Pressing On: The Roni Stoneman Story

16. Nashville

J @ O K < < E Nashville After we were so successful in the West, it was decided that we should go to Nashville. Again it was decided by our manager Bob Bean and by Jack Clement, who was establishing himself as a producer in Nashville. And we agreed. We got a job down at Printer’s Alley, at the Black Poodle in late 1965. Incredible as it may seem, we Stonemans were the first ones to bring country music to the bars of Printer’s Alley. There was an article in Record World talking all about it. Before us, the bars just had pop and rock. Actually, even more incredible, from what I was told, country music was pretty new to all of Nashville. Though we sort of think Nashville is country music, before the 1940s the only country thing in Nashville was the Grand Ole Opry. A lot of the country music songwriters and singers were in Hollywood where they were making those cowboy movies with Gene Autry and Roy Rogers. And the other country singers, the singers Nashville pressing on / 97 performing the old mountain songs, would play on small radio stations scattered all over the South, or, if they got lucky, on the two or three big ones. In Nashville there weren’t any country recording studios or song publishing companies. Then during the forties the music business started to come to town, and it grew in the fifties. But it wasn’t yet established like it is now. Anyway, the Black Poodle was going to try us because we were kinda folk/pop after those performances in the West. Use “folk music” when in doubt! Well, we were a big hit. The Nashville residents, the kids from Vanderbilt , the tourists, they would all line up around the place to get in. It was amazing. But we really were good, five or six musicians up there (Scott joined us after a few months), all working as a team. The other Nashville entertainers also came to see us. We played later than they did, and after they finished their shows, they’d straggle in—Tom T. Hall, Faron Young, George Jones, Johnny Cash, Waylon Jennings, Tompall and the Glaser Brothers, John D. Laudermilk, Kenny Price (just after he had finished doing I’m walking on new grass / Singing a new song / Tomorrow you’ll be calling me), Willie Nelson, Minnie Pearl, Mel Tillis with his band the Statesiders. All of them listening to us! I remember Tompall one time saying “The Stonemans don’t play a song, they attack it!” That attack was basically our bluegrass roots, I guess. Boy, we could drown in definitions—folk, country, bluegrass.And those bluegrass people go to the ropes arguing over what’s bluegrass and what’s not. Bluegrass to me is that hard-driving real energetic rhythm that Bill Monroe, the Father of Bluegrass, got when he had my hero Earl Scruggs in his band in the forties. We Stonemans had that drive. And we also had the traditional bluegrass instruments, all taking solos, and great harmony playing and singing. But there’s a lot of overlapping with country and folk, which is why people argue about what is what all the time. Anyway, Nashville for me was an incredible scene. First thing, I had never been accepted as a human being with any intelligence—until I came to Nashville. When I was in school, I was, as I said, out of my element. And at home I was never thought to be an intelligent one of the children, and Daddy always put a very high emphasis on intelligence. He would always have books around the house that the Salvation Army gave him. 98 / pressing on And of course I wasn’t a scholar. Sometimes I notice now I get things backwards. I once asked a doctor, “What is that? How come I do that?” “Dyslexia,” he said. Even my sisters didn’t consider me smart. Donna wasn’t too harsh on me, but with Patsy and Grace I always felt intimidated . I was like a little kid to them. I wasn’t trusted with anything. But when I came to Nashville, I started thinking, Hey, I’m not a lost person. This is my place. For one thing my performing was being approved . We would be playing there at the Black Poodle and all those neat people would be looking at me and liking what I was doing. I was pretty good on the banjo then, fast and real smooth, and my comedy was going over well. Those people made me feel thankful that I was Roni Stoneman. And that made me more talented. I would be thinking, They’re out there laughing at what I’m saying, so I must be pretty good. And that makes you relax and you just get better and better. (Or worse and worse. We used to say about Scott, “Don’t laugh at him, you’ll only make him worse.”) And then also Nashville in the sixties made you feel, Wow, this is fun! Everybody was creating something. I think maybe that was because country music was pretty new in Nashville. Singers and songwriters were just flocking to the place, but because the music business was only getting settled, there