Jack Newman (2)

Country western singer-songwriter from San Antonio, Texas, Jack Newman, wrote dozens of country songs including some crossovers into pop music. Jack was born January 31, 1929 and lived to June 3, 1995. He wrote several national hits that charted into the top ten and twenty, and his House of Blue Lovers on TNT made it to #1 in many locations across the country. He wrote several chart hits for Hank Snow, including Whispering Rain, After Night Falls (Billboard #6), and Silver Rails, a neat hobo song about riding the rails. For Jack, the frets on his 1950s Martin guitar were his own silver rails. Jack even owned a German Shepherd name Silver Dial. He performed on the Louisiana Hayride hosted by his close friend Jim Reeves and also went on one of the first Elvis Presley tours with Hank Snow, Jim Reeves, and Johnny Cash, using Jim's band in all his performances. I believe that would be the Louisiana Hayride Band. Jack was close to Willie Nelson, who played the lead parts on a good number of Jack's recordings, which is a little known fact. Jack was close to Mrs. Jimmie Rodgers, and even recorded Waitin' For A Train, a copy of which is stored in a bank vault with no other recordings of that produced. Friends with Ray Price, the Libertos (Johnny Cash's San Antone family/inlaws), Jimmie Newman and Charlie Walker, plus a host of radio DJs, Jack was fond of his music industry friends, although not always happy about the state of the industry's relationships with its performers. In the internet age, there's been some confusion between the black blues singer Jack Newman and Jack Newman the country singer. The former is famous from the 30's, when Jack was not yet ten years old, and the latter began his music career professionally in the 1950s. An interesting aside to this is that in Jack (Milton) Newman's music, you will find the word "blue" is more used than any other word, when all the songs are considered. But that's as close as it gets to the blues, which have been integral to country music at least since Jimmie Rodgers was singing Blue Yodel #9.