BoxCar Willie to take final ride

Funeral procession for famous singer to go down Branson strip.

The Associated Press

BoxCar Willie will take one last ride down the glittering Branson strip he helped create when he is laid to rest Saturday after a funeral in the Ozark mountain music town that had been his home since 1986. The performer, who died Monday of leukemia, will be buried Saturday at Snapps Cemetery in Ozark Memorial Park, said Brenda Pratt at the BoxCar Willie Theatre. A funeral procession starting at the theater on Country 76 Boulevard will head downtown, passing BoxCar Willie Drive, renamed in the performer's honor in 1997. The funeral will be at the theater at 4 p.m. and is open to the public. Visitation will be from 8 a.m. to 8 p.m. Friday at the Greenlawn Funeral Home in Branson, where family members will visit from 6 p.m. to 8 p.m., Pratt said. BoxCar Willie, who was 67, became the first nationally known performer to live and work full-time in Branson when he arrived in 1986. He went on to become one of the community's most popular figures, and city spokesman Jerry Adams said many of the town's scores of performers were expected to attend Saturday's funeral. "Country music has lost a great traditional artist, something we don't have enough of. I've lost a great friend," fellow performer Roy Clark, the first big-name entertainer to open a theater in Branson, said Tuesday. Mickey Gilley, who operates a theater of his own on Country 76 Boulevard, credited BoxCar Willie with keeping him in town. When his theater burned in 1993, Gilley said, BoxCar Willie let him do afternoon shows at his place while Gilley rebuilt. "If it had not been for BoxCar Willie, I probably would have ended up back on the road and not staying in Branson," Gilley said Tuesday. "He didn't walk out on that stage and perform for money. He walked out there and performed because he enjoyed what he was doing. That's what a true entertainer's all about," Gilley said. The performer, whose given name was Lecil Martin, was born in Sterrett, Texas, in 1931. His father was a railroad man who would sit on the front porch and play the fiddle after work, with his son joining him on guitar. By the time he was 16, BoxCar Willie already was performing regularly on Dallas' Big D Jamboree. But he would forgo the stage for a 22-year career as an Air Force pilot, not returning to performing until he was 44. A proponent of traditional country music, particularly the lonesome train songs he became famous for, he began the transformation to BoxCar Willie in the 1970s, donning overalls, a battered old hat and a worn suit jacket. He said he took on the persona after seeing a freight train roll by with a hobo aboard one day as he waited at a railroad crossing. "And there was an old boy sitting on a boxcar, dressed the way I dress today, and he looked just like a buddy of mine named Willie Wilson," he told the Associated Press in 1997. "I said, "There's Willie in a boxcar,' and that's where it came from." His first big break came with an appearance on "The Gong Show" in 1978. Three years later he was invited to join the Grand Ole Opry, and soon he was touring the world. Although he never had a hit single, his albums sold well through the years, and he developed a loyal fan base that would follow him to Branson, where he did six or more shows a week for years. After being diagnosed with leukemia in 1996, he continued to perform whenever his health would allow, and he said in an interview the following year that he would never retire. "You can't retire out of this business," he remarked at the time. "And it's such a good life, who would want to retire anyway?"

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