weren’t these hard lines and rules. Everybody could meet everybody else and trade ideas. It was just casual and informal. I’d go to the Nashville parties with the other pickers, and there would be all these creative people, like Hank Cochran and Jeannie Seeley. Hank Cochran wrote “Make the World Go Away” and Patsy Cline’s “I Fall to Pieces” and A little bitty tear let me down and Your hand is like a torch / Each time you touch me. The rest of the Stoneman family didn’t go to the parties, but I had a wonderful time at them. Hank and Jeannie had an apartment and were great hosts. Sometimes we would pretend that we were in Hollywood. They’d set up a tripod and Red Lane, the writer who wrote a lot of songs for Dottie West, would say, “Now, take, take.” And he’d act like he was turning on the camera, and everybody would go into these really clever acts. Hank Cochran—God what a genius he is. And Jeannie?—a great singer. They fought a lot, and they got ’til they hated each other and ended up divorced. But I loved Jeannie and I loved Hank. pressing on / 99 And it was wonderful to feel accepted and be one of the crowd: “C’mon, Roni, get the banjo in here!” Or we’d have a guitar pull.Aguitar pull’s where you have one guitar, and a whole bunch of people get in a circle, and they talk and smoke a cigarette or two and drink a few drinks, and someone will say, “Hey listen, I got a great song.” And someone else will say, “Play it.” And he’ll sing his song. And the other guy’ll say, “Terrific hook! You finished? I got something here,” and he’ll pull the guitar away, and he’ll start picking and singing his stuff. And everybody’ll be listening to each other’s songs. It was great. You’d just feel the creative vibrations. I think if you’re an artist, a painter, whatever, if you surround yourself with other artists, you will climb in talent. If you’re a singer and you’re around a lot of singers, your voice will get better. If you’re a poet and around poets, you get ideas, your soul is fed. For a musician, when you’re around your own kind, people that like music and songwriting, you might hear a different note or a different key, and some time later you may not even remember where it came from, but it’s there in your mind and you add it to what you’re doing. Now when they first booked us into the Black Poodle, it was a week with an option to renew. God, we were there forever. We were doing five shows a night and later we were also doing television shows during the day. Gene Goforth came down to the Black Poodle, went totally crazy over us, and got us a weekly TV show. Gingham Girl Flour was our sponsor. Just like Martha White’s Self-Rising Flour was Lester Flatt and Earl Scruggs’s, though we never did have a song for Gingham Girl Flour like the famous Martha White Flour song. But they put Gingham Girl dresses on Donna and me, with vests to match. They even had Roni and Donna dolls. The show, Those Stonemans, was very popular and soon it was carried in prime time by lots of stations, mostly in the South, but also in places like Chicago, Cincinnati, New York, San Francisco, and L.A. In one market it outrated the Lawrence Welk Show. So Nashville was really exciting on the professional side. On the domestic front, well, at first I was living in a terrible apartment, all I could afford. Gene was only sending me fifty dollars every now and then—in spite of him doing pretty darn good with that job with Judy Lynn. I had seen a house that I wanted, but I didn’t have the money for it. One day Gene called, said he was quitting Judy Lynn and wanted to come home. 100 / pressing on “Well, Gene,” I said, “like I told you, far as I’m concerned, we’re separated. Now, I can’t say I don’t need help with the children, because I do, but I’m not gonna be a wife to you because all I do is have babies and you don’t help me support them.” “I don’t care about that. I’m coming home.” “Well, I saw this little house. You can buy it on the GI Bill, and we can get the children settled and they can go to this school right down over the hill.” The house was in Donelson, a suburb of Nashville. It had three bedrooms and a big yard. We moved there, and the kids were as happy as can be. Gene wanted to stay home and take care of them while I performed , like a housedaddy. Well, although nowadays that’s accepted, it wasn’t fashionable in the sixties. But it was okay with me, anything that worked. So that’s what was going on with my family life. I get real nostalgic when I think about all the talented people I met in those early days, the artists of Nashville. They were so interesting. I talked about Hank Snow and that scene at the Opry, where he said we wouldn’t be asked back. But there was another side to Hank Snow. He really did a lot of good. He believed in doing shows for abused children because he was an abused child