Lefty Frizzell

• Born: March 31, 1928
• Birthplace: Corsicana, Texas
• Died: July 19, 1975
• Place of death: Nashville, Tennessee

American country guitarist, singer, and songwriter

Frizzell, with his signature vocal style of pitch-bending with muddled word pronunciation, helped bring honky-tonk to maturity.

The Life

William Orville “Lefty” Frizzell (frihz-ZEHL) said he was born and raised “in an oil field behind an oil well.” His parents, Naamon and A. D., regularly moved the family to follow the changing flow of the oil industry. Frizzell earned his nickname for delivering a left hook to a bully in the schoolyard. Always close to family, Frizzell, as a child, enjoyed visiting his Uncle Lawrence, and there a neighboring farmer introduced him to guitar picking. Within his immediate family, Frizzell’s mother enjoyed singing and his father moonlighted in a Western band. After Frizzell began collecting musical repertory from songs he heard on the radio, he was afforded an opportunity to perform on KPLT radio in Paris, Texas.

At this time, Frizzell met Alice Lee Harper; and the teenage couple married in March, 1945. Soon after, the couple moved from town to town and state to state to maintain a living. They eventually settled in New Mexico, where Frizzell performed on KGFL until 1947, when he was put in jail for statutory rape.

After his incarceration, Frizzell and his wife moved back to Texas, where he auditioned for Jim Beck, a liaison for Columbia Records. Beck took great interest in Frizzell’s song “If You’ve Got the Money (I’ve Got the Time).” However, when Columbia Records executive Don Law heard the singer, he was impressed with Frizzell’s distinctive voice. Frizzell signed a recording contract, and soon he had several number-one hits and a spike in popularity. Frizzell went on tour with Hank Williams, and he joined the Grand Ole Opry. By 1953, because of poor contracts, mismanagement, and a growing alcohol addiction, Frizzell found his career floundering. Nevertheless, he remained popular on tour, and he released his last number-one hit in 1964. When Law retired from Columbia Records in 1972, Frizzell was dropped from the label. The singer died of a stroke three years later.

The Music

Although initially he modeled his style on that of Jimmie Rodgers, Ernest Tubb, and Bob Wills, Frizzell eventually found his own voice. Called the “boy with a wave in his hair and a curl in his voice,” his vowel-bending, syllable-extending vocal practice entranced countless listeners, making him one of the most mimicked country singers of all time. Frizzell favored ballads and romance-themed lyrics, which showcased his nasal, but warm, voice. Lyrically romantic or otherwise, his reflections on life’s trials and tribulations, in his jagged, emotional tone, connected him with a working-class audience. At the same time, his up-tempo tunes were equally admired in the honky-tonk blood buckets (taverns) and on the stage of the Grand Ole Opry.

“If You’ve Got the Money (I’ve Got the Time).”Encouraged to perform something upbeat for his audition, Frizzell completed “If You’ve Got the Money (I’ve Got the Time)” in Beck’s recording studio. Upon hearing his note-bending vocal strains, Law offered Frizzell a two-year contract. The singer’s slurred pronunciation and muddied vowels in lines such as “dance, drink beer and wine” captivated the Columbia Records executive. The heavy, offbeat rhythm of Madge Suttee’s honky-tonk piano drives throughout most of the song, and it is briefly featured halfway through the song. Her instrumental solo breaks up the repetitive form. Thematically, the lyrics play on the reversal of standard gender roles, and Frizzell makes use of edgy double-entendres.

“I Love You a Thousand Ways.”At summer’s end in 1950, Frizzell released “I Love You a Thousand Ways” and “If You’ve Got the Money (I’ve Got the Time)” on opposite sides of the same record. Both sides eventually hit number one on the charts. The lyrics for this love ballad were composed by Frizzell while he was imprisoned in New Mexico. He was fueled by an intense longing for his wife, and he demonstrated an apologetic sentiment through his words. Again going up and down elongated syllables, Frizzell reveals his heartfelt emotions throughout the song. His regular upward slide and extended tones on “you” in the first verse resemble a child’s whining plea.

