TXST CENTER FOR TEXAS MUSIC HISTORY
Bill Malone, featured on-camera expert in Ken Burns’ “Country Music” documentary, and his wife and collaborator Bobbie Malone hosted a tribute to legendary songwriter Cindy Walker at the Texas Music Museum in Austin.
They performed several of Walker’s songs, includ- ing ”You Don’t Know Me,” made famous by Ray Charles, and “Bubbles in my Beer,” which Bob Wills and the Texas Playboys turned into a Western Swing favorite. The afternoon featured a lively discussion of Walker’s legacy as well as several more songs featuring Kent Calder on electric guitar.
Calder is the former editorial director of the University of Oklahoma Press, which published “Traveler: The Musical Odyssey of Tim O’Brien” and “Nashville’s Songwriting Sweethearts: The Boudleaux and Felice Bryant Story,” both co-authored by Bill and Bobbie Malone.
Bill Malone, an instructor and assistant professor at Texas State during the 1960s and professor at Tulane University for more than two decades, is best known for his book “Country Music USA,” considered “the definitive history of American country music” by The Los Angeles Times.
Jason Mellard, the director of the Center for Texas Music History at Texas State, kicked off the afternoon with an introduction of the Malones as well as a brief overview of Cindy Walker’s legacy.
“Bill Malone is the original and preeminent historian of country music, starting with his classic work, ‘Country Music USA,’ that originated as a doctoral dissertation at the University of Texas at Austin in the 1960s. When no one thought that country music was worthy of academic study, Bill Malone is the one who paved that way.”
Beyond the introduction, the star of the show was Walker, with her large catalogue of classic songs.
“We’re real happy to do a program on Cindy Walker,” said Bill Malone. “We’ve always admired her work, the sophistication of her lyrics, the challenge of her chords.”
Among Walker’s biggest hits were “Dream Baby,” recorded by Roy Orbison and “Answer the Phone,” recorded by Ernest Tubb. The long list of country music legends who recorded her songs includes Johnny Cash, Merle Haggard, Wanda Jackson, Willie Nelson, Waylon Jennings, George Jones, Asleep at the Wheel, Glen Campbell and Loretta Lynn. Several pop artists covered Walker’s songs as well, superstars such as Bing Crosby, Perry Como, Dean Martin and Frank Sinatra, as well as contemporary artists like Cher and Bette Midler. In all, Walker wrote more than 650 songs. She died in 2006 at age 88.
According to Bill Malone, Walker played a key role in the post-war evolution of country music.
“Cindy was partly responsible for and present at country music’s first great commercial surge during the early 1950s,” he said. “She began writing songs that really fit the mood, the atmosphere of the music as it was now developing, what we now call Honky Tonk music.”
One of the anecdotes which received an enthusiastic response from the audience at the Texas Music Museum was Bill Malone’s description of Walker’s songwriting process, referring to one of her classic songs as an example.
“She never wrote a song without a title, she had to have the title, and when she got the title, she began developing a melody and the lyrics that went along with it,” he said. “One day, Tommy Duncan, who was Bob Wills’ first great vocalist, spoke to her, and he said, ‘Cindy, how’s this for a song: “Watching the Bubbles in my Beer”?
“Well, she had never watched bubbles, and she was surprised with the title, but it was something to work with, and she had a great imagination.”
In addition to “Bubbles in My Beer,” the Malones, with Bill on guitar and Bobbie on mandolin, plus Kent Calder on guitar, played several other Walker songs between anecdotes and stories, including “Dusty Skies,” “It’s All Your Fault,” and “Tater Pie,” which had the crowd laughing and singing along.
Following a brief Q&A with the Malones, historian Greg Smith, board member of the Cindy Walker Foundation, gave an update on efforts to preserve Walker’s home. Located in Mexia, about 50 miles northeast of Waco, the home was purchased by the Foundation in 2022.
Smith said that he had recently traveled to the Walker house to collect documents for his research.
“We pulled out about 75 boxes of materials. The Country Music Hall of Fame has five boxes that she donated, and the Wittliff (the Wittliff Collections at Texas State University) has another five boxes that her heirs donated.”
These boxes include receipts, contracts, cancelled checks and royalty statements, according to Smith, who is currently writing a biography on Walker.