himself. We Stonemans all had a wonderful life compared to how he was treated. He was beat bad. So he did a lot of work for that charity, and we loved him for it. Martha Carson became a great friend. She’s the number one queen of gospel music far as I’m concerned. When I was a kid I used to listen to her on our little old wind-up Victrola. I’d put on her 78s and turn her loose: I’m satisfied with my Jesus / When He knocks, I let Him in / He’ll go with me to the valley / ’Cause I know He is my friend. And when she hits the stage, well, Martha’s my total mentor with that. She comes out there and she’s got them frills on and she’ll just rip into a song. And in fact recently she was doing the Midnight Jamboree at the Ernest Tubb Record Shop, the show they always broadcast on radio after the Opry, and I went to watch. Eighty years old and that woman is still a-kicking butt. She had on a lavender dress, and she’s got “Martha Carson ” written on the neck of her guitar in mother of pearl. I sat in the back grinning up a storm. I almost cried because she’s so good. Now, I mentioned Johnny Cash and Waylon Jennings coming to see pressing on / 101 us at the Black Poodle. They were roommates then. That was a trip, to see them come and go and think of them having this apartment together. Waylon was as skinny . . . he looked like a spider monkey. And Johnny wasn’t far behind. And they’d say, “Partytime is on, girls!” I think I’d just kinda grin at them—I mostly skipped their parties. Much later, after all his success, all those hit songs, Waylon went back and got his GED, to show his son the value of an education. We were awfully proud of him. Johnny of course, like Waylon, had hit after hit.And Johnny was fantastic. When we did his television show—we did a lot of his shows—I’d go out in the audience to look at him. Even when he was at his worst, the time he was partaking of chemicals, even then he had that proud Indian face. When he was talking about the native American Indians, I just stared in his eyes, and, well, everybody knows how low his voice can get. Very few entertainers have the effect on me he had. John Hartford was another genius I knew really well. He would come and see us play all the time. And during that time I was separated from Gene, I used to run around with John. He had a little Volkswagen bug. John was about the same age as me, both in our late twenties. We never were intimate, but we were sweet, kissy facey. In the winter it would be so damned cold in that bug, you liked to died. One day he parked somewhere, and we kissed, kissed, kissed, and my feet were numb from us sitting in the front seat like two teenagers. He wanted to be intimate, but I said, “No, can’t do that, no.” So about three or four months later, he came up to me. “I wrote a song for you, Ron-i.” “What’s that?” “I wrote it traveling from Kentucky.” He was drawing it out. “What’s it called?” “‘Confused about a Simple Thing as Love.’” Because I wouldn’t do anything else but kiss him. At that time John was sleeping on the couch in the office of Marijohn Wilkins. She’s the one that wrote “Long Black Veil” and later the gospel classic “One Day at a Time.” Back then she had just started Bucktown Music. John cleaned out the ashtrays and such for his keep. Well, I ran into him one evening on Music Row, and he said, “Roni, would you come up to the office with me? I got something to show you.” I said, “Sure, 102 / pressing on John.” So we went up to the office and I sat down on the couch. And he said, “I’m going to play you a demo, Roni. See if you like it.” It was a reel-to-reel thing. He turned it on and it was It’s knowing that your door is always open. It was “Gentle on My Mind.” I said, “John, oh my God,” and tears started coming in my eyes, “My God, John, grab your hat and hang on. Really that is a monster! You’ve got a smash on your hands!” And of course the song was a smash. One night we were playing down at the Black Poodle, and John came in. It was the evening of the country music awards ceremony and he was up for Best Song of the Year, Best Writer, and some other categories. He had a tuxedo coat on, bibbed overalls, tuxedo shirt, and a pair of tennis shoes. I finally got off stage. “Roni, I’m going down to the awards, but I wanted to drop by first,” he said. Now, I used to buy him hamburgers. I didn’t have much money, but I knew he had less. So that night, when he came by the Black Poodle, he said, “Roni, you’re the only one that ever believed in me in this town, you’re the only one. I don’t know if I’m gonna get the awards or not, but I’m up for five.” I said, “John, you’re gonna get them. And those five awards are just gonna be a beginning for you.” I had to go back on stage, and he left. But a few hours later he drove back, right directly from the Municipal Auditorium where they used to