Chapter One
Setting the Stage
I've always wondered if maybe I passed Hank Williams on the street without knowing it. I worked down at Loews Theatre at the intersection of Church Street and Capitol Boulevard when Hank was at the Opry and when Hank and Audrey had a clothing store downtown. During the three years I worked there, I met hundreds of people, thousands of people. I rode the bus back then since I didn't have a car. If you came downtown, you'd probably cross that intersection of Church and Capitol Boulevard, and there in the heart of the city, not far from the Ryman Auditorium, you might pass anyone. Tex Ritter, Ernest Tubb, Red Foley -- and, just maybe, Hank Williams. I did recognize Bashful Brother Oswald downtown one day down around Fifth and Church.
I might not have known who Hank was because I wasn't a big Opry follower in the late 1940s. I wasn't really
Chapter One
Setting the Stage
I've always wondered if maybe I passed Hank Williams on the street without knowing it. I worked down at Loews Theatre at the intersection of Church Street and Capitol Boulevard when Hank was at the Opry and when Hank and Audrey had a clothing store downtown. During the three years I worked there, I met hundreds of people, thousands of people. I rode the bus back then since I didn't have a car. If you came downtown, you'd probably cross that intersection of Church and Capitol Boulevard, and there in the heart of the city, not far from the Ryman Auditorium, you might pass anyone. Tex Ritter, Ernest Tubb, Red Foley -- and, just maybe, Hank Williams. I did recognize Bashful Brother Oswald downtown one day down around Fifth and Church.
I might not have known who Hank was because I wasn't a big Opry follower in the late 1940s. I wasn't really a fan of anything except boogie-woogie. My grandparents loved the Opry, so I was grounded in it, but I thought there was a sameness to it. You tuned in and heard the same people singing the same songs. It took me a while to really start to love it. But I did.
I started listening to country music and the Grand Ole Opry because of my friend Jim Ralston, who was a big fan of Lazy Jim Day and the Singing News. I lived at 812 Russell Street in East Nashville and I'd go across the street to Jim's house at 817 Russell. Jim had a bedroom down in the basement, and that's where we'd go to play records and sometimes listen to the radio. Every Saturday night we'd listen to the Opry, then tune in to WLAC's late-night boogie and blues show. Gene Nobles would play gut-bucket blues and boogie-woogie. Gene's trademark was when he supposedly poured beer into the microphone. He was sponsored by a beer company, and he'd say, "I'm gonna pour a beer through the mike -- get ya a sponge and mop it up!" Then you'd hear a sound just like liquid being poured into the mike, a kind of fizzing sound. I got to know him after I started in radio and Gene told me he created the sound effect by dropping a seltzer tablet into a glass of water. But I never guessed it when I was listening to him as a kid.
Jim Ralston loved to hear Lazy Jim make up his funny little off-meter songs based on the news. Here's a bit of what a Lazy Jim sketch was like:
"Listen, everybody, here comes the singin' news with a little music to chase away the blues. This news is the truth, every line says I, and I'll betcha thirty cents you can't catch me in a lie. The longest line of the season -- a boy down in Florida went to the woods with his father to help drag up some poles but onecrawled away from the other. He saw a twelve-foot snake, but I couldn't a guessed how long 'cause I wouldn't a even stayed there till the other end come along. But I don't think that'll happen again in months and months and months. No, I don't think that'll happen again in months and months and months and months."
(I think it's safe to say that Lazy Jim never heard of iambic pentameter, but we didn't care. He was funny.)
If I ever heard Hank Williams on the Opry, it would have been because of Lazy Jim. I remember one night while I was working at Loews Theatre, a bunch of us high school boys all got off work around 10:00 P.M. and decided to head over to the Opry. Since we'd come late, it didn't cost anything to get in, and that was probably an inducement for us to stop by. We sat up in the balcony. I don't remember Hank Williams being on the show that night. The person who stood out in my mind was George Morgan, who was wearing a bright checkerboard shirt. Now I treasure memories and stories from those early times.
One of my favorite stories from country music's old days comes from Uncle Art Satherley, the executive who almost single-handedly built Columbia Records into a country powerhouse. It's a story about how one of the biggest records in the industry's history almost didn't get cut. The tale begins at the Adolphus Hotel in Dallas, where Uncle Art was on one of his music-finding jaunts. Into the hotel walked Albert Poindexter, a housepainter from Troup, Texas, who wore chaps, boots, and a ten-gallon hat and thought he could speak in tongues. Art knew Poindexter and had already made a few records with him, none of which caught on. But among Poindexter's new tunes was a lovely song titled "Rosalita," which Art thought had potential. They picked eleven more songs and began recording in Art's hotel room, using Poindexter's band.
One of the compositions was about a woman who walks into a bar and finds her husband in the arms of another woman. Clearly not amused, she pulls a gun and shoots him. Art thought the lyrics were bizarre, but he liked the steady rhythm enough for the tune to make the cut. And it was enough of a contrast to "Rosalita" that Art put it on the B side of the single and sent it to radio in March 1943. Almost no one ever heard "Rosalita" because the minute the deejays listened to "Pistol Packin' Mama," they played it instead, By June it was one of country music's biggest-selling records and the darling of the jukebox crowd. By December it...
Continues...
Excerpted from 50 Years Down a Country Road by Emery, Ralph Copyright © 2004 by Ralph Emery. Excerpted by permission.
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