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11. The Music City News
- University of Illinois Press
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11 The Music City News When the first issue of the Music City News rolled off the presses in July 1963, with a one-year subscription price of $3, Faron’s “fan journal” began a run that lasted until February 2000. He surely didn’t expect the magazine to someday sponsor a network television award show, the TNN Music City News Country Awards, which was presented until 1999. Country music journals started in previous years usually went broke due to lack of industry support.1 Although Billboard and Cash Box covered the music industry, they weren’t devoted to country music. Faron wondered why other industries had their own magazines and country music didn’t, and he decided to do something about it.2 For some reason, however, he neglected to acknowledge the existing Country Song Roundup, which in turn neglected to mention Music City News when it listed Faron’s business ventures of 1963.3 “I bought into a printing company,” Faron said, “so we had our own presses and everything, and we could buy the newsprint pretty cheap. I hired a few people to go to work for me . . . and we put out a hell of a newspaper.” He paid tribute to Dixie Deen, one of the original employees: “She was so loyal, and took care of me, and did such a great job with my paper, and Tom T. Hall came along and married her. She was the best thing that ever happened to my paper.”4 Faron’s name appeared on the masthead as president of Music City News, Inc., and his business partner, Preston Temple, was vice president and publisher. The first issue included a “Home of the Stars” feature that pictured the Youngs’ house. A photograph of George Jones advertised him as one of the first ten people to subscribe to Music City News. “This thing like to put me in the poorhouse when I first started it,” Faron said. “It was costing me three to four thousand dollars a month, right out of my pocket—for payroll, getting it printed, getting it mailed.” Yet he was determined to give country music a successful magazine.5 The Deputies sold copies on their tours and at first gave the magazine away to publicize it. “I got to sell them for 50 cents later,” Jerry Hunley recalls, “and I’d sell enough to make me some money to eat on. I was a hustler, and I tried to make a dollar any way I could—albums and T-shirts and whatever.” Music City News started on a shoestring and grew to be a big thing. “People loved that paper,” Hunley adds. “It was like the bible of country music.”6 Getting the industry’s backing took some time. “It was hard to get anybody to put advertisements in it,” Faron remembered. When he and his staff asked people to buy advertising their response would be,”aah, nobody reads that.” They would, however, send their stories and press releases. The staff would print the information and then go back and say, “Now that we printed that for y’all free, you want to buy some ads?” “Nah, nobody reads that paper” was still the response.7 People who saw Faron’s advertisements incorrectly assumed he received free publicity. “I actually robbed Peter to pay Paul to keep the magazine going,” he said. “I was paying for this out of one corporation into another.” He didn’t even take a discount when the magazine ran specials on advertising . “Most people don’t believe that,” he said. “I tell my writers not to mention me that much, because I don’t want nobody to think, because I own it, that I can put anything I want in there. So the two or three stories I’ve had, they’ve made me put them in there.”8 The Music City News [54.234.136.147] Project MUSE (2024-03-28 23:57 GMT) live fast, love hard One of those stories appeared in the October 1967 issue and carried the title “Faron Young, Here Is Your Life! (or as Much of It as Is Possible to Print).” In response to numerous fan requests, Dixie Deen interviewed the Young Sheriff and wrote a four-page spread about his background, family, and movie career. By then, four years after its establishment, the magazine was in the black. “We have succeeded with the help of a lot of people,” Faron told Deen. “Number...