have the ceremony. He walked into the Black Poodle, and he had those five awards. He held them up to me. “I got ’em,” he said. His face was just the way it normally was, dry, a straight face. But his eyes were shining. So we went over to the Carousel. He said, “Let’s go to the balcony, and we’ll have some coffee, and just you and me talk.” As we were going there, the people coming over from the ceremony were saying, “Congratulations ,” “Congratulations, John.” Somebody touched him, and he jerked his arm. He said to me, “They never helped me at all, when I was climbing. Now it’s all ‘Good job, John, good job!’” And I said, “John, be friendly to everybody. You’ll be paying them back—your success is your ‘I told you so.’” (And in fact I read that some survey found that “Gentle on My Mind” was the fourth most often played country song ever!) So anyway we had a cup of coffee, and we held hands, and got real close together, because it was private up there. Then my manager Bob Bean came over, and he said, “Roni, time to get back on the stage.” pressing on / 103 John and I never went out any more after that. I don’t know, I guess we both just got busy with our careers and other people. Just recently he died of cancer. Him dying was a real tragedy not only for me but also for country music—because he was so true to his music. I remember one time, just a few years ago, me and a friend went to a bluegrass event near Nashville. “John Hartford’s over there on that stage, getting ready to go on,” somebody said, pointing to the stage. “Oh, let’s go and see him!” I said. “Who’s John Hartford?” asked my friend. “The man who wrote ‘Gentle on My Mind.’” Now my friend really admires writers. He thought John would be somebody impressive, somebody real intelligent-seeming, a class act, to write such a song. We go over there and there’s old John, wearing his shabby vest and his hat, his fiddle in his hand. “You’re gonna play in the contest?” I asked. “Yep.” “What is a professional like you entering a contest for?” “Well, I’m just playin.’” And nobody applauded for him. He played the drabbest old tunes. And he would shuffle. He was playing just for himself. He was really true to his music. Audrey Williams, Hank’s widow, was another Nashville friend of mine. People used to badmouth her because of the way she bossed Hank Sr. around, and, later, the way she pushed Hank Jr. But let’s give Audrey her due. We all loved Hank Williams Sr., but he was a troubled man. He was taking diet pills, speed, then drink on top of it. Which wasn’t good. But he was a genius, and in my opinion, and as much reading as I’ve done about different geniuses, every single one of them has a flaw in their character. You just don’t go through every day the same old same old and be happy with life and then turn around and produce great art. When our family would have a grandchild, Momma’d say, “Oh, we gotta pray them out of any talent. Maybe if we pray, they won’t have it.” In other words, if you didn’t have talent, you had a chance at a good life. Well, you’re sure not gonna have a good life married to an alcoholic. And Audrey didn’t. And then she got to drinking too. Doing the same thing. 104 / pressing on She was kind to me. At first she wasn’t, but I straightened that out. It was when we were playing the Black Poodle. I had just pierced my ears. Audrey came in and she was sitting there with five or six of her lawyers. I thought of her as a pretty woman, and very interesting. I went over, and I said, “Hi, Audrey, how’re ya doin’?” “Hi, Roni. What’s the strings in your ear?” I had strings because that’s the way you did ear piercing then. You took a needle and shoved it in there, attached to a string with alcohol on it. Then you’d move the string to keep the hole from closing. I said, “I’m getting a little diamond earring to put in there, so I pierced my ears, and that’s the string that came from the needle.” “My goodness!” She said, “I wear diamonds”—she had huge diamonds on her fingers as well as on her ears—“and I don’t have to pierce my ears.” And then, well, sometimes these things come over me. I said, “If I had a ten-carat ass, I wouldn’t need to pierce my ears either.” Audrey’s mouth flew open, and the lawyers started laughing. And after that, me and Audrey were really good friends. I remember one of Audrey’s parties. It was over in Franklin, at Hank Williams’s old house. It was the first time I was in the house and I was staring at the drapes. They were black and a kind of cream color, and on them was written out the words and the musical notes to Hank’s songs. There right on the drapes was “Your Cheating Heart” and “Hey, Good Lookin’”! Audrey was dating a young guy, a jeweler. I was thinking, She’s going with that young kid? We were standing near the dining-room table and he started talking to me. Then Audrey