you can get by that, if you can get somebody to put up the money or put up your own money, go in and record your own album and say here it is, you might be better off. You might have a better chance becau,,, se it's real competitive. It's more competitive, probably, in Nashville now than it was when I went there. You had almost no problem getting established as a songwriter, right? I mean, your talents were really pretty quickly recognized as a songwriter.
Yeah, I was very fortunate to get listened to by some people who could really do something. For instance, Charlie Dig, Faron Young who went to the studio and recorded 'Hello Walls,' and 'Congratulations.' It was a lot easier than I expected it to be. But you also wanted to be a performer. I was a performer when I came to town, and it was difficult to find places to perform in Nashville. The bars and the clubs weren't as plentiful as they were in Texas.
You were playing with Ray Price too, or was that later? When I was there in Nashville, after a while Ray Price called me. He owned the publishing company that I was writing for. He called me and asked me if I could play bass. I said, "Of course, can't everybody?" Johnny Paycheck, who, at that time, was going under the name of Donny Young, was playing ba, ss for Ray Price, and Donny quit and went to California. So Ray called, and I was writing for him. So I joined up with Ray, and I played with him for over a year. By the way, I learned to play bass in Nashville on the way to the first gig.
Some people described the music that was coming out of there as being pretty cookie-cutter during that time: lush arrangements; artists didn't really have a say. Very controlled. Not a lot of individuality. One of the biggest problems, I thought, is that you had three hours to do four songs. That's hard to do, especially if the band is not familiar with the songs when they get there. I always wanted to go in with my band and do it, because I knew we could knock them out. And it would be something that we could go out and perform, and it would be like the record. But that's hard to do now. What made you decide to leave Nashville? I was working, most of my dates in Texas, driving back to Nashville mainly to work the Grand Ole Opry. Because you had to be there six months out of the year you had to work the Opry. You had to be there on Saturday night. I was working in Texas a lot, and it was really wearing me out, going back and forth just to get there Saturday night, and then go back to Fort Worth on Sunday. I finally left the Opry and decided that I would move to Texas. My house burned, so it gave me a real good excuse to leave early. When that happened, you kind of found a new audience.
Well, I found the old audience again. I was raised up in the Texas beer joints, and they knew me a lot better when I left Nashville than they probably do in Nashville now. So when I got back to my old beer joints, I was at home again and met a lot of my old waitresses that took care of me. So, no, I got back to Texas, I got back in my element. You seem to pick up a young element, a hippie element not usually associated with country music.
That's true. I started playing places where a lot of hippies hung out, like Devil Road Headquarters in Austin, and different places around different towns. They would have their special places - the hippies went here, the rednecks went here. I tried to play in both places. Your music didn't really change during this period. I think you may have changed a little physically, but your music pretty much stayed on course, right? I was trying to prove the point that the same people would like the same thing if they ever got together and listened to it. Hank Williams never fails. He would bring [people] together wherever [I went]. When I was playing with Ray Price, we'd always do a little Hank Williams. Of course, nobody knew who I was, so everything I did on those shows were other people's songs, until 'Bela Walsh,' came out. But Hank Williams was my savior every night.
How did the whole outlaw thing come about? Was that marketing or a real thing, I mean, I know that there was this record that came out with you and Tom [Collins]. What was really behind that? I think a lady wrote an article at the time that calls us outlaws. And someone picked up on it. I think her name was Helen. I should know her name. She was a writer in Nashville, and she wrote an article about me and Waylan and Chris and a bunch of us and called us the Outlaws. I loved her for it, I thought it was great. Someone came along and decided it was a good marketing name, so all of a sudden now we were Outlaws, and there was an album out called "Outlaws" with me and Jesse and Tom and Waylan on it, and we did pretty go, od.
