Since I have so much relative free time on my hands, in-between the solemn recuperating, the constant blood tests and the extensive physical therapy, I’ve been doing a little bit of genealogy here and there as an obsessive hobby, trying to dig up my roots, especially on my father’s side, before I die.
My dad's Choctaw lineage was a mostly well-documented one, thankfully, allowing me to track the relatives who walked (and mostly died on) the Trail of Tears. I have also found a few things I never knew, such as how my grandfather "Two Gun" Bill Fowler was training to be a Choctaw code-talker just as World War I was winding down…or about my Uncle Lefty, who allegedly murdered a girl in Duncan and spent years in prison for it, a case covered by the creator of Perry Mason…or, as I learned just weeks ago, my dad’s cousin, a little-known rockabilly singer by the name of Don Fowler who recorded a swingin’ twangy tune in the mid-60s.
Hailing from my dad’s hometown of Waurika, little is known, so far, about Don with the exception of his birth, his lone 45 recording and, most triumphantly, his love of the Waurika Rattlesnake Festival. In 1966, he recorded the song “Oklahoma Baby” for Oakridge Records based out of Fort Worth. The front of the cover featured Don and his guitar superimposed over a rattlesnake handler with the words “From the Rattlesnake Center of the World, Waurika, Oklahoma” beaming in big type.
Here’s the song for your listening pleasure: