The Beginning of a Songwriter, Part 1
I remember that the only time I saw my dad, was when I went to my grandmothers house. Later he moved to her house in the country. Donie, Texas. I remember that every Saturday night that I was there, we went to Aunt Ida’s house. She had the only TV in the town. We would watch all of the Country Music shows. Porter Wagoner, The Wilburn Brothers, and many others. Daddy loved country music. He loved Willie Nelson, back when. Willie was wearing a suit, clean shaven, and singing “The Party’s Over”, Waylon Jennings, also clean shaven, in a suit singing “Only Daddy That’ll Walk The Line”. I knew daddy wrote songs, but I didn’t know he had already written a hit for Hank Thompson called “Just an old Flame” I loved his songs and looking at his lyric books. I didn’t know grandma had offered to pay his way to Nashville, and her cousin Bob Wills was willing to help out. But he wouldn’t go, I guess he was scared. I learned later that he was a bad alcoholic, and grandma was his enabler. He actually accomplished a lot from Donie. He was always sending his songs off to Nashville, and actually got a lot recorded and published. I was told many years later by an old friend Doodle Owens, that it was so easy to get songs recorded then. I could have been a spoiled rich kid living off daddy’s royalties. But he never went. He was not a big part of my life, we lived in Houston, and only saw him when grandma took us. When he died in a car crash when I was 8, I don’t even remember crying. That’s where the line from my song “Across The Hands of Time” came from. “since the day my daddy died, and I learned what ambivalence was” After that, all I had was his song books. I treasured them. I used to read them all the time. I never tried to write songs myself. It was when I was 15 or so that lyrics started coming to my head. I started to write them down. Sometimes I had to pull over and write them down. That was when I started to become a Songwriter. Not a very good one, but the spark was there.
