Aug. 27, 2009 - As proof that anybody can grow up to be, if not President, at least a Governor or Senator, we submit the name of Wilbert Lee "Pappy" O'Daniel, who rose from humble roots to be a public figure who was just as ineffective as he was popular. His greatest contribution to the state was in popularizing Western Swing music by giving men named Bob Wills and Milton Brown a job.
After his father died when he was a baby, Pappy O'Daniel grew up working in the fields of his family's Kansas farm. At age 18, he went to work for a Kansas milling company. He moved to Fort Worth in 1925, to be sales manager of Burrus Mills. Put in charge of radio advertising, he began evangelizing and writing a few songs for a "hillbilly band" known as the Lightcrust Doughboys. He fired the band not long after taking over because he didn't care for the band's hillbilly music.
Thousands of listeners, it turned out, did like the band's brand of hillbilly music, which was really a mixed bag of country, jazz, polka, rhythm and blues and native Mexican music. Radio bands were expected to be versatile and the Lightcrust Doughboys were that.
Pappy decided to hire the band back, provided they work full-time for the flour mill. They did so for about three weeks, then threatened to quit one job, the other or both if new arrangements weren't made. O'Daniel kept the disgruntled musicians on the payroll provided they practice for eight hours a day at the mill, a stipulation they gladly accepted.
This was about the point where O'Daniel decided he liked this hillbilly music enough to become the Lightcrust Doughboys manager. He became so enamored of the hillbilly culture that when he started his own flour company in 1935, he named it Hillbilly Flour. The hillbilly-tinged phrase, "Pass the biscuits, Pappy" became his signature line on the radio right along with announcer Trett Kinskey's, "The Light Crust Doughboys are on the air!"
One of the original Doughboys, Milton Brown, left O'Daniel and the Lightcrust Doughboys in 1932. He went on to form the pioneering Western Swing band Milton Brown and the Brownies. A year later, O'Daniel fired Bob Wills for drinking too much and Wills responded by forming one of the most popular bands of all time, the Texas Playboys.
On his Palm Sunday broadcast in 1938, O'Daniel informed his listeners that a blind man had sent him a letter complaining the state needed a decent, Christian man in the Governor's mansion and he asking Pappy if he would run for Governor. O'Daniel said that if he did run, his platform would include the Ten Commandments, abolition of the poll tax (which he hadn't paid) and a pension program that would guarantee all Texans over the age of 65 a monthly income of $30. He ended by asking his listeners to write in with their thoughts on the matter.
On a subsequent broadcast, Pappy announced that of the 54,499 responses he received, all but four asked him to run for Governor. Those four dissenters advised against it, he said, because they thought he was too good for the job.
That didn't turn out to be the case when he stunned the state and the country by winning the Democratic primary, which in those days in Texas was tantamount to winning the general election. Every newspaper in the state had come out against O'Daniel's candidacy, and the new governor did nothing to quiet those critics. Actually, he did hardly anything at all.
O'Daniel's inaction did not bother his supporters. "He's a good man," one said after O'Daniel was re-elected to a second term. "It ain't his fault he didn't do nothing."
In 1941, O'Daniel defeated a young Congressman named Lyndon Johnson in a special election for U.S. Senator. It was the only defeat at the ballot box that LBJ ever suffered. O'Daniel then went on to win a full term by defeating former governors James Allred and Dan Moody.
O'Daniel declined to run for reelection in 1948, because he was certain he had little chance of saving America from Communism. His position was bolstered by a 7 percent approval rating in public opinion polls.
He ran for Governor in 1956 and '58, on a segregationist platform, but was defeated badly both times. The power of radio to broadcast a candidate's message had been eclipsed by television and Pappy wasn't much of a TV personality, though he is recognized as the country's first "media" or celebrity candidate.
While his reputation as a politician has not held up well, the Western Swing music he helped introduce to the state and the world has endured. The power of that music, combined with the power of a radio microphone, was such that it kept Pappy O'Daniel in elected office for the better part of a decade.
