An Article From Life - The Complete Recordings (20-CD Deluxe Box Set & Book)

9 T H E E A R LY Y E A R S F rom the very beginning, when he burst on the complacent music world of the 1950s with a spectacular string of hits that has never been equalled in coun- try music since, Lefty had been a singer's singer. While millions were casually lis- tening to his drawling Texas baritone on hit after hit, young singers across the land listened intently, trying to pick up every nuance and grace note of that style that was more intense, and more personal, than any that the music had ever seen. This was the generation that was to define modern country singing, and in the young man from the Texas oilfields, they had found their model. As early as Janu- ary 1954, when a young ex-marine named George Jones made his first audition records in Beaumont, the Frizzell mys- tique was in place. As Pappy Daily lis- tened to young Jones, he recalled: "George at that time sounded exactly like Lefty Frizzell. I said, 'People don't want some- body that sounds like somebody else.'" Yet it was hard to sing a modern country love song with any feeling, and not copy Lefty's style – or some of it. As Dottie West remarked years later, "Most all country artists were touched by his style. Mickey Newbury recently said: 'Wasn't Lefty always right?' I agree." Most open in his admiration for Lefty has been Merle Haggard, and his story of first see- ing Lefty conveys some of the intensity with which the younger generation of singers viewed Lefty, and conveys a sense of the impact Lefty had on the music of the time: "I first saw Lefty Frizzell in 1951 at the Rainbow Gardens in Bakersfield. I believe he was the hottest country artist in the nation. No one, not even Hank Williams, was as hot as Lefty was then. He was just dynamic on stage, and he really inspired me to try and sing a song. A year or so later, he came back to Bakersfield and I was introduced to him. I sang a couple of songs for him, and he got me up on stage – that was one of the greatest thrills of my life, to be on stage with him. "From then on when I'd get on stage, and I'd wonder how I should do a song, and maybe I'd be in doubt, I'd just mentally try to remember how Lefty would do it, and that pulled me out of a lot of holes. We became close friends. Years later some- one said to me, 'Merle, that guy sounds a lot like you.' I can remember when having someone say that about Lefty was a dream beyond ever coming true. "Lefty Frizzell was ninety percent of the reason that I'm in the business. He was my inspiration, and I feel that he was the most unique thing that ever happened to country music. When I was fif- teen years old, I thought he hung the moon. You know … I'm still not sure he didn't." L ike the prime movers in any art form, Lefty attracted his share of legends. Some were foisted on him by eager press agents in the 1950s as part of an early and effective image-building campaign; others came from his mam- moth capacity for hard drinking and hard living; others came from his sudden spec- tacular success and early fame; and many came from his own shyness and difficulty in explaining himself. "He hated inter- views," his wife Alice recalled, "and if he had to do one, he would have to get loos- ened up with drinks before he did one." The late journalist Bob Claypool, who fol- lowed Lefty's career for years said: "He was one of those wild men of country music, the central figure in hundreds of rip-roaring tales – some true, some make-believe… (Did Lefty really do THAT?)." In a few serious attempts to write about Lefty's career, these legends have crept in over and over, jostling the true facts and salient de- tails. They appear in everything from liner notes to record company publicity to official Hall of Fame biographies. Some of them are useful, even if they are not accurate, for they give us something of the way Lefty was per- ceived by his friends and fans. Others are sim- ply misleading. This account [by Charles Wolfe], in its original edition, was an attempt to start from scratch, and to reconstruct the ca- reer of one of the seminal figures of American music. The current edition has been revised to incorporate the research of other authors who followed, principally Kevin Coffey and Daniel Cooper. PREFACE