Billy Joe Shaver, the man Willie Nelson has said “may be the best songwriter alive today,” will retrace the path he took as a poor, share-cropping boy riding loads of cotton into Corsicana in the 1940s, when he is honored as the Grand Marshal of the 2009 Derrick Days Parade on Derrick Days Saturday, April 25.
Shaver was born Aug. 16, 1939, in Emhouse, and raised by his grandmother, Birdie Lee Collins Watson, on North 15th Street, then on the outskirts of Corsicana.
Shaver describes his early life as a near-orphan in and around Corsicana in his autobiography, “Honky Tonk Hero.” On the first of his 25 commercial album releases, “Old Five and Dimers Like Me,” Shaver recalls the sights, sounds and smells of the cotton harvest along Beaton Street in the song “Jesus Was Our Savior and Cotton Was Our King.”
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“The wagons was a-rollin' with a cobble-colored sound
When me and little David rode our first load into town
The cotton gin was a-ginnin' out the pennies for the pound
Like a giant vacuum cleaner sucking lint up off the ground:
Our freckled faces sparkled then like diamonds in the rough
With smiles that smelled of snaggled teeth and good ol' Garrett snuff
If I could, I would be tradin' all this fatback for the lean
When Jesus was our Savior and cotton was our king”
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The Derrick Days Grand Marshal float will be pulled by G.A. McLain’s International Tractor built in 1939, the same year as Shaver’s birth.
An unplugged acoustic performance and a book and CD signing will follow the parade at 10:30 a.m. inside Caleb’s Diner, 125 North Beaton Street. Caleb’s is the oldest continuously operating soda fountain in Texas and was known as Hashop’s during Shaver’s childhood.
Derrick Days is a celebration of Corsicana’s heritage as the first commercial oil field in Texas, dating to 1894. The annual event is held the third weekend of April.
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On the Web:
www.derrickdays.com
www.utexas.edu/utpress/excerpts/exshahon.html
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