Billie Maxwell

Billie Maxwell (February 1906 - 1954 ) was an American singer . She is considered the first “Singing Cowgirl” and an exemplary representative of the early, authentic style in the field of Western music .

Life

Very little is known about her childhood and adolescence. What is certain is that she was born in February 1906 and spent her childhood near Springerville, Arizona , where she came into contact with the traditions of the old west at an early age.

Her father Curtis Maxwell played with his band White Mountain Orchestra at regional dance events that he could often only achieve by horse. The band's repertoire consisted of the traditional songs of the cowboys and their own compositions. As a member of the band, the young Billie accompanied her father on the guitar, but was not originally a singer. In 1929 she married the teacher Alvin Chester Warner and actually wanted to take care of her family more.

At that time, Victor Studio was looking for new talent and holding talent competitions across the country. Jimmie Rodgers and the Carter Family had been discovered in the same way before . Billie's father found out about planned recordings in El Paso, Texas through his brother Frank, who was a police officer in Silver City . For this purpose, an audition was held in Silver City, in which Bille and the band also took part.

The band prevailed and two weeks later the whole family drove to the recordings in El Paso, where the band members first met talent scout Ralph Peer and recorded some instrumental pieces. Peer loved the band and got the idea to test Billie as a singer. She sang the traditional song "Billy Venero", which Peer so impressed that he signed Billie for solo recordings.

During these recordings on July 7, 1929, Billie was only accompanied on the fiddle by her father . Incidentally, this sparse style is typical of the early recordings of the singing cowboys; Carl T. Sprague only accompanied himself on guitar on the first hit of the genre “When The Work's All Done This Fall”.

The recordings were only moderately successful, "Billy Venero" sold just over 3,000 copies. It was not worthwhile for the studio to make further recordings, so that Billie's career as a soloist was quickly over. She still played in the band occasionally, but withdrew from the business after the birth of the first of her two children.

legacy

Maxwell and her few recordings had long disappeared from the public's consciousness. It is only recently that a renewed interest in the development of western music has brought it back to light. Because of her status as the first singing cowgirl and the authenticity of her recordings, long after her death in 1954, she received an attention that was denied to her during her lifetime.

literature

• Wolfe, Charles: Classic Country: Legends of Country Music , Oxford (UK): Routledge, 2000, ISBN 978-0415928267 , p. 261 ff.
• Green, Douglas: Singing in the Saddle: The History of the Singing Cowboy , Nashville: Vanderbilt University Press, 2002, ISBN 0-8265-1412-X , pp. 42 f.