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I’d also decided I didn’t want nothing more
to do with Pappy Daily. So I drifted down
to Galveston, and then on back to Houston,
and I mainly stayed drunk for about the
next three or four years
.
”
Although Pappy Daily proved crucial
to Burns’ comeback hopes, two other little
credited figures on the Houston music
scene played important roles in his return
to the scene. They were songwriter Buddy
Word and promoter/manager Walt
Breeland. The little known Buddy Word
wrote or co-wrote a number of fine honky-
tonk songs, including both sides of Burns’
first post-Starday record for TNT in 1959
and several of the songs he’d record for
United Artists when his comeback started
to gain momentum in the early ’60s. Walt
Breeland is better known, mostly for
having been one of the astute trio of men
– the other two were Paul Buskirk and
Claude Gray – who bought the struggling
Willie Nelson’s songs
Family Bible
and
Nite Life
. An officer with a Houston,
Texas Teamsters union local, Breeland
also gained some notoriety as the co-
author, with Gray, of a song about the
infamous Teamsters’ President Jimmy
Hoffa,
The Ballad Of Jimmy Hoffa.
An
active promoter of country music in
Houston, Breeland would become
Buddy & Margie Word with their son, 1950s.
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