I Love You a Thousand Ways

The Lefty Frizzell Story

David Frizzell

• Publisher: Santa Monica Press
• Year: 2011
• Print ISBN: 9781595800589
• eBook ISBN: 9781595808875
• Topic: Media & Performing Arts
• Subtopic: Music Biographies

I Love You a Thousand Ways is the story of one of the most loved, respected, and imitated singer/songwriters in the history of country music, a man whose songs touched the lives of millions of people. Lefty Frizzell's relaxed style of singing proved to be a huge influence on a wide variety of country and pop music stars such as Merle Haggard, Willie Nelson, Roy Orbison, George Jones, John Fogerty, George Strait, and Tim McGraw.In addition to his incredible vocal talents, Lefty was widely recognized for his songwriting skills. He had four songs in the country top ten at the same time in 1951—a feat that would only be repeated one more time on any chart, when The Beatles had five songs on the pop chart in 1964. Among Lefty's many hits are: "If You've Got the Money, I've Got the Time, " "Mom and Dad's Waltz, " "The Long Black Veil, " and "Saginaw, Michigan."Willie Nelson's 1977 album, To Lefty From Willie, was a tribute to Frizzell and consisted entirely of cover versions of Frizzell songs. Fellow Texan Roy Orbison was also a devout fan of Frizzell's sound. In 1988, as a part of the Traveling Wilburys, Orbison chose the name "Lefty Wilbury" in honor of his musical hero.Lefty was inducted into the Songwriters Hall of Fame in 1972 and the Country Music Hall of Fame in 1982. He has a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame and is a member of the Rockabilly Hall of Fame. I Love You a Thousand Ways is a long overdue, beautiful tribute to one of the most underrated musicians of all time, a man whose music continues to influence new generations of musicians and music fans.

CHAPTER ONE

MOM AND DAD’S WALTZ

Red switched the big diesel engine to idle, hooked the end of the chain to the brake handle, and shouted to the other roughnecks, “Break time. Damn, it’s hot.” He waved to the man at the top of the derrick to come on down.

The men followed Red to the tool shack laughing, pushing and joking with each other. Red liked working hard, and he liked working with hard men. They were all dirty, oily and sweaty, but they were used to it, it didn’t bother them at all.

Around eight o’ clock in the evening, Red heard someone calling his name.

“Red, Red, where are you? AD’s in labor.”

Red came out of the shack at a run, calling back over his shoulder to a fellow by the name of Gene to take his place running the big engine.

“Gotta go home and look in on AD. I may be back and may not, depending on how she’s doing. We’re gonna have a baby.” Red jumped into the old truck beside his friend saying, “How’s she doing, is she having the baby now?”

“Don’t know,” his friend said. “My wife is with her. She just said to come and get you. I think she just started, though if she did this might take a while.” They roared through the oil camp known as Tuckertown and slid to a stop in front of the little shotgun house where Red had lived for only a few months. He hit the ground running.

“AD, AD, I’m home. Where are ya?” He entered the bedroom and saw AD lying on the bed.

“The first pain was about two hours ago,” AD gasped, breathing heavily, “It comes and goes.”

Red, still oily, dirty and sweaty, leaned against the door jam, looked over at his wife of two years and said, “Okay, well just take it easy, lay there and rest. I’m here, so let me know when and I’ll fetch the doctor.”

AD felt another pain coming on. “Six or seven minutes apart,” she gasped. “Bring me a wet wash rag, Naamon.” She clasped her hands underneath her swollen belly, looked up at Red and added, “We’re gonna…hiave…a…very big baby I think.”

The doctor came out of the bedroom and closed the door behind him. He walked to the front door of the little shotgun house, opened the screen door and said, “It’s been a pretty good night, hasn’t it. I think it’s gonna be a nice day, Mr. Frizzell. You have a fine, big baby boy. Your wife and baby are both doing great, but she’s gonna need plenty of rest.”

Red grinned, walked over and gave the doctor a firm handshake, “Thanks, Doc, for coming all the way out here. I don’t have much money, but I want to do what’s right.”

The doctor walked over to the far side of the porch and took out a pen and pad from his pocket. He said, “We’ll get to that in a minute. First, let me get some information for the birth certificate. Okay, let’s see. Name of child?”

Red grinned at the doctor. “William Orville Frizzell after me and my dad.”

