According to Don Wayne, he wrote “Saginaw, Michigan” because he saw that name stamped on a tool on his work bench for days on end.

Don commented, “I was born in Nashville, Tennessee. I started out making my living as a tool and die maker. In the early 60’s I was working in a tool and die shop here in Nashville. One of the tools I was using in my trade was some micrometers, which were made by The Lufkin Tool Company . And these micrometers were in a little wooden box and when you opened that box, there was  a little golden nameplate on it that said “Lufkin Tool Company, Saginaw, Michigan.” And oftentimes times when I’d go to work in the morning, I worked at a bench, I would take that little box out of my bigger tool box and set it on my work bench. I’d open it up in case I needed it. I made eye contact with that thing hundreds of times a week. I  think that I was just brainwashed into writing “Saginaw, Michigan.”  This was like—I started writing “Saginaw, Michigan,” in the latter part of 1962. And this was not too long after “Detroit City”  had been  a big hit by Bobby Bare.

I just kept thinking about it and I was in doubt as to whether or not I could write another city song.

Then I finally decided to go ahead and take a stab at it.  And looking at the map, I didn’t know a lot about the geography of that area,  But looking at the map, it looked like Saginaw, Michigan was right on Saginaw Bay. So I got to thinking about Saginaw—writing the song---and I decided to go ahead and take a shot at it. I guess I was too lazy to go to the library and look up the information on it. So I decided to base it on somebody in Saginaw, Michigan and I just assumed that Saginaw was right on the Bay there.  And I figured that at some time or other-there had been some commercial fishing going on --so—I decided to build a character—a son of a poor Saginaw fisherman being in love with a rich man’s daughter. And I started coming up with a little rhyming scheme and I just built the song from there.

And later on, I got with Bill Anderson, when I was cutting the demo on the song, and he helped me out with some lines that I got stuck on. So Bill Andersons owns 25% of the copyright on that song.  It’s been a great song for both of us. I put in most of the work on the song. I worked on the song a long time, probably a year. By the time I got it finished, it was late summer of 1963.  And Lefty Frizzell recorded it in December. And they released it in January of 1964. It was one of those songs where you feel like your mind was just manipulated into doing something.”

“Saginaw Michigan” entered the country music charts January 11^th, 1964 and made it to number one. ..where it stayed for four weeks. It was Lefty Frizzell’s  21^st charted song and was on the charts for 26 weeks.

Doug Davis
Country Music Classics