ABSTRACT
In the late 1970s, Ed Bruce was just about unavoidable. His song, “Mammas Don’t Let Your Babies Grow Up to Be Cowboys,” was a Number 1 hit for Waylon Jennings and Willie Nelson, and his records for MCA were on the radio. Meanwhile, his voice-overs were selling anything and everything from Hungry Jack Biscuits to Tennessee tourism. He was even on television as James Garner’s sidekick in the beleagured 1982 revival of Maverick. By then, he’d perfected the grizzled look, like the Marlboro Man near retirement. But he didn’t always look that way. In 1957, Ed Bruce was Edwin Bruce, a freshfaced seventeen-year-old rockabilly with a greasy kiss curl and a deal with Sun Records. He tried hard to become a teenage idol, but it didn’t happen, and when the music changed he became one of the first, perhaps first, to revert back to country the music.
