The country-blues legacy of Big Bill Lister

The country-blues legacy of Big Bill Lister
December 21, 2009
BY MICHAEL H. PRICE
Fort Worth Business Press

In 1981, I received an early pressing of a début album by Salt Lick, an East Texas-style string band with which I was soon to begin a lasting affiliation. Impressed as I was by the songwriting craft and the artists’ mixture of reverent traditionalism with edgy humor, I was distracted by the byline on the liner notes: Big Bill Lister.

“So is this guy, like, the real Big Bill Lister?” I asked the record’s producer, guitarist–fiddler D.M. “Slim” Richey.

“None other,” said Slim. “The Grand Ole Opry star and runnin’ buddy of Hank Williams his ownself. Big Bill is the [Salt Lick] mandolin player’s uncle.” I had yet to meet mandolinist Harris Kirby in person but already had become impressed with his mingling of blues and bluegrass styles.

A while later at a Salt Lick meeting, Harris mentioned, “Y’know, one of these days, we oughtta do some recordin’ with Uncle Bill.” No sooner done than did, y’know, and by 1983 Weldon Edwin “Big Bill” Lister was traveling from the San Antonio area to Fort Worth to record an album with Salt Lick.

“Think 1950, boys,” said Slim Richey. The result: an LP called Sho’ ’Nuff Country Stuff: The Second Time Around, from Slim’s Tex-Grass label.

Big Bill Lister, a six-foot-seven titan of blue-yodeling country music, died this month at 86 — still in harness as a generous entertainer, just back from a touring engagement.

Lister’s legacy persists in our collaborative recordings, and in a collection of Lister’s mass-market singles of the 1950s, Big Bill Lister: There’s a Tear in My Beer, from Bear Family Records, with liner notes by Fort Worth’s Kevin Coffey. (And yes, Hank Williams had composed “There’s a Tear in My Beer” for his pal Lister — long before Hank Williams Jr. got hold of the tune.)

No time like the present to re-examine Big Bill Lister’s career — and in his own words, yet, courtesy of a kitchen-table tape recording made by Salt Lick’s D. Lee Thomas between album sessions in 1983:

“I was working in San Antonio…,” Lister says, recalling a 1950 breakthrough. “And I decided, if I was ever goin’ to do anything record-wise, I’d have to get to Nashville.

Fortunate connections resulted in an invitation to tour with Hank Williams and a foot-in-the-door at Capitol Records — “and I had recorded my first session for Capitol by the end of the week,” Lister continues on the tape recording.

“Both ‘Beer Drinkin’ Blues’ and ‘Gimme an R.C. Cola and a Moon Pie’ … did real well for me. And shortly after, I went on the road with Hank Williams … [and then] went back into the studio with Hank Williams’ Driftin’ Cowboys … played a little bit differ’nt on my backup than what they played when they were recordin’ with Hank.”

Lee Thomas asks: “What songs did you do with Hank’s band that you recorded for Capitol?”

“Oh,” says Lister, “I did ‘Ship of Love,’ ‘What the Heck Is Goin’ On?’ ‘There’s a Tear in my Beer.’ … Back in those days, radio stations wouldn’t play [beer-drinking songs] — I couldn’t do ‘Beer Drinkin’ Blues’ on the Grand Ole Opry — but it was a heck of a jukebox tune…

“I left the Opry not too long into the 1950s. In the meantime, Hank had passed away [at the start of 1953]. And that just kind of took the heart out of me for doin’ country music…”

Lee Thomas says: “Well, you’re gettin’ back into the music, though.”

And Lister answers: “You know how it is: Once an ol’ fire horse hears the bell, he wants to run again.”

And so Big Bill Lister took off at a fresh gallop, and kept running into a new century — right up to a finish-line consistent with a natural-born passion for the
music.