After a few more questions, the doctor wrote:

Full Name of Child: William Orville Frizzell

Place of Birth: Corsicana, Texas

(Because Tuckertown was only an oil camp and not a real town)

County: Navarro

Date of Birth: March 31, 1928

Father of Child: Naamon Orville Frizzell

Color or Race: White

Father’s Age at Time of Birth: 19

Father’s Birthplace: Chidester, Arkansas

Occupation: Driller

Business: Oil Field Worker

Mother of Child: AD Cox

Color or Race: White

Mother’s Age at Time of Birth: 19

Mother’s Birthplace: Sulphur Springs, Texas

Occupation: Housewife

Red and the doctor agreed on a payment. Red thanked the doctor, and then walked to the bedroom to see little William. However, AD and Red never called their son William. He was always called Sonny by his parents, brothers and sisters, but he was to be known later by millions of country music fans as “Lefty Frizzell,” and …

The Legend Was Born.

Our father, Naamon Orville Frizzell, was born on November 11, 1908, in Chidester, Arkansas. He started working with his dad in the lumber camps by the time he was ten. Hard working “Red,” as everyone called him, took up oil field work at the age of thirteen, starting out as a roust-a-bout doing a man’s work, earning a man’s wage, and trying to complete the eighth grade at the same time. He would work after school and during the summer, and then bring all his money home to his parents. At the age of nineteen, Red worked the big rigs as a “Cat Head Man.” A Cat Head Man ran the big engine that powered the drill. Red was considered one of the best. All the other roughnecks looked up to the young man with the red hair. Daddy quit school and started following the oil field work, traveling from one rough boomtown to the next. Among the booming oil towns in southeast Texas was a place called Tuckertown, just outside of Corsicana and about an hour south of Dallas. That is where this story begins.

Our mother’s maiden name was AD Cox. She was born one of ten children on January 14, 1909, in Sulphur Springs, Texas. Momma wasn’t given a full name. She was named with initials like her mother, and some of her sisters and brothers.

Although a few of the older kids had some schooling, Momma was not as fortunate. She could neither read nor write; however, she could sign her own name. Our mother had something a lot of people don’t have, and that is common sense and a tremendous personality. There wasn’t one of her brothers or sisters who didn’t have a great sense of humor. All of them could keep you laughing, especially Momma. She had the uncanny ability to find the funny side to almost any situation. Even though her life was filled with hardship, tragedy and pain, somehow she would find the strength to smile and keep on going. Momma never lost that ability. She never lost the child within herself. Finding humor within tragedy was her strength and her survival.

Not much is known about Momma’s father, John Cox. She said that he had some mental problems and that sometimes he was mean to them. It all ended out in the barn one day when he took his strait razor and cut his throat from ear to ear. Momma, who was around seven years old, was playing on the front porch with her older sister, OV, when she saw her daddy trying to walk back up the hill to the house. She could see him stumbling and, when he got closer, she saw the blood pouring down the front of his shirt from the slit in his neck. Both girls started screaming.

Their mother, RT, came running out of the house and grabbed him before he fell to the ground. She helped him into the house, threw everything from the kitchen table, and laid her husband down. He was barely alive. While she cleaned the wound, she sent her oldest son, Johnnie, to fetch the doctor. John had severed his windpipe. RT cleaned out a piece of sugar cane and, cutting it to size, placed one end into his throat. Then, very calmly and patiently she kept her husband alive until the doctor arrived. He died a short time later, while Momma and OV looked on from a distance.

Our grandma had to find a way to support her kids after granddaddy’s death. She was a very stern and strict lady, no stranger to hard work and adversity. Momma would say of her mother, “She never had over two dresses at any given time in her life and they were always black. She had no sense of humor at all, which is strange because all of us kids do.”

Momma and her brothers and sisters loved to sing and dance, but her mother wouldn’t allow the girls to go to any parties unless they were dressed right. Dresses had to button around the neck and cover down to the girls’ ankles.

Grandma was known as a mid-wife around the county; people would call on her to deliver babies and help expectant mothers. She was also known as a medium and a healer. She had the ability to stop blood. If someone cut themselves or was hurt in an accident and the bleeding wouldn’t stop, they’d send for RT Cox. Because Momma and some of the other kids were small, they would go with their mother and watch her perform her miracles.

Momma described one such scene: “One day this man came to our house and asked Momma to come over and help with his wife. Her time of the month had come and gone, but she wouldn’t stop bleeding. Momma and we four kids went to the man’s house. Momma put her hands on the lady’s belly and closed her eyes. I could see Momma was saying something, but it wasn’t loud enough for anyone to hear. Within minutes the bleeding stopped.”

