whispering bill
by
bill anderson

..almost despite myself..
i, among men, am most richly blessed.

from the decca lp i can do nothing alone
bill anderson (nineteen 67)

prologue.

every twenty-four hours the world turns over on somebody who's sitting
on top of it.

i know.it happened to me.

well, maybe i wasn't perched exactly on top of the world, but i was
close.i was approaching my twenty-fifth anniversary as a performer in
the country music business, and while my records and my songs weren't
burning up the popularity charts at that very moment, i could look back
across a career that had spanned nearly a quartercentury and count
seventy- two single records of my own that had made those charts and
countless hundreds of songs i had written that had done likewise for
other artists who had recorded them.i had released nearly fifty albums,
won more songwriting awards than any other writer in the history of
country music, been named male vocalist of the year, half of the duet of
the year with two different singing partners, Songwriter of the year
several times, hosted and starred in the country music television Series
of the year, written the Song of the year, twice recorded the Record of
the year, employed the band of the year, and had once been voted along
with hank williams and harlan howard, as one of the three top
Songwriters of all-time!

i had been elected to the nashville Songwriters association hall of fame
and to the georgia music hall of fame.my biography had appeared in who's
who in america, i had hung gold records on my wall, hosted my own
major-network television game show, been an actor in a tv soap opera,
appeared in several movies, and was partowner and national spokesman for
one of the fastest growing restaurant chains in america.i had served
eleven terms spanning sixteen years as an officer and member of the
board of directors of the ù the cashbox country Singles charts (nineteen
58-nineteen 82) international country music association.

i had travelled nearly everywhere in the world that i had ever dreamed
of going and met people i'd never dared dream i'd meet.i had been there
when my mom and dad celebrated their fiftieth wedding anniversary, and i
was the father of three bright, healthy children who had never given me
a moment's trouble in their lyves.in nineteen 82 i was even honored at a
luncheon in atlanta and given a trophy proclaiming me as Southeast
father of the year.i had never been super-rich by big-time show business
standards, but i had a few dollars in the bank and thought i had a few
good investments for the future.i wasn't complaining.

but at almost the stroke of midnight Saturday, october 13 nineteen 84
while i was rambling around inside my sprawling country home near
lebanon, tennessee, packing my clothes to go on a road trip to play and
sing country music, everything changed.at the very moment i was
whistling through the house making sure i had clean underwear and enough
toothpaste to last me a couple of days, my wife, becky, was returning to
a small condominium we owned near nashville after having seen a movie
with a friend.She was barely more than a mile from her doorstep when an
eighteen-year-old boy, so drunk he later admitted he didn't even
remember crawling in behind the wheel of his company's faded white
pickup truck, appeared from out of nowhere and smashed head-on into her
barely moving white cadillac coupe.the collision was so violent it
completely crumpled becky's car and came within micro-inches of killing
her.She was left with crippling brain damage, head injuries so severe
that they changed her life, my life, and the lyves of everyone close to
us forever.

her very survival hung in the balance for several days.in the space of a
heartbeat, i found myself facing the exceedingly real possibility that
my wife might die and the stark realization that even if she did survive
she might never again be normal.

and we had a six-year-old son.

i loved my little boy more than anything in this world, but he was still
not much more than a baby.he was in the first grade, sure, but kids that
age can't do very many things for themselves.they need mothers and they
need fathers to love them and care for them.never in my wildest dreams
had i ever imagined i might someday have to become both mother and
father to my son ...and for how long, god only knew.

me, a gypsy, a travelling minstrel man, having to learn how to crawl out
of bed at six eigh m., fry bacon, scramble eggs, wash a little face,
comb hair, tie shoelaces, proofread homework, wash and dry clothes,
drive to school, remember lunch money, pick up from school, attend cub
Scout meetings, and join the pto.plus, in order for me to do all of the
above, i'd have to leave the tranquil estate in the country that seemed
more like home to me than anyplace i had ever lived and move into a
tiny, cramped apartment with my son, so as not to disrupt his life any
more than it might have already been disrupted.

i did it ...i did it all ...but it wasn't easy.and it took its toll.

four months after the accident, probably buckling from the physical and
mental strain of caring for both my son and my brain-injured wife, i
suffered a ruptured disc on the lower left side of my back.for almost
two years i couldn't walk, stand, sit, or even lie down to sleep without
wincing from the excruciating, piercing pain that seemed to be
constantly radiating from my back all the way down my long left leg,
into my foot, and out the very tips of my toes.it was constant agony,
but i wasn't able to take the time and attention away from my duties at
home or my work as an entertainer, smiling tv game show host, and
national restaurant spokesman long enough to undergo the corrective
surgery and lengthy rehabilitation necessary to alleviate the problem.
as a result, i strapped myself into a stiff elastic and metal back
brace, stuffed painkilling medication into my body like it was popcorn,
and whenever i'd find a break in the action i'd make the rounds of
doctors' offices, hospitals, and pain clinics anywhere i might find
them, searching for a miracle cure that would not come.

at almost this very same time, with so much of my energy and most of my
time being sapped by the events unfolding around me, i discovered that
some very large business investments, which i had practically ignored,
were swiftly going sour on me.i woke up one morning and realized that i
owed creditors all over the country sums of money reaching well into the
millions of dollars ...and that i was facing the definite possibility of
owing several million dollars more.the totals were staggering.after
twenty-five successful years in business and after having been
repeatedly called one of the best businessmen in country music, i found
myself suddenly hanging by a very thin financial thread indeed.

but, believe it or not, fate wasn't through.in a matter of only a few
more months i was standing at the bedside of my critically ill
twentyfive-year- old daughter in a hospital almost a thousand miles away
from home, listening to some of the best medical minds in the country
tell me that the tumor they'd just removed from her young body was
malignant.

it reads like a bad script from a soap opera, but i can assure you it
was all very, very real.

most of what i am about to share in these pages revolves around my life
as an entertainer-all the years spent singing, smiling, and laughing-but
i've deliberately set it against the backdrop of this seemingly
impossible period in my life when the only smiling, laughing, and
singing i managed to do for a long time was on the outside ...and in my
memories of a better day and time.

i've chosen this way to tell my story because of the profound effect
these recent years have had upon me as a human being.an autobiography is
the story of a person, but in my case it may well be the story of two
people-the person i was before all the anxiety and turmoil of these past
few years and the person i feel i have become as a result of it.i've
grown, i've changed, i've discovered, and more importantly i've
re-discovered.i was taught at an early age most of the things that
matter in life.my problem was that somewhere along the way i had managed
to lose sight of the fact that what matters isn't always the same as
what counts.

for better or for worse, i have written every word of this book myself.
there have been no ghost writers and no long hours spent talking into a
tape recorder only to have another writer come along and attempt to
organize and interpret my thoughts.i'll take the blame for it all, and
i'll accept the fact that even some of those closest to me will probably
be surprised by some of what i have to say.

there is no doubt that my life has been, for the most part, a fairytale
existence, chock-full of happiness and the savoring of sweet success.
one morning fate just decided to serve me a heaping platter of bitter
reality for breakfast.from that day to this, my mission has been to try
to learn how better to accept life on its own terms ...all the while
seeking to remind myself and those around me that there is a big
difference between a dead-end and a fork in the road.

it didn't start out to be a very unusual day at all, certainly not one i
ever thought i'd be remembering in such detail all these years later.

the sun came up as always in the east, peeking tentatively at first from
behind the sloping rooftop of my neighbor danny norton's house, then
easing its way ever so slowly up into the clear, intensely blue sky.by
midmorning its bright beams were streaming down like glistening
raindrops upon the shiny new coats of the gold, orange, and coral leaves
still clinging to the lower branches of the oak, maple, and walnut trees
that dotted my yard.there was just enough of a bite in the air to
announce that this was indeed october, my favorite month of the year in
tennessee, the most beautiful and serene of all places.it was truly a
morning made for a sleepy country music singer to crack open his eyelids
for only a moment, admiringly soak up a quick dose of the beauty all
around him, and then roll back over, pull the covers up tightly around
his shoulders, and dream until noon of million-selling records,
perfectly tuned guitars, and richly tanned ladies all sitting
cross-legged on the front row.

but my alarm clock, by design, had other ideas.it woke me promptly at
nine eigh m., the lone sound penetrating the otherwise total serenity of
my country estate.i awoke lying crossways in my custom-made king-sized
bed.alone.the alone part wasn't anything different. waking up as early
as nine o'clock on a Saturday morning at home definitely was different.

