|
Californian staff writer Ferlin Husky doesn’t quite recollect what he expected from the skinny, confident boy who ambled up to the microphone that Saturday night in 1952. Most likely this boy would monotone his way through some tired, old Sunday School hymn, then slink back to his seat to a smattering of half-hearted applause, just like all the others before him. That’s normally the way things went at this children’s talent show, hosted by Husky each week at Bakersfield’s Rainbow Gardens dance hall. But this gangly 12-year-old belted out a lively number by Little Jimmie Dickens that knocked the socks off both the host and the crowd. Big-eyed Dallas Frazier, straight off a Greenfield ranch, could sing like a whippoorwill. “There was no question that kid was something special,” Husky said. “He was cute as a bug and clear as a bell.” Frazier won that week’s talent show and Husky, then a Bakersfield disc jockey and part-time singer who went by the name Terry Preston, signed up the boy as a regular member of his traveling band, the Termites. Twenty-four years later, Dallas Frazier, by now better known for his song-writing talents than his singing, was named 1976 Country Music Songwriter of the Year for tunes such as “There Goes My Everything” and “Elvira.” Country music icon George Jones recorded an album called “George Jones Sings Dallas Frazier,” and, that same year, Frazier was elected to the National Songwriters’ Hall of Fame. Five years later, he virtually disappeared. Like so many others in the music business, before and since, he had been living out the stories in his songs - the hurtin’, cheatin’, drinkin’ songs. The bottle, he acknowledged later, was on the verge of ruining his life. “I wasn’t a good husband,” said Frazier, who today lives near Gallatin, Tenn., about an hour outside of Nashville. “I was running wild, drinking and partying. So I backed away from the music business.” Frazier intended to take a yearlong sabbatical, but one year stretched into two, and two into three. Now it’s been more than 15, and Frazier is regarded as the J.D. Salinger of country music - at least among those who still know of him. But throughout the mid-1960s and beyond, the Oklahoma-born, Bakersfield-bred singer with the broad smile and the golden voice was the hottest thing on Nashville’s Music Row, at least among songwriters. It all started with Husky, who tended to keep a close watch on his younger Termites. Tommy Collins, who would also go on to a notable career in music, was already rooming with the Husky family in east Bakersfield when young Dallas showed up. With the consent of Frazier’s family, which by this time had moved to McFarland, he was given his own bunk in the same bedroom. What better way could there be to learn the music business? “I had a guitar, cost about $10,” Frazier said. “Tommy showed me my first chord.” Husky introduced Frazier to Capitol Records executive Ken Nelson, who went on to produce Bakersfield artists like Buck Owens and Merle Haggard. Frazier was 13. “When he auditioned me at Ferlin’s house in Bakersfield, he read a newspaper the whole time,” Frazier said. “I thought that was strange. He said, ‘Go ahead, if you do something that catches me, I’ll hear it.’ When it was over he said, ‘Not right now, but maybe later.’ ” Later turned out to be the next year. Nelson was true to his word, and Frazier signed with Capitol. Among the first original compositions he recorded were “Ain’t You Had No Bringing Up at All” and “Love Life at 14.” “Don’t ask what I knew about love then, because it wasn’t much,” Frazier said. At about that same time, Frazier went to work with Cousin Herb Henson, performing off and on during the first four years of the local television show’s 10-year run. His voice was polished, but his stage demeanor gave him away as the impressionable babe he was: Older Bakersfield viewers might remember Frazier as the bandanna-wearing kid who sang with one end of his neck-kerchief in each hand. As he warbled through a tune, Frazier kept time by yanking on the bandanna in a shoeshine motion against the back of his neck. Viewers might have considered it a nervous tic, but Frazier says he picked up the habit from Husky, on whom it looked somehow dashing. At age 15, Frazier joined Cliffie Stone’s “Hometown Jamboree,” a popular, Los Angeles-based TV show that featured stars like Tennessee Ernie Ford and Tommy Sands. When the show went off the air after four years, Frazier, now 18, married his girlfriend, Sharon Carpani, and the next year he hit it really big on his own. This time, it was as a songwriter. His “Alley Oop,” a pop novelty
tune written in 1959, achieved an unusual trifecta: In
the summer of 1960, three versions of it, recorded by
three different groups, appeared simultaneously on the
pop charts, led by the Hollywood Argyles at No. 1. That’s when the song-writing bug started to come back, perhaps in part because nothing seemed to be working for him in Portland. “I figured I’d try to give it another shot,” he said. At about that same time, Husky came through Portland on concert tour, and the two men got together. Husky asked Frazier if he would write songs for him again, as he had done as a teen, and Frazier jumped at the chance. He and Sharon moved to Nashville and Dallas began composing for Husky’s publishing company. Frazier’s greatest professional successes followed. In 1964 he wrote “There Goes My Everything,” which was a hit for Jack Greene in 1966 and was later recorded by Engelbert Humperdinck, Elvis Presley and Don Cherry. The song is Frazier’s most profitable copyright, having been recorded, according to Frazier, by well over 100 artists. Frazier’s banner year was 1966. He wrote and recorded “Elvira,” a regional hit that would later become a national smash for the Oak Ridge Boys. Connie Smith made the top 10 with his song “Ain’t Had No Lovin’,” and George Jones did the same with “I’m a People.” But in returning to the charts, Frazier had also returned to the party life, and eventually his personal life started to feel the strain. “It took me quite a while to come around, but I finally realized I had to back off and straighten out,” Frazier said. He began to move away from Nashville’s fast lane in 1976 and by the time “Elvira” became a No. 1 hit for the Oak Ridge Boys in 1981, Frazier was all but retired at age 41. “I’m not blaming the music business, but I found myself getting farther and farther away from the things that are important,” he said. “I got back in church. God helped me get off the alcohol.” Today he believes his stature as a songwriting giant is, at least in part, a matter of luck. “I’ve had a good career, and I’ve been fortunate,” he said. “I’ve had people take me under their wing. We all need help to get ahead, and I got plenty. There’s things in my life I’d like to do over, but I wouldn’t trade it either.” He and Sharon still visit Bakersfield regularly, as they have through the years. Dallas’ mother and brother still live in Kern County, and a sister is in Tulare. Frazier still sees Tommy Collins, too: The two live a half-hour from each other in central Tennessee, and their families often sit together at the church where Tommy serves as a deacon. Now, at 57, the one-time talent-show champion believes the world may be ready for the third coming of Dallas Frazier. Or at least he is ready for the world. “I feel a renewed interest in music,” said Frazier, who has starting studying piano again. “How that plays out, I don’t know. I don’t think a man can just change the way he is, or the type of music that comes out of him. “But ... when I write again, if I write again, I’ll do it strictly for me. It may not be a commercial-sounding type of thing. That doesn’t mean I haven’t written for myself before - it just means I don’t want to be on that commercial treadmill, where you develop a feel for what might sell and write to that feeling. That won’t be my guideline for writing. “I don’t know what I’ll do with it. But I know I have some things left to say. I feel a stirring in me.”
|
By 
