Howard Crockett (December 25th, 1925 - 27 December 1994) was a little known singer and songwriter who is sadly ignored by practically every country music encyclopedia.
Howard Crockett was born Howard Elton Hausey on Christmas Day in the tiny north Louisiana settlement of Yellow Pine, a few miles from Minden. His parents made their living as farmers and sharecroppers. Besides Howard, the Hauseys had a daughter, Irene. Howard became a good baseball prospect, and was discovered by Larry Hunter who owned a Coca-Cola bottling plant in Minden and ran a baseball team. When Howard was twelve, Hunter hired an ex-professional baseball player to teach and train him. By 1942, when Howard was seventeen, talent scouts were coming to see him play, among them one from the Brooklyn Dodgers. Howard wound up playing for the Dodgers organization as a pitcher until a shoulder injury forced him out.
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| Johnny Horton |
After a short stint with the U.S. Navy, Hausey turned to music and began writing songs. In late 1955, he went to the Louisiana Hayride with three songs he had penned. Two of them were ballads, which he sang for Johnny Horton, but Johnny was looking for something uptempo. Howard then came up with "Honky Tonk Man", his third composition. Horton liked it and so did his manager, Tillman Franks.
However, to get the song recorded, Howard had to give one third of the publishing to Horton and another third to Franks (who claims that he earned his share by refashioning the melody). "Honky Tonk Man" became Horton's first hit and on the strength of this, Howard moved to Texas (Fort Worth). During the next Horton session (May 23, 1956), they recorded another composition by Howard Hausey, "Sugar Coated Baby", but this wasn't released until 1963, when Johnny Horton was already three years in his grave.
Howard also tried to land his own recording contract as a singer. In 1957, he was signed to Dot Records by Mac Wiseman, who encouraged the singer to adopt Crockett as a surname. At the first session, four tracks were recorded in Nashville, with the city's finest session men (Chet Atkins, Grady Martin, Bob Moore, Floyd Cramer, Buddy Harman, the Jordanaires). "You've Got Me Lying" and "If You'll Let Me" were issued on Dot 15593 in June 1957.
Howard named his band the Night Riders and they played regularly on the Louisiana Hayride in 1958-59. He continued to supply Johnny Horton with songs: "Counterfeit Love", "All Grown Up", "Whispering Pines" and "Ole Slew Foot". This last song was first recorded by Crockett himself, as "Slewfoot the Bear". Again, Horton wanted half of the composer credit, waving a large cheque under Howard's nose (Horton had money to burn after the giant success of "Battle Of New Orleans"), but this time Crockett didn't budge.
Meanwhile, Howard's recording career continued, though it was far from successful. Dot had dropped him after those first two singles and after that there were releases on Solar, Hamilton, Dixie and Manco. All small labels, but in 1961 he was signed to Smash Records, a subsidiary of Mercury, where his records were produced by Shelby Singleton and accompanied by Jerry Kennedy (guitar), Buddy Killen (bass), Ray Stevens (piano) and Buddy Harman (drums). Of the three Smash singles, the first two are certainly worthwhile: "Deep Elm Dave" and "Break Away Billy Boy".Crockett then moved to Motown's country subsidiary, Mel-O-Dy, where he released sides that emphasized his vocal similarities to Johnny Cash, but these too did not garner much attention.
Crockett had to wait until 1973 for his one and only hit, "Last Will And Testimony (Of A Drinking Man)" which peaked at # 52 on the Billboard country charts and at # 45 in Cash Box. This was his comeback single after five years of retirement. He had been labelled as too close to Johnny Horton or Johnny Cash and after all those years, he had began to believe it himself. This hit encouraged him to try again, but his fortunes were short-lived and he distilled much of his bitterness into a song called "Don't Go To Nashville In the Summer, Songwriter, Or You'll Freeze To Death And Won't Know Why".
Crockett retired from singing in 1981, though he continued to write songs. In 1986, Dwight Yoakam had a # 3 country hit with a remake of "Honky Tonk Man". After the death of his wife Patricia in 1989, Howard once again became active as a songwriter, until he died on the 27th December 1994, two days after his 69th birthday after a long struggle against cancer. In 1999, he was inducted into the Texas Country Music Hall Of Fame. "Crock", as he was called by his friends, was a prolific songwriter, with 343 titles in the BMI database.
(Edited from This Is My Story, Bear Family notes & AllMusic)