Another obvious after-effect of the 1939-40 tent show tour is that it got Colonel Parker thinking. He saw the vague outlines of upside commercial potential in finding some uniquely attractive entertainer who might work that fuzzy crossover space between country and gospel-influenced southern pop. If you could take a guy like that into the movies, as Austin had started to do, that might be a very big deal.
He soon found a first nominee for the role in Nashville — a virtual unknown named Eddy Arnold. “It was Gene that had suggested to Parker, ‘Why don’t you go up there to Nashville?'” Arnold recalls. “Well, I was a young kid at that time, and Parker came up here and walked up and extended his hand.”
The Colonel’s previous work with Austin — and the suggestion that the young “Tennessee Ploughboy” could travel in such circles — was a key part of his pitch. “I loved Gene Austin,” Arnold says. “He had a style — which wasn’t melodic in the way a Caruso was, but in a different way. And he was a good guy, too, which I found out later, as I got to know him. He didn’t read music, you know; played by ear. But what a showman he was; when he sat down at the piano, he’d have the audience in the palm of his hand.”
The troubled years of World War II and its readjustment aftermath were great for Austin. He was married briefly to wife number three (a young singer named Doris Sherrell), tried running a night club, and did a lot of less-heralded gigs. But the era was the first of several really good times for Eddy Arnold, as he scored hits such as “Bouquet Of Roses” and “I’ll Hold You In My Heart”.
Arnold would, of course, reach monster sales proportions in the 1960s by infusing country music sounds with a strong dose of southern pop style, blurring the distinction. But he was already a crooner, influenced specifically by Austin, Autry and Crosby, when he had his first smash hits of the ’40s. And his essential singing style, he readily agrees, was already in place then — if with arrangements that were more obviously traditional country.
His requirements of the musicians he played with had elements formed in understanding of individualized, swinging southern pop music like Austin’s — just outside the country mainstream, musicians with the knack of a Red Wooten. “When I use a musician,” Arnold acknowledges, “it’s not just a guy who can play three chords on a guitar. I’m a stickler for tempo — tempo for me, that tells me where I can phrase, and what I can phrase.”
By the ’60s, Arnold had massive country hits on the scale Parker had dreamed of, with songs such as the crooner ballad “Any Time” (first associated with protean ’20s singer Emmett Miller). RCA Victor could bend the song just a little, at Arnold’s suggestion, to get a pop hit with Eddie Fisher. Crossing over had become a new marketing possibility as early as 1950, when those Hank Williams songs could cross over toward pop without trouble. The American music world was now enthralled with southern pop.
And it was time for a Gene Austin comeback.
The ’50s, Suburban Pop and Rockabilly
The mixing of sun belt farm boys and the general population through the war years, and the exposure of northern boys to country sounds on southern military bases, set up a situation predisposed for southern pop success. Audiences who loved country music went for this stuff, as on the Austin tent show tour — but then, so did many, many others.
The jive of Phil “That’s What I Like About The South” Harris was finding great popularity on radio. Hits by Les Paul & Mary Ford furthered the hot guitar and southern rhythm song sound, and Jimmy Wakely (an often Austin-like former sidekick of Autry) had hit duets with Margaret Whiting that married languid cowboy crooning and pop. Austin himself did some sides with Les Paul in the late ’40s.
By 1950, a pop song such as “Dear Hearts And Gentle People” — built on those “in-between gospely” rhythms and tunes, and sentimentalizing home and hearth as directly as “My Blue Heaven” had — could be working for golf sweater country artists such as Red Foley, Ernie Ford and Jim Reeves, but also for Bing Crosby and new, clearly southern-identified pop stars Dinah Shore and Kay Starr.
The postwar yearning for security in new suburban homes; the strong emphasis on the tidy nuclear family (and some edgy mid-’50s freedom-seeking reactions to that Ozzie & Harriet life which were even sharper than Mae West’s had been); the broad belief in an inevitably prosperous future; wondrous Space Age innovations — all made this period comparable to Austin’s Roaring Twenties.
There was an announcement in Variety, around Christmas 1956, of a major Hollywood musical featuring Austin’s life and music to be written by swamp humor “Pogo” cartoonist Walt Kelly. That didn’t happen, but The Gene Austin Story did, airing on prime-time network television. Austin appeared at the end to introduce a new song, “Too Late”, which came out on a new LP — marking his return to what was now RCA Victor Records. (Tommy Overstreet recalls celebrating in New York after the broadcast, with Austin and Eddy Arnold trading hilarious, and scabrous, show business stories that had him and “Green Door” country singer Jim Lowe in stitches.)
Major stories in the Saturday Evening Post and The New York Times marked Austin’s comeback; his music was again permeating the air. Gene appeared several times on “The Ed Sullivan Show”, performing his hits; covers were making a lot of them generally familiar again.
There was Fats Domino’s new charting version of “My Blue Heaven”; Austin found the beat on that one too regular for his liking. Pat Boone did “Love Letters In The Sand”; it was suggested for him by bluegrass star and A&R man Mac Wiseman, who’d covered it previously. “Tonight You Belong To Me” was a hit for school-age sister duo Patience & Prudence; Gene Vincent recorded “Wedding Bells Are Breaking Up That Old Gang Of Mine”; the rocking Collins Kids revived “Lonesome Road”; and Ricky Nelson did “Cindy”.
Boone might seem a more obvious place to find Austin’s influence than all of those rockabillies. But Austin had, after all, also been that high-energy Charleston-era rhythm singer, and still could be. He proved quite accepting to that new genre-fusing sound. He spent seven years on the road with the young son of his first cousin, Tommy Overstreet, who, in keeping with Austin’s penchant for snappy new names, he dubbed “Tommy Dean from Abilene.”
Overstreet, who is usually referred to as Gene’s nephew, first recorded in Clovis, New Mexico, and knew Buddy Holly, Buddy Knox, the Fireballs and other rising southwestern rock acts. Overstreet recalls vividly that Austin, by then in his late 50s, would announce slyly, after charming the audience with his own hits: “Now, ladies and gentlemen; you know I have a nephew who’s come along with me, from Abilene, Texas. So many of these young people are shaking their legs and doing that stuff — but not my nephew. He’s a good kid. Would you please welcome — Tommy Dean from Abilene!”
“And I’d come out,” Overstreet continues, “and before I’d sing a thing he’d say, ‘I’ve told these fine people about you, and how sweet and kind you are, and nice, and how you don’t believe in that rock ‘n’ roll. Why don’t you sing us a song and show them.’ And I’d go ‘Hey Baby!’ — and slam into Roy Orbison’s ‘Ooby Dooby’ like mad, and he’d shrug — and join on the piano!”
