Lefty Frizzell

He was making a statement, you don't need strings and choruses to make great country music.

Similarly, Lefty Frizzell, with Long Black Veil in 1959, maintained that honky-tonk authenticity even as the industry was moving away from it.

Some artists straddled both worlds.

That's where it gets really interesting.

And then the The disc jockey, Nelson Bragg, was playing all the current music.

Well, Hank Williams was still alive, and Webb Pierce, and Lefty Frizzell, and Hank Snow, and all of that music.

Kitty Wells, Hank Thompson.

And I just really loved it, and I loved Hank Williams.

That started in 1949.

But a year later, Lefty Frizzell wants to go to the park where it's dark and he doesn't want to fool around.

Or does he? If you got the money, honey, I've got the time, came out in 1951.

Then Webb Pierce's 1952 release, A Backstreet Affair, blames his adultery on his wife's adultery, but explicitly excuses this breaking of the Seventh Commandment.

Now, country music at that time was his major music influence, along with western twang, which was also known as country jazz.

Now, he played by the name of Lefty Frizzell, F-R-I-Z-Z-E-L-L.

Now, Lefty Frizzell was an exponent of this country jazz, and that led Roy to adopt a moniker of Lefty Wilbury when he was in the Travelling Wilbury days.

Now, he had a polio scare in 1944, and that's not he did, but there was a polio scare in the area in 1944, and that prompted his parents to send he and his brother Grady Lee to Burnham, Texas, to live with his grandmother.

Now, he

New Riders of the Purple Sage with Lonesome L.A.

Cowboy and Lefty Frizzell, Cigarettes and Coffee Blues.

That's a fantastic one.

Gotta love Lefty.

I mean, I joke on stage when I play a song of mine called The Many Deaths of Rose Murphy, which is basically a murder ballad.

Um, I thought it sounded like a Marty Robbins-type murder ballad, or like a, you know, Lefty Frizzell type thing, and then I listen back and I'm like, "No, that's, that's a sea shanty." [laughs]

[laughs]

Whether, whether I like it or not, that's where it ends up, so.

And Jake Worthington basically showed up wearing a vintage suit, carrying a steel guitar, and reminding Nashville that country music didn't start with a drum loop and a guy yelling truck every 12 seconds.

This Texas traditionalist grew up soaking in the sounds of honky-tonk legends like Lefty Frizzell and George Jones.

His mission? Bring back the twang, the heartbreak, the kind of country where the singer actually sounds like he's lived a little.

Next New Thing is a wink at the music business because Jake knows the funny truth.

Saginaw has also served as a muse for songwriters.

In 1964, honky-tonk pioneer Lefty Frizzell put the city on the map with his song, Saginaw, Michigan, which topped the country charts for 23 weeks and even earned a Grammy nomination.

Fred

Reif is the author of several books that explore Saginaw's music history.

If I ever get to Saginaw again

The historians I spoke with can only speculate why Saginaw became a common denominator in several popular songs.

There's no evidence that Lefty Frizzell or the Monkees ever came to the city.

Maybe Saginaw's rich industrial history made it seem alluring.