Pressing On: The Roni Stoneman Story

26. Losing Hee Haw

K N < E K P $ J @ O Losing Hee Haw At the same time Barry left me for the last time, took my RV and all my money, I lost Hee Haw, which was why his taking the money was such a disaster.According to the newspapers, Hee Haw was ranked number four or five in the country. But the higher-ups had been thinking for several years they had to “update” it. They started doing things like putting blue jeans on Grandpa Jones. They also fired Buck Owens. I was stunned. Buck Owens was one of the stars. Sam’s face was blood red when he told me the head office had ordered the move. Well, about four years go by, and then there was a real curious incident . We were all in the studio taping, and we broke for lunch. As we were coming out of the studio past the makeup room, we looked in and saw a bunch of new young girls. The Hee Haw girls were worried. “I wonder why they’re in there for?” they kept saying. Later, when we came back to the studio, Sam Lovullo told us that Losing Hee Haw Losing Hee Haw pressing on / 217 these girls had won contests, Miss County Fair or State Fair, and part of their prize was to get to be on Hee Haw for a season, clapping their hands to the music. So we taped several segments, and the directors said, “All right, take ten.” They had a place where you could get coffee. We always used honey in our coffee for energy. Because it was a high-energy show, and you really had to put the energy out. Why honey not sugar? Some people said it was better for you. All the girls from California said, “No, it makes us faaatter!” But the ones for honey were louder. “High energy and better for you—natural honey!” Anyway, they gave us a break, we got our coffee with honey, and we all went into the dressing room. Everyone’s still saying, “I wonder why they’re here.” Then Sam came up and said, “Let me tell you something. We shot each and every one of the young girls. They said none of them was as pretty on camera as our girls.” So we figured it was okay. We trusted Sam. Here’s an incident about Sam and the girls that shows how we got along with him. Lisa Todd was the tall girl that had, well, she was loaded down with chest, really well built. And had these, what do you call them?—vampy eyes, and that long black hair. She was the weather girl, with Gailard Sartain, for awhile. And she’d say in a real high cute voice, “Now, ladies, and oh yeah, you fellers too, we gonna have rain storms today.” And she would breathe real heavy. When you’d go into the studio, down the hallway, they had a little area where you could just duck in and change fast behind a screen. Well, one day Sam came behind the girls and saw that Lisa wasn’t with them, and he knew that she had stepped behind the screen. Sam says, “All right, Lisa, c’mon, let’s get in the studio. Bring them boobs down.” She was hiking them up because she knew the camera was going to be on her. But they had got some letters from the friends and neighbors saying there was just a little bit much of the boobs being shown by Lisa. So he said, “All right, Lisa, drop them boobs.” Just like it was his daughters or something. Everybody giggled. We really trusted Sam. But then the Hee Haw Honeys were fired. It was a mistake. I mean when you’ve got a bunch of women like the Hee Haw girls, you can’t just replace them with these little girls that are just brand spanking new and 218 / pressing on don’t, well they didn’t know what Hee Haw was all about. They were just sweet young girls. Our girls knew how to put a line over or giggle over something hillbilly-ish. And most of them weren’t hillbilly at all. There was Linda Thompson, there was Lisa from California. They were professional actresses. My opinion? The head office didn’t realize what all went into that show, how much talent there was. They just saw the girls with the boobs and thought that’s all they needed. But the fans out there in TV land, they realized the difference. The new “improved” program only lasted one year. The first I heard of the firings was on August 12, 1991. I get a call from Sam: “Roni, they’re letting some of the people from Hee Haw go. But they’re keeping you.” I’m relieved, but I’m also upset, thinking, Oh my gosh, there goes my friends. He says, “Now, we’re gonna start October 6 instead of October 15 and we’re gonna tape twenty-six shows, not thirteen, like we usually do. I don’t want you doing any fair dates. We’re gonna even be in the studio on weekends.” Well, of course Hee Haw came first to me, so I didn’t book any new fair dates, and I called the jobs I had and managed to cancel them. I thought, I’m sure it’s going to be the last season or why would they change the schedule, but at least this taping will give me a chance to take care of my finances really good. On September 28—my mother’s birthday, that’s how I remember so well—Sam called me and said, “Roni, don’t come to the taping. We’re not going to be using you. We’ve got to let you go. I tried to hang on to you, but there was no way.” Well I went into . . . I just stood there. I almost dropped the phone I was so stunned. Aaagh I had no job and I was putting everything on this last taping. Putting all my eggs in that basket. Because I had canceled a lot of dates. I think I almost had an emotional breakdown. I would sit and stare. And I’d smoke one cigarette after another. Just sit out on the swing under a tree and smoke and stare straight ahead. I knew I had to get a grip on myself. I tried to get work, but I couldn’t. And I didn’t have any money coming in from nowhere, none. I really tried. My buddy Noka had a little talent agency called From the Heart, pressing on / 219 and she also tried to get me working. I told her, I said, “You can’t do it. I know, Noka, I’ve been trying.” She thought I was just feeling depressed. So she called around, and . . . well, sometimes I would come in and she would have tears in her eyes. I’d say, “What are you crying for?” “Nothing .” And then I’d find out she’d been getting rejections. Later I found out why. I was told by an insider. Now I’m not saying how true this is, but it matches the truth more than anything that I can think of. What this person said was there was some problem with the legal rights to the Hee Haw characters, and that meant it was risky to hire those of us who were closely identified with the show. Well, that stopped me from getting work performing as Roni Stoneman . I didn’t know what to do. So I went over to Mom and Dad’s grave. I sat down right beside the graves, in fact touching Mom’s tombstone. I said, “What in the world am I gonna do?” And there was a sound, like a magnified voice in my head. It said, “Go to work. I did.” And I thought, But what kind of work? Then I thought, Well, better get to finding out. Better get to going. So I drove to a store where I bought a newspaper. I went home, sat down on the floor, and spread out the classified ads. But everything seemed like it was computer, or electronic, and they wanted you to have a high school diploma and a good résumé. I didn’t have those things. First thing I saw that looked possible was “Hotel Maids Needed.” All over the page, hotel maids wanted desperately. I thought, I’m good at that. I can do things like housecleaning real fast. And I took pride in it. So I called. I said, “This is Veronica Stoneman, and I’m looking for . . . I hear that y’all need some hotel maids.” “Oh, yes, we’re really low. We need all the maids that we can get.” I called five different hotels and got the same answer. I said to myself, Well, I’ll make my rounds and whoever offers me first, I’ll go to them. So I went on down to a hotel and walked into the manager’s office. “My God, you’re Roni Stoneman!” he said. “Yes, now, I never worked hotel work before but I’m awfully good. I raised seven children.And I’m healthy, and I’m thin, and I can get around the beds real quick, and I can do the job real good.” The guy looked straight at me. “But we can’t hire you as a maid!” 220 / pressing on “Why?” “Because you’re too recognizable. We can’t have the tourists and the fans of country music come in here and see our stars cleaning toilets!” I went to all five hotels. They all told me the same thing—“But you’re Roni Stoneman! We can’t give you a job.” I went home and I cried for about an hour and a half. Then I prayed some more. And cried some more. And then I thought, Now what do I do? What I did was I went down to this place that said BoutiqueAcademy or something of that nature. It was a home care thing for little children. I went in and talked to the lady, and, well I don’t know, I don’t understand it to this day because I’m excellent with children. I can read to them and I can play with them and teach them while they’re playing. But the woman acted so hostile to me—“I hope you realize that after you pay for your playground insurance, you’ll be earning less than four dollars an hour,” she said coldly. I went around to two other places. They acted the same way. So I thought and thought, and, again, like that time years ago, decided that it had to be music. I decided that if I could get a band together with some young girls, it would be so different from my Hee Haw characters that maybe people would feel they could hire me. So I met this young lady by the name of Beverly Nolan. Well, Beverly’s an excellent drummer and she sings great. She said she had some friends, one named Terry Lee, one named Melissa Smith. And then I said, “Well, we’ll call ourselves the Daisy Maes.” It was kinda corny (terrible pun, sorry), but they went along with it. When we rehearsed, I liked the sound we were getting. These girls had been playing with country bands in Nashville, so they were seasoned. But they were also young and fresh. That’s a combination that’s hard to find. Terry Lee was pretty as a picture and one fine musician. She would hold a fiddle under her chin while playing the keyboard and then take a terrific fiddle break. Melissa played the bass and sang. And we had Beverly on the drums and singing. Ralph Emery let me come on his show with my all-girl band. It was at 5:00—in the morning. We had to get up at four. To give you a hint of pressing on / 221 how bad my financial situation was, after arranging the booking I had gotten back to the crummy place I lived in and thought, Well, it’s awful early but at least they’ll probably give us a free breakfast. So we got down to the studio, and we played a romantic country song, and then we did “Wabash Cannonball.” I had rearranged it where we go “Whoooooo,” and everybody was singing really good: “Whoooooo. From the great Atlantic Ocean . . .” We did so well I was able to use the video of the show to get a gig at a Holiday Inn in town. Right before we started that, we went to Huntsville, Alabama, to be on a show. Somebody Walker, a really good guy, can’t remember his full name. He said, “We want you to come down. Bring your girl band.” He was trying to be nice to me. Now, the girls had been saying that we needed a lead guitar player. “Well, find one,” I said. It’s hard to find a good girl lead guitar picker. But it was true, we needed another lead. Terry was working herself to death on the keyboard and fiddle. So they picked up this girl named Doris (not her real name). Anyway this girl was wilder than a can of kraut—like Grandpa Jones used to say. She played two nights with us down in Printer’s Alley, and I knew she was trouble. So I took the girls aside. “Y’all better think on this. My opinion? Sometimes it’s best to get a musician that’s not so good as y’all say she is.” “But she’s our friend and she can really sing great.” So we took her to Alabama. We drove down, five women in this van, all picking and singing. Now, this girl Doris used to sing in church. She was from the old tradition of church gospel singing, had been singing for years with her family. She had really great harmony. I was impressed. We get to the studio. By now she’s high. I don’t know what she took or when, but she sure was high on something. When we were getting ready to do the soundcheck, I looked over and Doris was cussing. “Son of a bitch! That son of a bitch!” “Honey, what is it?” She had her hair slung over, and it was thick and pretty. She was brushing it and pulling it up. “That son of a bitch made fun of my guitar!” 222 / pressing on “What son of a bitch made fun of your guitar?” “That man out there. He laughed at my guitar, that damn son of a bitch!” So I went out and I said, “Beverly, who made fun of her guitar?” “Nobody.” I go back, and this girl’s still cussing. She did have a guitar that was shaped like a V. It was electric, looked like a rocket, shot to the moon. She was a rock ’n roll picker. I could handle that because she also really knew our kind of music. Well, we do the soundcheck. Doris is clearly in Never Never Land. The next thing you know, the men were gathered around. They had drinks with whiskey, where you put whipped cream on top of it, and you stick your tongue way down to the bottom. And Doris was drinking one. Whipped cream was all over her face, and then she had another drink and then another. She had five of them, downed them. All the men were going, “Yes! Yes!” cheering her on. This was the little gal that had grown up singing in church, that did such great harmony on the gospel songs! Then Beverly had one of them. “Beverly . . .” I said. “Hey, it’s okay, Roni. I can do them. I done it before. This is okay, this is okay.” Maybe I’m in the wrong league here, I thought. I’m too old or something . And these girls are grownups. Two of them have children. Then Melissa started laughing so hard. When Melissa gets nervous, she’ll laugh and laugh, and she’s got the most beautiful laugh. I’m thinking, desperately, Well, if she does that on camera, it’ll look cute, add to the effect, a little like Hee Haw. “Did you see how many drinks she . . . ?” she asked, laughing. Unbelievably, the performance was great. We went down to Alabama again. But we didn’t take Doris with us. That’s because she was working with us a couple of more nights, down in Printer’s Alley, and on the second night it was over. She just took off early, disappeared. We got a replacement, but soon Beverly had to go back home to care for her sick grandmother, and Melissa’s father died and she left to be pressing on / 223 with her mother. So the band just, well, disbanded. It’s not easy holding a band together, especially when you’re not making much money. When I got down, real despairing, and needed some money, Bill Deaton wrote for me to see if he could get me some money from the musicians’ fund. They wouldn’t give me any. Now when Hee Haw was on, they had us do shows for the Opry Trust Fund. We would go in there after we’d been filming all day. I was happy to do it. I thought it was for a good cause and that everybody should help each other. But when it came down to helping me, they didn’t. And what was told to me was that a pretty famous singer I’m gonna call X was on the board, and he’s the one said no. Now I don’t know how true that is. But it might be, because I didn’t make out with X. The incident happened back when we Stonemans had not been in Nashville too long. We were playing at the Black Poodle and we had our television show, but we had been working so hard that I hadn’t had any chance to get out and visit with the country music people. I was too busy taking care of the children, trying to find a place for them to live. One night X was in the audience. After the last show he came up. “Roni, would you like to go have breakfast with me? We could go to the Downtowner.” The musicians would go there after playing all night. Good pancakes and eggs and ham and stuff. So I agreed and said, “I’m just gonna tell Daddy.” Daddy usually drove me home. I didn’t realize the reputation that X had because of how he was with his lady friends. But I remember leaving—and Daddy watching me get in the car with X. He looked real funny. This was during the time I was separated from Gene. X’s car was nice. A good thing because we ended up spending a lot of time in it. We drove around the block and then went around to Union Street. There was a red light there, and we stopped. And he started kissing on me. The light turned green. I said, “X, it’s time to go.” And he kept kissing and kissing. Then he started trying to talk me into going to his condominium with him. “No. I don’t know . . .” “C’mon.” Then he started kissing on me some more, and the light turned red, then it turned green again. 224 / pressing on “X, we better go! Somebody is going to smack into the back of us!” “No, no, everything’s okay. Let’s go to the condo.” “No, I don’t think now . . .” Well, finally he drove to the Downtowner and we went inside to eat. About four booths up sat my daddy. He always stopped there for food anyway, but also he knew I was going there. Daddy had his crutch leaning straight up in the booth. By this time his hip had disintegrated from his arthritis and he needed the crutch real bad. It was aluminum and made a racket when he used it. So I ate my breakfast, and X ate his breakfast. I looked over to Daddy and I saw him reach for his crutch with his check in his hand. I said, “Excuse me, X.” I got up and went over to Daddy. “Daddy, can I ride home with you?” “You sure can.” Then I went back to X and said, “X, I’m going home with Daddy.” I never have been looked at or talked to much by X ever again, until that thing came up about the money.And then I didn’t get it. Now I don’t know for sure if he remembers, but a man like X is likely to remember something like that. Because he don’t get turned down every day of the week, in front of his buddies, especially from somebody that looked scrawny like I did. My girlfriend said, “Oh, you oughta see X’s place. He’s got mirrors on the ceiling.” And I was even gladder that I didn’t go. I was young, and I was worked to death. You know how a dog looks after it had a litter of puppies? That’s what I looked like. I was wore out. The mirrors would have shown a grasshopper making out. It would have been an awful picture. If I could get any work at all in those first few years when I lost Hee Haw, it was often in honky-tonks. And that was so hard, after being in all those big auditoriums. To give you an idea, one time I was down in a place on Broadway, in Nashville, and I had to play with just my recording machine as a backup band. I had to play my banjo over my banjo. And I had to sing my songs over my songs, word for word. ...