Tonight In Honky-Tonk Heaven, Part I

Wow, am I getting tired of writing these damn eulogy/memorials for my heroes. As most of you already know, Buck Owens passed away on Saturday, and Cindy Walker passed away on Thursday. Since Buck Owens was the far more famous of the two, and is therefore getting most of the "press" (what there is of it), I'm going to start by talking about Cindy Walker.

For those of you who may not know, Cindy Walker was a brilliant pioneer songwriter in Nashville and Hollywood from the 1940's to the 1960's, and continued to write songs until her last days. She was the first woman to be employed as a staff songwriter at BMI, and her biggest hits were "Dream Baby" by Roy Orbison and "You Don't Know Me", which was made popular by Ray Charles and has become a pop-jazz standard that has been recorded by many artists over the last six decades. Her first success came in 1941, when Bing Crosby recorded her first song, "Lone Star Trail". In the '40's she made even more headway, writing 39 songs for Bob Wills that appeared in eight of his western movies for Columbia. "Cherokee Maiden" and "Bubbles In My Beer" are two of the more recognizable tunes she wrote for Bob Wills, and her success with him really gave her notice in country music circles. Over the coming decades, her songs were recorded by Eddy Arnold, Jim Reeves, Ernest Tubb, Webb Pierce, Faron Young, Hank Snow, George Jones, Elvis Presley, and Dean Martin -- and that's just a few. She was the first woman inducted into the Nashville Songwriter Hall of Fame in 1970, and was inducted in the Country Music Hall Of Fame in 1997. At that ceremony, she read a tear-jerking poem she had written about her mother sewing a very nice dress for her to wear for one of her first formal occasions as a young woman. Cindy half-jokingly promised her she would wear it when she was inducted into the hall of fame, and she was actually wearing the dress that night. Not a dry eye in the house, I can assure you.

One of my favorite all-time moments as an artist came in 2004, when I had the honor of being part of a "Tribute To Cindy Walker" at the Paramount Theater, sponsored by Texas Folklife Resources, which included myself, Teri Joyce, Ray Benson, Johnny Gimble, Leon Rausch, and several others, with a backing band that consisted of Redd Volkaert, Cindy Cashdollar, Earl Poole Ball, Sara Brown, Eleana Fremerman, and Lisa Pankratz. And to top it off, Ms. Walker herself, now in her '80's, agreed to come to the show all the way from her home in Mexia, TX. She rarely makes public appearances, so we were truly blessed to have her in the audience that night. It was such an honor to get to sing and play her songs with her sitting right there in the front row, a pristine picture of elegance in a sequined gown and long gloves, smiling and enjoying herself. But the absolute pinnacle of the evening for me was at the end. As the show was closing, she was asked to come onstage. Rather than make her way backstage (which is the only stage entrance) she just got out of her seat and walked to the front of the stage with her arms outstretched. Led by Ray Benson, myself and all the other men-folk reached down and hoisted her fragile frame right up onto the stage. What a woman! That ain't no fragile bird, I'll tell you that right now. She gave a short and gracious speech, and then danced while we gave our big finale, a rousing version of "Dream Baby", her biggest hit. I'll never forget that night as long as I live. You can find another great account of the evening, as well as a good article on Cindy in general, at http://www.rockzilla.net/rockzilla/dante14.html.

Cindy Walker had all the makings of a star -- gorgeous looks, immense talent, a great personality -- but chose to live the small-town Texas life she loved rather than move to New York or Nashville. She sang and danced in some of the first "soundies" (the first short films ever that included sound) from the 1940's, and it is no exaggeration to say that she was pinup-gorgeous (I'm talkin' gams, y'all), and could have been a star in Hollywood, or a country superstar as a singer, but preferred to use her greatest talent as a songwriter to leave her mark on the world. With Cindy, it was ALL about the song, and she lived that until the day she died last week.

In true songwriter fashion, no words work better than her own:

"I write...for people, for the artist and (they) all have different personalities. I just write what I think will suit them..sort of a tailor-made song. Some ideas come out of the blue, but not usually. I guess the more you write, the more you're likely to come up with ideas. It's just labor, that's all there is to it....The title tells the story. If you can get a real good title, you've got something. I always write from the title. I've never written a song without the title...The words and music come together. It just sort of comes to you. The songs just sing themselves to me. They kind of write themselves. I just stand back and listen..." "(Best tunes) are songs with a face. You recognize them. You know them. It's like a person. They have a face that's outstanding. Other songs don't have a face; you just hear them, that's all. The really good ones are few and far between." -- www.nashvillesongwritersfoundation.com/fame/walker.html

Cindy Walker was one of the great ones. There'll never be another like her.

Roger