Honky Tonk | Old Time Blues

Back in the days when radio was king, a great many singing and musical stars of yesteryear made their fame on that medium, often producing few if any records, and so faded from public memory along with the generation that enjoyed their music like the ephemeral waves that carried their sounds through the air. We hear from one such star on the record herein: once a familiar voice on north Texas radio: the “Yodeling Country Boy”, Cecil Gill.

Cecil Gill, Yodeling Country Boy, circa 1930s.

Cecil Harris Gill was born in Des Arc, Arkansas, on September 19, 1912, but grew up in Texas from the age of seven when his family moved to the small west Texas town of McCaulley. There, on Christmas Day of 1928, when he was sixteen-years-old, Gill made it up in his mind that he wanted to be a singer and yodeler. And so he did, making his radio debut on KFYO in Abilene—some forty miles to the southeast—alongside fellow budding star Stuart Hamblen, who was four years his senior. At a 1929 show at Simmons University, Cecil Gill met his hero, Jimmie Rodgers, who invited the young singer to join him on stage for a performance of “Never No Mo’ Blues”. The next year saw Gill relocate to Fort Worth, where he began singing on KTAT under the sobriquet for which he would be best known: the “Yodeling Country Boy”. His repertoire consisted of both traditional folk songs and originals of his own composition. In the early 1930s, he married Pearl Bernice Nelson, and the couple had two children, a boy and a girl. In 1932, he was appearing on WBAP, and by 1935, was singing multiple times a day on KFJZ, with whom he seems to have had the lengthiest affiliation. In 1936, he gained note for singing the “Little Frontier Centennial March” in honor of Amon G. Carter’s Frontier Centennial celebration in Fort Worth. By the beginning of the next decade, he was on the popular station KGKO, alongside “Smiling Troubadour” Ernest Tubb, whom he would later join in a Grand Ole Opry show at Fort Worth’s North Side Coliseum in 1945. He was also known to have made appearances on other stations, and bounced back and forth from station-to-station throughout the years. Gill estimated at one point that he had been before the microphone on 6,448 broadcasts. He also made numerous public appearances. Though known primarily as a regional star, Gill was known to have performed outside of Texas as well, including a stint on WGAD in Gadsden, Alabama in 1947, and apparently even an appearance at the 1933 World’s Fair in Chicago. Around 1946—after roughly two decades on the air—Gill made his recording debut, waxing six sides for the Fort Worth-based Silver Star Records. He reportedly made further recordings for Dallas’ Blue Bonnet Records in 1948, though none of these seem to have surfaced (it is possible that this report had simply confused his Silver Star recordings with the more prolific Blue Bonnet label). He would not record again until 1963, when he began producing five albums worth of material for the Bluebonnet label in Fort Worth (a separate entity than the aforementioned), all titled The Yodeling Country Boy. In 1971, he came out of retirement to record an album of gospel songs titled How Big is God for the Inspiration label in Arlington, Texas. On the side, Gill operated a café—”Cecil Gill’s Eat Shop”—and later a laundry service. Making his home in Arlington in his later years, Cecil Gill died of a heart attack on March 28, 1978, at Huguley Hospital, and was interred at Laurel Land Memorial Park in Fort Worth.

Silver Star 101 was recorded presumably in Fort Worth, Texas, in 1946 or 1947; the exact date seems to have been lost to time. It features the vocals of Cecil Gill, backed by a small honky-tonk band (most likely Ernest Winnett’s Texas Trailblazers, who accompanied Gill on his other Silver Star records) that sounds to consist of—at least—steel guitar, standard guitar, and string bass. According to some sources, it was released in February of 1948. It was also issued on the Tennessee-based Rich-R-Tone, record number 393, the following year.

A personal favorite of mine, the poignant “Tear Drops in the Rain” seems to have been something of a signature song for Gill, and he recorded it again on his second Bluebonnet album in 1966.

Tear Drops in the Rain, recorded c. 1946-47 by Cecil Gill.

On the reverse, he sings another original composition, “Say Goodbye”. Though he was known as the “Yodeling Country Boy”, Gill did not yodel on these recordings.

Say Goodbye, recorded c. 1946-47 by Cecil Gill.

Seger Ellis, as pictured on his Okeh record label.

