Billy's songs have been recorded by Gary Stewart, David Frizzell, Billy “Crash†Craddock, Johnny Lee, Barbara Fairchild, Bertie Higgins, Johnny Neel, Blue Monday, The Sanders, Roguie Ray & The Rockets, the Forrester Sisters, Jeff Cordes, Leroy Van Dyke, Joe Sun, Ace Moreland, the Toler Bros., Jimmy Hall, and the Carter Family, on what would be the last album they recorded together.Billy Stone didn't GET into the music business. He just always was. He's been there and back and he can tell you about it.
Billy was born August 9, 1952 in Dallas, Texas.
His daddy's second cousin was Billy Jack Saucier, the leader of the Big D Jamboree band of which Cowboy was a sometime member. He and his cousin, Sonny Belk, had a hillbilly band that played the honky-tonks, beer joints, dances, and the occasional all night gospel sing across E. Texas.
"My real first memory of it all was when Cowboy took me to the State Fair of Texas to see Hank Thompson and The Brazos Valley Boys play on the Mobil Oil Stage across from Big Tex.
We were standing on the side of the stage when the band started and they introduced Hank Thompson. He came walkin' by in a blue sequined Nudie suit, wearin' a big white cowboy hat, with that big'ol f-hole Gibson. The spotlight hit him just as he passed us and he patted me on the head and took the stage and I stood there starin'. I knew for sure that that had to be God, and I tell you, at the time in East Texas Hank Thompson was some kind of God."
"My first gigs, when I was about five or six, were standin' at a booth at Scyene Drive-in, or Poor-Boys, or Ma Brand's Log Cabin, or one of the other beer joints Cowboy frequented, singin' "WEDDING BELLS" or "YOUR CHEATIN' HEART" for the quarters Cowboy's drinkin' companions tossed. "
Hearing about the first-grade talent show audition, Billy signed up. He walked out onstage and the teacher asked what he was going to sing. "She said,"Do you have a record to lip-synch to?" "No. At that point I rolled up my sleeves and broke into "WELL IT'S ONE FOR THE MONEY. TWO FOR THE SHOW. an
acapella version of "BLUE SUEDE SHOES".... I sang that and "YOU'RE SO YOUNG AND BEAUTIFUL" from "JAILHOUSE ROCK" which was Elvis' new movie the next day for the whole school."...Billy's first band was in the fifth grade. "Yeah, me and Merle Grice and Skipper Stuart put together a band and rehearsed at the old Dallas Bus Barn on Hall St. 'cause Merle's daddy was a bus driver.
The bus driver's seemed to like us so we walked around the corner one day and tried to book a gig at The It'll Do Club, maybe the most dangerous gun and knife club in Dallas, Texas at the time.The owner, in shocked disbelief called Merle's daddy and we didn't rehearse at the Bus barn after that.
We did book gigs at Hunt's Drive-In in Urbandale, where they flashed their lights and honked after every song, and the Buckner Blvd. Drive-In Movie on the playground, where you played 'til it was dark enough to start the movie, usually right in the middle of a song. And sock hops. Lots of sock hops."
Billy's cousin, who was older and played in top 40 and blues bands, got Billy into bands as a singer, then bass player. "That was real cool. I was fourteen, fifteen, gettin' to play night clubs, and everything that came along with it."
Home life was bad. Cowboy and Gloria had divorced and Gloria married a man who figure five kids was enough to raise, so the summer Billy turned fifteen he moved out. Working at grocery stores and 7-11 and playing when he could, Billy finally dropped out of high school and joined the Army, still 17 in 1970. "That was pretty wild. I wasn't used to being told what to do, so after nine weeks five days twenty-three hours and thirty-three minutes (but who's countin') me and the US Army parted ways. I was out of the Army two weeks before my eighteenth birthday."
Returning to Dallas, Billy joined a band his cousin was in. "The first night we played at a lounge in a bowling alley in Ft. Worth. My cousin got into it with the drummer and quit. The drummer taught his wife to play bass and I got the girl I was dating (and later married so her parents would let her travel) to play piano. We signed with the Sam Gibbs Orchestra Service in Wichita Falls, Tx. Sam had the exclusive booking for a lot of small town clubs. He booked mostly old country and western bands, so we were like the young rockin' band that came through town every few months. It was among other things, a learning experince, and for the next two and a half years we played small town clubs and military bases in 43 states. The band lasted 2 and a half years, the marriage two years seven months."
Back in Dallas in early 1974, Billy jumped in the middle of the Texas Progressive Music Movement. "I started hangin' out at the old Rubaiyat Club and the manager (and first real songwriter I ever knew) Jim Ritchey, helped me some. It was a good time. I started playing clubs around Dallas as a solo and eventually with my own band. I did shows with Willie Nelson, B.W. Stevenson, Michael Murphey, Jerry Jeff Walker, Willis Alan Ramsey, Townes VanZandt, Guy Clark, Gary P., Milton Carroll, Billy Callery, and others.