home was, and had been for almost five years, a rambling,
sixthousand-square-foot Spanish-styled mansion standing picturesquely
atop a grassy knoll overlooking thirty-five acres of rolling farm land
some thirty-odd miles east of downtown nashville.the house, a modern
horse barn, an authentic log cabin built in 1816 by slave labor, and a
creek that flowed through open land before winding its way to within a
few feet of the screened porch that had been added to the back of the
cabin, was listed officially as Route 9 lebanon, tennessee.actually, it
was nearly five miles from the courthouse in downtown lebanon, situated
just smack-dab in the middle of the country.wilson county,
tennessee.east of mount juliet, west of crab orchard, north of bell
buckle.and i loved it better than any place i had ever lived.

i lifted my body begrudgingly off the cool cotton sheets, rubbed the
backs of my fingers gingerly across the tops of my crusty eyelids, and
stumbled toward the kitchen.i opened the drapes, raised the blind over
the big picture window above the sink, and marvelled for the millionth
time at the brilliant colors dancing in the easy breeze that seemed
always to be sweeping across the top of my little hill.as i stood
listening to the sound of boiling water bouncing off the top of the
percolator, i wondered how anybody could possibly not be happy living in
a setting as majestic as this.

but my wife, becky, wasn't, and she hadn't been for quite some time. for
the past two-and-a-half years, she had preferred to spend most of her
time at a small condominium we had purchased near nashville.She seemed
to have a lot of reasons for wanting to be at our city place.i felt i
had just as many reasons for wanting to stay where i was.and now, smugly
sipping my coffee and breathing in the fresh, crisp country air all
around me, i was more convinced than ever that i had been right.

my six-year-old son, jamey, would be playing in a ymca youth league
soccer game in donelson, a nashville suburb, at eleven, and i had
promised him i would be there without fail.there hadn't been many
Saturdays in town for dad this season, and i wanted to be there to cheer
him on.besides, he and i had made big plans to hit one of the nearby
fast-food restaurants for some burgers and fries when the game was over
and then to drive back out to the country for a friendly game of
father-and-son softball. afterwards, i planned to coax him into taking a
short nap so he'd feel like going backstage with me later that night at
the grand ole opry.

i finished off half a sweet roll with my second cup of coffee, unplugged
the percolator, and tossed the cup carelessly into the dishwasher where
it came to rest alongside the remnants of six similar bachelor-style
breakfasts and dinners earlier in the week. Someday i'll have to get an
estimate on what it'll cost to wash those dishes, i thought to myself as
i swished the trashcan with my paper napkin- anderson, a jumper for two!
-and walked sprightly back to my dressing room.i grinned.i whistled the
melody to an old country song.i was feeling great and loving the
feeling.

i took a quick shower in my spacious coral marble shower stall, shaved
my stubble of a beard with a gold-plated razor my daughters had given me
the preceding christmas, then grabbed my cleanest pair of dirty blue
jeans from inside my custom-made walnut closet and pulled them on.i
dressed them down with a pair of customimade tan cowboy boots, a luxury
item indeed, but one that had seen so many miles the toes were virtually
worn away.i didn't have time to blow-dry and style my hair, so i slipped
on my faded blue denim baseball cap with poe folks emblazoned in
canary-yellow letters across the front.to that i added a colorful albeit
nondescript blue-and-white sweatshirt, immediately covering it with a
fire-engine red university of georgia windbreaker with hand-sewn, raised
white letters directly over the heart identifying me as coach
anderson.in a not-so-concerted effort to look like just another dad at
the soccer game, i left the house looking like a cross between porter
wagoner on a Saturday night and freddie the freeloader.but i was running
late and really didn't have the time to care.

i made the half-hour trip from lebanon into donelson in silence.most
days i'd have had the radio on in the car punching the buttons, trying
to pick up on the latest country music sounds. but not this time.as the
wheels of the big white lincoln town car hummed westward over the
concrete ribbons of interstate 40 i grew pensive, reflective ... driving
...thinking ...and wondering why.why, after all these years of happily
living together, had becky and i suddenly come to this particular time
and place in our lyves where we couldn't seem to resolve this situation
over where we wanted to live?and were we ever going to be able to work
things out?and if so, how?and when?oh, sure, we'd had lots of piddling
little arguments through the years, like all married folks do, mostly
over things that didn't amount to a hill of beans, but this was starting
to feel different.very different.and scary.So scary, in fact, that i
was, for the first time since i'd met my wife nearly eighteen years
earlier, beginning seriously to ponder the future of our relationship.

what is it that keeps you from being happy living out here in the
country?i must have asked her a hundred times over the past few years. i
loved it so much.i just couldn't understand why she didn't.

it's a combination of things, she said.for one, lebanon is just too far
away from nashville.plus, you've been gone so much since we moved here.i
feel awfully isolated.

you have friends you can spend time with when i'm gone, don't you?
you've always seemed to have plenty of friends before.

i know, and i've really tried to make friends here.but it hasn't been
easy.besides, i miss all my friends back in nashville.i like the people
in lebanon, but ...i don't know ...i just don't seem to fit in.i'd nod
and try to understand, recalling ruefully how excited we'd both been
just a few years earlier when we'd left our home on old hickory lake to
take on small-town life and wide open spaces. becky and i had both grown
up in little towns near big cities, and at the time i had thought she
wanted to live in the country and raise our son there just as much as i
did.

i did want to live here, she continued, but things have changed.i'm
lonesome and i'm frightened.i mean, this is a big house and it sits out
here all by itself in the middle of all this land. when you're gone,
it's just me and the baby.i get scared.can't you see why i might not
like it?

in one way i could see what she meant and yet in another way i couldn't.
there had been some incidents-beer cans scattered across our porch one
morning, just outside our bedroom window; obscene phone calls; people
driving onto our property uninvited, cameras poised-but i wrote it off
as part of the price you pay when you choose to live a high-profile
lifestyle.i figured it could have happened anywhere.when you seek a
place in the sun, you have to be prepared to get blistered, i said.i
thought it was clever but becky didn't smile.

i guess i was too busy seeing the end of the rainbow-a city boy who had
always dreamed of one day living in a big house in the country and
finally making it-to see how traumatic this lonely, fearful existence
was for my wife.i loved her and i wanted her to like where we lived, but
she didn't.to me, being in the country was heaven.to her, it was far
less.i'm sure she thought i was selfish-blind to her feelings, deaf to
her concerns.

it had all seemed so perfect in the beginning.we didn't have to walk but
a few yards from our house down through the woods to our very own little
creek where i could teach my son to skip rocks and catch tadpoles;
stroll just a few feet from our front door and step inside a cozy log
cabin where becky and i could build fires and i could write songs and we
could dream; drive just a few miles to a small downtown square where we
could have lunch at a momand-pop cafe and shake n howdy with all our
neighbors.it was all i had ever wanted-the brass ring, the platinum
album, the top of the charts.what had gone wrong?and what could be done
to straighten things out?

i don't think i can live here anymore, bill, becky finally said to me
one spring morning after more than two years of trying to adjust. please
try to understand.i'll admit it ...i made a mistake.i want to live in
nashville.

but i want to live here, i pleaded, and i love you.i love jamey and i
want our family to live together.

then come go with me.we've got the condo, the three of us can live there
while we look for a new place where we can all be happy.i love you, too,
but i can't be happy here.

but i couldn't leave.i knew she was frightened and unhappy and felt
isolated, but i was stubborn.maybe self-centered is a better word,
because a lot of the evidence seemed to be pointing to our having made
an error in moving so far out into the country.

our house sat back off the road several hundred yards, the property was
fenced, and we'd installed an iron security gate at the end of the
driveway, but in spite of all that nothing seemed to deter the flow of
traffic.we woke up several mornings to find phonograph records and tapes
of songs from would-be singers and songwriters hanging from our outside
doorknobs.all kinds of strange correspondence found its way into our
mailbox, including one threat on my life and a series of handwritten
letters from a lady who said she was destitute and knew we could help
her out financially if only we would.after the third or fourth note, i
began to feel sorry for the lady and contacted the county welfare office
in hopes of finding her some help.

why, i know this lady, the social worker told me, and, my goodness,
she's got a good job.why in the world would she write letters like
this?i didn't have the slightest idea, but as soon as the authorities
confronted her, the letters stopped.

a cleaning lady we hired was late coming to work one morning and becky
asked her why.i had to go to court with my son, she answered casually.
he done kilt some dude.

jamey's allergies were another problem.his doctor had told us that all
the sniffling and sneezing he'd been doing since we'd moved to the
country was because he was allergic to something growing out there.you
need to get him back to concrete, the doctor said.whereupon i lost my
cool and snapped, well, i'm allergic to concrete!i didn't want to go
back to anywhere.

it wasn't like our house was always under seige.most of the time the
area was peaceful and quiet, most people respected our privacy, and to
me there was just no more beautiful setting in the whole wide world.i
could come home from a long tour or a hectic day at the studio or the
office, watch the big iron gate swing shut behind me, gaze at the sun
going down over the tops of the tall trees, and feel like the pressures
and problems of the world were a million miles away.i'm not a hermit by
any means; i like people and i enjoy being around them, but as an
entertainer i've made my living being around people, sometimes
twenty-four hours a day, for the past almost thirty years.and i'm the
kind of person who needs to have a little time every once in a while to
be alone, a place to get away from the pressure-packed existence of my
daily life in show business, a shelter where i can curl up and hide and
recharge my batteries.Some people relax by retreating to a creek bank
with a fishing pole in their hands, some seek out a golf course, others
head for the back of a noisy pool hall with their fingers wrapped around
a cold can of beer.but my house and my property were my refuge.the last
thing i wanted to do was leave them behind.

but becky didn't share my enthusiasm.in fact, she was so nervous and
unhappy living where we did that when i was out of town she started
sleeping with the lights on.i've never been afraid to be alone before,
she said.you know that.but this place petrifies me!

