Webb Pierce – Caught In The Webb: A Tribute To The Legendary Webb Pierce

Webb Pierce should have been in the Country Music Hall of Fame a decade before he died of pancreatic cancer in 1991. He didn’t get there until 2001.

Shortly after he died, I began researching a story on his life. I planned to speak with some of his Nashville contemporaries: musicians, producers and performers who had reliable memories and loved to reminisce. Funny thing. As soon as they heard Pierce’s name, they all had other commitments. In the end, only his friend Merle Kilgore (singer, songwriter and more recently Hank Williams Jr.’s manager) would talk, and he sang Pierce’s praises.

There’s certainly much to praise. Pierce was one of the great voices of his era, with a singular, distinctive power and bare-wires emotionalism unmatched by any singer then or now. The essence of George Jones’ genius is knowing when to bear down on a word or a phrase to extract every drop of emotion and when to back off. Pierce kept his emotional boilers going full-tilt from start to finish. The result? More heart in his heart songs, more anguish in his weepers, and more jaunt in his jauntiness than any artist of that time.

His 1953 hit “There Stands The Glass” stirred controversy in a day many radio stations felt songs touting booze as therapy undermined family values. With considerable care, he crafted “Slowly” to introduce Bud Isaacs’ pedal steel, ending the reign of lap steel in Nashville and forever altering the music’s instrumental signature. Sticking by his hard country guns during the Elvis onslaught, he wasn’t above recording “Teenage Boogie” or covering “Bye Bye Love” to see how they’d play (country Top Ten in both cases). His sequined Nudie suits, his Pontiac Bonneville with silver-dollar-studded, tooled leather interior, and the famous guitar-shaped swimming pool became quintessential Nashville iconography.

So, why the extended snub? Behind the sequins, in a day when most singers equated “investing” with buying a new Caddy every year, lived another Webb Pierce. This one was a shrewd, successful businessman who learned fiscal fundamentals during six years working at Shreveport’s Sears. When it came to the bottom line, he played hardball, pissing off Music Row when it was still called 16th Avenue South.

Within a year of his 1952 arrival in Nashville to join the Grand Ole Opry, the Louisiana Hayride alumnus joined with Opry manager Jim Denny to found Cedarwood, which became a major Nashville song publisher. Pierce later left the Opry, convinced he no longer needed it. He routinely cut himself in as co-writer when he recorded songs penned by others, which some struggling writers (such as Kilgore) appreciated and others (Mel Tillis) eventually came to resent. Wealthy enough that he didn’t have to work in later years, he opened his home (and guitar-shaped pool) to tour buses. After losing a court battle with neighbors (including Ray Stevens) over the buses, he ruffled feathers in 1978 by building an identical pool for tourists — in the heart of Music Row.

In an industry where memories are long and controversy is as popular as an approaching twister, politics and glad-handing have long been prerequisites for living artists seeking Hall of Fame induction. They who fail to genuflect, often wait. And wait. That’s why the affable Willie Nelson made it in 1993 and fellow Outlaw Waylon Jennings waited until 2001. Indeed, Willie was the only superstar to honor Pierce late in his life: Their 1982 duet album In the Jailhouse Now proved Pierce’s last musical hurrah.