I became the constant opening act at a 2,000 seat hall called The Electric Ballroom where I opened shows for everyone from David Allen Coe's wedding, to Byron Berline and J.D. Souther, to an Elvis impersonator, to Larry Jon Wilson, Pure Prairie League. My band was playing Lone Star Beer shows. Five dollar cover and $2 for a longneck and a shot of tequila. YeeHaa! Crazy times." Billy remarried in 1976, three weeks after his mother died of lung cancer. Strike two.
In 1977, Billy with money invested from friends and with a guy he thought was his best friend, who booked college gigs for UTD, started Lucky Dog Productions. He showcased at NECAA conventions in the southeast, southwest, and northwest. He booked coffeehouse gigs at colleges in all those regions. Billy left Lucky Dog Productions, that mariage, his best friend, and Dallas, Texas, one Wed. morning in 1978 and moved to Nashville, Tn. "I've never been a very good judge of character."
While playing the NECAA showcase in Spokane, Wa., Billy had met Noel Fox, a booking agent for the Don Light Agency, who was managing Gove Scrivenor. Billy got to Nashville and stayed with a friend who worked for Waylon."I hooked up with Noel who, a former Oak Ridge Boy, had left Don Light and was running their new publishing company. I gave him a tape and left for a trip to Florida.
I called Noel from the road and he said,"You might want to come back up here. The Oaks are doing a country album and they're talkin' about recording three of your songs." "I hauled it back to Nashville,actually Hendersonville.
I rode down to Woodland Studios with Duane Allen, the Oak's lead singer and a really nice guy. Long story short, didn't get any cuts, ah showbiz, but being the gentleman he was, Duane honored my six month contract and then gave me back my songs."
Back in Nashville, Billy juggled playing, writing, and trying to get a publishing deal with raising his two young sisters, who had moved from Texas after his mother died. His friend Bill Conrad had left Waylon and was managing Steve Young. Billy started opening some shows for Steve and playing writer's nights.
The Mississippi Whiskers was becoming the scene. Guy and Townes were playing and hangin' out there. Billy Joe Shaver had moved from Texas and was playing there. Joe Sun, Kathy Mattea, Mark Germino, Shrub Smith, Annie Friedman, Bob House, and a bunch of musicians who would be A-Teamers themselves, were all honing their skills.. Billy and Bob House wrote a song together which led Bob to introduce Billy to Merlin Littlefield who signed Billy to a publishing deal with Peer Int'l. Corp., one of the oldest and the largest privately owned publishing co. in the world. Two weeks later "IT WAS YOU" had been recorded by Billy "Crash"Craddock and would become a top twenty record.
"Bob and I started getting other cuts; Leroy Van Dyke, Barbara Fairchild, Vassar Clements, then Bob found out his song"COULD I HAVE THIS DANCE" had been recorded by Anne Murray and was in the movie, "URBAN COWBOY". He left Peer. Merlin Littlefield produced a single on me and I put together bands featuring Ray Flacke, Dave Pomeroy, Bruce Bouton, Bobby Whitlock, Bee Spears, Gary Nicholson, Wally Wilson, and other stellar players, but before the first single was released Merlin was stabbed trying to stop a purse snatching. After a long recovery, he left Peer to return to ASCAP, leaving me to run Peer's Nashville office, a position I neither asked for, nor wanted. I was a songwriter not a businessman. I kept running the office but the Peer organization was at the time based more in catalogue and the New York office seemed less than interested in Nashville. I continued to get cuts; David Frizzell, the Forrester Sisters, Bertie Higgins, the Carter Family. But because of the organization's lack of input, I was getting songs cut but they went from singles to b-sides, album cuts to not making the album. Feeling like I was was in an untenable position, I left Peer in 1983."
Having been immersed in Music Row daily (and nightly) for five or six years, and somewhat frustrated over the Peer situation, Billy took a gig playing bass for Ronnie Sessions. "Yeah, Sessions and I were hangin' out and he needed a bass player for a weekend gig in Texas and I went and started laughin' and wound up stayin' in his band for a year. We'were playing in Ft. McMurray, Alberta, Canada when I received a call that my brother, Rickey, had been killed in a motorcycle accident. I left the Ronnie Sessions band and went to Dallas."
Billy went into a depression. "Looking back, I realized I lost a couple of years after Rickey died. I was a mess and my other brothers and sisters were a mess. I stayed in Dallas to be around them and wound up working construction with my cousins and ....I don't really know. I was playing a few gigs. Willie's nephew, who'd played drums with me in Nashville was stayin'at the Perdenales "Country Club" outside Austin and I went down to hang out and play some golf and wound up ridin' down to San Antonio with Bee Spears and then back up to Ft.Worth on the bus for a show and it kinda hit me, it was time to go on back to Nashville."
