[ad_1]
Songwriter Dallas Frazier, with a huge emotional range who wrote #1 country hits for Charley Pride, Tanya Tucker, and the Oak Ridge Boys, died Friday at a rehab facility in Gallatin, Tenn., near Nashville. He was 82 years old.
His death was confirmed by his daughter, Melody Morris, who said she had suffered a stroke twice since August.
Despite achieving his most enduring success in country music, Mr. Frazier has also written pop and R&B hits for artists such as the country-soul singer. Charlie Rich and Louisiana bluesman Slim Harpo. Both released versions of Mr. Frazier’s “Mohair Sam,” a swamp-pop homage to the larger-than-life hipster that became one of Elvis Presley’s favorite songs in Mr. Rich’s 1965 Top 40 pop version.
Mr. Frazier’s big breakthrough came five years ago. “Street Oop,” A novelty song that reached #1 on the pop chart (#3 on the R&B chart) for the Hollywood Argyles in 1960. Inspired by the VT Hamlin comic of the same name, the song has since been recorded several times. Versions of the Beach Boys and satirical British art rockers Bonzo Dog Doo-Dah Group.
David Bowie also added the line “Look, see those cavemen go” from “Alley Oop” in his 1973 single “Life on Mars?”.
In an interview with Perfect Sound Forever magazine in 2008, Mr. Frazier said, alluding to his musical appetite, “I had rural roots, but there was something else that was with me.” “I’m not stuck in this area of music. Other things were happening in my soul as well.”
Still, Mr. Frazier’s bread and butter was country music, in which his songs nurtured a range of themes and emotions, including humor, heartache, and his difficult childhood during the Great Depression.
Mr. Frazier wrote “There Goes My Everything” for Grand Ole Opry star Jack Greene, “Beneath Still Waters” for Emmylou Harris, and “Elvira” with the atavistic “oom poppa, oom poppa” chorus for the Oak Ridge Boys. All three were career-defining records, and each topped the country chart. (“I Have Everything” also reached the pop Top 20 for British singer Engelbert Humperdinck in 1967.)
Inducted into the Country Music Hall of Fame in 2012, Connie Smith has recorded more than five dozen songs written by Mr. Frazier.
Dallas June Frazier was born on October 27, 1939, in Spiro, Okla. His parents, William Floyd Frazier and Eva Marie Laughlin Frazier, were traveling workers who moved the family to Bakersfield, California to work in the cotton fields there. Young Dallas was only 2½ years old at the time.
Model A loaded and docked in California
Chance change was only four days away
But for my father the only change I remember seeing
It was when her black hair turned silver gray
So the second half of the last continent goes “California Cotton Fields” An autobiographical original written by Mr. Frazier and Earl Montgomery, which became Merle Haggard’s signature song, whose childhood abstinence rivaled that of Mr. Frazier.
“We were part of the ‘Grapes of Wrath’,” Mr. Frazier said in 2008, referring to John Steinbeck’s epic novel, the Oklahoma Dust Bowl. “We were Okies who drove to California with mattresses on top of their Model A Fords. Mine were poor.”
The Fraziers lived in tents and wagons in California labor camps, suffering not only from the humiliation of poverty but also from the prejudices of native westerners. Dallas started cotton picking at the age of 6.
His father introduced him to country music and played the latest hits from Hank Williams and Lefty Frizzell on his local restaurant jukebox. Dallas Frazier commemorates what happened. “Hank and Lefty Raised the Spirit of My Country” A top 40 country song for Stoney Edwards of Oklahoman in 1973.
Mr. Frazier began writing and singing songs as a teenager and at the age of 12 received an invitation to tour with the country star. Ferlin Husky After winning the West Coast talent show. At the age of 14, she signed a contract as a recording artist with Mr. Husky’s company, Capitol Records. He was a regular on Cliffie Stone’s “Hometown Jamboree,” a popular country music television show broadcast from Los Angeles, from the mid to late ’50s.
In 1963, after her singing career began to take shape, Mr. Frazier moved to Nashville with his wife, Sharon, to work for country song publishers. He continued to record occasionally, immersed in New Orleans-style R&B before eventually dedicating himself to songwriting full-time.
In 1976, shortly after he took office Nashville Songwriters Hall of FameMr. Frazier abruptly retired from music to become the pastor of a church outside of Nashville. Thirty years later he returned to writing and performing and emerged as an elderly statesman of the music he helped shape.
Besides Ms. Morris, Mr. Frazier is survived by his wife of 63 years, Sharon Carpani Frazier; two other daughters, Robin Proetta and Alison Thompson; four grandchildren; a grandchild; and a sister, Judy Shults.
Despite his success as a songwriter in country music, Mr. Frazier said Nashville’s unwritten rules sometimes get in the way, especially when it comes to embracing broader musical influences like rock and R&B.
“Nobody said, ‘Dallas, you can’t do this,'” he told Perfect Sound Forever, “but it was common knowledge that you did certain things. I definitely should have had more product in the rock ‘n’ roll space. In Los Angeles or New York. If I lived, I would be, but less country, you see.”
[ad_2]
Source link