Where did 'Red-headed Stranger' come in? 'The Red-headed Stranger' is a song that was written by Arthur Smith.- no, I think it was written by two more people. But Arthur Smith recorded it back in the '50s. I was a disc jockey then in Fort Worth, and I used to play it every day. I had a kiddie show from 1-1:30 in the daytime, when it was time for kids to take a nap, I would play children's music, I'd play 'Red-headed Stranger,' and I played Tex Ritter's 'Blood on the Saddle,' and all the different kid songs that I could come up with, and 'Red-headed Stranger' was one of the most popular songs that I played. I sang it to my kids every night. So several years later I had the opportunity to go on and do an album when I first signed with CBS. In our agreement, I could go in and do what I wanted to do any way I wanted to do it, and they would take it and put it down. So that's when I wrote the 'Red-headed Stranger' album, and I took that song and I wrote from the first song from the time of the preacher all the way up to the Red-headed stranger, and imagined what would have happened after that. I wrote the concept album, recorded it, and gave it to CBS. They thought I'd gone insane because there wasn't that much there. It was very sparse. But they put it out. I think Waylan shamed them into putting it out. And that really changed it.
There were some good songs in there. 'Blue Eyes Crying in the Rain' was a big hit out of the album, and the album itself sold very well. A lot of young people liked it. They still like it. It was re-released last year. How would you describe how you gained control of your own music? What were the steps that you went through to gain control of your own career? Well, as I say, I had a clause in my contract which gave me artistic freedom. That was all I needed, I thought. That's really all anyone needs. If you think you can do it yourself, do it. That makes less for them to do, and they can just sell it. And if it doesn't sell, you're screwed.
So you assumed total responsibility for everything, right? Yeah, I bet everything I had on this one album. It was the first album with CBS, and it had to be good or else the second one they don't normally get excited about. Can you talk about Fourth of July? I was living in Texas, picking a , lot, and this was about some of the same time there had been a concert in Wichita where a lot of the young pickers were coming together and listening to all kinds of music - rock and roll, mostly, I suppose. But they were coming together. Big crowd, I forget how many thousands of people, and I thought it was a good idea. Someone did the same thing in Austin at a place in Dripping Springs, and it was the First Annual Dripping Springs Reunion in March. I was on the show with Roy Acuff, Ernest Tubb, Roger Miller - a bunch of the traditional country people - Bill Anderson. And it wasn't promoted, so it didn't do that good, but I thought it was such a great idea, I felt like if we did the same thing further down in the year when the weather wasn't so cold, like the fourth of July, it would be worthwhile trying to do it. So I started calling up friends and seeing who all wanted to come and work for nothing. And I rustled Kris Kristofferson, Tom T. Hall, Charlie Rich, and the Bees-in-Slaws, Asleep at the Wheel, and a whole lot of great talent was there. We showed up, and we played, and we had about fifty thousand people, so everybody got paid, and we decided it worked and we should do it again.
As you were doing that, another guy you liked a lot, Merle Haggard. He had some of the same heroes, Bob Wills, like that. What do you think he brought to country music? Merle Haggard is one of my favorite artists and writers. He's been good ever since he , started. His first records were good ones. People immediately liked Merle because they knew talent when they heard it. He was an original, and he still is. He's one of the few guys that are still out here beating the bushes up and down the highway. His writing is just as good as it gets, and his singing iswell, he's Haggard. Everybody loves him. Was his 'Okie from Muskogee' sort of tongue in cheek, or did that reflect his politics at the time?
I don't know. I've sung it many times, sort of tongue-in-cheek. I'm not sure where he was mentally when he wrote it. Farm Aid was also something that you established. Can you talk about that and what was involved? Well, I remember talking to a lot of friends of mine that were farmers. And they were telling me that there was a big problem. And we traveled around the country a lot and talked to a lot of farmers in different parts of the country. But I asked some of my friends in Texas around Abbot and Hills Vern West where I came from if they were having any problems. They said, "Well, it's getting kind of tight, but they're really having problems in the midwest." A few weeks later I was playing in Springfield, Illinois, and the governor, Big Jim Thompson, a good friend of mine, was there. And we used to have a ritual where every year he'd come on the bus and have a bowl of chili and talk. And this particular time, I ask him about the farm situation, and he says, "Yeah, it's really bad." So I said, "What can we do about it? Can we do a Farm Aid, or something like that?" He said, "I don't know, we can try." So he got the venue in Champagne, Illinois, and we did the first one 21 days later. And how many years has that been? I forgot. It's fifteen or sixteen, I guess. Raised a lot of money.
