Cal Smith is best known for his three number one hits: “The Lord Knows I’m Drinking” in 1973, “Country Bumpkin” in 1974, and “It’s Time to Pay the Fiddler” in 1974. He was born Calvin Grant Shofner July 4, 1932 in Gans, Oklahoma, a small town of around 200 people located in eastern Oklahoma near the Arkansas border, but moved to the Oakland area of California when he was a youngster.
Prior to his high school days, Cal learned the guitar from rodeo-rider Todd Mason and began to play local clubs with a San-Francisco based country band called Kitty Dibble and Her Dude Ranch Wranglers, while still a teenager. He recalls that his professional debut was at a diner-beer joint called “The Remember Me Café” when he was fifteen.
Cal joined the California Hayride out of Stockton in 1954 and stayed with the show for two years before service in the military. After his discharge, he worked as a disc jockey on radio station KEEN in San Jose and was a vocalist with Uncle Philley’s band when it performed at San Quinten Prison along with Johnny Cash in 1958. Cal’s first recording on Plaid Records in 1960 was a prison ballad, “Eleven Long Years.”
From 1961 to 1967, Cal used the name Grant Shofner and was a vocalist for Ernest Tubb’s Texas Troubadours. He toured and performed on the Grand Ole Opry with Tubb, appeared on Tubb’s syndicated television show, and was on one of Tubb’s recordings, “The Great Speckled Bird.”
With assistance from Tubb, Cal signed a recording contract with Kapp in 1966 and cracked the country charts with his second single “The Only Thing I Want”. He went on to have eight more singles that reached the charts throughout the rest of the decade.
In 1970, Cal switched to the Decca Label and in 1973 he had his first number one hit, “The Lord Knows I’m Drinking.” The song also surfaced on the pop charts and was nominated by the CMA for Single of the Year. After a couple of minor hits, Cal scored again in 1974 with another number one hit, “Country Bumpkin,” which went on to become his signature song.
Cal released six albums for the Decca label in the seventies, two more in the eighties, and performed throughout the country in the nineties. He now lives in Branson, Missouri.