Lefty Frizzell Discography

William Orville `Lefty` Frizzell (March 31, 1928 – July 19, 1975) was an American country music singer and songwriter of the 1950s and a leading exponent of the Honky Tonk style of country music. His relaxed style of singing was a major influence on later stars Merle Haggard, Willie Nelson, and George Jones.

Frizzell was born in Corsicana, the seat of Navarro County in east Texas, but moved with his family shortly after his birth to El Dorado, Arkansas, where the Frizzells remained until the early 1940s. Frizzell began playing the guitar as a young boy. By the age of twelve, he was appearing regularly on a children`s show at a local radio station KELD.

The family returned to Texas when Frizzell was still a teenager, his music career having received a significant boost when he won a talent contest in Dallas.

Lefty, who was known as "Sonny" to his family, acquired the nickname "Lefty" at the age of fourteen after a schoolyard scrap with another student. Part of Frizzell`s early music lore pushed by his record company suggested the name came from winning a Golden Gloves boxing match, but this version was deemed untrue. [1]

In his late teens, he was performing at fairgrounds and other venues, developing a unique, soulful voice. Like his father, he got work in the oilfields, but his growing popularity as a singer soon gave him regular work on the Honky Tonk nightclub circuit. At the age of nineteen, he had a half-hour show on a small Texas radio station, getting a big break when a record producer, Don Law heard him sing. Signed to Columbia Records, he immediately had a string of hits that broke into country music`s top ten; several of them reached # 1. In 1950, he was invited to perform at the Grand Ole Opry; the following year he appeared on the prestigious Louisiana Hayride radio program that broadcast from Shreveport, Louisiana and then he and close friend `Cowboy` Ralph Spicer began touring with country music`s biggest star of the era, Hank Williams. Handbills of the time refer to them as "Kings of the Honky Tonks". A prolific songwriter, Frizzell had four songs in the country top ten at the same time in 1951 — a feat that would not be repeated on any chart until The Beatles one-upped him, on the popular music/pop charts, with five songs in 1964.

In 1952, while he was speeding through Minden, the seat of Webster Parish in northwestern Louisiana, Frizzell crashed his Cadillac into the home of City Judge and later State Representative R. Harmon Drew, Sr. Harmon Drew, Jr., himself a state appeals court judge and a musician, recalls that his father always thought Frizzell had a "bad attitude". The Drews are descended from the first families to have settled Webster Parish.[2]

By the end of the 1950s, rock and roll was dominating the North American music scene, but although no one would ever mistake Frizzell`s music for anything but country, his 1959 hit, "Long Black Veil," gained wide acceptance with a variety of music fans in addition to country, and was the first recording of this "standard."[citation needed] A few years later, Frizzell recorded "Saginaw, Michigan," which took the #1 spot on the country music charts and broke into the pop charts as well.[citation needed] The song earned him a Grammy Award nomination.

In the early 1970s, Frizzell changed record labels and moved to Bakersfield, California, where he recorded several more country music hits and became the first country singer to