Biography
-
Years Active
1972 – present (53 years)
-
Members
- Marcia Ball
Freda & the Firedogs is one of the greatest albums in Austin music history. A record that was set to give major national exposure to the then-fresh outlaw country movement in Texas.
The band consisted of Marcia Ball, John X. Reed, Steve McDaniels, David Cook, and Bobby Earl Smith, and in the early part of 1972 legendary producer Jerry Wexler, who'd already signed Doug Sahm and Willie Nelson, took a shine to them, and had them record an album for Atlantic. Unfortunately, says Smith, "We were trying to make sure and get a good deal, and we hemmed and hawed too long. We ended up putting Jerry in a kind of a bad light at Atlantic," and the deal was never signed.
The album was forgotten, the band members lost their personal copies over the years, and then, not long before Sahm's death in 1999, Smith called him and got Wexler's number in hopes of finally releasing the album more than a quarter-century after it was recorded. Unfortunately, Wexler reported that the master tapes had been lost in a warehouse fire. "My heart sank," gulps Smith, but then Wexler added that he had managed to keep track of his personal copy of the reel to reel tape. Following a bit of EQ-ing and the limited corrections that could be made to the original recording, Smith has had a limited number of copies pressed up for Austin release, with national distribution to follow.
And if you didn't guess that rumblings of a reunion are already buzzing, shame on you! Smith says he's talking to Ball this week about putting together some shows at the Broken Spoke, Gruene Hall, and elsewhere.
–Ken Lieck, Austin Chronicle, October 11, 2002
Freda And The Firedogs disbanded in 1974.
Bobby Earl Smith maintains a website for Freda And The Firedogs at http://www.fredafiredogs.com/. Their long-lost album (on CD) is available for purchase there.
Artist descriptions on Last.fm are editable by everyone. Feel free to contribute!
All user-contributed text on this page is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike License; additional terms may apply.