came through the living room into the dining room. She was zonkered, I mean like out of her mind zonkered. She was carrying a drink, and she fell on the floor. She couldn’t get up and her wig had slipped half off. So I raised her as much as I could with the jewelry guy helping me, and we got her in her bed. She was saying, “Noooo, I don’t wannnnnt ta lay ddddown. I wannnnnnnt ta get up.” There were a lot of sad stories in Nashville. Once Colonel Tom Parker, the guy who managed Elvis, stopped me. “We listen to your family all the time. Elvis loves the Stoneman family .” “Well, that’s real nice of him.” pressing on / 105 “Umm, Elvis’ll be here in about, “ and he looked at his watch, “in about five minutes. I’d like for you—would you like to meet him?” But I knew Elvis was being bugged by everyone and I didn’t want to be part of that, so I made some excuse and left. They say that before Colonel Parker died, he sat in front of the window every day, all day, crying, tears running down his cheeks, because of what became of Elvis Presley. Elvis was used, absolutely used to death. A bodyguard of his once told me that Elvis never had a life. He couldn’t go anywhere, he couldn’t do anything. There would also be touring musicians in Nashville, of course. I met one of them at the Carousel. He had a whole band down from Canada. I hadn’t caught their name. “What do you do?” he asked. “I’m a mechanic for Piedmont Airlines,” I said. We got to dancing and then we went down to an all-night coffee shop, my girlfriends and I and this guy and his band—we still didn’t know who they were. Then we finished up at a pancake place, where we were all singing. I started “I’ll Fly Away,” and he came in doing harmony, and the whole place was singing “I’ll Fly Away.” When we finally said goodbye out on the street, the street washers were there—it was that late, that early in the morning, around four. And then the next time I saw him was when the Stonemans were playing in Toronto. We were singing In the early morning rain and I said, “Ladies and gentlemen, I dedicate this song to . . . someone told me he’s in the audience, the writer of this song, Gordon Lightfoot.” Everybody started turning toward this guy sitting on the left-hand side in the front row grinning up at me. It was the guy I had danced with that night in Nashville! Besides the performers there were other really special people who made Nashville what it was. Like Mr. Friedman, the gentleman who had Friedman’s Pawn and Loan. One time when I walked in the shop, there was a guy playing the guitar sitting on the floor. And Mr. Friedman said, “Still feels good to you, don’t it?” The guy had hocked his guitar about a month prior to this and he had not been paying his interest on it. But he wanted to feel it in his hands. “Yessir, it does.” And he went, “Oh by the way, Mr. Friedman, I got a gig in Columbus, Georgia, and if I could play it, I’d come back and buy this guitar back from you.” “In other words, 106 / pressing on you don’t have a guitar to play?” “No, I don’t, Mr. Friedman.” “Okay, I’m gonna let you write a note that you promise to bring it back or bring me the money you hocked it for. I’m gonna let you take it.” I loved that man. The store is right next to Tootsie’s Orchid Lounge. His son’s taken it over. But Mr. Friedman still comes in there sometimes. And of course there was Tootsie herself, who ran Tootsie’s Orchid Lounge. Tootsie fed a lot of the musicians, and she had an apartment upstairs over the restaurant, and they sometimes slept in one of the rooms. That’s where Kris Kristofferson went after his wife left him, for instance. Tootsie helped a lot of the stars, but she would fuss at them too and get at them just like a mother would a child. Now the great country singer FaronYoung would go down to Tootsie’s all the time. He called her “Tooootsie.” Tootsie was a short little gal, kinda chunky, but not real heavy, with a round face and a darling highpitched voice. She’d always be laughing and giggling. But when she’d get mad—“I’m not putting up with that dirty mouth around here, you son of a rat. I ain’t putting up with it, Faron, no more!” And then she’d gouge him with a hatpin. And Faron: “Jesus!!!! Tootsie, you’re gonna give me tetanus and lockjaw! That damn thing is rusted!!!” So one time he goes out on the road and he comes back with a beautiful box. “Tootsie, I got you a present.” She opens it up and it’s a gold hatpin, with a diamond, a ruby, and an emerald. “That’s to stick me with,” Faron said. “My private hatpin, so I won’t get lockjaw. You can’t use it on anybody but me!” In Tootsie’s Orchid Lounge there were booths set up along the wall and tall round tables and tall bar chairs. They have a good hamburger there, but the musicians would also drink, drink, drink all the time. And they would write and trade