Later on before her death, Grandma passed the gift on to Momma who used this amazing healing power many times in her own life.

Our mother and baby Sonny followed the oil field work all over Texas and parts of Arkansas with Daddy. Momma’s mother, RT, lived in Soper, Oklahoma, right outside of Hugo. Sonny was almost a year old and RT had not seen her grandson. Momma was excited about seeing her mother and couldn’t wait to show off her big boy. Grandma RT was sitting on her front porch when they drove up, and even though she didn’t get up from her chair she did give them a little grin. She still didn’t like our father, Naamon, and wouldn’t pretend she did. Momma got out of the car carrying Sonny. She walked over and offered to let Grandma RT hold the baby. Grandma took Sonny from Momma’s hands.

“Mighty big boy you got here, AD, good looking too. How much does he weigh?”

“When he was born he weighed nine pounds and six ounces,” Momma told her. “Now he is probably closer to twenty-five pounds or better.”

Grandma RT had taken the blanket off Sonny so she could get a better look. “You have a precious little guy here.” She ran her hand along the right side of Sonny’s face and down onto his neck. “AD, this is quite a birthmark here. Look!” She traced the birthmark with her fingers up onto Sonny’s chubby little cheek, back to his ear, down to his chin and onto his neck. The color was a light pinkish brown and had a rough textured feel to it. She asked Momma, “When you were pregnant did something happen to you, anything out of the ordinary, other than being married to him?” She glanced over at Daddy then turned her attention back to the baby.

Daddy stepped up on the porch without saying a word. He knew Grandma RT would never pay him any attention anyway. She never said “hi” or “bye” to him. He didn’t exist as far as she was concerned. When Momma and Daddy married, they did so without her mother’s knowledge. Consequently, Grandma RT never liked that red-haired man.

Our mother answered, “Momma, something did happen one day when I was around seven months pregnant. I think it was last January, and it was real cold. Naamon and some guys he worked with were down in the barn. I hollered to Naamon to bring some firewood in, but he couldn’t hear me so I left the house and was walking down to where they were. I had on my coat and was pulling my wool cap down over my ears. When I came around the corner of the barn, all of a sudden I saw Naamon cut the throat of a pig. A loud and chilling scream came from that pig. It startled me and scared me so bad I couldn’t move. When I finally realized what was going on, I remember my right hand was on my cheek but moved down around my throat.”

Grandma RT looked up at her. “You’ve marked this child. This boy’s birthmark is light now, but as he gets older it will darken. When he gets to be a man it will lighten up again, but he will always have it, it’ll never go away.” She looked over at Daddy. “Might of known you were the cause of it.”

Throughout Momma’s life she believed that she was the cause of Sonny’s birthmark, and no one could convince her differently.

Daddy moved our family back to El Dorado, Arkansas, when Sonny was about a year and a half old. El Dorado had been a rough lumber town, but with the discovery of oil people from everywhere were moving there. It had gone from a town of about eight or nine thousand to well over twenty thousand.

William Monroe Frizzell, like his son, Naamon, was a hard worker and hard drinker. He was a carpenter by trade but, now and then, he worked alongside his son and his brother, Troy, falling timber in the woods.

One evening before dark Daddy and his father were drinking with some other men down by the railroad tracks. Bets were being made to see who was the strongest. The bet was over who could lift one of the old rusty tr...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Titlepage
• Copyright
• Contents
• Acknowledgments
• Foreword by Merle Haggard
• Family Chart
• Introduction
• Prologue
• Chapter One: Mom and Dad’s Waltz
• Chapter Two: I’m Gonna Sing Like Jimmie
• Chapter Three: Lefty
• Chapter Four: Please Be Mine, Dear Blue Eyes
• Chapter Five: Travelin’ Blues
• Chapter Six: I Love You a Thousand Ways
• Chapter Seven: Time Changes Things
• Chapter Eight: If You’ve Got the Money, I’ve Got the Time
• Chapter Nine: Hank and Lefty
• Chapter Ten: Always Late
• Chapter Eleven: Lefty Meets Merle
• Chapter Twelve: California Blues
• Chapter Thirteen: The Long Black Veil
• Chapter Fourteen: Saginaw, Michigan
• Chapter Fifteen: That’s the Way Love Goes
• Chapter Sixteen: The Last Session
• Chapter Seventeen: Forever and Always
• Epilogue
• Song Credits
• Discography
• Index