Log Cabin Stories: Linda Flanagan on Razorback

Linda Flanagan - Street of No Return (Razorback 45-107), 1959

There was a time in the early to mid 1960s when it seemed that Linda Flanagan was heading for stardom. Obviously, she never achieved that, although working with such top names as Webb Pierce or Ernest Tubb, but she graced the world with a series of fine country singles. Her debut record on Razorback Records is featured in today's post.

Linda Flanagan hailed from Arkansas, although I could not find details on her birth place or birth date. Her father was Harold Flanagan, who was a local country music performer in his own right. A 1956 Cowboy Songs article mentions that she started her professional career at age 13 (although she started singing even earlier at age 3), which puts her birth date into the early 1940s. By 1956, she was performing over KFSA in Fort Smith, Arkansas, on both radio and television. She also dabbled in songwriting around this time, penning songs with Louisiana Hayride member Jimmie Helms.

From Fort Smith, located on the Arkansas-Oklahoma state border, she made her way to nearby Muskogee, Oklahoma, where she not only appeared on a local TV show entitled Big Red Jamboree, but also recorded for Carl Blankenship's Razorback label. "A Life That's Hard to Live" b/w "Street of No Return" (Razorback #107) was released in late 1959. The top side was co-written by the duo of Jerry Roller and Hershel Parker, the latter being also an Arkansas born singer and songwriter, who recorded a few singles in his own right and worked with Flanagan during this time frame.

From left to right: Linda Flanagan, Charlie Walker, Herschel Parker
at the 1956 Jimmie Rodgers Memorial Day in Meridian, Mississippi
(courtesy of Western Red)

Flanagan's next stop in her career was Nashville, Tennessee, where she was given the opportunity to appear on Ernest Tubb's Midnight Jamboree. Likely from this appearance resulted a recording session on June 29, 1961, at the Bradley Film and Recording Studio with a top band behind her, including Grady Martin, Buddy Emmons, Hargus Robbins, and producer Owen Bradley. The result was only one song, "Pass Me By", which in fact saw release in 1962 on a various artists Decca album simply entitled "Midnight Jamboree" featuring different artists that appeared on the show. The LP was also released in the UK and New Zealand. Flanagan's "Pass Me By" was furthermore issued on a special DJ 45rpm with the flip side filled by Webb Pierce's "Sweet Lips".

The release of the LP in the UK was to some historical importance. Not for Ernest Tubb or any of the other better known artists on the record but for Flanagan. At that time, the Beatles were making their first steps and the band's drummer Ringo Starr was introduced to Flanagan's "Pass Me By" by his best fried Roy Trafford, who was a big country music fan, owned the "Midnight Jamboree" album and was especially fond of "Pass Me By". He even learned it for performing and the song inspired Starr to take up songwriting and he wrote his own "Don't Pass Me By", similar in its lyrical content but otherwise different, as Starr put a piano boogie beat behind it. The song probably wasn't even a minute long and band mates Paul McCartney and John Lennon dismissed it as a "rewrite of a Jerry Lee Lewis B-side". The song, if you can call it even a song, never made it far but Linda Flanagan's recording was an early influence on Ringo Starr's songwriting.

Unknown to Flanagan back then, she tried to find her own way to success. A second Decca session was not arranged for her until October 3, 1963, this time at the Columbia Recording Studio but again produced by Owen Bradley. Four songs were recorded that day and released by Decca in late 1963 ("Hold on to Happiness" b/w "The Keeper of the Key", Decca #31569) and July 1964 ("There's Love All Around Me" b/w "Mama Kiss the Hurt Away", Decca #31647). However, none of her two singles released by the label seem to have caught on with the public.

Although Decca dropped her, the independent and much smaller Boone record label gave Flanagan a chance once more. She recorded for the label in 1966 and 1967, releasing two singles, but these did not chart either. She had one more record out in Nashville in 1970, a duet with Lex Thomas entitled "South Bound Train," which was produced by guitarist Howard White for Spar Records - again without much success.

She left Nashville in the early 1970s and worked the Western Lounge club in Creve Couer, Illinois, with her husband Pete Blue from 1973 until 1975. She held one more session in Nashville in late 1985, which resulted in another record for the tiny Password label. At some point afterwards, she dropped out of the music business but was still residing in Nashville as late as 2017.