songs. In fact, the story goes that Faron got his big hit of 1961 “Hello Walls” from Willie Nelson in Tootsie’s. And remember that song, “Please Don’t Squeeze the Charmin”? That song was written in Tootsie’s about a waitress whose name was Charmin. Now from the Ryman Auditorium, where they did the Grand Ole Opry, you could go right across the alley, and you would be at the back door of Tootsie’s. So Grant Turner, or whoever was in charge, would trudge across to Tootsie’s to get the act that was coming out next. The musicians would be over there drinking beer, telling wild tales of the road, and trading songs: “Listen here.” “Well, listen to this song.” “When pressing on / 107 we were on the road with Tammy, you won’t believe what she said.”And Grant Turner would say, “All right, c’mon now, we gotta get . . . you’re up next.” And he’d drag them over there. Grant Turner was the real hero of the Opry. He was also of course an announcer there for many years. Tootsie tried to keep the boys from drinking too much, to get them ready for their shows. She would say, “All right, here comes Turner. Get your ass up these steps and get to the Opry!” And if they got ornery and got to cussing, she’d gouge them with the hatpin, the one that wasn’t Faron’s. Talking of Faron . . . Well, there was a girl called Suckin’ Sue. She had an apartment off Music Row, above a store. She called it the Boar’s Nest. Well one day I’m walking down the street, and Faron sees me. “Hey, Olive Oyl” (I was still very skinny). “Hi, Faron.” “Olive Oyl, c’mere, c’mere. I wanna educate ya.” He had a couple of beers in him. He’d been up to the Country Corner, another joint where all the pickers’d go to drink and feed off each other’s talents and write songs. It was sort of like your local tavern. There was also another place, Wally’s Professional Club. That’s where I first heard Tom T. Hall’s superhit “Harper Valley PTA.” Anyway, Faron put his arm around my shoulders, and said, “Olive Oyl, I’m gonna show you what life’s all about.” And I said, “Okay.” Dumb, dumb, I was dumb. He said, “I’m gonna introduce you to a friend of mine, Suckin’ Sue.” Now in those days you didn’t hear the word “sucking ” unless it was a lollipop. “Okay, Faron.” And he had another buddy with him. Well, we go trumbling up some stairs. And in the corner of the steps was dirt, lint, like fur balls. I said, “Well, somebody ought to sweep the stairs!” I guess he knew I was about to ask him if they could get me a broom and I could help out Suckin’ Sue by sweeping the steps because Faron threw back his head and roared: “Ha, ha, ha. Olive Oyl, you beat all I ever seen.” Well we got up to the top of the stairs and straight ahead there was a little couch and a table. Off to your right was a bedroom. Off to your left was a little setting area, with a teeny chrome table and chairs, kinda raggedy looking. And there was this woman. Faron said, “Roni, this is Suckin’ Sue.” I said, “Hi, Suckin’ Sue. It’s nice meeting you, Suckin’ Sue.” And everybody laughed. So I’m sitting there, in one of the chairs by the table, just looking around. 108 / pressing on “C’mere,” says Faron. “I want to show you something. C’mere. Lookit. You see those little notches in the head of that bed? The headboard?” “Ya mean them dug-out places, like a knife’s been used on it?” “Those are notches.” “Oh.” Well I didn’t know what it all meant, though afterwards I figured it out. But I left right after that. There was too many men in there, and there was no need in my being there. Now in general Faron was really good to me. When he came down to see us at the Black Poodle, he would always say, “I’m taking care of Olive Oyl, Pop.” But he sure did like to tease me, and he sure got a kick out of somebody from the hills with so many children being so darned innocent! During this time when we were so popular in Nashville, in the sixties and seventies, we were also doing a lot of recording, album after album. And I hate talking about our records—don’t pay attention to our records—because they were really not us. The big guys at RCA would tell us what songs we were going to record. They took us away from our hillbilly roots and made us do more pop-like songs. This is good for you, you got to sing this to be commercial and saleable. We had no say, zero, zilch, none. One reason we didn’t rebel was because the situation wasn’t like it is today where the records are all-important. In those days you did the records to make you more visible and then have more shows. The shows were where you expected to get your money from. Also, we weren’t sure enough of ourselves because we weren’t educated. Scott wouldn’t record with us much because he hated Bob Bean. We thought we were working for Bob Bean. Later on, after I left the group, somebody told me, “Well, Roni, y’all had it backwards. Bob Bean was