Daily, Harold [Pappy]
The Professional Work of Harold W. [Pappy] Daily
Harold W. "Pappy" Daily was was born in Yoakum, Texas, on February 8, 1902. His mother remarried after Daily's father died when he was a child and the family relocated to Houston. After a stint in the Marine Corps, Daly began working for the Southern Pacific Railroad as an accountant (1922). Around the same time he began playing baseball. From the mid 1920s until 1931, he dabbled in baseball management and even launched a new baseball team called the Freeport Tarpons.
When the Great Depression forced the Southern Pacific to lay off many of its workers, Daily sought a job with more security. He found it in the amusement-machine business. He wrote to the Bally Manufacturing Company in Chicago and asked why Houston had no distributor for Bally's Juke Boxes. The company wrote Daily back and offered him the territory. He started South Coast Amusements in 1932 to distribute Bally Jukeboxes. At first he kept his job with the railroad and worked part-time distributing jukeboxes.
In 1933, he left the railroad to work full time on his distributorship and his business flourished, that is, until World War II, when the government banned jukebox manufacturing for the duration of the war. Undaunted, Daily gathered as many records as he could and opened a store in Houston and sold phonograph records. Eventually he became a wholesaler and distributed records in the Southwestern USA.
In 1952, Daily founded Starday Records with Jack Starnes and it grew to become one of the most successful independent labels from Texas. Starnes was a talent booker who owned a night club in Beaumont Texas and who at one time managed Lefty Frizzell. The name Starday came from their two last names, "Star" from Starnes and "Day" from Daily. Daily paired artists with songs and supervised their recording sessions.
In 1954, a young ex-Marine named George Jones was playing in Starnes' club. Starnes decided to cut some records with Jones and brought in Daily to help produce his first session. The records were cut in Starnes' living room on a Magnecord home recorder. Jones initially sounded like his idols Roy Acuff and Lefty Frizzell, but Daily told him to develop his own style. His first release was No Money in This Deal. The record didn't sell well, but in 1955, Jones recorded his first hit titled, Why Baby Why (N. 4, 1955).
From 1954 to 1958, George was the mainstay of the label recording exclusively for Starday. Together with Don Pierce (who replaced Starnes at Starday), Daily worked extensively with George Jones to further his career. Their collaboration generated six top-ten singles, including Why, Baby Why (No. 4, 1955), What Am I Worth (No. 7, 1956), You Gotta Be My Baby (No. 7, 1956), Just One More (No. 3, 1956) and a duet with Jeannette Hicks titled, Yearning (No. 10, 1957).
Although Starday typically recorded Texas honky-tonk music, it also covered western swing, rockabilly, Tex Mex, Cajun, Bluegrass and polka music. Starday rode a wave of success with several country artists, including Cowboy Copas, Alabam (No. 1, 1960). Red Sovine charted his two biggest singles for Starday, Giddyup Go (No. 1, 1965) and Teddy Bear (No, 1, 1976).
When Daily and his partners decided to split up in 1958, each retained part of the master tape catalog (Daily got the George Jones masters, among others), and Daily went to work for Mercury Records as a producer for country music artist. George Jones followed him to Mercury. As his producer, Daily worked on a succession of hits for Jones. George scored eight ten-top hits, including his biggest song, Tender Years (No. 1, 1961). The Starday label, without Daily, also entered into a distribution agreement with Mercury Records.
In 1958 Daily had sold his interests in Starday and began producing and managing his own Houston based label, D Records. He hoped this line would serve as a regional subsidiary for Mercury Records, with which he had established a working relationship as George Jones's producer. Daily's agreement with Mercury allowed him to continue with his Starday venture and other independent labels, licensing any promising records back to Mercury for the larger label to market and distribute.
Daily moved over to United Artists Records around 1960. George followed, as well as another country singer, Melba Montgomery. While associated with United Artists, Jones garnered seven top-ten singles, including She Thinks I Still Care (No. 1, 1962).
In 1965, Daily closed D Records and left United Artists to concentrate his efforts on Musicor Records, signing artists of the caliber of Gene Pitney. When Daily left United Artists, Jones and Montgomery again followed. It turned out to be a very good deal, for Musicor. Jones alone racked up sixteen of his biggest singles with Musicor, including Things Have Gone to Pieces (No. 9, 1965), Take Me (No. 8, 1965) and Walk Through This World With Me (No. 1, 1967).
Jones and Pitney were by far the biggest names on the Musicor label so by the time the 1970s arrived, with Pitney no longer making records and Jones moving on to Epic Records, Musicor was left without any names big enough to make the label viable.
Several members of the family carried on his musical legacy. In 1958 Pappy sold his record-distributing company, H. W. Daily, Inc., to his sons, Bud and Don, who opened Cactus Music and Video in Houston in 1975 and operated the store until their retirement in 2006.
Harold Pappy Daily died on December 5, 1987, in Houston and is buried at Forest Park Lawndale Cemetery in that city. After his death Bud and Don also took over the D Records catalog. Pappy's grandson, Mike Daily, began a successful career playing steel guitar for George Strait's Ace in the Hole Band in 1975.
Richard Bell, Country Music Historian, Nashville, Tennessee, USA. June, 2009.