Not as much as we need. The problem is as bad if not worse than it was when we started, and we're still losing three to four hundred farmers every week with all the droughts and the floods and all the problems they have. Their prices are way down, and what they buy is way up. We need a new farm bill, the Freedom to Farm Bill that both the Democrats and the Republicans sign into is horrible. So both the Democrats and the Republicans have got to get together and come up with a farm bill, or else we're going to lose all our small family farmers, and when we do that, we lose the next rung on the ladder.
Whenever five farmers go out in an area, one business in that town goes under, and the schools and the hospitals fall right along behind it. So all these people who get thrown off the land wind up in a big city somewhere becoming a part of the problem there. So we need to reverse that. We need to get them a farm bill that will get people back on the land. Yesterday, I think, or the day before, I played over in Harvard, and we played a show for a school for young farmers, and I thought that was one of the greatest ideas I had heard. A lot of the people there are bringing kids out of the city, putting them on the farm, letting them learn how to farm, and teaching them what it's like, teaching them where their food comes from. And that's what we need to see - more of that. You know, we focus on some of the tejano musicians that I think you know and like. Little Joe Hernadez is one. Tell us about Little Joe and how you know him and what you think of his music.
Well, Little Joe and I are real good friends, and we've been playing music together for a long time. He's done Farm Aids, and we've recorded together. I've done a couple of songs in Spanish with him - hope to do some more. We were talking not too long ago about getting together, doing some more recording, and maybe going to Mexico and doing a couple of shows down there. What about Flaco Jimenez? Is he somebody that you've worked with? Oh yes. Tell me about Flaco and his music.
Well, Flaco's a great accordion player. He and his brother both received the Texas Music Art Award. Several of us did, Tommy Lee Jones, a bunch of us. And both Flaco and his brother got the award. They both deserve it. I know that you also are good friends with B.B. King and that he's influenced you. I love the way he plays. And if you're going to play the blues, you need to listen to B.B. and start from there and do the best you can. As far as I'm concerned, he's the guy. And he's the guy that's lived that Delta experience and brought it up and electrified it. And stayed with it. He stayed with the blues. He hasn't tried to go into this direction or that direction because he didn't need to. Another type of music that we're looking at that's been kind of negated in America is that of Native Americans. Native American music is starting to cross over. And it's the first music in America. Is there anything you can say to help people realize the importance and the beauty of that music?
Well, if you've heard it than it's not necessary to explain it. It's different music, and it's coming from a different part of life. The Native American rituals, I think, are an important part of life, and they've put a lot of this in their music, and there's great education there, if one would listen. Their music is not something that you go around whistling and humming all the time (unless you're an Indian, I guess you would), but I think a lot of those bands out there are capable of playing blues, they're capable of playing country. I mean, just because they're Indians doesn't mean they can't pick. So they can play their traditional stuff, and they can play all kinds of music. In the explosion of American musics that occurred during the 20th Century, how important is radio and records? I mean, this music came out of different ethnic groups, different regions of the country, and it seems like it exploded all of a sudden and was being recorded for the first time and being broadcast. How important is the radio to American music of the 20th Century?
For one, it's important in trying to get people to hear you on radio. If you can get your music on the radio, which is harder to do these days. There's not a lot of radio stations playing traditional like they used to be. There are a few, and there seems to be more and more coming along. But radio used to be really important to me because I didn't get a lot of airplay. Still don't get a lot of airplay. But it was important to me whenever I'd work for Alice Ray to have some radio station in that town would play my records before I come to town so I would be ensured of having a pretty good crowd, maybe. So I would promote all these stations and try to find somebody in town that would play. So radio was very important.
When you were growing up, what were some of the first things that you remember over the radio or on records very early on? The Grand Ole Opry. I used to listen to WSM every Saturday night. That was Roy Acuff, it was Minnie Pearl... If you were to summarize your music and what you've done so beautifully and so consistently for quite a while now, what do you think that you brought into the mix that was different that you feel is distinctly yours? Well, I don't really know about that. I know that I like to have freedom to play. I'm not locked into a lot of arrangement and things. Our band jams a lot. It's fun, what we do, and I think people can see that we're having fun, and that, I think, is infectious. You like to see a band that's having fun.
If you were to summarize the main influences on your music... I don't know. I listened to everybody, so I've got to give everybody a little credit. But what about those early influences. I hear a lot of different ethnic groups in your music. Well, somewhere in there is a little gypsy music, a little Spanish, a little country, and a little blues. I think it's a lot of different things. Why do you feel that there's such an explosion of American music in the 20th Century? At the beginning, almost no one really thought America had a musical tradition, it was such a young country, it comes from Europe, it comes from Africa. And we get all these things: gospel, Cajun, jazz, blues, country, tejano, just comes out. And it's not the music that came over from Europe, it's something that's unique in America. Why does that happen in such a short time?
Well, I don't know, but I think every country has it's uniqueness, its own musical heritage. But it was a while before they discovered that we had one over here. And maybe it's because it took it a while to develop. Maybe Jimmie Rodgers and Ray Charles and Hank Williams and Bob Wills had to sort of melt together into something. What do you think the earliest strands of American music were? Well, I don't really know. The first music I remember hearing was on the radio like The Carter Family and Jimmie Rodgers, and I'm sure before radio there were singers that I don't know.
Out of the songs that other people have done of your own material, which one is probably the one that opened up your career the most? Would it be 'Crazy' or 'Hello Walls?' Well, definitely, 'Crazy' would have to be in there somewhere. Can you sing a little for us? Sure. [singing] "Crazy. Crazy for feeling so lonely. Crazy. Crazy for feeling so blue. You'd love me as long as you wanted. And then someday you'd leave me for somebody new. Worry. Why do I let myself worry? Wondering what in the world did I do? Crazy for thinking that my love could hold you. Crazy for trying, crazy for crying, and I'm crazy for loving you."
Born: Orvin Gene Autry
Born Sep 29, 1907 in Tioga Springs, TX
Died Oct 2, 1998
This year, 2007 marks the 100th anniversary of Mr. Autry's birth. There are many major events all over the country to celebrate the birth of this great American Icon. I hope there is one near you. What a great American success story.
Dugg Collins
Gene Autry was more than a musician. His music, coupled with his careers in movies and on radio and television, made him a part of the mythos that has made up the American identity for the past hundred years John Wayne wi, th,a little bit of Sam Houston and Davy Crockett all rolled into one, with a great singing voice and an ear for music added on. He defined country music for two generations of listeners, and cowboy songs for much of this century, and American music for much of the world. He was country music's first genuine "multi-media" star, the best known country & western singer on records, in movies, on radio, and television from the early-'30s until the mid-'50s. His 300 songs cut between 1929 and 1964 include nine gold-record awards and one platinum record; his 93 movies saved one big chunk of the movie industry, delighted millions, and made millionaires of several producers (as well as Autry himself); his radio and television shows were even more popular and successful; and a number of his songs outside of the country & western field have become American pop-culture touchstones.
