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Webb Pierce certainly wasn’t the first to sing a country song but he was a man of firsts. He was first to have pioneer entertainment fashion designer, Nudie put rhinestones on his suits and first to build a ($35,000) guitar shaped swimming pool at his house. He pioneered the use of pedal steel guitar and was definitely the first and only one to drive around Nashville in a ‘62 Bonneville convertible with Colt Peacemaker door handles and a silver dollar encrusted hand-tooled leather interior. What a car! You can get a close up, personal look at it if you drop by the Country Music Hall of Fame in Nashville -- something I highly recommend, even if you live here.
Born August 8, 1926, he was raised by his mother on a farm outside of West Monroe, Louisiana his father having died when he was three. When he was 12 he got a guitar and started picking and singing. By the time he was 15 he had his own radio show on the local station, KMLB.
He married Betty Jane Lewis in 1942 and after a three year stint in the Army, they settled down in Shreveport where Webb took a job at Sears Roebuck selling shoes. He, of course, continued his picking and singing and the couple landed a show on KTBS. It was called "Webb Pierce with Betty Jane, the Singing Sweetheart." He also played gigs around the area and was getting pretty well known. He moved over to KWKH in 1949 and became a member of the then new Louisiana Hayride.
In 1950, Webb went solo in more ways than one. He and Betty were divorced but his popularity was on the rise and he was beginning to be noticed. He signed with Decca in ‘51 and his first release, "Wondering," went to number one for four weeks and earned him the nickname, "The Wondering Boy." He wasn’t one to take it slow. 1952 saw him get married again (this time to Audrey Grisham), leave his job at Sears, leave Shreveport and the Hayride and head for Nashville and join the Grand Ole Opry.
He was enjoying a busy and successful public appearance career as well as becoming a consistent front runner in the charts. Had it not been for his contemporary, Hank Williams, it was considered by many that he would have held the number one spot in country music stardom hands down. He hit early in 1952 with "Wondering" and then again that year with "Back Street Affair," a cheating song that rather pushed the envelope of the day. In ‘53, he put out "It’s Been So Long" and "I’m Walking The Dog." When he wanted to record "There Stands The Glass" he was warned that, because some might think the song advocated drinking as a way to solve problems, it would be the ruin of his career. He remembered similar warnings about "Back Street Affair" but it had shot to number one. "There Stands The Glass" did the same thing and became a honky tonk classic. Late that year, Webb, his band, a recording crew and producer, Owen Bradley showed up one night at the old Castle Studio, a converted dining room in the Tulane Hotel. They watched as Webb’s steel player, Bud Isaacs, unpacked and assembled a two-necked Bigsby steel guitar with a strange bunch of rods and foot pedals attached to it. No one had ever seen such a thing, much less heard the haunting, crying sound of a pedal steel. They had been using steel guitar in country music for several years by that time but the pedal steel was something brand new. If you can get you hands on a copy of "Slowly," just listen as Bud Isaacs bends those opening notes. You’ll be hearing what Owen Bradley heard that night -- history.
According to the Bear Family, the collectors and distributors of rare and out of print recordings from all over the world, "No one sold more records in the ‘50’s (than Webb Pierce)." But, although he held on to his record deal well into the ‘70’s, he had peaked in the mid ‘50’s.
Loyalty among country music fans has always been remarkably strong but for the dyed-in-the-wool country fan of the 60’s, the dye went a lot deeper than it does in the fickle 90’s. It was this loyalty which allowed Webb to maintain a very successful touring career and still get a lot of airplay on the more traditional country radio stations long after the labels and producers effectively turned a deaf ear to his high-pitched bar room wail in favor of the slicker, softer, more palatable kind of music then being introduced by Owen Bradley and Chet Atkins. The music that would come to be known as the "Nashville Sound."
Yes, the honky tonk era is now long past but Webb Pierce’s music lives on as does the indelible mark he made on Nashville, country music in general and on every picker and singer who has come after him. The honky tonk songs keep popping up among the works of today’s writers. And every now and then someone digs back into the archives and drags out an old Webb tune and takes it into a studio and puts a new twist or two on it.
Back in the 80’s, Randy Travis recorded a song called "There’ll Always Be A Honky Tonk Somewhere." Yes there will. And somewhere there’ll always be a Webb Pierce to sing those honky tonk songs.
Cal Adams