Ronald “Slim” Wallace was a truck driver. He logged more than 4 million miles for his company, which changed names several times but was called Roadway when he retired.
Slim Wallace had a hobby though, one that would prove perhaps more interesting: He operated a music label. From his home in Memphis, Tenn., the Paragould native created recordings of rockabilly artists such as Billy Lee Riley and Thomas Wayne Perkins, brother to Luther Perkins. Thomas Wayne cut the song “Tragedy,” an album that sold more than a million copies, for Fernwood Records.
It was a real life tragedy that became the end of Fernwood, says Mark Wallace, grandson of the label’s founder. One of Slim’s daughters died under mysterious circumstances in Tulsa, Okla., and as Slim traveled to tend to her estate, the younger Wallace says a few of the label’s employees pilfered some
of the master copies.
While the theft of the master copies represented a potential revenue loss, it was the death that had a
greater impact. The family never recovered, Wallace says, and the label last created an album in 1968.
But Wallace says his grandfather was a packrat, so for more than 30 years, boxes of memorabilia like records and newspaper clippings were stored, without mention, in the attic of Slim’s home.
Wallace found the collection in the days after his grandfather’s death in 2001.
“I think it was meant for me to find,” he says.
Just what he was supposed to do with the memorabilia was another matter, even if he did realize that this collection of items - and his grandfather’s legacy - would become his own.
“I woke up one morning, and I couldn’t think about anything else,” he says.
On his lunch break one day, Wallace, who has lived in Rogers for about two years, stopped at the Rogers Historical Museum for a visit. Inspired, he soon pitched the idea of a museum exhibit of his grandfather’s collection.
Wallace is currently assembling the memorabilia for that exhibit, which will debut Feb. 5 at the museum in downtown Rogers. It is the first exhibit he’s assembled, and he acknowledges the staff members at the museum have been a tremendous help.
The collection includes many of the items of which his grandfather was most proud: a copy of the gold
selling album, a Fender jazz bass and photos of Slim with his family, often with him clad in his truck driver’s
workclothes.
In addition to the items, the exhibit will also offer a video that includes conversations the younger Wallace recorded with many of the rockabilly pioneers associated with Slim Wallace, who has been inducted into the Rockabilly Hall of Fame.
Mark Wallace is also assembling a rockabilly concert to coincide with the exhibit. It will take place on Feb. 5 at the Victory Theater, just down the street from the museum. The show will feature performances by Ramon Maupin, a rockabilly artist who recorded on the Fernwood label, SlimWallace and the Dixie Ramblers (with the younger Wallace portraying his grandfather), the Sin City Ramblers, a
contemporary rockabilly band with which Mark Wallace performed before he moved to Rogers and also The
Dusters, a Nashville band that has toured throughout the United States and overseas.
Wallace, who once worked as a tour guide at Sun Studios in Memphis, hopes the exhibit will last a long time after its run at the local museum, and the process of creating it has convinced him he’d like a career in museum work.
Until something like that happens, he’ll be working to keep promoting his grandfather, whose legacy gets lost among the more famous Memphis studios such as Sun and Stax.
“It’s a tragedy I can’t get him more than a footnote,” Wallace says.
“When I feel like he’s been recognized, I’ll stop.”
***
FAQ
‘ROOTS OF ROCKABILLY: RONALD ‘SLIM’ WALLACE
WHEN - 10 a.m. to 5 p.m. Monday-Saturday Feb. 5-March 15
WHERE - Rogers Historical Museum in downtown Rogers
COST - Free
INFO - 621-1154
***
FYI
ROCKABILLY CONCERT
With music by Mark ‘Slim’ Wallace and the Dixie Ramblers, Ramon Maupin, Sin City Scoundrels & The Dusters
WHEN - 7 p.m. Feb. 5
WHERE - Victory Theater in downtown Rogers
COST - $10-$35
INFO - 631-8988
Whats Up, Pages 8 on 01/28/2011