Silver Star 101 – Cecil Gill – c.1946

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.