The biggest selling country & western singer of the middle of the century was born Orvin Gene Autry on September 29, 1907 in the tiny Texas town of Tioga, the son of Delbert and Elnora Ozmont Autry. He was first taught to sing at age five by his grandfather, William T. Autry, a Baptist preacher and descendant of some of the earliest settlers in Texas, contemporaries of the Houstons and the Crocketts (an Autry had died at the Alamo). The boy's interest in music was encouraged by his mother,,who taught him hymns and folk songs, and reading psalms to him at night. Autry got his first guitar at age 12, bought from the Sears, Roebuck catalog for eight dollars (saved from his work as a hired hand on his uncle's farm baling and stacking hay). By the time he was 15, he had played anyplace there was to perform in Tioga, including school plays and the local cafe, but made most of his living working for the railroad as an apprentice at $35 a month. Later on, as a proper telegraph operator, he was making $150 a month which, in those days, was a comfortable income in their part of Texas.
He was working the four-to-midnight shift at the local telegraph office in Chelsea, Oklahoma one summer night in 1927 when, to break up the monotony, he began strumming a guitar and singing quietly to himself. A customer came into the office; rather than insisting upon immediate service, he motioned for Autry to continue singing, then sat down to watch and listen while he looked over the pages he was preparing to send. At one point, the visitor asked him to sing another. Finally, after dropping his copy on the counter, the customer told Autry that with some hard work, he might have a future on the radio, and should consider going to New York to pursue a singing career. The man, whom Autry had recognized instantly, was Will Rogers, the humorist, writer, movie actor, and one of the most popular figures in the entertainment world of that era.
Autry didn't immediately give up his job, but just over a year later, he was in New York auditioning for a representative of RCA-Victor. The judgment was that he had a good voice, but should stay away from pop hits, find his own kind of songs and his own sound, and get some experience. He was back six months later, on October 9, 1929, cutting his first record, "My Dreaming of You"/"My Alabama Home," for Victor. Two weeks later, Autry was making a demo record for the Columbia label of Jimmie Rodgers' "Blue Yodel No. 5." Present that same day in the studio were two up-and-coming singers, Rudy Vallee and Kate Smith. Autry found himself being pressured to sign an exclusive contract with Victor, but chose instead to sign with the American Record Corporation. Their general manager, Arthur Sattherly (who would later record Leadbelly, among many other acts), persuaded Autry that while Victor was a large company and could offer more money and a better marketing apparatus, he would be lost at Victor amid its existing stable of stars, whereas ARC would treat him as their most important star. Additionally, Sattherly through a series of arrangements involving major retail and chain stores across the country now had the means to get Autry's records into peoples' hands as easily as Victor.
His first recordings had just been released when his mother, who'd been ill for months, died at the age of 45, apparently of cancer. Autry's father began drifting away soon afterward, and he became the head of the family and the main supporter of himself, two sisters, and a younger brother. In early December of 1929, Autry cut his first six sides for ARC. The music was a mix of hillbilly, blues, country, yodel songs, and cowboy ballads. His breakthrough record, "That Silver-Haired Daddy of Mine," co-written by Autry and his friend Jimmy Long one night at the railroad depot, was released in 1931. The song had sold 30,000 copies within a month, and by the end of a year 500, 000 had been sold, an occasion that American Records decided to mark with the public presentation of a gold-plated copy of the record. Autry received a second gold record when sales later broke one million. And that was where the notion of the Gold Record Award was born. The record also led him into a new career on the radio as Oklahoma's Yodeling Cowboy on the National Barn Dance show sponsored by WLS out of Chicago. It was there that Autry became a major national star his record sales rose assisted by his exposure on radio.
During the early years of his career, Autry took a number of important collaborators and musicians aboard. Among them were Fred Rose, the songwriter (later responsible for "Your Cheatin' Heart") with whom he collaborated on many of his hits; and fiddle-player Carl Cotner (who also played sax, clarinet, and piano), who became his arranger. Autry had a knack for knowing a good song when he heard it (though he almost passed on the biggest hit of his career), and for knowing when a song needed something extra in its arrangement, but it was Cotner who was able to translate his sensibilities into musical notes and arrangements. Mary Ford, later of Les Paul fame, was in Autry's band at one time, and in 1936, Autry signed up a 17-year-old guitar player named Merle Travis, the future country star and songwriter.