working for you all.” But we didn’t know it then. Anyway, we felt our managers were the educated ones, so we should do what they told us. Bob Bean would say, “We gotta go over to Jack’s. Here’s a song that he picked out,” and he would hand it to us and say, “Now learn it!” Like that stupid song—“Two Kids from Duluth Minnesota.” Minnesota’s a beautiful state, and I love it, but I hated that song. And we had to sing it the way Jack Clement wanted us to, separating each syllable—“Minne -so-ta,” he kept insisting. I thought it sounded awful. pressing on / 109 Now, I have to admit Jack Clement was really one of the most important forces in Nashville and in country music. He wrote some great songs like “Ballad of a Teenage Queen,” and he discovered and produced some great talent. One of those talents was Charley Pride and I was in on the discovery. I was in Jack’s office. A man came in, and he had this tall nice-looking black guy with him. He put on a tape. We all listened. Then he said, “What do you think of it?”And everybody’s saying, “That’s fantastic!” “You know who it is?” Everybody says, “No.” “Well, that’s this man here! We’re trying to get him a deal with RCA.” And I said, “If they don’t sign him, they’re crazy.” So he said, “Well, you come with me.” So we all trooped down to Chet Atkins’s office. Chet was an amazing man. He had performed all those big hits like “Mister Sandman” and had devised a guitar style all his own that everybody was copying, and he won instrumentalist awards year after year. By this time he had become a vice president for RCA. Well, we’re all in Chet’s office, and they put the tape on, reel to reel, and played it. “That’s a good singer, a really really good singer. Who is it?” said Chet. And Jack said, “It’s this young man, this guy here.” And Charley’s standing there, kinda proud and kinda shy. I remember Chet studying, listening. And he pushed himself back from his desk, and he said, “How would we do that?” “You can put girls on the front of the album,” I said, “beautiful girls, and don’t let anybody know that’s he’s black.” And that’s what they did. The first two albums he made, they did not let anybody know he was black. Terrible, isn’t it, to think that that had to be done? They did of course finally make it public. Once, we were playing somewhere in Texas, the Stonemans and Charley . And we were riding down together in our limousine. “I’m . . . I’m really scared,” said Charley. “My opinion, Charley,” I said, “don’t ever surround yourself with white women. With some of those people you don’t want to even be near a white woman. Make sure your wife is with you at all times, or if there are any ladies coming around, make sure they’re of your color. Just while you’re getting started.” “They won’t . . . Do you think they’ll shoot me?” “No, they won’t shoot you, if you don’t surround yourself with white women.” In those years, interracial dating was a big bad thing. 110 / pressing on Chet Atkins was always on my side. I would normally go down to the RCA building every now and then to say hey to him. I’d push the button—daang. They’d say, “Who is it?” “Roni Stoneman. I’ve come to say hey to Chet.” I could walk in any time I wanted to and talk to Chet because he was wanting some time out for foolishness. It wasn’t sex or anything, never sexy with Chet Atkins. But I’d just drop in if I was downtown. And we would sit and talk awhile. That ease of access is what I meant when I mentioned the freedom and lack of restrictions in those early Nashville days. I also used to go in the studios to watch the recording. For instance I remember one time when I went in to watch one of Charley’s sessions. I sat down at the board on the right side of Jack Clement, and he was pushing the buttons up and down and directing. They had Buddy Emmons on the steel, Hargus “Pig” Robbins on the piano, and Junior Husky Sr. on the bass. And I was particularly interested in seeing them because we were good friends. They were seriously working at getting the arrangement they wanted. Now, that’s about when the Nashville Sound was first being used a lot. Anumber system had been invented that named the intervals on the scale, so the pickers could just use a shorthand (“1, 4, 5, 5, 1”) to tell each other which chords to play. And then the musicians could get more interesting arrangements, the Nashville Sound, because they could improvise more on account of knowing that number shorthand. (Later the term Nashville Sound came to mean something else—the fuller arrangements using strings and horns and vocal choruses to make it sound more pop-like. The fiddle and the banjo just about disappeared.) So, anyway, Charley Pride was in the studio, and I was watching what was going on there. All the boys had written their numbers chart for the music, how to kick it off and so on. They