B.W. Stevenson born 5 October 1949

Louis Charles "B. W." Stevenson (October 5, 1949 – April 28, 1988) (originally known as Buckwheat Stevenson) was an American country pop singer and musician, working in a genre which is now called progressive country. 

Stevenson was born in Dallas, Texas. He attended Adamson High School in Oak Cliff, where his peers included Michael Martin Murphey and Ray Wylie Hubbard. Under the name Chuck Stevenson he sang with a few local bands until he graduated in 1967 and went to North Texas State University (now University of North Texas) in Denton on a voice scholarship. Operatic singing did not appeal to him, and he left the music program after a year. He subsequently attended Cooke County Junior College (now North Central Texas College) and served a stint in the United States Air Force. 

Stevenson returned to Dallas, playing local clubs when he could and working odd jobs. He went to Austin in 1970 to look for work but found none. He then went to Los Angeles to try to sell his songs, but the L.A. labels also passed him by. Sometime in this period his longtime girlfriend left him unexpectedly, and, heartbroken, he wrote some of his best ballads. A representative from RCA who was in Los Angeles heard his songs and signed him in 1971. 

                          Here's "On My Own" from above LP

                                      

Stevenson's self-titled first album on RCA was recorded in Chicago and released in 1972. The record included one of his songs that is very popular with his fans today, "On My Own," but RCA did not promote any songs on the album that were written by Stevenson. This was the first misstep in a long series of blunders in producing and marketing his music and voice. 

Stevenson's talent lay in his ballads and mournful tunes of lost and unrequited love, of which "On My Own" is a beautiful example. This got the attention of the Austin music scene, and Stevenson was welcomed back as a brother in the progressive country movement. RCA had given him the moniker "Buckwheat," and the name stuck. "Buck," as his friends called him, became a regular at the Armadillo World Headquarters and other clubs around Austin. RCA had no interest in the Austin music scene and took Stevenson to L.A. for his next recording, Lead Free (1972) which also produced no hits. 

For the third album RCA's producer found a song in the ABC–Dunhill reject pile called "Shambala," written by Danny Moore. It was perfect for Stevenson's voice, and he was climbing the charts with it as a single when ABC–Dunhill realized its potential and quickly released a version of it by Three Dog Night, even though RCA had negotiated a "lock" on the song. As Three Dog Night was very popular at the time, its cover of the tune quickly eclipsed Stevenson's and knocked him off the charts. This unscrupulous move generated some sympathetic press for Stevenson, but not much else until RCA released "My Maria," written by Stevenson and Danny Moore as a vehicle to show off Stevenson's powerful and distinctive voice. "My Maria" went to Number 9 on the pop charts for weeks in 1973 and was the most commercially successful of Stevenson's recordings, although he felt it was far from his best work. Nevertheless, it had a compelling sound, so much so that it became the Number 1 Billboard "Country Song of the Year" when Brooks and Dunn covered it in 1996. 

The misguided attempts to package Stevenson as something other than what he wanted to be, a Texas musician, continued with the next album on RCA, Calabasas (1974), and with subsequent albums from Warner Brothers and MCA. Calabasas was critically acclaimed, but its over-produced sound was difficult to reproduce onstage, and although Stevenson toured extensively to promote it, his heart was not in it. He grew discouraged and, already fond of food and drink, began to drink excessively. Warner Brothers and MCA also attempted to categorize him as a pop musician on the next five albums that he recorded, with fewer and fewer of his songs on the records. 

By the time his ninth major-label album was released in 1980 and Stevenson was free of his contracts, the progressive country scene had faded. Although he returned to Texas for a while, there were no further recording opportunities available to him. But in 1980 Stevenson recorded a contemporary Christian album titled Lifeline, produced by Chris Christian, his neighbor in Beverly Hills, California and it had success on Christian radio with the hit "Headin' Home". 

Stevenson returned to Texas once again in 1987 and went into the studio on his own. He recorded some new songs and some old ones, including "On My Own." This was the first time his songs were recorded the way he wanted them produced, and the first time all but one of the songs on an album were his. 

Before the album was completed, however, Stevenson fell ill, in February 1988. At first he thought he had the flu, but the diagnosis was endocarditis, an inflammation of his heart that was eating away one of its valves. Stevenson went to the hospital to undergo heart valve surgery. He developed a staph infection and died on April 28, at 38. After much effort, with the last overdubs and mixing done after Stevenson's death, Rainbow Down the Road was released as a CD on Amazing Records in 1990

(Edited from The Texas State Historical Association)