Big Spring: Lefty Frizzell at the Ace of Clubs

In 1950, Lefty Frizzell had a regular gig at the Ace of Clubs in Big Spring, Texas. The West Texas oil city was honky-tonk country — the kind of place where a singer could get paid to do what he loved. He was 21. He did not know that someone in the audience was about to rewrite his future.

Big Spring sits in Howard County in the Permian Basin, where oil derricks rise out of caliche flats and the wind comes at you from every direction. The town had grown up fast on petroleum and railroad money. And like every oilfield town in Texas, it had bars. The Ace of Clubs was one of the better ones — a place with a stage and a sound system and people who came to drink and dance and forget they worked in the fields all week.

Frizzell had been working this circuit for years by then. He’d performed on radio stations across Texas and Arkansas. He’d played honky-tonks from northeast Texas to New Mexico. He had the technique — that extraordinary way of bending syllables, of holding a note until it transformed into something deeper — but he did not yet have a record contract.

The Night Jim Beck Walked In

Jim Beck was a Dallas studio owner with a reputation for finding talent. He had built a recording studio at 1101 Ross Avenue in Dallas, and he was always looking for the next act to bring to the major labels. When Beck heard Frizzell at the Ace of Clubs, he recognized something immediately: a voice unlike any other in country music.

Beck offered to record free demonstration recordings at his Dallas studio. Frizzell accepted. In April 1950, he drove to Dallas and cut the sessions that would change everything. The demos included a song called “If You’ve Got the Money (I’ve Got the Time).” Beck took the recordings to Columbia Records producer Don Law. Law signed Frizzell within weeks.

Big Spring did not make Lefty Frizzell a star. But the Ace of Clubs is where the door opened. A West Texas honky-tonk, a Tuesday night set, and a record man who knew what he was hearing — that was the combination that launched one of the most influential careers in country music history.