Search - Slim Willet :: Slim Willet

A One-Hit Wonder - But What A Hit

08/17/2007

(5 out of 5 stars)

"Back in the first half of the 1950s there wasn't much room at the top of the Country charts for anyone other than Hank Williams, Hank Snow, Eddy Arnold, Red Foley, Ernest Tubb, Lefty Frizzell, Webb Pierce, Carl Smith, Jim Reeves, Hank Thompson, and Kitty Wells.



Every once in a while, however, someone different would nudge their way to the top, among them the Delmore Brothers, Leon Payne, Pee Wee King, Marty Robbins, The Carlisles, The Davis Sisters, Mitchell Torok, Tennessee Ernie, Hank Locklin, and Johnny & Jack.



Another was Slim Willet who wrote one of the biggest hits of 1952/53, Don't Let The Stars Get In Your Eyes. His version for the 4 Star label, b/w Hadacol Corners, and billed to Slim Willet With The Brush Cutters, reached # 1 in October 1952 and spent 23 weeks on the charts. So too did the rendition by Skeets McDonald, whose Capitol release spent three weeks at # 1 and 18 weeks in total on the charts. Unlike Willet, however, Skeets would go on to post four more Country hits from 1960 to 1967 for Columbia, whereas that would be it for Slim.



But the writing royalties continued to pour in as an up and coming Ray Price also took the song to # 4 Country on the Columbia label [his second charted hit], and Goldie Hill [The Golden Hillbilly] rode the popularity of the song to # 1 [three weeks] early in 1953 in the form of an "answer song" - I Let The Stars Get In My Eyes. On the pop charts Perry Como's RCA Victor rendition reached # 1, and stayed there for five weeks in late 1952/early 1953, and Gisele MacKenzie made it to # 11 with her Capitol recording. So, a one-hit wonder was our Mr. Willet - but what a hit. Both sides are in this volume.



Many of the tracks here, you will note, have an oil rig/oil field theme, reflective of his birth in Dublin, Texas in 1919. Obviously not one of the giants of the Country genre, but even so his other songs, the majority of which he also wrote, are worth having purely from a historical aspect covering the heyday of the Texas oil business. And, so far, this is the ONLY Slim Willet CD available. Sadly, he died of a heart attack in July 1966 at age 46."