LA GRANGE — The Fayette County Country Music Club will host a special opry show featuring the great country music entertainer Darrel McCall on Monday, July 15, at the Knights of Columbus Hall in La Grange.
The show starts at 7 p.m., and the doors will open at 5:30 p.m. Admission is $8.
McCall grew up listening to the music and picking up the guitar of Merle Travis. He started his own Saturday morning country deejay show on WSRW radio in Hillsboro, Ohio, at the age of fifteen. McCall and Johnny Paycheck moved to Nashville in 1958 and formed the “Young Brothers.”
McCall began working as a harmony singer with artists like George Jones, Faron Young, Freddie Hart, Carl Smith and Ray Price. He joined Price as a member of his Cherokee Cowboys. He later joined the bands of both Faron Young and Hank Williams Jr.
The 70s brought several top hits for McCall, including “There’s Still A Lot of Love In San Antone,” “Pins and Needles (In My Heart),” “Down The Road To Daddy’s Dreams,” “Dreams of A Dreamer” and “It’s The Water.” McCall and Willie Nelson recorded the Top 40 single “Lily Dale.”
It was Nelson's first duet recording, resulting in a very successful album by the same title.
McCall still performs all over the country with his wife, Mona and frequently appears on the world-famous Grand Ole Opry. They most recently moved back to Texas and are now residents of the small community of Fredonia.
In 2008, Heart of Texas Records released the landmark album “Lily Dale,” featuring Nelson on two compositions and several of McCall’s dance hall favorites.
His latest studio project, “All She Did Was Fall In Love/A Way To Survive,” contains 20 songs McCall recorded in the 1980s. They have been remastered and placed on one CD. His newest studio album, “Keeping With Tradition,” was released in October 2010.
In 2010, McCall went back into the Heart of Texas Recording Studio with two of his friends, Curtis Potter and Tony Booth, aka The Survivors, and released the self-titled CD The Survivors. The success of this CD prompted the three to go into the studio once again, resulting in The Survivors II being released in 2012.
“We love the Central Texas and Hill Country area and all the people there,” McCall said. “As a matter of fact, we loved it so much that we moved here! We are looking forward to hitting the stage and entertaining some of our favorite people in the whole world.”
