In It for the Long Run: A Musical Odyssey

Tex and Abe

TEX AND ABE They tell us that we carry all kinds of information in us, locked in our genes, passed down through the generations. So when I first heard the sound of the fiddle and banjo coming out of the radio as I tuned in one night, I’m convinced that my Irish genes woke from their slumber and started jangling. Nothing had prepared me for this. It was 1951. I was thirteen years old, living outside of Boston in Dedham, Massachusetts, farfromthemountainsofAppalachia,fartherstillfromtheEmeraldIsle, definitely not a musical hotbed. MyparentshadmovedtheretoraisetheirfamilyawayfromtheIrishCatholicenclavesinBoston .Theywereraisingustobeopentoallkinds of people. The focus was on education, and like my brother John before me, I was going to the Roxbury Latin School. After the Ames School in Dedham,whereIhadbeenquitethelittlegenius,itwaslikewalkinginto a stone wall. This was a “classical” education and I was taking Latin, Math, English, History, and Geography for starters. French, Greek and Physics would come later. I begged my parents to take me out, but they kepttellingmethatIcoulddoit.Educationwasit.Itwasnotnegotiable. 6 GOING MY OWN WAY At school I had become buddies with a live wire named Dick Curley. One day Dick told me to turn the radio on to WCOP at 7:45 that night. This band was playing “hillbilly” music. It was the funniest thing he’d everheard.Songslike“Mother’sNotDead,She’sOnlySleeping.”Itwasa riot.Iwenthomethatnight,tookDick’sadviceandtunedin.Iheardthis amazingsound—fiddle,banjo,mandolin,andguitarcoupledwithahigh wailingkindofsinging.TheycalledthemselvesTheConfederateMountaineers ,andtheywerereallyfromtheSouth.UnlikeDickCurley,Iwasn’t laughing. Something about that sound was familiar; something about it was “right.” Was it my Irish genes aroused by this music? Who knows? All I know is that I kept coming back again and again. I was hooked. Buttherewasmore!RightaftertheConfederateMountaineersadisc jockey named Nelson Bragg came on with a show called theHayloftJamboree . He was a great character—”The Merry Mayor of Milo, Maine.” He definitely wasn’t from the south, but he knew that there were lots of rural New Englanders and people from Quebec and The Maritimes who’d moved to the cities for work and who loved this simple, heartfelt music. Hank Williams sang “Honky Tonk Blues,” Lefty Frizzell had “If You’ve Got the Money, Honey (I’ve Got the Time),” Hank Snow did “A Fool Such as I,” Webb Pierce sang about a “Back Street Affair.” This was a life I knew nothing about. If Dedham had any honky-tonks or back streets I certainly didn’t know where they were, but these singers and these songs were reaching something deep inside of me, stirring emotionsIdidn ’tevenknowIhad.TheyweretakingmeoutofthelifeIknew. I was setting out on the journey of a lifetime. Once a month the Hayloft Jamboree did a big show at Symphony Hall, so Dick Curley and I decided to go. The star was going to be Slim Whitman , who sang in a high, yodelly style and had had big hits with “Indian LoveCall”and“RoseMarie.”SymphonyHallwasfullandbuzzing.Ihad beenthereoncebeforeonaschooltriptoheartheBostonSymphonyOrchestra , something I would never forget, but Nelson Bragg lost no time inlettingeveryoneknowthatthere’dbenolonghairmusicbeingplayed that night, and we were all invited to let our hair down and whoop it up. our hair down and whoop it up. our AlltheperformersweredressedinwesternoutfitsexcepttheConfederate Mountaineers who wore riding pants, high boots, and Confederate officers’ hats. Slim Whitman was a star. When he came out in his blackand -white suit, his black-and-white guitar, and his Clark Gable looks, 7 TexandAbe and hit his first high note the place went wild. I’d never experienced anything like it. It was worlds away from Dedham, from Roxbury Latin. I felt like I had taken a trip to an exotic land, but it was only a bus and trolley ride away. One day Curley talked me into going into the radio station to see the Confederate Mountaineers play. WCOP took up a good part of the first FIGURE 1. The Confederate Mountaineers (l.tor.: Everett Lilly, Bea Lilly, Tex Logan, Don Stover). 8 GOING MY OWN WAY floor of the New England Mutual Life Building in Copley Square. We entered a large lobby painted with a big mural of “hillbillys” having fun in the style of Al Capp’s popular comic strip “Lil’ Abner.” There was a mazeofstudiosandcontrolroomsbeyondthelobby,andaswerounded acornerthereinoneofthestudioswecouldseetheConfederateMountaineers getting ready to go on the air! DickandIstoodthereinaclassicpose,withournosesliterallypressed against the glass, watching our heroes. Everett Lilly did all the talking in his high-pitched West Virginia accent. “Thank you just a whole lot there, Nelson Bragg. We’d like to say a great big howdy to all the friends and neighbors! We’re...