DALLAS FRAZIER LIVE! - RIP

Mr. Frazier wrote, “There Goes My Everything” for the Grand Ole Opry star Jack Greene, “Beneath Still Waters” for Emmylou Harris, and “Elvira,” with its atavistic “oom poppa, oom poppa” chorus, for the Oak Ridge Boys. All three were career-defining records, and each topped the country chart. (“There Goes My Everything” also reached the pop Top 20 for the British crooner Engelbert Humperdinck in 1967.) Connie Smith, a 2012 inductee into the Country Music Hall of Fame, has recorded more than five dozen songs written by Mr. Frazier. Dallas June Frazier was born on Oct. 27, 1939, in Spiro, Okla. His parents, William Floyd Frazier and Eva Marie Laughlin Frazier were itinerant laborers who moved the family to Bakersfield, Calif., to work in the cotton fields there. “California Cottonfields,” an autobiographical original, written by Mr. Frazier and Earl Montgomery, became a signature song for Merle Haggard, whose childhood privation rivaled Mr. Frazier’s. “We were part of ‘The Grapes of Wrath,’” Mr. Frazier said in 2008, referring to John Steinbeck’s epic novel of the Oklahoma Dust Bowl. “We were the Okies who went out to California with mattresses tied to the tops of their Model A Fords. My folks were poor.” Dallas began picking cotton at the age of 6. His father exposed him to country music, playing the latest hits by Hank Williams and Lefty Frizzell on the jukebox of their local diner. Dallas Frazier commemorated the experience in “Hank and Lefty Raised My Country Soul,” a song that became a Top 40 country hit for his fellow Oklahoman Stoney Edwards in 1973. Mr. Frazier began writing songs and singing as an adolescent, earning an invitation at 12 to tour with the country star Ferlin Husky after winning a West Coast talent contest. At 14, he signed a contract as a recording artist with Mr. Husky’s label, Capitol Records. During the mid-to-late ’50s, he also appeared regularly on Cliffie Stone’s “Hometown Jamboree,” a popular country music television show broadcast from Los Angeles. In 1963, after his singing career began to founder, Mr. Frazier moved to Nashville to work for country song publishers. He continued to make the occasional record, steeped in New Orleans-style R&B, before eventually giving himself over to songwriting full time. In 1976, shortly after his induction into the Nashville Songwriters Hall of Fame, Mr. Frazier suddenly retired from music to become the pastor of a church outside Nashville. He returned to writing and performing three decades later, emerging as an elder statesman of the music he helped shape. ------------------- Please, subscribe and like to keep REAL COUNTRY MUSIC alive! 👉 Visit https://www.newhillbilly.com/ 👍   / newhillbilly-and-when-the-cowboy-sings-147...   🤠Guide to New Traditionalism, Bluegrass, Honky Tonk, Western Swing, Texan, Outlaw, Truck Driving, Country, True Country, Traditional Country, Ameripolitan, Irish Country, Australian, Canadian, Old-Time, Cajun, Gospel, Classic Country, Rockabilly...