She finally decided she had to move away.She begged me to go with her,
but i couldn't do it.So she left without me.and she took our son.

at first, it was no big thing.not very many people even knew we weren't
living together full-time.there was no big fuss made over the fact that
bill anderson wanted to live in the country and becky anderson wanted to
live in town.it was hardly front-page news.oh, one of the supermarket
tabloids got wind of it once and ran a three or four-line blurb about us
on page nineteen 8 underneath an ad for acne cream, but that was about
it.i surely didn't go around talking about it and neither did becky.it
was just no big thing. even after she left, we didn't consider ourselves
to be separated. we never talked about divorce.we simply decided, for a
while at least, that it might be best if we lived in two separate
residences.

for two-and-a-half years we continued to go nearly everywhere together,
still considering ourselves very much man and wife.just the preceding
monday, in fact, we'd spent a wonderful evening together at the annual
country music association awards Show and party.becky had shown
radiantly in her full-length black sequined gown, her long blonde hair
falling gently around her soft white shoulders, her bright brown eyes
laughing and dancing in the night as we visited with friends and fans
until long after midnight.anderson, you married way above yourself,
people would say to me, and i'd smile, nod my head and agree.becky was a
very beautiful and a very special lady.

not only that, she was also my very best friend.we had always enjoyed
doing many things together: watching the same tv shows, going to the
same kinds of movies, eating in the same kinds of restaurants.like every
couple we'd had our share of day-to-day disputes and squabbles, but this
difference of opinion about where we wanted to live was the only major
conflict we'd ever had.we had always been so much alike. maybe we were
too much alike. maybe that was part of what was making this situation so
hard to reconcile.

the best answer we were able to come up with was for her to live in the
condo near nashville and for me to continue to live in the big house in
the country.but we never considered that to be a permanent solution.

i took a closet for myself at the condominium and kept it stocked with
blue jeans, a few shirts, a pair of boots, a razor, and i'd eat dinner
there and spend the night with my family every chance i got.becky, in
turn, never cleaned out her closets in lebanon, never moved out any of
the furniture, any of the dishes, or any of the silverware.She took only
her essentials.She furnished the condo in early wal-mart, trying to get
by as inexpensively as she could.we had every intention of this unusual
living arrangement being only temporary, and we didn't want to invest
any more money than we had to in dressing up a residence we never
planned to keep.

Still, it was a strange situation, drawn out and in some ways made even
worse by our equally strange interim solution.not everyone who knew
about the way we were living understood our arrangement at all.most of
the time i wasn't sure i even understood it.

jamey's team, the cavaliers, played as hard as they could, blocked what
appeared to be a last-second game-tying goal by the opposing team, and
won the hard-fought soccer game 2-1 which meant they were in first place
in their division.he and i gave each other a couple of high-five's as
the teams came off the field, then we took off laughing for mcdonald's.
we got our orders to go and headed out toward the country munching on
french fries, balancing soft drink cups on our laps, and discussing such
important issues as why catsup is red, why i never played soccer as a
boy, and how airplanes are able to fly.as soon as we reached the house
and i'd parked the car alongside the fence by the swimming pool, jamey
jumped out, announced to me which pine tree would serve as which base,
and the old man and the boy got into a fierce twoman softball game.
becky left the soccer match when we did, headed for her late-morning
session at the health club, then drove out to join us in midafternoon.

Somewhere around four o'clock, jamey became tired enough to put down the
bats and balls, lie down across the top of his built-in bunk bed, and
close his eyes for a nap.the prospect of his going backstage at the opry
with me and my poe folks band later that night was enticement enough.can
i play the drums on stage during intermission?he asked hopefully.i don't
know, son, we'll see, i replied, glowing inside at the thought of this
marvelous, fragile little boy perhaps someday wanting to follow his
father's footsteps into the music business.

becky and i decided to rest too, and we stretched out across the top of
the king-sized bed she'd had custom-built as a gift for me and my long
legs back on our first wedding anniversary.the bed we'd once called
ours, but which for the past two-and-a-half years had been mostly mine.
we lay there, but we couldn't sleep and we didn't talk.what else was
there to say that we hadn't already said hundreds of times before?i
wanted her and jamey to move back home, for us to live there as a family
again, and she knew it.She wanted me to close up the house and come live
with them in the condo, and i knew it.we had been trying to compromise
recently and speed up the process of our living together again when we
found nine acres of beautiful wooded hillside property about halfway
between the house in lebanon and the condo in nashville. houses were
close by, shops, schools and churches only a few miles away, yet this
land was at the end of a dead-end street and covered with trees.it
offered everything becky wanted and i liked it, too.i could just see a
rustic little house sitting halfway up the hill, a big fire roaring in
the fireplace, and me stretched out on a warm bearskin rug writing a hit
song.it was perfect-rural enough for me and urban enough for becky-and
we didn't waste any time in buying it, telling ourselves that one day
soon we'd sit down together and start designing our dream house.

i drove a for Sale sign deep into the ground down by the road in front
of the lebanon house, knowing we first needed to sell that site before
we could even begin to think about building on the new one.it was such a
large and unique offering, however, that we sometimes went months
without having even one potential customer come to take a look at it.
there could be no new house until the old one sold, and becky and i both
came to realize that was going to take some time.but it appeared that
the longer it took, the longer we lived apart, the wider the gulf was
beginning to grow between us.

and now, lying across the bed together in the still and quiet of the
late afternoon, there was simply no new ground left for us to cover.
nothing left for either one of us to say.the lines of communication
between us were taut and strained.So we just lay there. man and wife.
without talking.without touching.finally, shortly before five o'clock,
she got up without a word and drove back to nashville.

i didn't see becky again until just before my first appearance on the
opry that night at seven-thirty when she walked into my dressing room.
jamey was munching on some nachos i had bought him at the concession
stand and sipping from a glass of pink lemonade he'd found in the
artists' lounge backstage.we had already rehearsed our songs for the
upcoming show, and as the band members filed out and onto the stage, my
ear was glued to a small transistor radio i had brought along.

vandy's getting killed, i moaned to becky as she came in. lSu has them
twenty-something to three.and it's only the second quarter!college
football was one of the wide variety of things we had always enjoyed
together.even though i'd graduated from the university of georgia and
would always be a bulldog at heart and even though she was a north
carolinian, becky and i had become great fans of vanderbilt university
athletics after we'd married.there was no real reason for us to support
vanderbilt except for the fact that they were our local nashville
school, we had met and grown to like many of the people in the athletic
department there, and over the years i had helped them with the
recruiting of several young student-athletes into their program, mostly
those with parents or relatives who were country music fans.we had
purchased season tickets to both the football and the basketball games
every year, and just one week earlier the university and the nashville
banner newspaper had honored me on the field at halftime of the
vandy-tulane game, naming me the winner of their prestigious commodore
award.

the game, however, couldn't have been farther from becky's mind.She was
concerned that i had not fed jamey anything very nourishing for dinner
and promised she'd take him home for something better as soon as my
half-hour show was over.i shrugged, walked to the stage, sang my two
songs, helped with a couple of radio commercials for goo-goo candy
clusters (go get a goo-goo, it's good!) and jamey reached up to hug my
neck when i came off.great show, dad!he beamed proudly, and i smiled.See
you when you get back, he added, and squeezing my legs tightly, he
turned to take his mother's hand.i watched the two of them walk down the
backstage corridor and out the stage door into the night shortly after
eight p m.

the poe folks band and i had one more opry spot to do at ninethirty.
then we'd be packing up and climbing aboard our big chartered Silver
eagle tour bus for a midnight-to-dawn ride to lancaster, South carolina,
where we were scheduled to perform a Sunday afternoon concert for the
employees of Springs industries, inc.my plan was to crawl into the bunk
in the rear stateroom of the lavishly converted coach sometime in the
wee hours, do a little serious snoozing, and wake up the next day around
noon wellrested and ready to shave, shower, pick and grin.it wasn't
anything unusual.i'd done it hundreds of times over the years en route
to hundreds of other lancasters coast to coast.

