Bill Mack, country music composer and radio announcer “Midnight Cowboy”, died Friday at the age of 88.
Mack died of COVID-19 headaches and “underlying fitness problems,” according to a message posted on social media through his son, Billy Mack Smith.
“He’s a father, grandfather, wonderful grandfather, and wonderful husband to my mother,” Smith, program director and on-air personality at 93.1 KSTV in Stephenville, Texas, wrote. “I am blessed to have had not only a glorious father, but also my most productive friend.”
Inducted into the Texas Country Music Hall of Fame, Mack is perhaps the most productive known for hosting the Country Roads Show overnight at WBAP, an AM radio station founded in Forth Worth. Mack began presenting “Road Show”, later known as the Midnight Cowboy Trucking Show, in 1969.
The WBAP transparent channel signal reached night listeners in Texas and elsewhere. Responding to truckers traveling miles long between dusk and dawn, Mack maintained “the corporation of the global with its music and talk,” according to the Texas Heritage Composers Association.
“No one in broadcasting has a more recognizable voice than Bill Mack,” the association wrote.
Mack’s long career in broadcasting also included time on XM satellite radio and as host of the syndicated exhibition “Country Crossroads”. He broke the microphone with some of the most prominent country music personalities, adding Waylon Jennings, Conway Twitty and Roy Clark.
As a songwriter, Mack wrote “Blue”, which LeAnn Rimes made it notice as a hit on the most sensible charts in 1996. The recording earned Mack a Grammy Award for Best Country Song. The Texas local also wrote “Drinking Champagne”, a song known as one of the five most sensitive radio hits for George Strait in 1990.
Jerry Lee Lewis, George Jones and Dean Martin recorded songs from Mack’s songkeon.
“2020 has claimed some of the best,” Rimes said Friday via Twitter. “Very sad to hear the news that Bill Mack has passed away. I’m grateful to him for him and the music he created. Sending all my love to his family. We’ll be “Blue “without you Bill”.
Mack, a local from Shamrock, Texas, joined the Radio Country Hall of Fame in 1982 and earned a spot in the Texas Country Music Hall of Fame in 1999.