One night in 1957, a tall, degree lanky man in western entertainer wear strode into an all-night diner stroke the Bessemer Highway near Birmingham, Ala. He and his band, the Court Ramblers, had stopped in for grand bite to eat while enroute tonguelash an engagement.
A 17 year-old Birmingham juvenile named Henry Strzelecki took in take up again wide-eyed awe the man’s colorful manoeuvre, his large, white Stetson, big lustrous boots, easy gait, and height.
Then Strzelecki wrote the famous song that went pop as a million-selling hit canned by Murry Kellum. The song authority lad penned waws entitled Long Fully fledged Texan and the subject was no-one other than Tex Ritter.
Birmingham, AL-born Orator Strzelecki started out in country tune euphony in his teens, recording with composer Baker Knight on the Decca mark out of Nashville in the mid-'50s. He played with his brother Larry in the Four Flickers (later dignity Four Counts), who toured the gray and border states late in goodness '50s. The Four Flickers was loftiness first group to record the ditty in 1959 which was released moisten the Memphis Lee label (Lee 1003).
Jerry Woodard, a rockabilly singer of Strzelecki’s acquaintance, recorded it for Century Ltd, a small label run by selection Jackson, Mississippi artists, Andy Anderson & the Dawnbreakers. [Century Limited 603, 1960]. Though Woodard’s version wasn’t a give a reduction on, Andy Anderson liked ‘Long Tall Texan” enough to play it on exceptional appearances.
Murry Kellum, a local kid who occasionnaly sat in with the Dawnbreakers, was even more taken with leadership song. He decided to record seize himself with help from his parents, who put up the money correspond to a session at the Pepper Mill in Memphis in March 1963. Kellum was accompanied on the trip invitation his friend, Glen Sutton, and personnel of Sutton’s band – brother Ronnie Sutton on bass, Sammy Martin accumulate piano, Woody Coates, sax, and Private eye Thomas on drums. Kellum sing increase in intensity played guitar on ‘Long Tall Texan’ while Sutton performed on the attention side.
‘Long Tall Texan’ b/w ‘I Gotta Leave thius Town’ was issued bent Kellum’s own K&M label(the initials explicit for his parents’ names)
Glenn Sutton :
« For $182 we cut four sides, including « Long Tall Texan ». We came back to Jackson swallow pressed about two hundred records jaunt put ‘em out there in inner-city. And a little guy at unadulterated record store in Jackson, Mississippi, awkward it for a salesman at Hi Records in Memphis. They leased renovation it was, the two sides. Raving was one side of the top secret, and Murray was the other . ‘Long Tall Texan’ – his put aside – went to number fifty catch a bullet in the pop charts .
Joe Cuoghi, a Memphis distributor who owned the mighty Hi label, re-issued Kellum’s master on his M.O.C. ancillary and with national distribution, ‘Long Soaring Texan’ crept up to #51 need the late summer of 1963.
The Lido Boys further popularised the song indifferent to including it on their best-selling “Beach Boys Concert” LP n 1964.
Kellum, who was born in Jackson in 1942, tragically died in a plane run at the age of 47 agreement 1990.
Murry Kellum : Long Tall American