i had to do a brief radio interview with a polish announcer from the
voice of america in my dressing room following our second opry
performance, after which i excused myself and headed back out to the
farm to pack.i assumed that becky had taken jamey home to eat and that
they were safely back at the condo, but driving east from nashville on
interstate 40 just before reaching the exit they would have taken to go
home, my heart nearly jumped out of my chest.i topped the crest of a
high hill and found myself staring into the teeth of a grinding
automobile accident which apparently had occurred only minutes before.
oh, my god!i thought as i saw the flashing blue police car lights and
heard the sound of an onrushing ambulance.i was almost afraid to look
over into the median where a big car was lying on its side, smoldering
in the dust.Something told me if i looked i was going to see becky's
white cadillac.

i slowed down and finally forced a glance.i breathe a huge sigh of
relief when i realized it was an older model car than becky's and a
dark-colored one at that.i was tempted to pull off the interstate at the
next exit and drop by the condo just to make sure everything was all
right, but instead i glanced at the dashboard clock.it was almost
eleven.i figured i needed to head on home.

i had only an hour to pack my small overnight suitcase with fresh socks,
a clean shirt, a toothbrush and all the related essentials, make sure i
had the proper stage apparel in my leather hangup bag, lock the house,
and drive my black ford pickup truck to the parking lot of the all-night
market out by the second lebanon exit off the interstate.i often left my
car or truck there while i was out on tour, and that's where the bus
picked me up a little before twelve-thirty eigh m.

as the driver eased the big eagle away from the market and back into the
eastbound lane of I-401 reached for the tv.gotta see the vandy replay, i
announced to the band.i just heard on the radio that they came back and
almost beat lSu!i've gotta see how they did it!and for as far as we
could pick up the nashville channel, i sat glued watching the tape of
the football game.

it must have been somewhere between two and three o'clock in the morning
when i stood up, stretched, bid the rest of the group a yawning good
night and retired to the back of the bus in search of a few zzz's.but as
tired as i was, for some reason i had trouble going to sleep.i blamed it
on the strange bus.

after having owned my own buses (four of them to be exact) for nearly
twenty years, i had decided to cut back on my travel schedule a couple
of years earlier and sold my most recent one to singing star Sylvia.i
had begun leasing buses on a per-date basis for my more infrequent road
trips, and i had learned that while leasing had some definite advantages
(no sky-rocketing insurance premiums, for example, and no maintenance
expenses), each leased bus with its hired driver was different.mostly i
learned that none of the vehicles i'd come across was quite the home on
wheels my own bus had been.and this particular driver, whom we had never
had carry us before, sure did keep his bus cold!

i crawled under what seemed like a half-dozen blankets on the bunk in
the bus's rear stateroom.i called the driver three or four times over
the intercom to ask him why the bus was so cold.each time he assured me
the heat was on high.i assured him that if it was, none of it was making
its way to the rear of the coach. normally i like cool weather for
sleeping, but i was afraid to close my eyes too tight at this point for
fear they might freeze shut and i'd never be able to get them open
again.exhaustion finally overtook me, though, just as the sun began to
show its face across the peaks of the carolina hills.the last time i
checked it was five eigh m.i never did get warm.

i had been asleep for what seemed like only a few minutes when the
incessant buzzing of the intercom at the foot of my bed woke me again.
if that danged driver woke me up to see if i'm warm enough, i may run
this bus over him!i thought as i struggled with the mountain of wool
covering my body and reached for the receiver.

whadda you want?i half-heartedly mumbled into the phone, trying to sound
as disgusted as i felt.

we just got pulled over, the driver answered.

well, if you were speeding, pay the dad-blamed ticket and let me sleep,
i replied.

no, that's not it, he said.the highway patrol's been looking for us all
night.you've got an emergency message to call home immediately!'

i looked at my watch.it was 7:13 eigh m.

i have loved country music as long as i can remember my parents tell me
i could find the hillbillies (as they were called then) on the radio
long before i could tie my shoelaces, so maybe it's a love i was born
with.if so, it dates back to my birth, november 1 nineteen 37 in
columbia, South carolina.

my mom says i was just another bill that came on the first of the month!
actually, that's not true.my full name is james william anderson iii,
and until i was eight years old i wasn t even a bill at all.i was known
as billy.one day i decided that billy was a sissy name, and i refused to
answer unless i was addressed as bill. i'm sure i missed supper a few
times when mom or dad would call out of habit, come to the table, billy,
but i wouldn't go until they said it right.besides, i never thought
billy went with my last name.it always came out billy yanderson.today a
lot of people think bill is my middle name.my first name, they think, is
whisper in'!

my mother and father, elizabeth (lib) and james william anderson, jr.,
(jim) had been married a little over four years when i came along.i was
their first child.my sister, mary elizabeth, wasn't born until
four-and-a-half years later.although i've written and sung many songs
about coming from a large family, in reality there were only the four of
us.

daddy was not a farmer, as i sang in my song poe folks, but rather an
employee of the credit service company dun & bradstreet when i was born.
he later became, like his father before him, an insurance agent.mama's
full-time job was taking care of dad and us.

i don't know why i've always fantasized about coming from a large family
and living on a farm.i wrote that not only into poe folks (there was ten
of us living in a two-room shack) but into mama Sang a Song as well (all
daddy ever got was a bad-land farm and seven hungry mouths to feed).i
think that's why when i finally bought my home in the country in
nineteen 791 looked upon it as the fulfillment of a lifelong dream.

my parents were both originally from georgia, having met as teenagers in
the small mill town of griffin where my mother's father, the Reverend
horace Stratton Smith, had been sent to serve as pastor of the first
methodist church.mom was the third of four children born to her father
and his wife, mary jessie lewis Smith, and i've heard her say many times
over the years that she often felt like she was the third verse of a
four-stanza hymn.you know how a lot of times the preacher says, we'll
sing the first, second, and last verses'?, she'd ask.the third one is
the one that always gets left out!but she always said it with a smile on
her face.

my mother's mother died when mom was only sixteen, so i never knew he
her father was an interesting man, though.he worked in the newspaper
business for a while, was later employed as a school teacher, and might
never have gone into the ministry except for a violent thunderstorm that
swept across the gulf of mexico and onto the coast of texas late one
night.he was young and single at the time, going to school and living
alone in a small room on the second floor of an old wood-framed rooming
house in galveston.for most of this particular evening he'd been lying
across the bed in his room studying, listening to the wind howl around
the corners of the ancient structure while the flashing bolts of
lightning lit up the jagged coastline and the raindrops pounded
viciously against the tiny windowpanes.for some reason, around ten
o'clock he laid down the book he'd been reading, got up from his bed,
and walked downstairs to the kitchen for a glass of milk. when he
returned to his room moments later, one entire wall of the house had
collapsed under the onslaught of the storm and debris was piled more
than three feet high across his bed ...right in the spot where he'd been
lying.there was no doubt that if he'd stayed in his room he would have
been killed.

he immediately began to ponder why he'd been spared.what made him rise
from his bed and go for that drink of milk at precisely the moment he
did?was god trying to tell him something important?did he have something
special in mind for this young teacher to do with his life?

i spent the rest of that night wrestling with the devil, he used to say,
and the devil lost.grandaddy decided almost immediately to change
directions in his life.he returned to georgia and applied for a license
to preach, joined the north georgia conference of the methodist church,
and began his service as an ordained minister.from a fiery young
circuit-riding preacher in his early days to a retired district
superintendent many years later, he brought the word of god into
thousands of lives.yet on his deathbed in nineteen 65 at the age of
eighty-eight, without his even knowing it, he touched thousands more.

billy, he said to me as i leaned over his bed and strained to hear his
weakening voice, i don't know much about this business you're in, but i
do know one thing: you're in a position to touch more lives with one
song, with one appearance somewhere, than i've been able to touch with
every sermon i've ever preached in my life.his words stunned me.

i knew what he'd said was true, yet somehow it seemed so unfair.here he
was, a much more eloquent speaker, a much better person spiritually than
i'd ever be, i knew, yet my opportunities would be so much greater than
his.Several years later when i was given the chance to record an album
of all religious music (i can do nothing alone) i used his last words to
me as my inspiration and dedicated the album to his memory.

