Cindy Walker

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Cindy Walker (July 20, 1918 – March 23, 2006) was an American songwriter, as well as a country music singer and dancer.

As a songwriter Walker was responsible for many popular and enduring songs recorded by many different artists. She adopted a craftsman-like approach to her songwriting, often tailoring particular songs to specific recording artists.

She produced a large body of songs that have been described as “direct, honest and unpretentious”.

She had Top 10 hits spread over five decades.Walker was inducted into the Country Music Hall of Fame in 1997 and inducted into the Texas Heritage Songwriters Hall of Fame in March 2011.

Early life

Cindy Walker was born on July 20, 1918, on her grandparents' farm near Mart, Texas (near Mexia, east of Waco), the daughter of a cotton-broker. Her maternal grandfather F.L. Eiland was a noted composer of hymns and her mother was a fine pianist. From childhood Cindy Walker was fond of poetry and wrote habitually.

Personal life

In her personal life, Walker shunned the limelight. It was often reported that she never married, though in an interview with The New York Times shortly before her death, Walker stated she once had “a very short-lived marriage”. After her stint in Los Angeles she returned to Texas in 1954, living in Mexia in a modest three-bedroom house with her widowed mother, Oree.

Walker's custom was rising at dawn each day to write songs. She typed her lyrics on a pink-trimmed manual typewriter and Oree helped work out melodies for her daughter's words. Each year Walker and her mother would operate from an apartment in Nashville for five months or so in order to market the songs. Oree Walker died in 1991. In a 2004 interview Walker stated: "I miss Mama every day".

Walker died at age 87 near her home, at the Parkview Regional Hospital in Mexia, Texas, on March 23, 2006. She died seven days after Willie Nelson's tribute album to her was released. She had been ill for several weeks prior to her death. She was buried in the Mexia City Cemetery. Her family had a custom-designed sculpture created for her gravestone to honor the songwriter and her work. The memorial sculpture is a large pink-granite guitar (in her signature color).

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Career

Walker wrote the song "Dusty Skies," which was later released by Bob Wills and the Texas Playboys as a youth, inspired by newspaper accounts of the dust storms on the American prairies in the mid-1930s. The Paul Whiteman Orchestra performed her "Casa de Maana" in 1936 (as part of the Texas Centennial celebrations). Cindy Walker was playing and dancing in Texas stage shows by the end of the decade.

Walker, a teenager who was 22, joined her parents on a business trip to Los Angeles in 1940. As they were driving down Sunset Boulevard, she begged her father to stop the vehicle near the Bing Crosby Enterprises building. "I had decided that if I ever got to Hollywood, I was going to perform Bing Crosby's 'Lone Star Trail'," Walker later recalled." "You're crazy, girl," her father said, but the car was eventually abandoned. Walker went inside to perform her song and then emerged shortly afterward to ask her mother to play the piano for her. Larry Crosby's brother was compelled to listen to the album, and Walker performed "Lone Star Trail" to him, accompanied by her mother. Larry Crosby was enthralled and informed that his brother was looking for a new Western song to record. At Paramount Studios (where he was filming), Cindy performed guitar and sang "Lone Star Trail" for Bing Crosby. Crosby arranged for her to record a demo with Decca Records' Dave Kapp, who was also impressed and gave her a recording contract. Bing Crosby's "One Star Trail" was a top-ten hit.

Walker lived in Los Angeles for 13 years. In 1940, she appeared as a singer in the Gene Autry Western Ride, Tenderfoot, Ride. Walker's recording contract led to the recording of several songs with Texas Jim Lewis and His Lone Star Cowboys, including "Seven Beers with the Wrong Man" in 1941, which was also shot as an early "Soundie" (a precursor to music videos). "When My Blue Moon Turns to Gold Again" in 1944, Walker recorded a song (not her own) that became a top ten hit.

Walker grew a following in the 1940s and 1950s. She owed her songs to Bob Wills and began to produce compositions for recordings and films. The partnership was extremely fruitful: "Cherokee Maiden" (1941), "Miss Molly" (1941), "Miss Molly" (1942), "Miss Molly" (1941), "Miss Molly" (1941), "Bubbles in My Beer" (1948), "Bubbles in My Beer" (1948), and "Miss Molly" (1948), "Cherokee Maiden" (1941), "Miss "You're From Texas," Bob Wills and his band performed Walker's first top-ten country hit, "You're From Texas" (1944).

"Triflin Gal" was one of her top-ten hits in the 1940s (Eddy Arnold, 1950): "Take Me in Your Arms and Hold Me" was among her other hits in the 1990s (top ten records for both Al Dexter and Walter Shrum). 30 Those sources have incorrectly attributed Johnny Bond's 1948 "Oklahoma Waltz" to her, possibly referring to her own 1947 composition of the word that was co-written with and recorded by Spade Cooley.

Walker's fame as a writer of popular songs continued in the 1950s. Hank Snow's "The Gold Rush Is Over" was a hit in 1952, and "I Don't Care" by 1955 Webb Pierce had a hit.

Gene Autry's "Blue Canadian Rockies" was another Walker song (which appeared in Autry's 1952 film of the same name). The song was revived by The Byrds on their influential country-rock album Sweetheart of the Rodeo in 1968. When they met in Nashville, Eddy Arnold pitched Walker the theme and the song name for "You Don't Know Me." Walker wrote the song based on Arnold's plan, with both of them receiving songwriting credit for their contributions. It has been dubbed "a beautifully symmetric and poignant portrait of a passion not to be."

Many musicians have performed "You Don't Know Me" over the years; Lenny Welch (1960); and Elvis Presley (1967). In 1957 and the start of another fruitful writer-writer partnership, "This is It" (1965) and "Distant Drums" (a posthumous hit for Reeves), Jim Reeves' "Anna Marie" was a hit for him. In 1966, "Distant Drums" remained at No. 1 on the British charts for five weeks.

Reeves performed several of Walker's songs; she often wrote specifically for him and gave him the opportunity to refuse first refusal of her tracks. Reeves' "Distant Drums" was first recorded as a demo, simply because he adored the song. Chet Atkins said that the time was not right for an international broadcast. This demo, as many for Reeves, was unearthed on his death, and Walker, alongside Atkins and Mary Reeves, oversaw the manufacturing of the overdub, which was to be released in 1966 and became a huge international hit.

With Walker's "Jim, I Wore a Tie Today," a touching song about a cowboy's death, Eddy Arnold had a minor success. Walker also wrote the song "Dream Baby (How Long Must I Dream)," which was recorded by Roy Orbison (who also released a version of "Distant Drums"). She had little faith in "Dream Baby" when she first heard of it, but Orbison's debut in 1962 and 1981 for Glen Campbell, as well as in 1983 for Lacy J. Dalton. Fred Foster, a 1964 comedian, brought her right back to the studio to record an album, Words and Music by Cindy Walker. Both Jerry Wallace (1964) and Dean Martin (1967) performed well, as well as Jim Reeves' "In the Misty Moonlight" by Walker. In 1968, "Heaven Says Hello" (recorded by Sonny James) and "You Are My Treasure" (Jack Greene) were both published by Walker.

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