By the early '30s, Autry became one of the most beloved singers in country & western music. By 1933, he was getting fan letters by the hundreds every week, and his record sales were only going up. Autry's career might've been made right there, but fate intervened again that year, in the form of the movie business. The western especially the "B" western, the bottom-of-the-bill, low-budget action oater had been hit very hard by the coming of sound in the years 1927 to 1929. Audiences expected dialogue in their movies, and most western stars up to that time were a lot better at riding, roping, and shooting than reading lines. Not only did producers and directors need something to fill up the soundtracks of their movies, especially on the limited budgets of the B-westerns, but something to substitute for violent action, which was being increasingly criticized by citizen groups.
Cowboy star Ken Maynard, who was a great trick rider and stuntman but no singer, had tried singing songs in a few of his movies, and the producers noticed that the songs had gone over well despite his vocal limitations. Maynard was making another western, In Old Santa Fe (1934), for Mascot Pictures, and producer Nat Levine decided to try an experiment, putting in a musical number sung by a professional. By sheer chance, the American Record Company and Mascot Pictures were locked together financially, though indirectly, and with the help from the president of ARC, Levine was steered toward Autry.
A phone call brought the young singer and another ARC performer multi-instrumentalist/comedian Smiley Burnette out to Hollywood, where, after a quick meeting and screen test, the two were put into In Old Santa Fe. Autry had only one scene, singing a song and calling a square dance, but that scene proved to be one of the most popular parts of the movie.
Levine next stuck Autry and Burnette into a Ken Maynard serial, Mystery Mountain, in minor supporting roles. But Autry's next appearance was much more important, as the star of the highly successful 12-chapter serial The Phantom Empire. Perhaps recognizing that Autry was no "actor," and that he had an audience of millions already, he, the writers, and the producer agreed that he should simply play "Gene Autry," a good-natured radio singer and sometime cowboy. The success of Autry's early films was not enough to save Mascot Pictures, which collapsed under the weight of debts held by Consolidated Film Laboratories, which did Mascot's film processing. In 1935, Consolidated forced a merger of Mascot and a handful of other small studios and formed Republic Pictures, with Consolidated's president Herbert J. Yates at the helm. Republic thrived in the B-movie market, ultimately dominating the entire field for the next 20 years. And central to Republic's success were the westerns of Gene Autry.
His first starring western for the newly organized Republic Pictures, Tumbling Tumbleweeds (released Sept. 5, 1935), which also included the singing group the Sons of the Pioneers, was a huge hit, and was followed by Melody Trail, The Sagebrush Troubador, and The Singing Vagabond, all released during the final three months of 1935. Autry settled into a schedule of one movie every six weeks, or eight-per-year, at $5000 per movie, and a formula was quickly established. The production values on these movies were modest, in keeping with their low budgets and tight shooting schedules, but within the framework of B-westerns, and the context of their music, they were first-rate productions. By 1937, and for five years after a string that was only broken when he enlisted in the army during World War II Autry was rated in an industry survey of theater owners as one of the top ten box-office attractions in the country, alongside the likes of James Cagney and Clark Gable. Autry was the only cowboy star to make the list, and the only actor from B-movies on the list.
For Republic Pictures, his movies were such a cash cow, and so popular in the southern, border, and western states, that the tiny studio was able to use them as a way to force "block booking" on theater owners and chains that is, theaters only got access to the Autry movies scheduled each season if they bought all of Republic's titles for that season. It was Autry's discovery of this policy (which, in fairness, was practiced by every major studio at the time, and led to the anti-trust suit by the government that ultimately forced the studios to give up their theater chains) in early 1938 that led to his first break with Republic. The problems had been brewing for some time, over Autry's unhappi, ness at never having gotten a raise from his original Mascot-era $5000-per-movie deal, and contractual clauses which had never been exercised, but worried him nonetheless giving Republic a share of his radio, personal appearance, and endorsement earnings. After trying unsuccessfully to work out the problems with Yates, Autry walked out of the studio chief's office and thereafter refused to report for the first day's shooting on a movie called Washington Cowboy, later re-titled Under Western Stars when it became the debut of Roy Rogers.
