Cindy Walker: Mart’s Queen of Country Songwriting

Today is the birthday of Cindy Walker. She would be 108 today.

Cindy Walker was born in Mart, Texas on July 20, 1918 — a McLennan County farming town between Waco and the Brazos River. Her grandfather was a fiddler. She was writing songs by twelve. At twenty-three, she drove to Hollywood with her parents, walked into the Bing Crosby building, and sang him her own song in the lobby. He recorded it. That was 1941, and the career had already begun on Walker’s own terms.

Five Hundred Songs

Walker returned to Mart and never left Texas for long, but the songs kept going everywhere else. Bob Wills recorded “Dusty Skies” and “Cherokee Maiden.” Eddy Arnold, Ernest Tubb, Red Foley — they all cut her songs. “You Don’t Know Me” was co-written with Eddy Arnold and recorded by Ray Charles in 1962, becoming one of the most covered songs in American music. Walker wrote over 500 songs and was inducted into the Country Music Hall of Fame in 1997. She died March 23, 2006, at home in Mexia, Texas, not far from where she was born. She never chased the music. She let the music come to her — and it always did. Learn more at the Texas State Historical Association.