“Always Late (With Your Kisses).”After Curly Chalker’s gently progressing steel guitar riff, Frizzell picks up the vocal line on “Ah-al-waay-yays lay-ee-yay-ate,” rolling each syllable through an extensive gamut of tones and glissandos. This may be the primary example of his innovative vocal practice. While Chalker claims no such confrontation occurred, he and Frizzell reportedly had a minor physical dispute over the singer’s inability to time accurately his entrance. In the song, the steel guitar, piano, and fiddle take turns reproducing the melodic material presented by Frizzell. Chalker’s instrumental portion on steel guitar comes close to emulating Frizzell’s vocal ornamentations, but it seems less complex without the added encumbrance of words.

“Mom and Dad’s Waltz.”This was the other side of the hit “Always Late (With Your Kisses),” and the origins of this sentimental ballad are in dispute. While Frizzell maintained he composed it when homesick in Dallas, his sister claimed it was initially penned for their mother, A.D., in Big Spring, Texas. Similar to “Always Late (With Your Kisses),” “Mom and Dad’s Waltz” features an instrumental interlude midway through, where the fiddle, guitar, and piano take turns performing the verse and chorus melodic material. The lyrical material highlights Frizzell’s dedication and reverence for his parents. Expectedly, the rhythmic meter is 3/4 time.

“Cigarettes and Coffee Blues.”Featuring a danceable tempo, strong backbeat, shuffling snare rhythm, walking bass line, and boogie-woogie-style piano, “Cigarettes and Coffee Blues” is, when compared to Frizzell’s earlier songs, stylistically closer to rockabilly. This musical change may have been intentional at a time when rock and roll was taking serious command over popular music. Other stylistic changes included clearer word pronunciation and fewer syllabic extensions. However, analogous to Frizzell’s earlier works, the lyrical theme is one of lost love. Published in 1958, the song reached number thirteen on the charts.

Musical Legacy

Frizzell’s primary musical contribution was, as noted by Law, his voice. He mastered the nuances of the Texan accent and dialect, placing them in song. Instrumentally, his voice paralleled the microtonal ability of the steel guitar. The vowel-bending vocal technique developed by Frizzell focused listeners’ attentions on key lyrics, and it brought emotional substance to each extended syllable. These contributions significantly shaped the genre of honky-tonk, influencing Merle Haggard, George Strait, George Jones, Willie Nelson, Randy Travis, and Roy Orbison. Frizzell was one of the few singers to have four songs simultaneously on the country Top 10. In addition, he was the first country act to perform at the Hollywood Bowl in 1955. Frizzell received a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame, and he was inducted posthumously into the Country Music Hall of Fame in 1982.

Principal Recordings

albums:Songs of Jimmie Rodgers, 1952; Listen to Lefty, 1953; The One and Only Lefty Frizzell, 1959; Saginaw, Michigan, 1964; The Sad Side of Love, 1965; Great Sound, 1966; Lefty Frizzell’s Country Favorites, 1966; Lefty Frizzell Puttin’ On, 1967; Mom and Dad’s Waltz, 1967; Signed Sealed and Delivered, 1968; Classic Style, 1975.

singles: “I Love You a Thousand Ways,” 1950; “If You’ve Got the Money (I’ve Got the Time),” 1950; “Always Late (With Your Kisses),” 1951; “Mom and Dad’s Waltz,” 1951; “I Love You Mostly,” 1954; “Cigarettes and Coffee Blues,” 1958; “She’s Gone, Gone, Gone,” 1965; “Lucky Arms,” 1974.

Bibliography

Cooper, Daniel. Lefty Frizzell: The Honky-Tonk Life of Country Music’s Greatest Singer. New York: Little, Brown, 1995. In writing this biography, Cooper conducted detailed interviews with Frizzell’s family members, who provided him with primary sources. Includes photographs, discography, and bibliography.

Jensen, Joli. The Nashville Sound: Authenticity, Commercialization, and Country Music. Nashville, Tenn.: Country Music Foundation Press and Vanderbilt University Press, 1998. This resource discusses topics such as authenticity and commercialization, within the context of Nashville’s country music industry. It includes a center section of photographs.

Kingsbury, Paul, and Alan Axelrod, eds. Country: The Music and the Musicians. New York: Abbeville Press, 1988. Rich with photographs, this book provides topical and chronological information on country music, placing honky-tonk within a larger historical context. Includes selected discography and bibliography.

Tribe, Ivan. Country: A Regional Exploration. Westport, Conn: Greenwood Press, 2006. A chronological survey of eighty years of country-music history, including a chapter on honky-tonk and sixty pages of biographical sketches, including one on Frizzell.