ROOTS of Country Music

The Professional Work of Don Wayne

(May 30, 1933 ~ Sep. 12, 2011)

Don Wayne was a country music songwriter best known for penning Carl Smith's smash hit Country Bumpkin, which received the Country Music Association and Academy of Country Music song of the year awards in 1974.

Born Donald Choate, Mr. Wayne was working as a shipping clerk when he received his first cut as a songwriter: George Morgan recorded Lonesome Waltz for Columbia Records in 1953.

A year later, he was drafted into the Army and he served 17 months in Germany. Mr. Wayne continued writing songs and made a solo recording in 1959, but his major break as a writer came in 1963, when he signed with Tree Publishing.

At Tree, he went to work on a composition called “Saginaw, Michigan,” but struggled to complete that story song.

“He had that song about halfway finished and then got hung up,” said Bill Anderson, who devised an ending to the song. As recorded by Lefty Frizzell, the co-written Saginaw, Michigan spent four weeks atop the country singles charts and became Mr. Wayne’s first great songwriting success. It was also Lefty Frizzell's final top-10 single.  

By the early 1970s, Wayne was struggling to place songs with artists and Tree’s Tom Hartman suggested that it was because he was writing too much material about rural subjects.

“Tom said….. ‘Nobody wants to hear about that frost on the pumpkin,’” Mr. Wayne related to interviewer Philip Self, for Self’s Guitar Pull book. “So, ‘frost on the pumpkin’ hit me, not only as a phrase, but the cutting way he was implying that my stuff was too hillbilly and too down-home to be commercial.” 

In the summer of 1973, Mr. Wayne rhymed the “frost on the pumpkin” line with “Hello, country bumpkin,” and wound up with a signature hit. Country Bumpkin became the Country Music Association and Academy of Country Music song of the year. Smith recorded a string of Mr. Wayne’s songs, and in 1978, Mr. Wayne was inducted into the Nashville Songwriters Hall of Fame.

Mr. Wayne went on to serve as president of the Nashville Songwriters Association International, and he remained devoted to songwriting throughout his life.

Don Wayne songs were recorded by Bill Anderson, Jean Shepard, Eddy Arnold, Ernest Tubb, Loretta Lynn, Conway Twitty, Connie Smith, The Osborne Brothers, Tanya Tucker, Tex Ritter, Jack Barlow, Jim & Jesse, Sheb Wooley, Hank Thompson, Doug Kershaw, Tommy Cash, The Wilburn Brothers, Hank Snow, Burl Ives, George Jones, Bobby Bare, The Browns, George Morgan and Dick Curless, among many others.

Awards:
1974--CMA\Song of the Year\Country Bumpkin
1974--ACM\Song of the Year\Country Bumpkin
1974--NSAI\Song of the Year\Country Bumpkin
1974--NSAI\Songwriter of the Year

Don Wayne Song Catalog: Partial Listing

1. Birmingham Blues (Jack Barlow, 1969)
2. Country Bumpkin (Cal Smith, 1974)
3. If Teardrops Were Silver (Jean Shepard, 1966)
4. It’s Time to Pay the Fiddler (Cal Smith, 1975)
5. Lonesome Waltz (George Morgan, 1953)
6. MacArthur's Hand (Cal Smith, 1976)
7. Nashville (David Houston, 1971)
8. Saginaw, Michigan (Lefty Frizzell, 1964)
9. She Talked a Lot About Texas (Cal Smith, 1975)
10. The Belles of Southern Bell (Del Reeves, 1965)
11. The Marriage Bit (Lefty Frizzell, 1968)
12. Walk Tall (Faron Young, 1965) 
13. What In Her World Did I Do (Eddy Arnold, 1979)

---------------------------------------------------------------------------Researched, compiled and written by Richard Bell, Roots of Country Music, Jan. 8, 2012. 

Don Wayne

Listen to Country Bumpkin