Billy got back to Nashville in the fall of '85. With an advance Merlin got him from ASCAP Billy started finishing songs for what would be his first album,"PICTURES NEVER LIE". " I'd run into Clinton Arthur aka "Kid Gumbo"and we started talkin'. Kid is a great New Orleans writer who's off-the-wall outlook and writing and a pleasure to be around. We put together $300.00 and a couple of six packs of beer and I got on the phone. It was the middle of January and there was about three feet of snow on the ground. I called John Loudermilk Jr. who had a studio, Bill VornDick, a great engineer, and Dave Pomeroy, Rick Durrett, Lanny Boles, Gary Nicholson, Bruce Bouton, and a few other musicians and asked them if they wanted to make a record or stay snowed in with their wives and kids. We recorded the tracks for "PICTURES NEVER LIE" on Jan. 17 and 18 along with a single for Kid Gumbo, "PAPA AND THE SNAKE FARM". After recording two more tracks with dobro virtuoso Leo LeBlanc, Billy secured a deal with independent, Allgood Records, a release date was set for June 18. After playing a pre-release party at Douglas Corner, Billy went trout fishing on the Piney River, slipped in the middle of the river, and crushed his ankle. Billy recovered after an operation and six month rehab, his album did not. Billy continued to write, getting cuts by Joe Sun, Jimmy Hall, the Toler Bros., Gary Stewart, Ace Moreland, and independent artits in Canada and Europe. He continued touring, playing shows with John Prine, Townes Van Zandt, Richard Dobson, Joe Sun, playing listening rooms and folk clubs. In 1990, Billy married Lois Johnson. "I met Lois in 1986, She was, and is to this day,, the the most wonderful woman God ever made, and the best person I have ever known." Billy compiled a collection of songs co-produced by Jim Rooney, titled it, "HONEYMOON", and he and Lois headed out on their honeymoon, a tour that lasted almost two years. On their retun to Nashville, Billy continued to write and tour, In 1993, he leased his first two albums to the German label, Bear Family, and headed out on a tour of Scandinavia and Europe. Bear Family released both records on one cd "WEST TEXAS SKY", twenty-five songs with a $22.00 retail price. "I was in shock. Hell, I am me and I don't want to pay $22.00 to listen to 25 songs. It was extremely depressing." Having trouble getting cd's and receiving little retail support for the record, the tour collapsed and Billy retuned to Nashville. Billy was glad to be home to Lois. He licked his wounds and wrote songs, as usual. Shortly after his return Lois found out she was pregnant. Needing a break and wanting to stay close to home, Billy took a gig playing bass with the cajun influenced blues band, Big Al and the Heavyweights. "It was mostly the most fun time I'd had in a while. Great players, Roguie Ray on harmonica and slide guitar phenom Kenny Lee along with Big Al on drums.
It was relaxing, no pressure and home every week, plus they knew I was leaving as soon as the baby was born. Glory Leigh was born March 14, 1994.
"I had been thinking that now was the time to step things up. I ran into an attorney/personal manager that I'd known for several years.He had been with a big Nasville firm that had done some big deals. He told me he had gone independent and as a friend and fan, he wanted to be my manager. He assured me a recording and publishing deal in 90 days. I signed with him.
Seven or eight months later I realized my attorney/manager had a big problem. He went to a nice cozy rehab center, and I, being bankrupt, gave up our home, loaded my wife, daughter, and Belle, our border collie, into a 1986 Isuzu Trooper and headed out on the road".
We were in Galveston, Texas, to play a show with Richard Dobson and I got a call from Larry John Wilson. He and Mickey Newbury were playing the Frank Brown Int'l. Songwriter's Festival at the Florabama on Perdido Key, Fl.
"They said come on over and within minutes Joe Gilchrist was on the phone with an official invite, We went over and I played. A few months later we wre back passing through Nasville and Joe was up from Florida. We went and played golf and he invited us to move down to Perdido Key. As I was still waiting out my horrible management and publishing contract, we went." Our son, Connor, was born one day after Christmas in 1998. After living in exile in Florida for five years Billy returned to Nashville in 2002. With all of his contracts settled, Billy has spent the last six years living in Franklin, Tn continuing to write and perform live dates.
Billy recorded “PICTURES NEVER LIE†for Allgood Records in 1986. In 1990, he released the independent album, “HONEYMOONâ€. In 1993, Bear Family Records, Germany, released “WEST TEXAS SKYâ€. In 2001, Billy played the Frank Brown Int’l. Songwriter’s Festival in Perdido Key, Fl, producing the 13 song set, “BILLY STONE LIVE†featuring “IN A NEW YORK MINUTEâ€, "MUREDERED BY LOVE", and "TOUGH TIMES FOR A TROUBADOUR".Billy recently recorded a new project, with Rich Adler, a Grammy winning engineer. It is a collection of 11 songs about some of the social and political issues of our time including “I’M WRITING MOMâ€, “CAUGHT BETWEEN IRAQ AND A HARD PLACEâ€, “JOHNNY CAN’T READâ€, “THE HEARTBEAT OF THE HEARTLANDâ€, and “THE BIG EASYâ€. It's Billy and a guitar, recorded live in the studio with no overdubs.
“This is a little different deal. Mickey Newbury told me once, "Pal, sometimes it's just journalism", so I guess I'm reporting on the world I see us leaving our children."
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