Talley. Figuring he’d pulled off his best scam yet, Barton went around town gloating that
he’d swapped a worthless song for a car.
A few months prior, Bill Woods had convinced Ferlin Husky, a Capitol Records artist who
had not yet had a hit, to relocate to Bakersfield. Appearing under the name Terry Preston,
Husky performed at the Rainbow Gardens dance hall on weekends, and worked as a DJ
on radio station KBIS during the week.
“I’d play that ‘Dear John Letter’ on my show and
I got a lot of requests for it
,” Husky
recalled.
“After a couple of weeks,
I thought, hell, there was
something to it
.”
Husky’s producer, Capitol
Records’ Ken Nelson, had asked
Ferlin to help him find songs for an
upcoming recording session with
Jean Shepard, a teenaged country
singer who was born in Oklahoma,
but lived in Visalia, about 80 miles
north of Bakersfield.
“I took the
‘Dear John Letter’ down to Ken
Nelson
,” Ferlin recounted,
“and
said, ‘This would be a good one
for Jean. This thing is a hit.’ He
just laughed at me. I said, ‘Hey, I
laughed too when I first heard it!
’”
Nelson took his advice and
recorded the song as a Shepard
and Husky duet at the Capitol
Ferlin Husky and Jean Shepard
- 7 -
