Dallas Frazier, a songwriter who broke out with the pop novelty hit “Alley Oop” and went on pen country classics like the Oak Ridge Boys’ “Elvira,” died Friday at 82. …
“Dallas Frazier is among the greatest country songwriters of all time,” said Kyle Young, CEO of the Country Music Hall of Fame and Museum. “He could convey infectious fun with ‘Elvira,’ and then write something as stunningly sad and true as ‘Beneath Still Waters'” — a No. 1 hit for Emmylou Harris. “He was a man of kindness, generosity and faith, who overcame a hardscrabble upbringing to offer smiling gifts to all of us.
In 1957, Frazier was 19 when he wrote “Alley Oop” in his head while working for his father in a California cotton mill. “Cotton was one of the biggest farm industries in the San Joaquin Valley at one time, back in the ’50s and ’60s. … I’m in this big, huge cotton trailer that’s full of cotton. … I get to thinking about the cartoon character .I start just kind of riffing with an ‘Oop-oop’… I wrote that song that day before I got through with my shift at the cotton gin.
The first song he wrote after moving to Nashville was “There Goes My Everything,” a smash for Jack Greene in 1966, which earned a Grammy nomination for its writer. It would later be recorded by Elvis Presley, whose version was released in 1971, and Engelbert Humperdinck.
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