Lefty Frizzell

A brief career as a boxer earned him the nickname "the left-hander", but at the age of seventeen, after several defeats, he opted for music. Strongly influenced by Jimmie Rodgers, he scored two huge hits in 1950, "If You've Got The Money" and "I've Got The Time", covered in 1976 by Willie Nelson. He enjoyed further success with "I Love You Thousand Ways", "I Want To Be With You Always", "Travelin' Blues" and, in 1964, "Saginaw, Michigan", his last big hit.
A superb tenor voice, playing on notes and syllables, a ferocious honky tonker whose statue adorns a park in his hometown, he was, for a time, put in competition with Hank Williams, then at the height of his career. In frail health, he died of a stroke a fortnight before Falling, a posthumous hit, entered the charts.