The recurrent flurry of election frenzy calls to mind my own brief brush with U.S. presidential politics.
The summer of 1952 was typically miserable in Kansas City. Temperatures hung around the high 80s, with the humidity about the same. My new friend and I had spent an overscheduled day rushing to appointments. That night he was going to make a speech in the city’s largest event center to a crowd expected to number in the thousands.
He wanted to freshen up and rest a bit before the big meeting. So did I, but I had no fresh clothes and his wouldn’t fit me. In his hotel room I rinsed out my sticky, stinky shirt, hung it on a hook to dry, and fielded phone calls while he sang in the bathtub.
He was the legitimate, serious candidate of a national political party for president of the United States.
The quintessential tall, dark, and handsome public figure, he had a waist like a wasp and a personality that could charm a corpse.
I had been selected for the delicate and daunting task of mother-henning him around my hometown for three days. It was delicate because we were meeting some pretty important people, requiring a level of demeanor at which I was quite inexperienced. It was daunting because his untamed high-voltage Texas disposition wasn’t made for tight schedules arranged by someone else. He could disappear while you were looking at him, heading off in a dozen directions at once.
Between meetings with dignitaries he would impulsively divert to a nearby radio station to meet disk jockeys. To both dignitaries and disc jockeys he would give an autographed 78-rpm recording of a new song he had written and wanted to popularize. He promised to give me a copy if he had any left at the end of his stay. He didn’t. He promised to send me a copy when he got back to his California home. He didn’t.
"The chimes of time ring out the news/Another day is through
Someone slipped and fell/Was that someone you?
You may have longed for added strength/Your courage to renew
Do not be disheartened/For I have news for you!
It is no secret what God can do/What He’s done for others, He’ll do for you.
With arms wide open, He’ll pardon you/It is no secret what God can do."
Stuart Hamblin became radio’s premier singing cowboy. Between 1931 and 1952 he had a series of highly popular programs on the West coast. He composed music and acted in motion pictures with stars like Gene Autry, Roy Rogers, and John Wayne. Some of his musical hits included “Hell Train,” “Blood on Your Hands,” and “I Won’t Go Huntin’ With You Jake, But I’ll Go Chasin’ Women.”
Like many country kids who found fame and fortune hard to handle, between music and film gigs his was a familiar face on the booze-and-party circuit.
In 1949 he experienced a religious conversion at a Billy Graham revival in Los Angeles. He gave up his secular radio and film career to enter religious broadcasting with his networked radio show, “The Cowboy Church of the Air.”
Musical staples of his program were his “Let The Sunshine In,” and his signature piece made famous by Rosemary Clooney, “This Old House."
He became a teetotaler, a supporter of the Temperance movement, and the Prohibition Party’s 1952 candidate for president. Mostly bankrolling his own admittedly impossible political campaign, he lent himself to a cause in which bitter personal experience made him believe. He was neither surprised nor disappointed to lose to Dwight D. Eisenhower.
I was then, and Stuart remained, a religious fundamentalist. I guess I’m writing this partly as a counterpoint to my outspoken antipathy to anything remotely resembling fundamentalism’s spiritually crippling combination of biblical literalism, guilt-producing legalism, and self-righteous judgmentalism—especially when it is packaged in slick, theatrical revivalism.
Hamblin’s turn to serious faith must be numbered among those whose conversion obviously “took.” Unlike some high-profile converts, he stayed on the path of righteousness. Married to his hometown sweetheart more than 40 years, he lived the lyrics of the songs he sang, and gave me a memorable three days.
But no autographed 78 rpm record.
Columnist Jack Wilson can play “It Is No Secret” on his big bull fiddle. You can find him at jackscolumn@jwco.us.
