Wayne Walker & Others How Do You Think I Feel? The Singer And His Songs (CD)

Wayne Walker

Wayne Paul Walker was from Quapaw, Oklahoma (born December 13, 1925), and was raised in Kilgore, Texas before moving to Shreveport, Louisiana. He worked as a vacuum cleaner salesman, fire escape salesman, car salesman, and roofer while getting his music career off the ground.

He appeared on the Louisiana Hayride, and recorded for a variety of companies, including Chess, Decca, Columbia, Ric, Everest, as well as ABC. Walker ran around Shreveport with Webb Pierce and joined Pierce and Denny at Cedarwood soon after it opened in 1953, helping it become one of Nashville's leading music publishers (it's worth noting, though, that Danny Dill [see below] actually claimed to be the one to introduce Walker to Denny).

Walker's enviable catalog included I've Got A New Heartache and Burning Memories for Ray Price, How Do You Think I Feel for Elvis, Leavin' On Your Mind for Patsy Cline, Are You Sincere for Andy Williams (half of which he lost in a poker game to Mel Tillis), Little Boy Sad for Johnny Burnette, Cut Across Shorty for Eddie Cochran, and many other hits. He saved none of his most commercial songs for himself, though, and never scored a hit under his own name.

Walker was married for fifteen years to Ernest Tubb's daughter, Scooter Bill, but they divorced in 1973, and he died of cancer six years later, on January 2, 1979.

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