The United States of America isn’t the only one born on the fourth of July, for it’s also the birthday of Texas’ own Seger Ellis, popular crooner of the Jazz Age. But perhaps Ellis’ greatest talent was on the piano that gave him his start down the road to fame.

Seger Pillot Ellis was born on Independence Day of 1904 in Houston, Texas. He learned to play piano sometime in his early years from Jack Sharpe (who later recorded with the KXYZ Novelty Band) and began performing on local radio station KPRC in 1925. He also played in Lloyd Finlay’s Houston-based jazz band, with whom he made his first records when Victor made their first field trip to Texas in March of ’25. Aside from the seven sides with Finlay, Ellis recorded two solo sides playing piano: “Prairie Blues” and “Sweet Lovable You”, both compositions of his own. Both masters were rejected, apparently for technical reasons, but Ellis was invited thereafter to come to Camden, New Jersey and re-make them, and that he did. Between 1925 and 1930, Seger Ellis recorded a total of twenty-three piano solos for Victor, Columbia, and Okeh records, of which only ten were released, all of them excellent hard-driving rag pieces showcasing a strong left hand. In spite of his outstanding piano abilities, Ellis’ real fame was to come from his warbly tenor croon.

After signing with Okeh in 1926 as something of their answer to successful Victor artist (and fellow Texan) Gene Austin, Ellis rose to become one of the label’s most heavily promoted artists. He toured England in 1928, and the same year was granted a picture label devoted to his records, an honor previously bestowed to the likes of Paul Whiteman and Ted Lewis. A jazzbo through-and-through, Ellis’ accompaniment often included the Dorsey Brothers, and for one session Louis Armstrong, and in addition to his popular vocals, he sang alongside jazz bands like Frankie Trumbauer’s, and occasionally made “hillbilly” records as “Bud Blue”. In 1929, he starred in a Warner Brothers Vitaphone short titled How Can I Love You? He retained his successful engagement with Okeh through the end of 1930, at which time he briefly signed with Brunswick. The Great Depression found Ellis in a period of recording dormancy, though he continued to work. As a radio personality on Cincinnati’s WLW, Ellis is remembered for giving the Mills Brothers their big break. In the 1930s, Ellis married vocalist Irene Taylor (the “Mississippi Mud girl”). Ellis resumed his recording career for Decca in 1936, at first singing with Jimmy Dorsey’s orchestra, but soon starting up a swing band of his own. Two years later, he returned to Brunswick, this time as director of his “Choir of Brass” orchestra, featuring Taylor as vocalist. That band lasted until 1941—moving to Vocalion and later Okeh following Brunswick’s demise—after which Ellis returned home to Texas and divorced Irene Taylor. Ellis served his country during the war, and afterwards made a few more records for the Bullet label of Nashville in 1948, and a few more for Kapp in the 1950s, by which time his voice had matured into a robust baritone. Through the following decades he remained active as a songwriter, for which he is remembered for “You’re All I Want For Christmas” (as well as “Shivery Stomp” from so many years earlier) and continued to perform locally, but disappeared from the national spotlight. Seger Ellis died at the age of ninety-one on September 29, 1995, in his hometown of Houston.

Victor 19755 was recorded on August 10, 1925 at Victor’s headquarters in Camden, New Jersey. It was released in November of ’25, and stayed in the Victor catalog until 1931.

Seger Ellis first recorded “Prairie Blues” during Victor’s field trip to Houston in March of 1925, a test recording which was apparently rejected for technical reasons. He was thereafter invited to Camden to record the version featured here, a re-take made on the same matrix number (though with a “BVE” electric prefix rather than the original “B” acoustic prefix). One of Ellis’ original compositions, the tune remained in his repertoire for quite a while, and he re-recorded in 1930 for Okeh. It evidently gained some note in its day, being reprised in Okeh’s 1929 “hillbilly” variety record “The Medicine Show”.

Prairie Blues, recorded August 10, 1925 by Seger Ellis.

On the flip-side, Seger dishes out more of that same rambunctious raggy piano sounding straight out of a little honky-tonk in some Texas oil boom town on his “Sentimental Blues”. Famed jazz pianist Willie “The Lion” Smith reported said of the piece: “I never thought I’d hear genuine whorehouse piano again!”

Sentimental Blues, recorded August 10, 1925 by Seger Ellis.

Tag Archives: Honky Tonk

Silver Star 101 – Cecil Gill – c.1946

Victor 19744 – Seger Ellis – 1925