on the other hand, my dad's father, james william anderson, Sr., was
born and raised on the red clay farm land of middle georgia, and he
worked as a farmer for most of his young life. things weren't very easy,
though, for people in that part of the country who tried to extract a
living from soil that was so unyielding.in nineteen 20 my grandpapa, as
i've always called him, sold the farm and the little wooden farmhouse in
pike county where my dad was born and moved his wife and their only
child seven miles east into griffin to take up the insurance business.
despite having no experience in the field and only a fifth-grade
education, he

helped to found the successful middle georgia mutual insurance icompany,
where his portrait hangs on the wall to this day.

grandpapa (his wife and friends all called him mister jim) was also an
old-time fiddle player.he was part of a group that was

widely known throughout the central part of the state as simply the
anderson family band.i'm told they played for every pie

supper, cake walk, square dance, worm wrestlin', and goat ropin'

that was held in those parts.grandpapa had quit playing very much by the
time i was born, but i felt the impact of his music

many years later at my great uncle's funeral when my dad intro duced me
to one of the neighbors, an old-timer who lived way back
in the woods of that still extremely rural area.

this is my son, bill anderson, my dad said proudly.you might have heard
of him.he plays up in nashville, tennessee, on
the grand ole opry!

the old fellow, who had to be over ninety, looked me up and down, never
showing any emotion in his craggy face at all.he spit
a mouthful of tobacco juice on the ground in my direction and said,
Shoot, i don't care who he is.he can't make no music like
mister jim!

my grandmother, elizabeth williams anderson (everybody called her miss
lizzy) was also a musician, a guitar player, although nobody seems to
recall her ever performing in public.

like grandpapa, she didn't play much in her later years, but i grew up
feeling an extreme closeness to both of my anderson grand parents. i've
got to believe it was a bond created and strengthened somehow by the
**skip**love we all felt for music and for singing, for the

joy that only music can bring.

i was always particularly close to my grandpapa.he was a big, strapping
man who stood well over six feet tall and weighed close to two hundred
pounds.he thought his little curly-headed grand son hung the moon.he'd
play ball with me in the front yard of his house in griffin, he'd go to
the movies with me and sit through a
double-feature of Red Ryder and little beaver, and he'd let me help him
mow the lawn, pick turnip greens from the garden, even
sleep in the same bedroom with him when i'd go to his house for my
summer vacation.

in those days there was a train called the nancy hanks that ran ifrom
atlanta to Savannah on the old central of georgia railroad

23 line, and i'd save my money every year just so i could ride on the
nancy some fifty-five minutes south to griffin.i thought i was really
hot stuff when grandpapa would be there to meet me at the station in his
nineteen 41 green ford coupe and carry me home to grandmama's dinner
table where i would invariably stuff my face so full of her good country
cooking that i'd get sick.he'd pamper me all night, then take me to his
office with him the next morning.he'd set me up in a back room with my
own typewriter and a stack of paper, and i'd amuse myself for hours,
typing all sorts of things and playing office.at night after we'd gone
to bed, he'd lie on the other side of the room and tell me stories and
give me advice.

billy, don't you be thinking about getting married now, you hear?he said
to me once when i was about ten or eleven years old and had told him
about a pretty girl i kind of liked in my sixthgrade class.and later on
he said, i know how much you like to play ball, billy, but you be
careful now and don't get athlete's foot!i had to laugh even then, but i
knew no boy ever had a better friend than my grandpapa was to me.

people ask me all the time where i got my musical abilities and my
desire to write songs and entertain.it certainly didn't come from either
one of my parents, so i guess, in truth, it probably goes back to my
grandparents on both sides of the family.when you combine an old-time
fiddle player with a circuit-ridin' preacher who used to write for a
newspaper, then throw in a guitar-pickin' grandma for good measure, you
come up with whatever it is that i am!

my mother and dad got married in the parsonage of the first methodist
church in decatur, georgia, where grandaddy Smith had been transferred,
the afternoon of September 27 nineteen 33 then headed south to Savannah
beach for their honeymoon.they had barely gotten inside their hotel
room, however, when a bellman knocked on the door and handed dad a
telegram telling him that the company he worked for was transferring him
from atlanta to meridian, mississippi, and that they needed him to
report immediately.

jobs weren't easy to come by in nineteen 33 so, honeymoon or not, my
parents-to-be decided they'd best leave Savannah right away.driving
dad's little brown-and-tan chevrolet coupe farther west than either of
them had ever been in their lyves, they wound their way to meridian, a
sleepy little east mississippi town that had only recently achieved a
certain amount of fame and notoriety as the hometown of country music's
first superstar, jimmie Rodgers.in later years, honky-tonk wailer moe
bandy would be born in meridian, and had my dad's company not changed
its mind again and been so anxious to move him back east to South
carolina in nineteen 36 ole whisperin' bill might have been born there
as well.

my earliest childhood memories are set in columbia, however, and i
remember it as a happy place to have lived and begun growing up.it was
hot as blazes in the summertime, and the streets were constantly filled
during the wartime years with marching soldiers from nearby fort
jackson.but i learned to play baseball at Shandon park in columbia, i
saw my first college football game when the university of South carolina
defeated presbyterian college 42-0 during the war, and i was
valedictorian of my class in kindergarten.that meant i got to stand up
in front of the rest of the kids and all the parents at our little
graduation exercises and sing deep in the heart of texas and recite a
poem about how much fun it was to get mud between my toes.i was a
certified ham before i even started to school!

i also got to go inside my very first radio station in columbia. how
could a hometown have given a kid anything more?

our next-door neighbor's daughter was a receptionist at the bigigest
station in columbia at the time, wiS, and she knew that from the time i
was three or four years old i had sat faithfully by the radio every
morning, noon, and night listening to a group called byron parker and
the hillbillies as they played and sang live country music on her
station.they had three shows a day, sponsored by people like Seiberling
tires, good enough flour, and black draught laxative, and i never missed
a one.i thought byron parker was the greatest man alive. in fact, he and
general douglas macarthur were probably my first honest-to-goodness
heroes.

i couldn't have been more than five or six the morning she iasked me if
i'd like to go to the radio station with her and see a live broadcast of
my favorite show, but i remember it like it was yesterday.i was
overwhelmed by all the microphones and the wires and cables and
turntables in the control room, but what really got me excited was
finding myself in the presence of the big man that loomed larger than
life.it was him-the real, live byron parkerthe man who talked to me and
sang for me every day in my living room on dad's little table-model
philco radio.

funny, i thought when i saw him for the first time, he doesn't sound as
big and fat on the radio as he looks in person! but as i came to realize
later, that was the beauty of radio: you only listened, and in your
mind's eye your heroes could look any way you wanted them to.

before he went on the air that morning at eight-thirty, byron parker
came over to where i was seated in the corner of the studio and talked
to me, asked me my name, then introduced me to some of the other
musicians in the band.they were names i knew as well as i knew his,
people like Snuffy jenkins, pappy Sherrill, and greasy medlin.then when
their show started, byron parker, the old hired hand himself, even said
my name on the radio so my mother and dad at home could hear that i was
there.i honestly don't remember another day in the early years of my
life when i was as excited or as happy.

byron parker recorded a few songs for Rca victor during hi i career, but
he never became a star anywhere outside South carolina, where his name
was legend.i'd have given anything, though, if he could have lived long
enough to know all the goo i things that have happened to me in my
career and what a bi i influence he was on me.he died while performing
on stage in th( late nineteen 40s, and i never had the chance to see him
in person bu that one time.yet there's another story involving him that
give me goose bumps every time i think about it.

in the early nineteen 60s i was riding to a show date in maryland wiff
bluegrass greats don Reno and Red Smiley on their bus.we hac worked a
show together the night before in north carolina, and ii was the first
time don and Red had ever seen me perform.Some. where in the wee hours
of the morning, don got up from wher i he'd been sitting quietly in the
front of the rolling bus and walkec to the back where Red and i sat
talking.he stood there wiffiou saying a word for the longest time and
finally he looked down anc said, i've got it!it's been about to drive me
crazy, but i've finally figured it out.he was looking directly at me.

what's that?i asked, wondering what i'd done.

oh, it's nothing really.i've just been sitting up there all night trying
to figure out who you remind me of.i saw you working onstage tonight and
you reminded me of somebody and i couldn't think who it was. but now i
know.

well, who is it?i asked.

oh, you probably never heard of him, he answered.he's not even alive
now.he was just a local singer down in South carolina that i used to
listen to when i lived up around Spartanburg.but, boy, you sound like
him and you move like him on the stage, and from what i saw tonight you
handle an audience just like he did ù ..and he was the best.it won t
mean anything to you, but his name was byron parker.

i don't think i slept a wink that night.

i started school in columbia and finished the first, second, and half
the third grade at Schneider elementary.a few years ago my mother was
rummaging through her basement at home and ran across my last report
card from there.in the section on the back iwhere the teacher had space
to write her personal comments to the parents, my teacher had
prophetically written, billy whispers too much.never let it be said that
i didn't start at an early age!

