Biography
Today regarded as a forgotten pioneer among rockabilly figures, Werly Fairburn nonetheless exerted direct influence on country icon Jim Reeves while sustaining a full-time living as a country performer who never scored a national hit. Across the 1950s he cut sides for Trumpet, Capitol, Columbia, and Savoy, yet his earliest and most enduring recognition arrived via radio work both as a deejay and as an on-air musician. In late-1940s New Orleans he was first billed as the Singing Barber and later as the Singing Deejay, eventually forming the Delta Boys, the group that accompanied him on his decade-long recording output.
Born in 1924 near Folsom, Louisiana, to a farmer whose ancestry included Cherokee, Scots, Irish, and English roots, Fairburn absorbed weekly broadcasts of the Grand Ole Opry with his family; after his father’s death in 1937, when Werly was thirteen, the elder Fairburn’s guitar became the instrument over which the boy competed most fiercely with his older brothers. An elderly Black neighbor taught the siblings blues licks that they folded into the hillbilly sounds they heard on the radio.
When the United States entered World War II, the seventeen-year-old Fairburn, already married, left the family farm for work at the Higgins Shipyard in New Orleans, then enlisted in the Navy in 1943 and served with its maintenance division in Honolulu. While stationed there he first considered music as a vocation, yet he prudently trained as a barber upon returning to New Orleans; music remained an avocation until his distinctive blend of Jimmie Rodgers and Hank Williams influences with New Orleans-style R&B secured him an on-air slot at WJBW, broadcast directly from his own shop.
Thus in 1948 local listeners first encountered him as the Singing Barber; he later moved to WWEZ, where he became the Singing Deejay, and enrolled at a local music school to formalize his technique. Early in the 1950s he made his recording debut for Lillian McMurry’s Trumpet Records—the same label that first documented Sonny Boy Williamson II—scoring his most notable success there with the upbeat proto-rockabilly number “Camping With Marie,” later recognized as a classic of the genre’s formative period.
Although rooted in country, Fairburn’s music carried a beat that appealed equally to younger rockabilly and rock-and-roll listeners; his 1956 Columbia single “Everybody’s Rockin’” stands as a quintessential rockabilly recording. A regional favorite in New Orleans, he also drew crowds at Dallas’s Big D Jamboree despite lacking a national hit, and his stage repertoire embraced New Orleans R&B material such as Fats Domino’s “All By Myself.” That stylistic openness, paired with professional adaptability, eased his transition when rock and roll arrived in the mid-1950s; unlike many country artists past their twenties who strained to court youthful audiences, Fairburn naturally embraced rockabilly.
In 1964, while performing his own composition “I Guess I’m Crazy” on the Louisiana Hayride, he was heard by his friend Jim Reeves, who promptly recorded the song; the resulting single was still climbing the charts when Reeves’s plane crashed on July 31, 1964. Fairburn’s southeastern popularity did not transfer when he relocated to California in the 1960s, yet he continued performing regularly until his death from lung cancer in 1985. Bear Family Records issued the retrospective CD Everybody’s Rockin’ in 1994, and a live version of “All By Myself” recorded at the Big D Jamboree in the mid-1950s appeared on CD in 2000.
Born in 1924 near Folsom, Louisiana, to a farmer whose ancestry included Cherokee, Scots, Irish, and English roots, Fairburn absorbed weekly broadcasts of the Grand Ole Opry with his family; after his father’s death in 1937, when Werly was thirteen, the elder Fairburn’s guitar became the instrument over which the boy competed most fiercely with his older brothers. An elderly Black neighbor taught the siblings blues licks that they folded into the hillbilly sounds they heard on the radio.
When the United States entered World War II, the seventeen-year-old Fairburn, already married, left the family farm for work at the Higgins Shipyard in New Orleans, then enlisted in the Navy in 1943 and served with its maintenance division in Honolulu. While stationed there he first considered music as a vocation, yet he prudently trained as a barber upon returning to New Orleans; music remained an avocation until his distinctive blend of Jimmie Rodgers and Hank Williams influences with New Orleans-style R&B secured him an on-air slot at WJBW, broadcast directly from his own shop.
Thus in 1948 local listeners first encountered him as the Singing Barber; he later moved to WWEZ, where he became the Singing Deejay, and enrolled at a local music school to formalize his technique. Early in the 1950s he made his recording debut for Lillian McMurry’s Trumpet Records—the same label that first documented Sonny Boy Williamson II—scoring his most notable success there with the upbeat proto-rockabilly number “Camping With Marie,” later recognized as a classic of the genre’s formative period.
Although rooted in country, Fairburn’s music carried a beat that appealed equally to younger rockabilly and rock-and-roll listeners; his 1956 Columbia single “Everybody’s Rockin’” stands as a quintessential rockabilly recording. A regional favorite in New Orleans, he also drew crowds at Dallas’s Big D Jamboree despite lacking a national hit, and his stage repertoire embraced New Orleans R&B material such as Fats Domino’s “All By Myself.” That stylistic openness, paired with professional adaptability, eased his transition when rock and roll arrived in the mid-1950s; unlike many country artists past their twenties who strained to court youthful audiences, Fairburn naturally embraced rockabilly.
In 1964, while performing his own composition “I Guess I’m Crazy” on the Louisiana Hayride, he was heard by his friend Jim Reeves, who promptly recorded the song; the resulting single was still climbing the charts when Reeves’s plane crashed on July 31, 1964. Fairburn’s southeastern popularity did not transfer when he relocated to California in the 1960s, yet he continued performing regularly until his death from lung cancer in 1985. Bear Family Records issued the retrospective CD Everybody’s Rockin’ in 1994, and a live version of “All By Myself” recorded at the Big D Jamboree in the mid-1950s appeared on CD in 2000.
Albums
