In the early 1940s, a young Texan named Cindy Walker accompanied her mother and her businessman father on a cotton-buying trip to Los Angeles. They were driving down Sunset Strip when she asked her father to stop at the Crosby Building.
”I had decided that if I ever got to Hollywood I was going to try to show Bing Crosby a song I had written for him called `Lone Star Trail,`
” Walker says.
”My father said, `You`re crazy, girl,` but he stopped. I went inside the Crosby Building and told the receptionist I wanted to see Mr. Crosby.
”She said, `Which Mr. Crosby do you want to see? We have Mr. Larry Crosby,` and she mentioned several more Mr. Crosbys-everybody but Bing. As far as I knew up to then, there was only one Crosby.”
Improvising, she asked to see Larry, since his was the first name the receptionist had mentioned. She was told Larry Crosby didn`t see people he didn`t know without an appointment. But Walker asked if the receptionist would just ”tell him somebody from Texas is here to see him,” and a few moments later she was ushered into his office.
Informing him she had written a song for Bing, she ran back downstairs to get her mother to play the piano so she could sing it. Her performance was impressive enough that, when she finished, he said Bing had been ”looking for a western song and might like that.
”If you`ll meet me here tomorrow,” he added, ”I`ll take you over to Paramount Studios. He`s making a picture over there, and he can listen to it.”
The next day, the unknown young Texan sang her song for the most famous Crosby, who was similarly impressed and said he would like to record it. Thus opened the career of one of country music`s most accomplished songwriters.
Currently nominated for induction into the Country Music Association`s Hall of Fame (the winner to be announced during annual award ceremonies from 8-10 p.m. (CDT) Monday on CBS-Ch.2), Walker is asked if she expects to win. She laughs.
”I don`t have any idea,” she replies. ”I`ve been nominated before. The other nominees are Bill Carlisle, the Louvin Brothers, the Jordanaires and Roy Rogers, all of whom I`ve known all my life. They`re all such lovely people that I`ll be happy whoever wins.”
Walker may not win this year, but if she doesn`t do so someday, justice will have seriously miscarried. She has written more than 450 recorded songs, and the list of her country and pop hits is staggering.
They include ”In the Misty Moonlight,” ”Dream Baby (How Long Must I Dream),” ”China Doll,” ”Blue Canadian Rockies,” ”Bubbles in My Beer,”
”Cherokee Maiden,” ”Dusty Skies,” ”Sugar Moon,” ”Tater Pie,” ”Take Me in Your Arms and Hold Me,” ”Triflin` Gal,” ”Hey Mr. Bluebird,” ”Anna Marie,” ”Distant Drums,” ”You Are My Treasure,” ”Thank You For Calling” and many, many others.
There have been 87 different recordings of ”Dream Baby” alone. Illustrating the enduring quality of Walker`s work, ”Sugar Moon” has been recorded three times this year-by Willie Nelson, Janie Frickie and K.D. Lang. ”I don`t know why it got recorded three times this year,” she says. ”I haven`t pushed it any. But, you know, that`s the way my songs do.” She laughs, seemingly without being able to help it.
”They do good,” she giggles, then adds: ”Don`t quote me. People will think I`m bragging.”
Walker is too self-effacing for anyone to think that, but she has ample reason to brag if she cared to. An obvious songwriting talent, she seems to find her craft, like that of most arts, difficult to explain. She says all her songs are written from titles that ”just come to me.”
Part of the explanation for her gifts may be in her genes. Her maternal grandfather was F.L. Eiland, a writer of well-known religious hymns. Eiland died before she was born, but she says she got considerable encouragement from her other grandfather, who bought her first guitar for her.
Born ”in the bed” on that grandfather`s farm in little Mart, Tex., near Waco, she began writing songs as a child.
”Dusty Skies,” which became her first country hit, was written when she was 12, inspired by Oklahoma newspaper accounts of animals killed in the Dust Bowl of the 1930s.
She got ”Dusty Skies” to Bob Wills soon after her successful encounter with Bing Crosby-which, by the way, resulted in another triumph.
When she went to the office of Decca Records, to which Crosby was under contract, to record a demonstration version of ”Lone Star Trail” from which he could learn the lyrics, Decca executives liked her singing so well they offered her a recording contract.
”That started me in Hollywood,” she says. ”My mother stayed with me while my father came and went, buying cotton. I stayed in Hollywood 13 years.”
Then she and her mother returned to Texas, partly because a brother had three young daughters he was afraid would grow up without knowing their grandmother.
The songwriter says that, having gotten established, she could write in Texas as easily as in Hollywood. And when she needed to market her material, she and her mother would go wherever she needed to-Los Angeles, Nashville, New York-and take an apartment for as long as she was required to be there.
The parent played a much bigger role in her career than just providing company, Walker says:
”My mother, Mrs. Oree Walker, is a wonderful musician. She has always played-and still does play-the piano for all the tapes I make of my songs. Everybody in the country music field knows and loves Mama Walker.”
Mama Walker and her daughter, who describes herself as ”very single,”
attend the Presbyterian Church together in their small hometown.
The daughter`s scores of classic love songs were written from
”inspiration,” she says, rather than from personal romantic interests.
”I`m just a songwriter,” she adds. ”The only songs I`ve written that may be about somebody I love are my sacred songs. I love the Lord.
”I have a whole hymnbook of sacred songs I`ve written titled `Of Thee We Sing`-including one called `Child of the King` that George Beverly Shea and the Happy Goodman Family and the Speer Family have recorded-but I don`t try to popularize those.”
Since coming home to Texas, she and her mother have lived in the small town of Mexia, population about 6,000. After spelling it, she tells a little story to illustrate its unusual pronunciation: Muh-hay-uh.
Grand Ole Opry singer-comedian Grandpa Jones once asked her how it was spelled, she recalls, and she told him.
”Oh,” he replied, characteristically deadpan, after a moment. ”The X is silent. As in fish.”