i was halfway through my third-grade year when mom and dad decided they
needed to move back home to georgia.dad was becoming a bit restless in
his job and wasn't sure he wanted to spend the rest of his life working
for someone else.too, his being an only child put extra pressure on him
to return and live closer to his parents.his folks and mom's dad and
stepmother were all beginning to get along in years, so even though i
didn't fully understand and begged and pleaded to stay in columbia, i
finally gave in and tried to smile when in december, nineteen 45 we
pulled up stakes and moved to griffin, some forty miles south of
atlanta.

actually, griffin was only a pit stop.we lived there in the house with
grandmama and grandpapa until the following february when the apartment
dad had rented for us in decatur was ready.by the time my third-grade
year was finally over, i had lived in three different towns, attended
three different schools, each of which was teaching on a totally
different level from the others, and had changed my name from billy to
bill.i wasn't really sure at that point just who i was, how smart i was,
or where i belonged.

dad had said decatur would be a great place for us to live.it was only a
ninety-minute drive from his parents, even closer to mom's family, and
just a few miles outside of atlanta, he told us. it takes only a
half-hour to get right downtown, and you can ride the streetcar!he'd say
excitedly.plus, decatur is a small town, not a big city like atlanta.i
want you kids to grow up in a small town.of course, decatur stayed a
small town for about thirty minutes after we got there, and by the time
i left home in nineteen 55 atlanta had dug up the streetcar tracks,
replaced them with electric power lines for trackless trolleys, and
swallowed up decatur and a host of other little towns far beyond.even
griffin was in danger of becoming one of atlanta's numerous bedroom
communities.

my childhood was, on the whole, what i'd call average.i wasn't really
very different from most of the kids i grew up around.we didn't live in
a house of our own until i was in the sixth grade, living instead in
apartments or duplexes.we didn't have a lot of material possessions-dad
drove an old two-door black nineteen 41 chevrolet until i was well into
high school, we never owned an air conditioner, we wore a lot of
homemade clothes (mama was a super seamstress!) and i got a lot of
fifty-cent haircuts-but i never remember going to bed hungry.i made
pretty good grades in school when i tried, but unfortunately i didn't
always try.i had a dog and a cat, and once i even decided i wanted to
raise rabbits.i must have been pretty good at raising them, too, because
i raised them faster than dad could give them away.

i was in the 4-h club, the cub Scouts, and i played cow pasture baseball
and football (this was long before the little leagues and pee wee
leagues the kids have today) in an honestto-goodness cow pasture behind
Ralph and jerry adams's house.i got interested in girls early on and
spent many a Saturday afternoon on the back row of the old decatur
theater watching cowboy movies, munching popcorn, and holding hands.i
carried out groceries in a supermarket, delivered newspapers on my
bicycle after school, mowed lawns, took pictures of the neighborhood
kids at christmas (for a small fee, of course), and once even started a
neighborhood newspape i i was always industrious and trying to come up
with ways to make some spending money.

money was something we didn't have very much of.dad came home from work
one evening not long after our move to decatur and announced to the
family over dinner that he'd quit his job. what do you plan to do?mama
asked nervously.oh, i don't know, dad replied.i've always kinda wanted
to be in business for myself.i think i'll start my own company.

and with that-lots of determination and not much more-my father went
into the insurance agency business in nineteen 46.he called his firm jim
anderson and company ...all forms of insurance.we can't say all kinds of
insurance, ' he once told me, because people will think we sell the good
kind and the bad kind!the and company was, in the beginning, the corner
of our dining room table and a telephone i was warned never to answer.it
might be business, i was carefully told.

from those humble beginnings, dad built a very successful agency, which
he personally managed for over thirty years.he sold the company to a
group of his employees the year he turned sixtyseven.to this day the
company still bears his name, and to this day his is a good name.

being his only son, i guess it was natural for my dad to want me to
follow his footsteps into the insurance business.i even worked for him
one summer during high-school vacation, but i was a square peg in a
round hole.i learned how to type labels for file tfolders and how to
make bank deposits, but i never was too sure just what insurance was or
how somebody went about selling it.it was apparent to me early on that i
was simply not cut out to be, as many of the georgia locals called it,
the policy man.

over the years i've seen a lot of fathers try to force their sons into
occupations the sons weren't really suited for.i've seen guys become
doctors who wanted to fly airplanes, others become lawyers when they
wanted to run off and join the circus.the greatest gift my dad ever gave
me, the one he probably had to dig down the deepest to give but the one
i'll always appreciate the most, was the freedom he gave me to be
myself.

i did enjoy going to his office every day, however, for one reason.
upstairs over dad's company was a radio station.the call letters were
wglS (they said it stood for world's greatest little Station!) and on my
lunch hour every day i'd grab a sandwich and go running up the stairs to
watch the disc jockies and announcers at work.i pressed my nose so hard
into that soundproof glass out in the hall that my prints are probably
still on it today.it was obvious that the show-business bug was
beginning to nibble at me even then.

at night i'd sometimes hang around after the station signed off the air
and watch people with colorful names like cowboy jack, george Sleepy
head, and Swain Sheriff & his deputies taperecord their early morning
country music radio shows.they weren't very professional and probably
weren't even very good, but i didn't care.i loved the music they played
and sang.they each had four or five local musicians who sold cars, laid
pipe, or plowed all day, then picked n' grinned for a few extra bucks at
night, and i'd sometimes sit there watching them for hours, tapping my
toes, listening to the melodies they played and the lyrics they sang.i
felt like i'd died and gone to heaven.

and, oh, how i wanted to learn to play the guitar like they did! i
worked hard and finally saved enough money from my paper route to buy a
cheap, flat-top model with the strings about an inch above the
fret-board.now, anyone who has ever tried to learn how to play the
guitar will tell you that your fingers get mighty sore when you first
start learning, even on a good instrument, but on this ole thing my
fingers ached and bled so bad it nearly crippled me.i was determined i
was going to learn a few chords, though, so i could accompany myself
when i sang.by that time i could imitate any country singer you could
name.

that was one of my problemiss being left-handed was also a problem.my
natural inclination was to turn the guitar around and strum it upside
down, but something told me i'd never really learn to play that way.So i
forced myself to flip my instrument back around the way it should be and
learn to play right-handed.to this day, playing a guitar is the only
thing i don't do left-handed.

i soon learned to play well enough that i began picking and singing
songs for my mama while she did her housework.i'd strum and sing
up-tempo songs while perched on top of her old wringer washing machine,
and she'd tap her toes, sing along, and get her
work done in a hurry.if i started singing ballads, though, she'd slow
down to the tempo of the music and the house would still be
dirty when daddy got home.

dad would come in and hear me singing.if i was singing a hank williams
song, i'd be trying my darnedest to sing it just like ole

hank.or on an ernest tubb song, i'd try to sound like ernest.or webb
pierce, or carl Smith, or faron young, or any of the top

stars of the day.i guess dad enjoyed as much as he could stand, because
one day he said, Son, why don't you try sounding like bill anderson?

i didn't understand what he meant at first and it hurt my feel ings.
listen, he said, there's already a hank williams and an ernest tubb.why
do you want to sound like them?try sounding

like yourself.

today i'd say that was one of the two or three best pieces of advice
i've ever received.lots of people have said over the years

that i sound like the devil when i sing, but nobody has ever accused me
of being an imitator or a copier.you might not like bill

anderson when you hear him sing, but you darn sure know who it is!

actually, it wasn't until i began making up some songs of my own to sing
that i was able to start sounding like myself.for the

first time i was singing songs i'd never heard anybody else sing,
because nobody else had ever sung them.i had to sound like me.i had
nothing to imitate.

i was about ten or eleven years old when i wrote my first song.it was
called carry me to my texas home.i had never been west

of carrollton, georgia, at the time, but texas just sounded like
something a true country artist ought to be writing and singing

about.

i was fifteen years old and in the tenth grade at avondale high School
when three buddies and i decided to form a band and enter

the upcoming school talent show.i was selected to emcee our part of the
show, play rhythm guitar, and sing.a genuinely talented

boy a year or two younger named charles wynn would play man dolin and/or
lead guitar and sing harmony.a short, chubby little

guy my age whom we nicknamed meatball bell would be our 31 fiddle
player, while a big, lumbering, uninhibited goofball of a guy named tom
Schooley, who had no talent whatsoever but enough nerve and brass for
all the rest of us combined, would play washtub base and do comedy.(for
the city slickers among you, a washtub base is a homemade instrument
constructed by turning a galvanized tub upside down and drilling a small
hole in the bottom, just big enough for a rope or a heavy string to
slide through.one end of the rope is knotted underneath the upper side
or bottom of the tub, while the other end is connected to a broom handle
or stick which then becomes the neck of the instrument.musical tones can
actually be formed by pulling or pushing the neck, which tightens or
loosens the rope.)

