Texas music fans, Mexia boosters work to preserve famed songwriter Cindy Walker’s home

If anybody may write the track, although, the late Texas songwriter Cindy Walker may. It could be a private track. The uncared for home was hers, a two-story, pale white home on a quiet avenue in Mexia, her home for 52 years earlier than her demise on the age of 88 in 2006.

It is the place the place Walker wrote a few of her most well-known songs, together with “You Don’t Know Me” recorded by Eddy Arnold and a few 200 others, tapping out lyrics on her pink Remington guide typewriter in her second-floor work research.

And it’s a place that followers hope to preserve for future generations as a tribute to Walker’s legacy and a degree of delight for her adopted hometown.

Efforts to save the home, believed constructed within the Forties, spun out of a documentary-in-progress “You Don’t Know Me: The Story of Cindy Walker,” led by Central Texas broadcaster and Texas music advocate Lindsay Liepman.

Liepman, a night news anchor with Central Texas tv station KCEN, has documented Texas music up to now, together with in a 2020 movie on the Waco hip-hop scene, “Blood, Sweat & Beats: The Waco Hip Hop Story;” the podcast “Invisible Icon: The Tom Wilson Story,” which she co-produced; and her collection on modern Texas performers, “Texas Voices.”

A member of the Mexia High School Class of 1999, Liepman spent her grade faculty and highschool years in the neighborhood the place Walker lived. She has a imprecise reminiscence of Walker, who is named chatty and beneficiant with associates and acquaintances, however guarded and extra non-public in public.

Liepman’s curiosity in Walker received rekindled when telling her story to director Michael Kirk, a “Texas Voices” collaborator, greater than a 12 months in the past. Kirk felt it was a narrative price sharing with a bigger viewers and with Liepman received the ball rolling on a documentary. Filming on “You Don’t Know Me,” with the 2 sharing directing duties, began in September of final 12 months.

As she talked with individuals who knew and labored with Walker, together with her surviving nieces Jerry Lawrence and Molly Dusenberry Walker, the destiny of Walker’s home on South Brooks Street in east Mexia rose to the floor.

“I realized it was crumbling to the ground, and no one was picking up the ball,” Liepman stated.

Her first go to to the home at 114 S. Brooks St. was not encouraging. The as soon as well-tended garden and gardens round the home and a masonry outside grill had been overgrown. A big patch of lacking shingles on the home’s gambrel roof confirmed an apparent want of restore. An eave that had shaded a pair of French doorways opening on a backyard had collapsed and lay on the bottom. A panel of corrugated Fiberglas patching stood instead of the French doorways. The entrance door stood unlocked and open.

A glance inside was equally dispiriting with furnishings and belongings left in the home on the time of Walker’s demise smothered by years of collected trash and objects from the home’s earlier inhabitants.

Walker had left the home the place she and her mom, Oree, had lived for many years to their longtime housekeeper, Willie Mae Adkinson, who lived there till her demise in 2019. The home then handed to her brother, W.D. Adkinson, Liepman stated.

Liepman helped create the Cindy Walker Foundation in April, partially as a mechanism to elevate cash to purchase and restore the home, and is serving as its president. The basis raised $30,000 plus closing prices to purchase the home in October.

With the home title within the basis’s hand, volunteers assembled for a November clean-up date and eliminated greater than a ton of litter, Liepman stated.

While the home cleansing confirmed the extent of the work forward to make the home usable, it additionally uncovered a small silver lining: some 75 unpublished, unrecorded Cindy Walker songs.

That silver lining may flip to gold for the inspiration. Walker left the rights to her revealed songs to the Country Music Hall of Fame, which now attracts the royalties earned by her songs. Rights to the brand new unpublished songs may imply income for the inspiration, Liepman stated.

Revenue shall be sorely wanted for the duty at hand. Liepman estimates it may price about $300,000 to “rehabilitate” the Walker home for public use and entry.

She additionally envisions a fundraising Cindy Walker Day, or days, held on the songwriter’s birthday of July 20, which might function stay music and different actions with proceeds devoted to the mission.

Liepman stated foundations and museums with Walker connections have indicated an early curiosity, together with the National Cowgirl Museum and Hall of Fame in Fort Worth and the Bob Wills Heritage Foundation. Walker wrote dozens of songs for the western swing icon Wills early in her profession, comparable to “Cherokee Maiden,” “Miss Molly,” “You’re from Texas” and “Bubbles in My Beer,” and she or he was inducted within the National Cowgirl Hall of Fame in 1998.

More help could also be forward. Preservation Texas included the Cindy Walker home on 2022’s Most Endangered Places list, placing it within the highlight for individuals fascinated by saving the state’s historical past.

While the nonprofit doesn’t underwrite funding for restoration or preservation initiatives, it does draw consideration from teams and people that do. In its 18 years, fewer than 10% of the 150 properties which were highlighted on the record have been destroyed or in any other case misplaced.

The Cindy Walker Foundation has contacted Ames Heritage Consulting, headed by Waco creator and Baylor Libraries spokesperson Eric Ames, to assist develop a plan and techniques for the following steps.

Ames stated a part of the consulting research will have a look at what tales the inspiration needs to share about Walker, given the artifacts readily available and the anticipated audiences, then how to form a presentation to inform these tales.

Walker moved into the Mexia home along with her mom in 1954, when Walker already was a notable songwriter and singer. The Mart-born daughter of cotton dealer Aubrey Walker and his spouse, Oree, Walker confirmed a love of performing and songwriting in her youth.

