Dream Baby – revisiting the music of Texan songwriting legend Cindy Walker.
When Cindy Walker was inducted into the Songwriters Hall of Fame in April 2024, she became the first person to posthumously receive that honour. It was just about the only songwriting award she had not garnered in her long life. Born in Texas in 1917, more than 500 songs had been recorded before her death in 2006, with over 400 of these making the top 40 in the pop or country music charts. Nine days before her death, none other than Willie Nelson released an album dedicated to Walker. Taking its title from her best-known song, “You Don’t Know Me: The Songs Of Cindy Walker” featured thirteen of Walker’s songs.
Now comes another collection, whose title also references one of her famous compositions. “It’s All Her Fault: A Tribute To Cindy Walker” is the fruit of a multiple-artist project put together by singer-songwriter Grey DeLisle, in homage to her greatest musical influence. Featuring on one of the tracks herself, DeLisle is not only a musician but also a successful voice actor who has appeared on The Simpsons, Scooby Doo, SpongeBob SquarePants and King Of The Hill.
With her entrepreneurial flair and acting as executive producer, DeLisle has pulled in a collection of talented musicians who share her dedication to preserving not just the songs of Cindy Walker but also the very house in which she wrote so many of them. Sharing her home in Mexia, Texas, with her mother, Walker would ascend the stairs each day and begin writing on a small pink typewriter. Hearing that the house had fallen into disrepair, DeLisle set to work contacting the many artists who have given their talents to this album, the streaming proceeds of which will go towards the Cindy Walker Foundation’s restoration project.
All thirteen songs feature a female lead vocal from established artists such as Kelly Willis, Rosie Flores and Summer Dean. Half a dozen of the songs appeared in Willie Nelson’s tribute, and the new collection inevitably includes ‘You Don’t Know Me’, Walker’s signature song that was co-written with Eddy Arnold in 1955. Having entered the charts in a version by Jerry Vale the next year, it later reached number 2 on the Billboard chart for Ray Charles in 1962. Another well-known tune is ‘Dream Baby (How Long Must I Dream)’, written in 1962 and a major hit for Roy Orbison. With only half a dozen lines, has there ever been a more economical love song?
The new DeLisle collection captures the spirit of the home where the songs were written. Many feature broken dreams, as if Walker was inhabiting the lives of women disappointed by their men, but with an indomitable spirit that refuses to be bowed. Often full of wry humour but never self-pity, her songs reflect on the lives of her mid-20th-century characters, the lyrics expressing their hearts and minds as successfully as Edward Hopper does in his 1941 painting, “Nighthawks”. Listening to these songs will take you straight to a time when the radio was ubiquitous.
A prolific poet in her youth, Walker produced vignettes of love and loss that have stood the test of time. Playing guitar and assisted by her widowed mother, a competent pianist, she set her lyrics to tunes that show imagination in their chord progressions and vary from western swing and Texas two-step to waltz time signatures. With just eight lines and under two minutes in length, ‘Hey Mr Bluebird’ crystallises heartbreak, a theme she turned to time and again. It’s sung with elan by Kimmi Bitter and beautifully played by the ensemble. The heart-melting ‘Goin’ Away Party’ has been covered by many artists, including Merle Haggard. Here it’s covered by the wonderful Amythyst Kia, who sings and plays acoustic guitar. It was written in 1974 and dedicated to Bob Wills, who, with his Texas Playboys, recorded over 50 of Walker’s songs from the 1940s onwards.
“Don’t worry it won’t be a loud party
Dreams don’t make noise when they die
And so since it’s a goin’ away party
Go away and let me cry”
Cindy Walker was inducted into the Country Music Hall of Fame in 1997, and this new album is a fitting tribute to her. With a rare mix of craft and emotional depth to her songwriting, she helped define the golden era of country music from the 1940s onward. Like the poet Emily Dickinson, another somewhat reclusive writer, Walker has made a lasting contribution to American culture, her output spanning well over fifty years across the mid-twentieth century. If this album can help restore the house where these songs first came to life and bring the music of Cindy Walker into more people’s lives, then Grey DeLisle will be deserving of much credit.