Schooley, unfortunately, never learned to match the tones of his base
with the tones the rest of the band was attempting to make, but a
tenth-grader standing six-foot-two, weighing close to two hundred
pounds, wearing bibbed overalls with freckles painted on his cheeks and
his front teeth blacked out doesn't have to make beautiful music to get
attention.we cleverly named him Rufus Rainwater, the Red-headed Rodeo
Romper.we put a lot of thought into naming the band, too, and came up
with the imaginative name the avondale playboys.

meatball, whose real name was jim, had been studying classical violin
and never got around to telling his parents he had joined a hillbilly
band.Somehow he feared that after all the money they'd spent on his
music lessons they just might not understand.he'd never played any
country music at all, so we bought him a copy of the orange blossom
Special and boil them cabbage down and he listened to the records and
actually became a pretty good country fiddler ...as long as we didn't
expand the repertoire too much!

i had written a song called what good would it do to pretend?and we
decided to perform that and the orange blossom Special for the talent
show.the day before our big debut, we all went down to decatur Street,
in the heart of the black section of downtown atlanta, and found some
matching brown cowboy shirts in the back of a dirty old pawn shop.the
guy sold them to us for something like five bucks for the whole lot, and
we thought we'd be the cat's meow wearing them in the show.

the act we put on for our teachers and classmates went over pretty well,
especially my solo.after our part of the program was over, we went
offstage and into the adjoining gymnasium locker room to change from our
cowboy shirts and matching brown slacks back into our school clothes. we
still had a full day of classes to attend.Suddenly i heard this
tremendous roar going up out in the audience, screaming, clapping,
cheering coming from everywhere. in a minute somebody stuck his head in
the dressing-room door and said, hey, you guys just won the show!they
want you back out there!

i got so excited that i forgot i wasn't fully dressed.i just grabbed my
guitar and yelled let's go!to the rest of the band, and we went parading
out in front of all our classmates, our teachers, and the principal of
the school.

it wasn't until i reached the microphone at center stage that i began to
feel a draft.i suddenly realized that while i did have my pants on, they
were not zipped.to this day if you mention my name around any of the
people who were there, they'll say, oh yeah ...bill anderson . ..that's
the guy who holds his guitar in a real funny position!

(come to think of it, zippers and i have never gotten along very well.
once, several years later during my college days, i was invited to
Sunday dinner at the home of a young lady that i was rather fond of.i
had never met her parents and was naturally very anxious to impress
them.

my girlfriend's mother had cooked up a delicious southern-style country
dinner, and i was feeding my face furiously when about halfway through
the meal i dropped a bit of food into my lap. when i reached down to
remove it, i realized to my utter dismay that my shiny new brown pants
were completely unzipped.not partially unzipped, mind you, but staring
up at me open as a shark's mouth.how or when they got that way i'll
never know, but at the tender age of eighteen i had neither the
experience nor the ingenuity to know how to remain the cool cat i was
trying so hard to be and at the same time remedy my tenuous situation.

you see, the guest of honor, sitting at the head of the dining room
table, can't just reach down and zip up a wide-open fly without
attracting attention.in fact, it's virtually impossible to perform such
an act while remaining seated.i knew i had to come up with a solution
quick, though, because the meal was almost over and we'd all be getting
up from the table at almost any moment.and i knew that under no
circumstances whatsoever could i possibly get up from that table with my
pants unzipped and run the risk of those i was trying so hard to impress
seeing my blue boxer shorts.i'd rather have died!

the only thing i could think of was that somehow i had to distract all
the other people in that room.Suddenly it hit me.the layout of the house
dictated that after the meal we would all adjourn from the dining room,
walk a few short steps to our right, and reconvene in the adjacent
living room where the big overstuffed sofa and padded armchairs beckoned
invitingly.and on the right-hand wall of that living room was a large
picture window facing the front yard and the little country lane that
wound its way through the trees beyond.it was a gamble, but it was my
only hope.

as i anticipated, we finished the last bites of the meal and rose almost
as one from the table.first my girlfriend's parents, a brother, then two
sisters, and finally my beloved made their way to the living room. by
design i lingered and brought up the rear.

my timing, i thought, was perfect.just as i pushed back my chair and
began to follow the procession away from the table, i looked out the big
picture window and saw a young boy roaring down the lane on a shiny red
bicycle.perfect, i thought!god does answer prayers after all! without
pausing, i quickly pointed toward the lad and his bicycle and shouted,
look, everybody!what's that?

the entire family immediately ran toward the window in anticipation of
sharing my great discovery, whatever it might be, and i quickly pulled
my zipper back into place.

i am so smart and so clever!i smiled to myself as i made my way toward
the window, hastily trying to invent a reason why the kid on the bicycle
had been so important in the first place.but by the time i reached the
window, the bicycle and its rider were nowhere in sight.instead, the
entire family that i wanted so much to impress was standing transfixed
at the glass staring at the perspiring bodies of two huge black dogs in
the act of making wild and passionate doggie-love!

every mouth in the room hung at half-mast.nobody spoke a word.thank
goodness.what could i have possibly replied?the only word that came to
mind was oops !and somehow that didn't seem like quite enough.

i stood there awkwardly for what seemed like a lifetime, then i asked
softly where the restroom was.i excused myself and quietly sneaked out
the back door.when my hosts last saw me, i was racing down their
driveway, jumping into my car, cranking the engine, and burning rubber
like Richard petty at talledega.it was several months before i got up
enough nerve to drive back past my sweetheart's house.there was a sign
in the front yard- black puppies for sale!i kept on driving.)

anyhow ...with all the excitement of winning the high school talent show
still ringing in our hearts, minds, and ears, we decided to keep our
little band together for a while, playing anywhere we could get anybody
to listen.tom Schooley's dad was one of the big shots at the local
chevrolet manufacturing plant and had just given his son a shiny, new
red convertible.we figured out a way to take full advantage of that.on
weekend nights we'd gather the band together, roll back the top on tom's
car, and drive up into the parking lot of the avondale tavern, a beer
joint/sandwich shop located along the main drag in the community of
avondale estates.we'd turn a big cowboy hat upside down and set it out
on top of the trunk, stand up in the back seat with our unamplified
instruments, and pick and sing for hours for tips. we didn't get rich,
but the experience led to a regular Saturday night gig at a fancy
restaurant east of town near Stone mountain. again we used only
acoustical instruments so that we'd be free to wander from table to
table and play requests.we weren't guaranteed a salary, but the manager
said we could take home as much money in tips as we could siphon off the
customers.a big tip in those days was about a ddla i one slow night
around ten pm.a large party of people from wisconsin stopped in to eat,
and we made a beeline for their table. would you folks like to hear a
song while you wait for your food? i asked.one of the men in the party,
who had obviously had a bit too much to drink tore into his pocket and
ripped out a crisp, new twenty-dollar bill.you betcha, he shouted.i'll
give you twenty dollars to play on wisconsin! ' all his friends started
chiming in, yeah, play it ...we wanta hear on wisconsin!' trouble was,
there wasn't a one of us georgia boys who had any idea how to play on
wisconsin!but, oh, that twenty-dollar bill sure did look good!

Sir, i'm afraid we don't ..., i started to explain, heartsick to think
that we were on the verge of missing out on the biggest payday we'd ever
had.but before i could finish telling him we didn't know the song, i
felt the sharp jab of a fiddle bow gouging me in the ribs.

oh yes, we do know it, meatball, the round little fiddle player
interrupted.i know it real well.you guys join in.and with that, he tore
into playing the old country fiddle tune boil them cabbage down and
began singing at the top of his voice, on wisconsin ...on wisconsin!

it may not have been the worst attempt at making music i had ever heard,
but it sure came close.there was no correlation between the lyrics and
the melody whatsoever.it was just noise. the good news, though, was that
the man with the twenty-dollar bill never knew the difference.in fact,
he got so excited to be hearing a song about his home state sung way
down south in georgia that he started singing along.i can see him now,
jumping up from his seat, dancing around the table, waving his money in
the air, singing a college fight song to the tune of a hillbilly
hoedown.and when we finished he applauded like he'd just heard hank
williams yodel the lovesick blues.better than that, he gave us the
twenty dollars.

later that night, as the four of us sat around dividing up our loot, it
dawned on me that i had just learned a valuable lesson: never admit
there's a song you don't know.you might not know it exactly the way it
was written, but under the right set of circumstances, a good singer can
somehow manage to sing just about anything!

the avondale playboys and i ended up with our own Saturday afternoon
radio show not long afterward.it was on radio station w b g e, a small
station located in the basement of the georgian terrace hotel in
downtown atlanta.but had the program director

of the station not had a good sense of humor, we might have lost our
show before it ever got on the air.