After eight months of legal sparring, Autry was left enjoined from making live appearances. Republic, however, found itself with an uprising of theater owners and chains on its handswithout a guarantee that they would have any Autry movies to release, the studio's entire annual distribution plans were jeopardized. By the fall of 1938 the two sides had come to terms, with raises for Autry and freedom from the most onerous clauses in his old contract. Despite his best efforts, however, he couldn't help the theater owners over the block-booking policy, for it was now entrenched in the industry and an integral part of Republic's business plan.
Meanwhile, his recording career continued, often in tandem with the movies. Whenever Republic could, they licensed the rights to whatever hit song Autry had most recently recorded to use it as the title of his newest picture when they did this, they always charged the theater owners somewhat more for the film, and they paid it, because the song had "pre-sold" the movie to the public. The songs kept coming, sometimes out of the movies themselves, and not always his own: Autry's friend Ray Whitley had written "Back in the Saddle Again" for a 1938 George O'Brien western called Border G-Man, and when Autry was looking for a theme song for his own radio show, he went back to Whitley's song, made a few changes, and recorded it himself. Along with "That Silver-Haired Daddy of Mine," it was the song he would be most closely associated with.
Autry's career was interrupted by his service in the military during World War II, but when he returned to the recording and movie studios in 1945, he resumed both his singing and film careers without skipping a beat. He was still a name to be reckoned with at the box office, although he was never again ranked among the top-ten money-making stars of movies. The cultural dislocations caused by World War II and their effect upon rural and small-town America, and on the movie business, as well as the impending arrival of television, had shrunk the B-movie market to a shadow of its 1930s glory. His movies still made money, however, and he kept making them right into the beginning of the 1950s, after which he moved into television production Autry had already begun buying up radio stations before the war, and by the early '50s he was owner of several television stations, a studio, and his own production company, where he made his own television program as well as others that he owned.
His singing career was bigger than ever, however. Even before the war, Autry had occasionally moved away from country music and scored big, as with his 1940 hit version of "Blueberry Hill," which predated Fats Domino's recording by 16 years. After the war, he still did cowboy and country songs such as "Silver Spurs" and "Sioux City Sue," sprinkled with occasional folk songs and pop numbers. In 1949, however, Autry scored the biggest single hit of his career and possibly the second- or third-biggest hit song ever recorded up to that time with "Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer," a song by Johnny Marks that Autry had recorded only reluctantly, in a single take at the end of a session.That same year, he cut "(Ghost) Riders in the Sky," a number by a former forest ranger named Stan Jon, es, which became both a country and pop music standard, cut by everyone from Vaughan Monroe to Johnny Cash.
By the mid-'50s, Autry's career had slowed. Rock & roll and rhythm & blues were attracting younger listeners, and a new generation of country music stars, heralded by Johnny Cash and Marty Robbins, were beginning to attract serious sales. Autry, then in his forties, still had his audience, but he gradually receded from the limelight to attend to his burgeoning business interests. He died October 2, 1998. Bruce Eder
Born-Leonard Raymond Sipes
Born Sep 28, 1930 in Bethany, OK
Died Mar 14, 2000 in Ashland City, TN
Along with his contemporary Wynn Stewart, Tommy Collins was one of the first country musicians to establish a distinctive Bakersfield, California sound. During the course of the '50s, he released a series of hit singles that lightened up the tone of honky tonk with bouncing back beats, novelty lyrics and electric guitars. Collins explored a more serious side with his ballads, yet they continued to sound slightly different than his peers though they weren't as polished as the countrypolitain coming out of Nashville, they didn't have the grit of honky tonk.
