Lefty Frizzell Museum

The Lefty Frizzell Museum, in Pioneer Village in Corsicana's Jester Park, is a shotgun house reminiscent of the one the honky-tonk singer was born in, and a statue of him stands nearby in Jester Park. Frizzell was born William Orville Frizzell on March 31, 1928, in Tuckertown, an oil boom settlement a few miles southeast of Corsicana. He did not live there long, but his father said Lefty was always proud to say he was born in Corsicana. The museum shows his stage costumes and boots made by Nudie's Western tailoring shop, photographs of him and his wife, furnishings from his first home, song manuscripts in his own hand, sheet music and records. Frizzell's first big hit, If You've Got the Money, I've Got the Time, came in 1950, and I Want to Be With You Always held number one on the country chart for eleven weeks in 1951.

His singing shaped Merle Haggard, Willie Nelson and George Jones, and Haggard said that most of them learned to sing listening to him. Corsicana's bronze tour calls him the original Rhinestone Cowboy, for his flashy suits. He died in 1975, aged 47, and entered the Country Music Hall of Fame in 1982. A local group of country music fans led the drive for the statue, unveiled on his birthday in 1992, which is the work of the sculptors Doug and Sandra McDonald. In 2017 his younger brother David Frizzell, also a country singer, stopped by to see it, and in 2018 he produced the first LeftyFest in the park. Pioneer Village, run by the city and the Navarro County Historical Society since 1958, gathers a blacksmith shop, a restored 1920s Magnolia gas station, a general store and log cabins around the museum.