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Posted by Larry Jordan
on September 8, 2009, 5:34 pm
69.66.111.56
A couple of fans have called my attention to the fact that on a Holland website there is a post claiming that Jim Bulleit supposedly helped to book Jim Reeves on the "Louisiana Hayride" on July 14, 1951, and the statement is made that it is hoped this will help "a Jim Reeves biographer who, for a number of years, has been struggling to finish his book and apparently is quite unaware of this information."
Actually, I am very familiar with the work of Steven Tucker and Tracey Laird, who are cited as the sources. Tucker wrote a doctoral thesis on the "Hayride" and Ms. Laird wrote a couple of books. Both writers produced very clinical analyses of the subject.
The Holland webmaster claims that "in January 1951, KWKH hired Jim Bulleit, who had started his own Bullit (sic) record label in 1948, as a full-time artists' service representative. In 1952 Jim Bulleit quit and moved back to his family in Nashville. In the brief period he was at KWKH, he had booked several important acts such as Jim Reeves..."
Jim Bulleit, a former deejay, had indeed founded Bullet records (spelled with an "e"), and had claims to songs like "If You've Got the Money, Honey, I've Got the Time."
But Ms. Laird is hardly a consistent source of information. If you look at the book she co-authored with Kip Lornell, ("Shreveport Sounds In Black & White"), it states on page 81, that "the first gig [Bulleit] booked was in Gladewater, Texas, at the High School Gym on 30 April 1955." This is THREE YEARS after Ms. Laird originally claimed Bulleit left employment at KWKH.
For the benefit of anyone interested, including Ms. Laird herself, I'd be happy to clarify the contradictions in her two books. Billboard magazine reported, in its January 20, 1951 issue, that Mr. Bulleit had left Nashville and taken on his new post in Shreveport on January 8, 1951.
Please note that Ms. Laird states in her book, "Louisiana Hayride: Music Along the Red River" that Bulleit "helped to hire several Hayride performers including Jim Reeves." She does NOT say anything about Bulleit having booked Jim in July '51.
In any event, I was amused to see Mr. Bulleit cited as having booked Jim Reeves on the "Hayride" at a time when Jim was still an announcer at KGRI in Henderson, Tex. Bob Sullivan, longtime engineer for KWKH, recalls that Bulleit was "the biggest con artist in Nashville. He came in and proceeded to screw up royally."
In her earlier book, Ms. Laird says "for reasons that remain unclear, Bulleit abandoned the effort within a year and returned to Nashville to rejoin his family..."
Widely respected manager Tillman Franks and engineer Bob Sullivan could have told Ms. Laird why Bulleit left. Tillman swore that Bulleit would sit in his apartment in Shreveport and book by phone, then send in expense accounts from all over east Texas where he claimed he had been out working to arrange shows and promote the artists. KWKH owner Henry Clay found out about it and fired him. Mr. Clay was so soured on the experience he had with Mr. Bulleit's false claims, that he stated publicly that he would never again hire a PR flack to run the artists services bureau, and he never did. He let the show sit there and die on the vine. Pappy Covington and Tillman Franks tried to run one but they didn't have a budget to work with. Pappy would go down and book acts on a pay phone. He didn't even have an office.
Given Mr. Bulleit's falsification of documents, I believe he has impeached himself as a credible source. Furthermore, I would ask: what is the DIRECT evidence that Bulleit booked Jim on the "Hayride" in 1951 or that Jim was even on the show then? (The webmaster of the Holland site has a long history of making unsupportable statements, such as when he describes a rare photo he claims exists, but fails to post the actual photo for fear it might help that "struggling" author).
Bob Sullivan summarizes it emphatically: "I was there in '51. And I was at the 'Hayride' every Saturday night for ten years. The first time I saw Jim Reeves was when they hired him as an announcer (in late '52)."
As I've said previously, I am willing to accept the fact that Reeves appeared on the "Hayride" earlier than is generally believed, but there has to be credible PROOF. Not the claims of a notorious con man, Mr. Bulleit, or an author who publishes two books which contain contradictory information. OR, I might add, the unsupportable assertions of a Holland webmaster who puts faith in a musician, the late Burton Harris, whose account of how Jim came to be signed to a deal with Fabor Robison differs from everybody else's account. (Burton likewise supposedly claimed Jim was on the "Hayride" in '51). What is the Dutch word for "gullible"?
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