She parlayed a household go to to Los Angeles in 1940 into the beginning of her profession, dropping in on Bing Crosby Enterprises in an unannounced go to and strolling away with an settlement from Bing Crosby’s brother, Larry, to purchase and file her track “Lone Star Trail.” Within days, she had a recording contract with Decca Records.

The Walker household go to became an prolonged keep thanks to Walker’s success. A significant step towards that got here when she occurred to pitch her songs to Bob Wills, simply because the Western swing band chief had landed a multi-film deal and wanted songs for these photos. Walker penned 39 songs for the flicks and ended up writing almost 50 songs for Will and his Texas Playboys.

Walker scored a Top 10 hit as a singer with 1944’s “When My Blue Moon Turns to Gold Again” and was featured in a number of musical westerns, however would cut her profession focus to songwriting.

After the demise of her father, Walker and her mom determined to transfer again to Mexia, prompted, Liepman stated, by a plea from her brother, Aubrey, who needed the household nearer to home.

Given that Hollywood and Nashville had been twin poles for nation and pop songwriters, Walker’s resolve to work from Mexia was outstanding in a time earlier than interstate highways, expanded air journey and the web.

In her time in Mexia, she wrote tons of of songs, recorded by a who’s who of pop and nation music from the Forties to Nineteen Seventies: Wills, Arnold, Bing Crosby, Ernest Tubb, Hank Snow, Roy Orbison, Ray Charles, Gene Autry, Elvis Presley, Jim Reeves, Merle Haggard, Glen Campbell, The Byrds, Dean Martin and Ricky Skaggs.

Two artists returned the favor, recording albums of Cindy Walker songs: Former Texas Playboys lead vocalist Leon Rausch, along with his 1998 “Close To You: A 20 Song Salute to the Music of Cindy Walker” and Willie Nelson’s 2006 “You Don’t Know Me: The Songs of Cindy Walker,” launched days earlier than her demise and one of many final albums she heard.

Walker scored the spectacular accomplishment of a Top 10 hit in every decade from the Forties to the Nineteen Eighties. The Nashville Songwriters Hall of Fame named her as a constitution member in 1970, and 27 years later, the Country Music Hall of Fame named her a member.

A current stroll by means of the home opened a window on the laborious work behind her success. She is understood for having began early each morning, waking at 5 a.m., consuming a cup of black espresso, then heading into the small second-floor room across the nook from her mom’s and her bedrooms.

Visitors, together with Wills and Tubb, would have heard the clatter of Walker’s typing in her workplace. Her blue Olympia guide, a backup, was left in the home, whereas her mainstay pink, flowered typewriter is on the Country Music Hall of Fame.

The songwriter usually wrote for particular artists and pitched her songs to them. Occasionally, they might plant the seed for a track. In the case of “You Don’t Know Me” and “Bubbles in My Beer,” the titles had been advised to Walker, who then wrote a track to match.

Walker reportedly by no means left a track unfinished. Her mom at all times was the primary to hear a track, offering a fast learn of lyrics and recommendations on melodies. She recorded demo tapes of every track, first on small 7½ inch reel-to-reel tapes, then cassettes.

Many demos had been present in the home, and Liepman stated they could replicate extra of Walker’s private songwriting. One demo was from Ray Charles, who had recorded his model of a Walker track and despatched it to her for consideration.

The songwriter performed guitar and piano, however neither stay in the home. The Texas Country Music Hall of Fame has one in every of her guitars, whereas the First Presbyterian Church of Mexia, wherein she was energetic, has her two pianos.

Walker and her mom made common pilgrimages to Nashville to pitch songs, hiring a cab to take them from Mexia to Buffalo, the closest depot for passenger trains, then staying for a number of weeks whereas she performed her songs to potential performers.

Walker’s appreciable, star-studded Rolodex file containing her music business contacts was nonetheless in the home as had been packing containers, cabinets and desk drawers holding enterprise contracts, correspondence and ledgers of track rights — the form of information that makes music students and researchers drool. Her stereo and reel-to-reel tape recorder had been there.

And there are objects that can make Mexia residents smile, just like the “I Know Dicky Flatt” bumper sticker plastered on the again of a door. Flatt, a Mexia printer and longtime buddy of Walker, received nationwide consideration within the Nineties when former Sen. Phil Gramm continuously invoked his identify within the “Dicky Flatt test,” a touchstone in figuring out what authorities packages merited funding by taxpayers like Flatt.

Sometimes the surprises had been in objects left after Walker’s demise, comparable to a funeral urn containing Adkinson’s ashes, present in a rest room, Liepman stated.

After 9 months of filming and interviews, Liepman’s documentary is heading into its closing phases, lining up superstar interviews with stars together with Willie Nelson and Tanya Tucker, with a projected end within the coming 12 months. Then it’s on to the pageant circuit, for screenings meant to elevate the film’s profile and broaden its viewers.

The basis will proceed fundraising and different work, with a GoFundMe site; digitization of the newly found Walker songs; a second cleanup day focusing on the home’s adjoining storage; and efforts to get the home listed with the National Register of Historic Places, which may open new sources for rehabilitation and restore.

Then there may be improvement of what could possibly be the home’s second life, one which could function a songwriter residency, music classes for Mexia youth, small group performances and occasions, and extra.

“We want this to be a living, breathing part of the community,” Liepman stated.

The subsequent verses in the home’s track are but to be written, and it’s a job Liepman stated will in all probability maintain her busy for years, even with group and statewide help.

“This is a lifelong thing for me,” she stated.