Lefty Frizzell
Classic Country
William Orville “Lefty” Frizzell was among the most influential vocal stylists in country music history, a honky-tonk singer-songwriter whose slurred, note-bending phrasing rewrote the way a country lyric could be sung. In an astonishing 1950–1951 run he became the first artist to place four singles in the Billboard country top ten simultaneously, and his fingerprints are all over the singers who followed — Merle Haggard, George Jones, Willie Nelson, Roy Orbison, and Keith Whitley among them. Though his star faded well before his early death, his phrasing remains a foundational country-vocal language, and his songs pass through bluegrass and folk repertoire to this day.
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- Born March 31, 1928, in Corsicana, Texas, the first of eight children of an oilfield worker; the family moved often, settling for a time in El Dorado, Arkansas, where as a boy he earned airtime on radio station KELD.
- Absorbed his style from Jimmie Rodgers, Ernest Tubb, and Ted Daffan, and by his teens was working nightclubs and radio across Arkansas, Texas, and New Mexico; the nickname “Lefty” stuck through the 1940s club circuit.
- In 1947 he was arrested in Roswell, New Mexico, and jailed roughly six months on a statutory-rape charge; from his cell he wrote to his wife Alice the poem that became “I Love You a Thousand Ways.”
- Working the Ace of Clubs in Big Spring, Texas, he cut a demo for Dallas producer Jim Beck that led to a Columbia Records contract; his July 1950 debut session yielded two future number ones.
- “If You’ve Got the Money (I’ve Got the Time),” released September 1950 with “I Love You a Thousand Ways” on the flip, became a two-sided smash and launched him to stardom; it spent three weeks atop the country jukebox chart.
- The hits came in a torrent: “I Want to Be With You Always” (No. 1, 1951), “Always Late (With Your Kisses)” (No. 1, 1951), “Mom and Dad’s Waltz” (1951), and “Give Me More, More, More (Of Your Kisses)” (No. 1, 1952) — 13 top-ten country hits within two years of his breakthrough.
- By 1951 he rivaled Hank Williams in popularity and toured with him; that same year he formed his touring band, the Western Cherokees, led by Blackie Crawford.
- He appeared on the Grand Ole Opry and the Louisiana Hayride during the early 1950s, but his restless, contract-strained career kept him from staying long at any one home base.
- After moving to Los Angeles in 1953, he became a fixture on the KTTV television program Town Hall Party; car accidents in 1952 and 1954, frustration with Columbia’s song choices, and burnout stalled his chart momentum through the mid-1950s.
- Working with Nashville’s Cedarwood Publishing, he engineered a comeback with “Long Black Veil” (1959), a Danny Dill–Marijohn Wilkin ballad that became a country and folk standard later selected for the National Recording Registry.
- His last major hit, “Saginaw, Michigan” (No. 1, 1964), earned a Grammy nomination; “She’s Gone, Gone, Gone” reached the top twenty in 1965, but sustained success never returned.
- He relocated to Nashville around 1960 and left Columbia for ABC Records in early 1972; the same year he was inducted into the Nashville Songwriters Hall of Fame.
- Chronic heavy drinking and hypertension eroded his health and voice; he died of a massive stroke in Nashville on July 19, 1975, at age 47, and was buried at Forest Lawn Memorial Gardens in Goodlettsville, Tennessee.
- He was inducted into the Country Music Hall of Fame in 1982, and “If You’ve Got the Money (I’ve Got the Time)” received the Grammy Hall of Fame Award in 1999.
- His influence is monumental: Merle Haggard called his impact “not even measurable,” Roy Orbison took the name “Lefty Wilbury” in the Traveling Wilburys to honor him, and Willie Nelson devoted an entire 1977 tribute album, To Lefty From Willie, to his songs. His younger brother David Frizzell went on to his own country success in the early 1980s.
