On Jan. 20, 1912, country artist Wayland Seals was born in Tennessee.
When Wayland was seven, his family moved to Eastland County, Texas, so his father could pursue work in the oil fields. These were the early boom years of Texas oil.
Following Spindletop in 1901, the strikes came fast and furious: Burkburnett and Ranger in the 1910s, the Panhandle and Permian Basin in the 1920s, East Texas in the 1930s.
Wayland followed in his father’s tracks as an oil field pipefitter. His occupation greatly informed his later music and fit a country tradition of the permeability between recording artists and working folk.
Wayland Seals made the oilfields part of his image, and its laborers his first audience. Together with his band the Oil Patch Boys, Wayland cut the rockabilly-flavored “When I’m Gone” in 1957 and in 1958 recorded “Oil Patch Blues,” a raucous number featuring Wayland’s son Jimmy on saxophone.
If these rare tracks don’t sound familiar, Wayland’s sons Jimmy and Dan would go on to wider pop fame in their own right – Dan Seals as “England Dan” and Jim with the folk-rock act Seals & Crofts. Their signature 1972 hit “Summer Breeze” feels a long way from roughneck labor, but that idyllic breeze floating through the jasmine perhaps seemed all the sweeter against the backdrop of his father’s West Texas work.
Though Wayland Seals’ recordings were limited, he led several bands and opened for touring performers like Bob Wills and Ernest Tubb.
Despite only recording two singles, Wayland Seals left a stamp on West Texas music and highlighted the culture around the region’s oil industry.
Sources
Michael Hall, “The Oil Patch Roots of ‘Summer Breeze,” Texas Monthly. February 2020.
Joe W. Specht in Laurie E. Jasinski, Gary Hartman, Casey Monahan, and Ann T. Smith, eds. The Handbook of Texas Music. Second Edition. Denton, TX: Texas State Historical Association, 2012.
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