Country western pioneer Cindy Walker dies at 87

Without question, she was the greatest female songwriter in the history of country western music.

When Cindy Walker died last week at the age of 87, she ended a legacy which began with a Bing Crosby hit in 1941, and ended with a top-selling Willie Nelson album this past month.

Considered the dean of Texas songwriters, male or female, Walker had Top Ten hits in every decade from the 1940s through the 1980s. And according to Broadcast Music, Inc. stats, her songs have been played over the radio more than three million times.

Walker's career began in 1941 when her family decided to take a road trip from Texas to Los Angeles. Her parents asked if she wanted to come along. "Does a sinner want to go to heaven?" she asked.

She admitted later that her mother worried because her suitcase was packed so full - of songs, not clothing.

Once they arrived in Hollywood, Walker spotted the offices of then mega-star Bing Crosby and his manager brother, Larry. She made her parents stop the car and she ran in, told her story to a sympathetic receptionist, went back to the car to get her much-protesting piano-playing mother, and did an audition for the Crosby brothers right then and there.

The result was a hit for Bing Crosby, "Lone Star Trail," and a Decca recording contract for herself.

Graced with glamorous looks and an appealing voice, Walker not only made hit recordings, but was one of the first country music video artists. She became a star of the "soundies," music videos played in movie houses before the main feature - a precursor to MTV.

During those years, Walker also began one of the great songwriter/performer collaborations in country music, teaming up with Western swing pioneer Bob Wills and writing more than fifty songs for Wills' Texas Playboys.

After five years of performing, Walker decided to become a full-time songwriter, and moved back to Texas, where she spent the next several decades pounding out lyrics on her pink Remington typewriter, turning out songs that made other people famous.

She always gave her pianist mother Oree (who died in 1991) credit for not only encouraging her, but helping her make arrangements of her songs before she marketed them.

A list of some of those songs (and there were more than 500 of them) ranges from the poignant "Not That I Care" to the rowdy honky-tonk "Bubbles in My Beer," from classics like "Cherokee Maiden" and "Dusty Skies" (which she wrote at the age of 12) to the sublime, heartrending "You Don't Know Me," her biggest hit, originally sung by Eddy Arnold and made into hit recordings since by the likes of Ray Charles, Mickey Gilley, k.d. lang, and Willie Nelson.

Other artists who recorded her music include Elvis Presley, Ricky Skaggs, Gene Autry, Glen Campbell, Hank Snow, Rose Maddox and Roy Orbison, who sang one of her biggest hits, "Dream Baby."

During the late 1950s, Walker befriended and mentored a young fan and fellow Texan who was just trying his luck in the songwriting field himself. His name was Willie Nelson.

Nelson was able to repay Walker's generosity some 50 years later when he recorded "You Don't Know Me: The Songs of Cindy Walker" earlier this month. The tribute album was released just nine days before she died, but Walker got to hear the album before its release and by all accounts loved it.

Tributes to Walker began back when she became the first female inductee into the Nashville Songwriters Hall of Fame in 1970. Induction into the Country Music Hall of Fame followed in 1997.

While Walker shunned the limelight, she did attend a tribute that was put on for her in Austin two years ago. The 18 musicians onstage included legendary fiddler Johnny Gimble, a veteran member of Bob Wills and His Texas Playboys (and the session fiddler for Willie Nelson's tribute album) and Ray Benson, leader of the preeminent Western music band Asleep at the Wheel.

Near the end of the evening, the 85-year-old Walker joined the musicians onstage, then spent the rest of the evening dancing to her own songs.

If Walker was aware of just how much a pioneer she was for women in the music business, by all accounts she never showed it. Like other great artists, she channeled her creative energy exclusively into her writing, and was content to let her songs speak for themselves. And when they speak, it's impossible not to drop everything else and listen.

Because, no matter what she was trying to say, each one of her songs had a wistful, conversational quality that gave them an emotional immediacy. A Cindy Walker song will stop you in your tracks - and start you remembering.