studied on each other and would say, “How do you do that doodle doodle doo?” Or “I like that four in there. Keep it.” Then, “We’re ready, Jack.” That’s the way the session sidemen worked out the arrangements. It was really interesting. Audrey Williams would often come with me when I went down to the studios. Back to Chet: he was a very helpful friend. He hired me to do a lot of shows. Once we played at the Hand SurgeonsAssociation, nine hundred hand surgeons. And I played at his celebrity golf tournaments down in pressing on / 111 Atlanta. He always encouraged me. I often played with the Boots Randolph Band, and I think Chet had a lot to do with getting me those jobs since he and Boots were friends. I would do “Dueling Banjos” with the piano and horn sections. When I decided to leave the family band, he wrote me a letter to help me get jobs, saying what a great entertainer I was. Daddy passed away in ’68, of a variety of ailments, and three years later is when I left the family band. I left because I could not live on the money we were being paid. We had been named Country Music Association’s Vocal Group of the Year in 1967, and that year and the next four years we were nominated for both Vocal Group of the Year and Instrumental Group of the Year. Plus our TV show was a big success. But even though we were sometimes getting a thousand dollars a show, and sometimes playing three different places in one night, the managers never told us exactly what we were making. They just gave us at the most $250 each a week. Then they went down to $200, then $165. They told us they were investing our money for us, and afterwards there would be the gravy train. Scott said they were crooking us but we didn’t believe him. We just thought Scott was drinking. When I first went out on my own in Nashville, I was playing by myself in Printer’s Alley with the Nashville Cats. It was Jim Vest on steel guitar and Cliff Parker doing the lead guitar. And I would get up there on stage and I would play the banjo pretty darn good. But when I started talking, well somehow Vest would be playing around with the amplifier, or they would get down on the floor, looking around to connect the wires or moving pedals. And they would take my mind off of what I was saying. And one time my friend Pat McKenney was there. “Pat, what am I going to do?” I said. “Get up there and tell them to stop it. You be the boss on the stage, Roni!” Pat McKenney was my hero. She was a girlfriend I ran around with. And a singer, the best you’d hear, and pretty, and she was dating all the musicians—Waylon Jennings, Roger Miller. Another friend, Dale Turner, would date Kris Kristofferson. They were modern girls. They did modern things. We would all go downtown. And I wouldn’t date a musician. It was always some businessman or somebody that wore a tie. I was trying to 112 / pressing on get more stability in my life. So they would say about me and my date, “Here comes Harriet the Housewife, and Herman the Husband.” And I said, “What in the world is a ‘Harriet’?” “That’s a woman that has a bunch of kids. She’s got a station wagon, going to the laundrymat with her laundry.” When I first started playing by myself, the main thing I was concerned about, after I got the sidemen to behave, was that I was not doing enough for the audience. What I missed from the family was . . . well it was like an obsession to put on the best show for the people. Scott instilled that into us. You can’t let the audience get bored. If you see them milling around during your show, it means it’s time to get off the stage. Scott used to tell me to practice in the mirror, so I’d really know what I looked like, with my body language, with my facial expressions, with my feet dancing, whatever I was doing. “Hey the audience, we’ve got to die for ’em,” was Scott’s motto. I love Nashville. Later when my kids were growing up, actually in Smyrna, which is right outside of Nashville, I was taking Eugene over to the high school, and Marty Stuart came running out. This is the Marty Stuart, who’s had all those hits, performed with so many of the top artists, and has a Martin guitar named after him. Then he was a high school kid. Now, I knew his mom and dad and his wonderful sister Jennifer—they went to the same church we did. But at that time and for some years after, I didn’t ever think of Marty as being an entertainer. I knew he played a little mandolin, but we were used to that around that part of the country. You didn’t pay much attention. “Well, he plays.” “Oh, he do? Well, that’s great. Well I pick now and then.” “Okay, good, where y’all pickin’ at?” “Wall, I don’t know.” “Wall, call me whenever y’all pick somewhere and I’ll come over and see ya’.”And that was it. That’s how rich the Nashville area is in good musicians. I don’t ever want to live anywhere else. ...