Legions of West Coast country performers most notably Buck Owens, who played guitar on several of Tommy's hit singles, and Merle Haggard built on the sound that Collins established in the early '50s. Collins wasn't able to cash-in on the Bakersfield craze of the '60s. By then, he had already quit the music business once, and was mounting a marginally successful comeback. Nevertheless, his influence loomed large, particularly on Haggard, who took Collins' "Carolyn" and "The Roots of My Raising" to the top of the charts in the early '70s.
Collins (b. Leonard Raymond Sipes) was born just outside of Oklahoma City, spending his entire childhood in Oklahoma, where his father worked for the county. As a child, he began to sing and write songs, eventually appearing on local radio shows. Following his high-school graduation in 1948, he attended Edmond State Teachers College while he continued to perform music. During this time, he made a handful of singles for the California-based record label, Morgan. In the early '50s, he was in the army for a brief time, before he moved to Bakersfield, California with his friend Wanda Jackson and her family. Shortly afterward, the Jackson family moved back to Oklahoma, leaving Tommy Collins alone in Bakersfield.
In a short time, Collins had begun to make friends and contacts within the city, eventually becoming friends with Ferlin Husky and the pair roomed together. After recording a handful of Collins' songs, Husky convinced his record company, Capitol, to offer Tommy a record contract and the fledging singer/songwriter signed to the label in June of 1953; at the time of signing, he adopted his stage-name of Tommy Collins, since it sounded more commercial than Leonard Sipes. Capitol and Tommy immediately assembled a backing band, which featured a then-unknown Buck Owens on lead guitar.
Following one unsuccessful single, Collins' released the jaunty "You Better Not Do That," which became a huge hit in early 1954, spendind seven weeks at number two on the country charts. Since the song was a success, Collins continued to pursue a light-hearted, near-novelty direction with his subsequent hits and the formu, , l, a initially worked. Between the fall of 1954 and the spring of 1955, he had three Top 10 hits "Whatcha Gonna Do Now," "Untied," "It Tickles" and in the fall of 1955, the double A-sided single "I Guess I'm Crazy" and "You Oughta See Pickles Now," which both reached the Top 15. In addition to these hit singles, Faron Young had a huge hit with Tommy's "If You Ain't Lovin'," which was one of many songs that Collins wrote but didn't record that became hits.
Collins was on the fast road to major success, but it stopped just as soon as it began. Tommy had a religious conversion in early 1956, and much of the material he recorded that year was sacred music; occasionally, he recorded duets with his wife Wanda Lucille Shahan as well. In 1957, Collins enrolled in the Golden Gate Baptist Seminary with the intention of becoming a minister. Two years later, he became a pastor. During all of his religious teachings, Collins continued to record for Capitol, but neither himself or the label were much interested in promoting his records, and he had no hits. When his contract w, ith the label expired in 1960, he stopped recording and enrolled as a student at Sacramento State College. For the next two years, he studied at the university.
In early 1963, Collins decided he was unfulfilled by the ministry, so he left the church and headed back to Bakersfield with the intention of re-entering the music business. Capitol agreed to re-sign him and in 1964, he returned to the lower reaches of the charts with "I Can Do That," a duet with his wife Wanda.
With the help of Johnny Cash, Collins switched labels and signed with Columbia in 1965; the following year, he had a Top 10 hit with "I Can't Bite, Don't Growl." For the next few years, he had a string of minor hit singles, none of which cracked the country Top 40. During this time, he also toured with his protegees, Buck Owens and Merle Haggard, acting as their opening act. By the early '70s, both Collins' professional and personal lives were on the verge of collapse, due to his increasing dependency on drugs and alcohol. In 1971, Wanda filed for a divorce, sending Tommy into a deep depression. Collins began to recover by continuing to write songs, many of which were recorded by Merle Haggard, including the 1972 number one hit single "Carolyn." In 1976, Tommy moved to Nashville, whe