Beech Tree News Network

Good stories can be found about anywhere, any time.  One’s own family can sometimes be a good source.

My mother, Gladys, provided a plethora of good humor over her 99 years…don’t get me wrong, she could also get all over you like a cheap suit…her own kids that is.

“Gladdy” wasn’t afraid of the devil, however she was deathly afraid of snakes.  

Once my daddy finally talked her into going blackberry picking with him.  Reluctantly she finally agreed— “I’m afraid I’ll see a snake,” she lamented.  “No, I don’t think so,” daddy told her.  “Where we are going is not a very snakey place.” 

My daddy Luther was WRONG!  They had scarcely been there ten minutes when mother nearly stepped on a very small, non-poisonous, snake.  “Gladdy” threw down her bucket and ran screaming and crying all the way back to the car. 

A rich source of stories can be found among folks in the music business.  

Once Grand Ole Opry star, Roy Acuff was on his way to a play date.  Recently his fiddle player had quit him.  On the way Roy spotted a young man walking along the road carrying a fiddle case.   Roy had his driver stop the bus while he got out to talk to the young man.  Right there on the side of the road Roy gave the fellow an impromptu audition.  He hired the guy on the spot.  

A little-known cowboy singer-song writer was a fellow by the name of Red River Dave (Dave McEnery), Dave recorded for Decca Records in New York City in the 1930s and 1940s.  He performed at the 1939 World’s Fair in New York, he and his two-member band.  

Although Dave had hopped from radio stations in Grand Forks, Idaho, to Richmond, Virginia, to Miami, Florida, his base became WOAI, San Antonio, Texas, his home town, where he performed live.  

Dave was a champion rope artist an da compulsive song writer.  He was possibly best known for his publicity stunt of chaining himself to the studio piano at WOAI, San Antonio, where he wrote fifty-two songs in twelve hours.  

In 1951, the song How High the Moon, by husband and wife team, Les Paul and Mary Ford, stayed at the top of the hit list for weeks on end.  It sold over one million records.  Moon was an old song from out of the 1930s.  Les and Mary were really “starving artists.”  

They were down to one box of White Castle hamburgers.  But when they added their touch to an almost forgotten 1930s number it did go as high as the moon.  It sold one million records almost over-night, owing to Les Paul’s fancy new, guitar sounds, and Mary’s beautiful contralto voice.

The last I heard, Les Paul was still playing New York night clubs, at 90 something years of age.  

Tex Ritter dropped out of University Texas law school to become a B-movie cowboy singer.  He once played Woodbury, Kentucky.  His gate was eighty dollars.  

It’s notable to mention that all Grand Ole Opry stars aren’t “hillbillies.”  

Whispering Bill Anderson is a college graduate with a degree in journalism. 

Grand Ole Opry singer Stu Phillips is also an ordained Episcopal Priest.

Cowboy singer, Al Dexter, from Borger, Texas recorded a beautiful Mexican ballad called Rosalita (my little rose of the rancho), back in the 1940s.  It was slated to be a big hit.  

When they needed a flip side to “Rosalita” somebody found one of Al’s honky-tonk songs called, Pistol Pakin’ Momma.

You guessed it, “Rosalita” hardly did anything; Momma sold over a million records for Al Dexter.  Bing Crosby cut it.  It sold a million for Bing… “She kicked out my windshield, she hit me over the head.  She cussed and cried and said I’d lied and wished that I was dead…Lay that pistol down babe; lay that pistol down—pistol pakin’ momma lay that pistol down.”  

Kindest regards…