Everyday Music: Exploring Sounds and Cultures

W. W. Trammell: Guitar Maker and Musician, Lone Star

W. W. “Skinny” Trammell Guitar Maker and Musician, Lone Star When I stop for gas in Lone Star about six miles south of Daingerfield on US Highway 259, deep in the Piney Woods of Northeast Texas, a white-haired man chewing tobacco exits his small storefront wearing a red and white ball cap with the brim flipped up. As I roll down the window, he motions for me to stay inside and says proudly, “We’re a full-service station.” Then he points to the two Leaving Dallas, Texas, May 2, 2011 74 / W. W. “Skinny” Trammell pumps, “Unleaded or premium?” I tell him “unleaded” and that I need to use the restroom. He shows me the way. When I return he’s finished checking the oil and is washing the windshield with a squeegee and cotton rag. I thank him and follow him back inside to pay and am completely surprised. There are woodchips scattered on the floor. Guitars, fiddles, and mandolins in different stages of construction are on the shelves and stacked in the corner. The conversation shifts to music and instrument making. He introduces himself: “The name’s Trammell, Skinny Trammell.” Before long, we’re sitting side by side in his office. I’ve taken my tape recorder from the trunk of my car and I have a microphone in my hand. I ask if I can buy a bottle of water, and he looks up with a little grin. “Help yourself. There’s a fresh paper cup by the water cooler.” A light autumn breeze wafts through the open door, and as the afternoon turns to dusk there are few interruptions. Lone Star has a population of about 1,600 people, and Trammell explains that most of his customers come in the early morning or on their way home from work. W. W. “Skinny” Trammell’s Fina Station, Lone Star, Texas, October 27, 1987 Guitar Maker and Musician, Lone Star \ 75 W INFORD WORKMAN TRAMMELL, or W. W. as he prefers to be called, was named for the physician who delivered him on January 31, 1929, in Balfora, a small town in Wise County in Northwest Texas. He was one of fourteen children. Trammell’s parents eked out a living during the Great Depression as sharecroppers. “We did stock farming,” he says, “and raising cotton and mostly everything we ate— green beans, corn, watermelon, cantaloupe, you name it.” His brother, who was twenty years old when Trammell was born, gave him the nickname “Skinny” when he was just a baby. “I was the thirteenth of fourteen children. My brother was working for the WPA [Works Progress Administration] and they asked him to list all the members in his family and he couldn’t remember my name. So, he wrote ‘Skinny Flint’ and it just stuck.” Trammell’s interest in music started early. “We had a Victrola,” he recalls. “It was a console that stood up about four feet high. I had to get up in a chair to put the record on to play it. Oh, we had Carter Family records, Jimmie Rodgers, and Gid Tanner and the Skillet Lickers—that’s the old fiddle tunes and what have you, back in the old days. It was the high point of my day,” Trammell says. “We had long days on the farm.” “Skinny” Trammell working on the neck of one of his handcrafted guitars in his Fina station, Lone Star, Texas, October 27, 1987 76 / W. W. “Skinny” Trammell As a child, Trammell attended a one-room schoolhouse. “I only went through the eighth grade,” he says. “I had to go to work. I hardly had any money to buy clothes. I just stayed on the farm and helped daddy do what needed to be done.” When he was thirteen years old, he wanted to buy a guitar, but he couldn’t afford it. Two of his brothers chipped in to buy him one for $15, and he learned to play. Two years later, after his family moved to Paradise, Texas, about forty miles north of Fort Worth, Trammell started his own band called the Country Balladeers. “Mostly, we played Western swing—the music of Bob Wills and Ernest Tubb. We played around Fort Worth, at places like the Cowtown Roundup. On Friday nights, they would tape it, and we could hear it on the radio on Saturday morning. That was in...