CINDY WALKER (1918-2006)

Cindy Cashdollar and Cindy Walker

Texas songwriter Cindy Walker, honored by Texas Folklife with the 2004 “Ultimate Cindy Walker Tribute,” died March 23 in Mexia, Texas. She was 87. One of country music’s most prolific and beloved songwriters, Walker’s songs have been recorded by everyone from Bing Crosby, Gene Autry and Elvis Presley to Roy Orbison, Bette Midler, Emmylou Harris, Van Morrison, Ray Charles and Patti Page. She wrote more than 50 songs for Bob Wills, and just two
weeks before her death, Willie Nelson released a tribute album: “You Don’t Know Me: The Songs of Cindy Walker.” Among more than 500 songs Walker composed were the titles “Dream Baby (How Long Must I Dream),” “Silver Spurs,” “Distant Drums,” “Bubbles in My Beer,” “You’re from Texas” and “Cherokee Maiden.” She had Top 10 hits during each decade from the 1940s through the ‘80s, and had been called “the greatest living songwriter in country music” by many of her fans and peers.

“I’ve never written a song without the title,” Walker once said. “… If you can get a good title, you’ve got something. … (The best tunes) are songs with a face. You recognize them. You know them. It’s like a person.”

Walker was inducted into the Country Music Hall of Fame in Nashville in 1997. She was also an inaugural inductee into the Texas Country Music Hall of Fame in 1998 and was the first woman inducted into the Nashville Songwriters Hall of Fame in 1970. When she was honored by Texas Folklife at Austin’s Paramount Theatre on Feb. 22, 2004, several famed Texas artists sang her songs, causing her to dance in the aisles. Casey Monahan of the Texas Music Office told the Austin American-Statesman Walker wrote songs right up until she died, adding, “Her last song was always her favorite.”