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Donald's Encyclopedia of Popular Music

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GLENN, Howdy

(b Morris Glenn, 1952, Detroit; d 2012) African-American country singer. His father was a bricklayer and a Baptist minister; he was influenced by gospel, and was soon attracted to country music. The family relocated to Los Angeles in 1971 and while working as an apprentice firefighter in Inglewood he entered a talent contest in 1974 (a 'Trucker's Jamboree' at the Hollywood Palladium) and won. He made a few singles on small local labels, and was well-received whenever he performed live, not only having a good voice but phrasing that convinced fans he knew what the words meant. He sang for the Academy of Country Music, and was signed to Warner Brothers by British-born producer Andy Wickham. He spent a total of 11 weeks on Billboard's country chart with a cover of Willie Nelson's 'Touch Me' '77 (a cover of Merle Haggard's 'White Line Fever' on the other side), and 'You Mean The World To Me' '78 ('That Lucky Old Sun' on the flip). Billed as The Singing Fireman, he headlined at Gilley's in Pasadena and was nominated as the ACM's Top New Male Artist, and then the label dropped him.

WB apparently did not see potential in him; it is not likely that he was dropped because he was a black country singer, because Charlie Pride had about 30 hits in the country top ten by then. Glenn again recorded for a small label, and there was an LP called I Can Almost See Houston, apparently a limited edition on Indian Head Records out of Redondo Beach. But he resumed his firefighting career, and slipped into such obscurity that he was not mentioned in Barney Hoskin's wonderful Say It One More Time For The Brokenhearted: The Country Side of Southern Soul (1987), which mentions Pride 8 or 9 times; then the Country Music Foundation's own 3-CD set of 60 tracks, From Where I Stand: The Black Experience In Country Music (1998), on which WB collaborated, also left him out.

FInally, I Can Almost See Houston: The Complete Howdy Glenn was released in 2023, 73 tracks on CD prepared by Grammy-level producers and engineers Scott Bomar, Cheryl Pawelski and Michael Graves, from Omnivore Recordings, one of the many small labels that have been popping up since the so-called major labels have all disappeared into their multinational corporate retirement homes.