Darrell McCall

Darrell McCall approached his earliest singles from a pop perspective, yet he stayed rooted as an uncompromising country singer who favored gritty honky-tonk material for the greater part of his career and paid no attention to passing styles. After gaining notice in 1960 as one of the Little Dippers, he left the ensemble the next year, and his style had shifted to straight country by 1963. Throughout the decade he performed both classic country and honky-tonk numbers before committing fully to roadhouse country, a choice that limited his commercial reach. Occasional hits surfaced every few years whenever hardcore country gained mainstream acceptance, but he otherwise sustained only a modest profile supported by a loyal core audience.

Raised in New Jasper, Ohio, McCall launched his career at fifteen by securing a Saturday-morning DJ slot at a local station while also performing at regional dances. Following high-school graduation he enlisted in the Army and was posted in Kentucky. Once discharged, he and his boyhood friend Johnny Paycheck relocated to Nashville in 1958. Their attempt to record as a duo proved unsuccessful, so McCall turned to studio harmony work, contributing vocals to sessions for Faron Young, George Jones, and Ray Price. Studio duties soon led to road work, where he played bass and sang harmony behind Young, Price, and Hank Williams Jr.

At a 1959 session McCall encountered Nashville producer and publisher Buddy Killen, who recruited him for the newly formed Little Dippers alongside Hurshel Wigintin, Delores Dinning, and Emily Gilmore. The group scored a major pop success with the 1960 Top Ten single “Forever.” McCall then secured a solo deal with Capitol and issued the pop-oriented “My Kind of Lovin’” and “Call the Zoo” in 1961; both flopped, prompting his release from the label. Returning to country, he signed with Phillips in 1962, and “A Stranger Was Here” appeared in January 1963, becoming his first and highest-charting country single at number seventeen. Although the track remained on the charts for eight weeks and he also sang the theme for the Paul Newman film Hud that year, no comparable follow-up materialized.

In the mid-sixties McCall paused his music career to pursue acting, appearing in the 1965 film Nashville Rebel and in Road to Nashville and What Am I Bid the following year. He also worked as a cowboy in the Southwest and competed in minor rodeos. Recording resumed in 1968 on the independent Wayside label, yielding four modest hits—“I’d Love to Live With You Again,” “Wall of Pictures,” “Hurry Up,” and “The Arms of My Weakness”—plus the 1970 Mercury-distributed album Meet Darrell McCall. After the Wayside contract ended in 1971, Hank Williams Jr. took the McCall–Morris composition “Eleven Roses” to number one, which led Tree International to sign McCall as a staff songwriter.

He resumed recording in 1974 on Atlantic with “There’s Still a Lot of Love in San Antone,” which nearly reached the country Top Fifty. Moving to Columbia in 1975, he enjoyed his strongest chart run since the early sixties. Although “Pins and Needles (In My Heart)” performed modestly, the Willie Nelson duet “Lily Dale” reached the country Top Forty; Cash Box later named it Best Duet of 1977. “Dreams of a Dreamer” became his first solo Top Forty entry since 1963. The outlaw-country wave that aided this resurgence faded by 1978, and singles such as “Down the Roads of Daddy’s Dreams” and “The Weeds Outlived the Roses” missed the Top Forty, resulting in his departure from Columbia.

In 1980 McCall joined Hillside and scored one chart entry, the Curtis Potter duet “San Antonio Medley.” He then moved to RCA, where “Long Line of Empties” nearly reached the Top Forty later that year. As radio and audiences embraced the smoother urban-cowboy sound, his recording activity diminished. Sporadic releases followed, including an uncredited appearance as “friend” on Connie Hanson and Friend’s 1982 minor hit “There’s Still a Lot of Love in San Antone” and the final charting single “Memphis in May” on Indigo in 1984. Two albums appeared in 1986: Reunion with his former backing band the Tennessee Volunteers on BGM, and the Johnny Bush duet project Hot Texas Country.

After 1986 McCall largely stepped away from recording yet continued occasional live performances and sustained long-term work with the Muscular Dystrophy Association. He spent the rest of the eighties and most of the nineties at his Texas home alongside his wife, Mona Vary, a former member of Audrey Williams’ band.