DAVE'S DIARY - 7 JANUARY 2007 - DEL REEVES OBITUARY
DEL REEVES RIP AT 73
BORN
FRANKLIN DELANO REEVES - JULY 14, 1933, SPARTA, NORTH CAROLINA
DIED CENTERVILLE, TENNESSEE - JANUARY 1, 2007
GIRL ON THE BILLBOARD FLASHES OUT
"Who is the girl wearing nothing but a smile/ and a towel in the picture on the billboard in the field near the big old highway/ rolling down the highway in my Jimmy hauling freight/ from Chicago to St Louis Lord I see her every day/ a double clutching weasel like me can hardly ever get a girl to look at him that way/ like the girl wearing nothing but a smile/ and a towel in the picture on the billboard in the field near the big old highway." - Girl On The Billboard - Walter Haynes-Hank Mills.
 |
Singing
actor Del Reeves gained recent fame as the artist who discovered Billy
Ray Cyrus and Lee Greenwood. But the trucking troubadour also inspired a generation of country rockers who covered his 1968 hit Girl On The Billboard and 1965 truckers anthem Looking At The World Through A Windshield. They included artists diverse as Commander Cody & The Lost Planet Airmen, Bill Kirchen, Son Volt and Australian band Moose Malone. Although Walter Haynes and Hank Mills wrote Girl On The Billboard and answer song I'm The Girl On The Billboard the song was long associated with Reeves and the late Dave Dudley. |
Girl on
the Billboard sold a million copies and earned him the nickname of
the Doodle-Oo-Doo-Doo Kid for the nonsense syllables that he sang with
the song's guitar intro.
It was a similar scenario with Looking At The World Through A Windshield.
That song was written by award winning tunesmith Jerry Chesnut and Mike
Hoyer and cut by Reeves and Cody and later revived by Martina McBride.
But it was Reeves who gave Greenwood his break by hiring him to play in
his band and provided Nashville contacts for Cyrus when he chased his
first record contract.
The arrangement ended up in court with Reeves suing for damages.
The matter was settled out of court for an undisclosed sum.
Reeves became a regular on the Opry in 1966, and performed for up to one
million people a year on the long-running country show.
He was celebrating his 40th year on the Grand Ol Opry when he died of
emphysema at 73 on New Years Day, 2007.
BURT REYNOLDS
The singer
also appeared in eight movies including Sam Whiskey - the acclaimed
1969 film starring Burt Reynolds, Angie Dickinson and Ossie Davis.
Other movies included Second Fiddle to a Steel Guitar, Forty-Acre Feud,
Las Vegas Hillbillies, Gold Guitar and Cotton Pickin' Chickenpickers.
He was also renowned for syndicated TV series, The Del Reeves Country
Carnival that ran for four years in the early seventies.
Reeves made his first big splash in 1965 with the whimsical Girl on
the Billboard - his only #1 hit.
He followed it with The Belles of Southern Bell, Women Do Funny Things
to Me, A Dime At A Time, Good Time Charlie's that also provided him
the name of his band.
Others included Be Glad, Getting' Any Feed For Your Chickens and
The Philadelphia Fillies that reached #9 in 1971.
Reeves never had another Top 20 record, but charted sporadically into
the 1980s on the Koala label.
Lesser known was Bertha The Bull Hauler that didn't enjoy success
of his last charted single in 1986 - The Second Time Around on
Playback Records.
Reeves made his last Grand Ole Opry appearance in August 2002.
Del was survived by his wife, Ellen, and daughters Anne, Kari and Bethany.
Funeral arrangements are incomplete.
NORTH CAROLINA ROOTS
"Bet it wouldn't take her very long to be gone/ if someone would pull a dirty trick and take her hot pants away/ I slow my Jimmy down to twenty that's how many wrecks I see there every day/ caused by the girl wearing nothing but a smile/ and a towel in the picture on the billboard in the field near the big old highway. - Girl On The Billboard
 |
Reeves,
the youngest of 11 children, learned to play the guitar at an early
age and had his own radio show by the time he was 12. He was named Franklin Delano Reeves for then-presidential candidate Franklin Roosevelt. After a brief period at Appalachia State College in Boone, North Carolina he joined the U.S. Air Force - a move that took him to Travis Air Force Base in California in the early fifties. |
It was in
California that Reeves got his professional start in music, first by appearing
on a local TV show before he signed with Capitol Records in 1954.
The singer doubled as a MC and recorded a series of singles for Capitol
- none of which charted.
Reeves showed promise as a songwriter as he and wife Ellen Schiell collaborated
on many tunes.
They wrote songs for Rose Maddox, Carl Smith, Roy Drusky, Sheb Woolley
and many others.
Reeves, whose collaborators included Stonewall Jackson and Jerry Chesnut,
has 44 original songs listed on the BMI publishing site
HANK COCHRAN
Encouraged
by songwriter Hank Cochran, Reeves moved to Nashville in 1962 and became
a member of the Grand Ole Opry in 1966.
"I listened on the radio on Saturday nights and it was the ultimate,"
he said in 1988. "As a child, I told my daddy I was going to sing
on the Opry one day. He said, 'Yeah, sure you are.' I kept my goal in
mind and in '66 we achieved it."
A talented mimic, he enlivened his shows with physical and vocal impressions
of performers as disparate as Little Jimmy Dickens, Walter Brennan and
Johnny Cash.
Reeves said he turned to impressions and light material early in his career.
"I couldn't really sell a ballad," he said. "It had to
be material on the lighter side. Under this clown's face, there's a serious
guy. But I never got to show it because I got tagged as that clown. I've
been clowning as long as I can remember."
In 1961, Reeves signed to Decca Records.
This union yielded him his first charted single, Be Quiet Mind,
which peaked at #9.
The Del and Ellen Reeves BMI award-winning tune Sing a Little Song
of Heartache, became a #3 hit in 1963 for Maddox.
Reeves then penned his 1963 hit, The Only Girl I Can't Forget.
Following very brief stops at Reprise and Columbia Records, Reeves settled
in at United Artists in 1965 and stayed there for the next 13 years.
DUETS
|
In
the 1970s, he cut a series of duets with Bobby Goldsboro and Penny
DeHaven. He continued to record in the 80s, just not as much and for smaller labels. |
 |
But he teamed
with fellow North Carolina born Australian tourist Jim Lauderdale and
Jeremy Tepper to write Diesel, Diesel, Diesel.
"I first became aware of Del when he had a syndicated television
show that I picked up in South and North Carolina as a kid," said
singer-songwriter Jim Lauderdale.
Jim recorded a duet with Reeves on their song Diesel, Diesel, Diesel.
"I was so impressed by his voice but also impressed by the way he
entertained. He was a real showman."
THE MOVIES
"Sleepy headed painter said the girl wasn't real better get the kwee on my way/ on Route 66 from the billboard to Chicago/ you'll find tiny pieces of my heart scattered every which a way." Girl On The Billboard.
Reeves played
the fisherman in 1969 movie Sam Whiskey after appearing in Forty
Acre Feud (1965), The Gold Guitar and Second Fiddle To A
Steel Guitar in 1966 and Cottonpickin' Chickenpickers in 1967.
His song Dozen Pair Of Boots was in 1976 movie Drive-In,
I Ain't Got Nobody was in Trackdown (1966) and Watching
The Bell Of The Southern Belle and Women Do Funny Things To Me in
The Las Vegas Hillbillies in 1966.
"I want to be remembered as a great showman and a nice guy,"
he told Associated Press in 1988.
"That's all I could hope for."
Reeves attained his dream but faded as a septuagenarian like the girl
on the billboard.
"He was one of the best entertainers that ever came through the Opry,
I think," said Kelso Herston, who signed Reeves to the United Artists
label in the '60s and produced some of his early records, including Girl
on the Billboard.
"He was happy-go-lucky. He had a positive attitude and was a great
person. A great friend."
MARTY STUART
 |
Multi-instrumentalist
singer-songwriter Marty Stuart was equally vivid with his praise
of Reeves. Stuart was a fan of Reeves trucking tunes. |
"There
was a time when truck drivers were a country singer's best ally on the
road," Stuart said.
"They'd come to shows wearing their Million Mile safety pins, and
they were the backbone citizens that helped boost the fan base. There
are still a lot of truck drivers out there. I don't know why the songs
about them stopped."
SELECTIVE DISCOGRAPHY
Year Album
1965 The Girl On the Billboard
1965 Doodle-Oo-Doo-Doo
1966 Sings Jim Reeves
1966 Special Delivery
1966 Santa's Boy
1967 Stuttin' My Stuff
1967 The Little Church In the Dell
1967 Our Way of Life
1968 The Best
1968 Looking At the World
1969 Wonderful World of Country Music
1969 Down At the Goodtime Charlie's
1969 Friends and Neighbors
1970 Big Daddy Del
1970 Country Concert
1970 The Best 2
1971 Del Reeves
1972 Before Goodbye
1973 Trucker's Paradise
1974 Live At the Palomino Club
1974 The Very Best
1975 With Strings and Things
1976 By Request (with Billie Jo Spears)
1976 10th Anniversary
1980 Let's Got to Heaven Tonight
1994 His Greatest Hits
1996 Gospel
1998 I'll Take My Chances