Abilene Reporter-News
Sunday, December 24, 1995

Don't let the stories get in the way, or who wrote Slim's greatest hit?

By BOB LAPHAM
Arts Editor

Abilene's Slim Willet wrote himself into early recording history with his monster crossover hit, "Don't Let the Stars Get in Your Eyes."

By 1953, when Perry Como recorded the country smash and had it shoot to No. 1 on pop charts, well over 100 singers, groups, bands and orchestras had put the unusual song on record. It was estimated that Slim's song was in the peerless class of Hoagie Carmichael's "Stardust," Mel Torme's "Christmas Song" and Irving Berlin's "White Christmas" as being the most recorded in history.

But what's this? Did Slim actually swipe the song from some down-and-out, washed-up musician living in obscurity on the Callahan Divide? Gave him a hundred bucks, maybe? Or just took it, put his own name to it, and garnered tens of thousands of dollars in royalties?

That's more or less what a columnist named Roxy Gordon indicated in articles carried by the Coleman Chronicle.

A rumor circulates

"Back in Texas, Dean (Beard) fell in with Abilene's Slim Willet," Gordon wrote in the Coleman County paper's Dec. 14, 1993, issue. His column traced the career of the late beard, a singer and musician who gained some measure of regional fame during the 1950s and '60s. "Slim was credited with writing 'Don't Let the Stars Get in Your Eyes' ... I'm told it's common knowledge among people of that era that Slim didn't write the song at all..."

Then, in another Gordon column, identifying the many Texas songwriters the columnist had known, in the Chronicle's March 21, 1995, issue: "Slim Willet's 'Don't Let the Stars Get in Your Eyes' seems to have come out of Coleman County. Rick (Sikes) says Slim didn't really write it, that it was written by some guy from around Novice ..."

Sikes is another Coleman County native and former singer-musician, one of the charter members of the country group known as the Rhythm Rebels.

These articles are all news to Slim's widow, who still lives in Abilene.

House on South 16th

Jimmie Moore recalls about 45 years ago, when she and her husband bought their first house.

"It was on South 16th, with no air conditioning. At night, during the summer, we'd leave the windows wide open. The stars and moon would shien through, and splash on the bed.

"Slim would sit on the bed and plunk the guitar," Jimmie Recalled, adding that he would go over and over the words and slip them into the strange, breathless meter with no pauses that led the song into its bridge and gave it the unusual wrap-around lyric sound which made "Stars" so popular.

"The Odis Claxtons lived next door," Jimmie said. "She was really into Eastern Star. She'd go to meetings every so often, in those fancy nightgowns. I'll never forget when Slim jumped up one night as she was walking up her driveway in that fancy gown, with the stars out and all.

"Slim rushed out of the house and met her in the driveway. 'Mrs. Claxton,' he said, 'let me sing my new song for you.' He did, right there in the drive, playing his guitar. She was the first person to ever hear it."

Slim made the initial recording of his own song. It sold moderately well, especially in later years, but more importantly served as the demo record which quickly made the rounds and got the ball to rolling with other artists. Skeeter Davis was one of the first country singers to record "Stars."

Slim's wife delivered the very first copy to a radio station -- to KRBC (now KNTS), of course, Willet was too ill to get out of bed the day the first pressings arrived.

This was in 1951, two years before Perry Como would sell more than 1,000,000 copies of his pop version. In between, the song enjoyed revived popularity in the country field and lingering chart popularity virtually unknown then, before, or since.

Jimmie said to this day, she still receives royalty checks from the song. Small ones. But enough to signify that "Don't Let the Stars" lives on.

Tracky down Roxy

The Coleman Chronicle didn't have Roxy Gordon's phone number but their sometimes-columnist was known to live in Dallas. As luck would have it, Roxy's address and number were in the Dallas phone book.

I was surprised to find that Roxy was a man's name.

He got the information that Slim put his hame on someone else's music from Beard and Sikes, Gordon said. He was just quoting them, and suggested since so much time had elapsed, "I just forgot about pursuing the story. Just leave things as they are," Gordon said.

When I insisted I couldn't do that, he provided Sike's phone number. Now semi-handicapped and running a small store with his wife out of his home in Coleman, Sikes said, "According to the story (Beard and others passed along to him), some guy over around Novice wrote the song." The nameless gentleman has long since passed away, he said.

Sikes said that since Beard also was dead, he knew of no other place to turn, to verify or refute the rumor he insisted had been around for decades -- even well before Willet's death in 1966.

Sikes said lots of country musicians would trade songs back and forth in the old days. Maybe help each other write a lyric or break the block they were experiencing on music.

I offered that the unusual, one-of-a-kind chatter-meter to "Don't Let the Stars" was a distant cousin to an earlier Willet song, "I'm a Tool Pusher from Snyder." And that it might be difficult to imagine a songwriter not composing both words and meter. And had someone had a hand in writing the song, surely he or she or their heirs would've come forward back in 1954, when Slim was rolling in royalty checks.

Maybe, Sikes replied. And maybe Gordon's right, he added. Maybe we ought to just drop the subject, since "we'll never know, for sure."

Just don't try to sell that to Jimmie Moore.