TEXAS MUSIC IS LOVED BILLY WALKER For DECEMBER 31st 2014 Billy Walker was a country music singer and guitarist best known for his 1962 hit, (Id Like to Be In) Charlies Shoes. He was born in 1929 in the small town of Ralls in northwest Texas. He becam known by a nickname “The Tall Texan” and had more than 30 charted records during a nearly 60-year career; and was a longtime member of the Grand Ole Opry. Inspired by the music of Gene Autry as a teenager, he began his professional music career in 1947 at age 18, and joined the Big D Jamboree in Dallas in 1949. The same year, Hank Thompson helped him sign with Capitol Records after they worked together in Waco. His manager at the time had him wear a Lone Ranger-style black mask and billed him as The Traveling Texan, the Masked Singer of Country Songs. He signed with Columbia Records and the following year joined the Louisiana Hayride in Shreveport, Louisiana, where he and Slim Whitman were responsible in part for Elvis Presleys first appearance on the radio program. In 1954, Walker scored his first hit with Thank You for Calling. After a brief attempt at rock n roll, Walker played the Texas bar circuit before moving to Nashville, Tennessee in 1959 and joining the Grand Ole Opry in 1960. He was one of the first artists to record a Willie Nelson song; and although his 1961 version of Funny How Time Slips Away only reached No. 23 on Billboards country singles chart, it helped establish Walkers national reputation. On May 21, 2006, Walker died in a car accident in a van he was driving back to Nashville after a performance in Foley, Alabama.
Posted on: Wed, 31 Dec 2014 03:41:24 +0000
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