Lefty Frizzell Birthplace — Corsicana, Texas

William Orville Frizzell — Lefty Frizzell — was born on March 31, 1928, in Corsicana, Texas, and grew up in a series of oil patch towns across Texas, Oklahoma, and Arkansas as his father followed the work. He was a naturally gifted singer from childhood, learning to stretch syllables and bend notes into a style that was entirely his own — a flowing, legato approach to vocal phrasing that influenced virtually every country singer who followed him. He was playing honky-tonks as a teenager and doing time in a Texas reformatory for statutory rape before his recording career began.

Frizzell's 1950 Columbia Records debut produced a run of hits so concentrated it has never been equalled: in October 1951, he simultaneously held the top four positions on the country charts — "I Want to Be with You Always," "Always Late with Your Kisses," "I Love You a Thousand Ways," and "Give Me More, More, More (of Your Kisses)." His influence on Merle Haggard — who has cited him as his primary inspiration — and through Haggard on Willie Nelson, Waylon Jennings, and essentially the entire outlaw country movement is incalculable. Willie Nelson's phrasing is directly Frizzellian.

Corsicana has a historical marker acknowledging Frizzell's birth there. He was inducted into the Country Music Hall of Fame in 1982. His life was shortened by the same combination of alcohol and hard living that claimed so many of his contemporaries: he died on July 19, 1975, at the age of 47, from a stroke. His vocal style — the way he turned single syllables into extended melodic journeys — is one of the most distinctive and influential innovations in country music history.