Billy Wallace

12+ albums

louisiana rock n rollfolkrockabillyalternative

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about

Billy Wallace (March 26, 1917 - June 3, 1978) was an American country and rockabilly singer, songwriter and guitarist. Wallace had one of the most unique voices in rockabilly music and played a different guitar style than most of the guitarists back then would do. Both, his voice and full-bodied guitar play worked well together on his classic session as Billy Wallace & the Bama Drifters in 1956 for Mercury Records, on which he laid down four songs. But Wallace had also a long and more successful (but also unknown) career in songwriting. He never achieved the honor he should have. Wallace was born in Oklahoma City, Oklahoma, in 1917, but his family moved soon after to Athens, Alabama. Previously, his father had worked on the oil fields in Oklahoma. He grew up on his father’s farm and learned to play the guitar at an early age. As a teenager, he began to write songs and was later influenced by the country music stars back then like the Delmore Brothers, Rex Griffin and Roy Acuff but also listened to Hank Smith, Ernest Tubb and Hal Smith. In 1943, Wallace got married and moved to Huntsville, Alabama. His career as a songwriter began, when Bill Carlisle recorded one of his songs. After that, Wallace and his wife moved to Nashville, Tennessee, hoping to be discovered in the « Music City USA ». In 1950-51, he recorded his first three singles for the small Tennessee record label based in Nashville : on Tennessee 829, “Southwind” is a worthy addition to the train-song catalogue an