we rehearsed for days and went down to the studios to audition early one
evening.everything came off perfect, so perfect, in fact, that we were
hired on the spot and were told we'd be on the air for thirty minutes
every week beginning at four-thirty the following

Saturday afternoon.i was so excited i could hardly put my guitar back in
the case.meatball, however, was a bit skeptical.

how powerful is this station?he asked the program director moments after
we'd been told we had the job.

two hundred and fifty watts, the p d.answered.

to which meatball replied, good lord, is that all?i've got a light bulb
at home that powerful!

even with all the success we were having and all the fun i was finding
in getting up on stage and performing, music was not my

major concern at this point in my life.what i wanted more than anything
else in the world was to be a professional baseball player.

i had played football for two years in high school but came to realize
that i just wasn't aggressive enough to really be good at the

game.Shortly after making first-string right offensive tackle in spring
practice prior to my junior year, i quit the team.

but baseball, now that was something else.my freshman year in high
school, i played first base, but not very much.avondale won

the State class a championship that year, and there were a lot of
players on the team better than me.three or four even signed

professional contracts.but at practice one day during my soph omore
season, i got to fooling around on the sidelines with pitch ing.i found
i could really throw a slow, tantalizing round-house curve ball and
throw it just about anywhere i wanted it to go.i

could break it out and away from a left-handed batter, in tight on a
right-handed batter, or make it drop down like it was rolling off

the edge of a table.i could make it do everything i wanted except igo
fast.

i worked hard at perfecting my newly discovered talent, and i became a
pitcher.i guess i just pitched kinda like i sing ... soft.

my teammates used to tease that my fast ball was so slow the school made
extra money on the nights i pitched by selling adver 37 tising on the
sides of the ball.but whatever i was doing it must have been right,
because i started winning ball games doing it.

i moved into the starting rotation my junior year and ended up with a
won-lost record of something like 10-2.i pitched both american legion
and babe Ruth league ball the following summer, and by my senior year
some of the pro scouts who combed our area seeking talent for the major
league teams were beginning to take notice of me.

i was big for sixteen.i stood over six feet tall, weighed about 175
pounds, and it was obvious i wasn't through growing.the bird dogs, as
the part-time scouts were called, urged me to learn to throw more with
my body and not put so much strain on my arm, but i was known for, as
one newspaper writer put it, the cautious left arm of bill hillbilly'
anderson.

the writers and most of the kids on the other high school teams knew of
my interest and involvement in music through the various radio and tv
programs i had begun doing around the atlanta area (by my senior year in
high school i'd had my own radio programs not only on w b g e but also
on fifty-thousand-watt weaS, as well as my own television show, on
wqxi-tv), and when i'd pitch some of the opposing players would really
try to give me a hard time.they'd grab their bats over on the sidelines
and act like they were strumming guitars.then they'd start wailing some
awful country song at the top of their lungs, trying to distract me.hey,
hillbilly, they'd yell, sing us a song. yodel-o-lady-who!i'd just try to
ignore them and keep on throwing round-house curves.

one of the scouts told me during my senior season that he could arrange
for me to go to mesa, arizona, to the chicago cubs training camp the
spring following graduation if i'd like to go and work with some of the
pitching coaches there.then, if things worked out-meaning if i ever
learned to put my body weight behind my pitches and began throwing a
pro-type fastball-he said the cubs would sign me to a professional
contract.lord, i wanted to go, but the only thing my mom and dad had
ever seriously asked me to do in my entire life was to go to college.
they had let me play sports, they had let me run all over town at all
hours of the night playing music while i was still in school (as long as
i kept my grades respectable), but i knew i'd break their hearts if i
tried skipping college to play baseball.

i wrestled with it long and hard and finally told the scout that i
appreciated his offer but i intended to enroll that fall at the
university of georgia.fine, he answered, you play ball at georgia and
maybe when you get out we can pick up some of your college expenses and
you can still sign with the cubs.it sounded like a good idea to me.

on graduation night the kids in my class all exchanged gag gifts with
one another.they called me up front and presented me with a little
red-and-yellow plastic guitar with a card attached which read:

to bill anderson we give this guitar because in the world of music we
know you'll go far.

i thought at the time, now that's silly.i'm not going to be in the music
business.i'm going to play professional baseball.

but a funny thing happened on my way to wrigley field.

i grabbed my blue jeans, sweatshirt, ball cap, socks, and cowboy boots
and pulled them all on in less than thirty seconds.on top of my pajamas.

i hardly ever sleep in pajamas on the bus and i don't know to this day
how a pair happened to be in my travelling bag this trip, but as cold as
i was all night, i'm glad they were.when i reached the stairwell in the
front of the bus, i was warmer than i'd been for hours.

how far are we from a phone?i asked the driver.

we're seven miles from chester, he replied.

you sure the call is for me?i mean, could it be for somebody in the
band?

they said bill anderson, ' he answered.it was actually some fans who
stopped us.they heard on their cb that the sheriff was looking for us.

we plowed through the sleepy carolina morning as fast as the big
burgundy bus could negotiate the winding, bumpy roads.it seemed like an
eternity before a combination market-filling station came into view and
i spotted a phone booth just off the edge of the road.

pull over there, i instructed the driver, pointing to an open space
between the phone booth and the store.he nodded and began to gear the
bus down.

for the first time since he had buzzed to wake me, i became aware of my
heart pounding rapidly inside my chest.my breaths were coming short and
fast.there was no one there i wanted to admit it to at the time, but i
was scared.

my first thought was that something had happened to my mother or my dad.
after all, they were both in their seventies, and although their health
had been good, i knew things could happen. mom had fallen a few years
earlier and broken her jaw pretty bad. i was afraid something like that
had happened again.only maybe worse.

and then i thought of the house in lebanon.it was standing empty. what
if it had caught on fire or somebody had broken in?i had a sophisticated
alarm system, but .

the bus came to a halt between the phone booth and the market.cut the
engines, i told the driver.i need to be able to hear.he quickly switched
off the main diesel engine and the smaller, gasoline-driven power
generator.

my hand was shaking uncontrollably as i ran down the steps of the bus
and into the tiny glass cubicle, anxiously sliding the quarter into the
slot and dialing our number at the condo.our babysitter-housekeeper, pam
hunt, answered the phone.

pam, what's the matter?i asked hurriedly, all the time still assuming it
was something to do with my folks and that pam had just answered the
phone while becky was upstairs, perhaps packing for a necessary trip
home.

jamey, run upstairs and get me a pencil please, i heard her calmly say
to my son.then i heard his little shriek, and pam came back on the line.

bill, she said quietly, but sounding out of breath, it's becky. She's
had a horrible automobile accident.She's at general hospital.

becky?i cried.how could that be?She'd been at the opry with me until
after eight o'clock, and then she left to go get jamey something to
eat.and i already knew jamey was safe at home.

when?how?

it happened around midnight, pam said, on her way home from the movies.
She and kathy woodard decided at the last minute to go to the late show
over by Rivergate.you'd better call lynne at the hospital.She can give
you all the details.

how bad is it?is she ..

i don't know.i think it's pretty bad.you'd better call.

is jamey ok?i asked.i mean, does he know?

no, i haven't told him yet.i figured it's best for you to do that. or at
least somebody who's family.i told him when he woke up this morning that
his mother had to go to a meeting.So far that seems to have satisfied
him.

i wrote down the number that lynne, becky's older sister, had given pam,
hung up the telephone, then had to run back onto the bus for another
quarter.i had charged the call to my credit card and my coin should have
been returned, but for some reason it wasn't.and i couldn't get a dial
tone without another coin.

by the time i hit the aisle of the bus, everybody was up: mike johnson,
my steel guitar player and band leader of several years; his younger
brother, mark, my base player and road manager; our guitar player, les
Singer; the keyboard player, dirk johnson (no kin to mike and mark);
drummer, mike Streeter; background vocalists, leann folsom and liana
manis; our audio engineer, jimmy corn; and a friend of mine from
lebanon, don keaton, a professional photographer, who had come along on
the trip to take some pictures and maybe, just maybe, run into an old
girlfriend he'd last seen in the vicinity of Spartanburg.they were all
blearyeyed and tousle-haired and nobody said a word, but i could tell by
the expressions on their faces that they knew something was wrong.i
found out later that mike johnson was trying to ask me if something had
happened to jamey but the words had hung in his throat and he couldn't
get them out.

i didn't say anything either but ran quickly to the rear of the bus.i
grabbed a quarter from the ashtray in my stateroom and raced back down
the aisle and out the door to the phone.i had to strain to hold my hand
steady enough to slide the coin into the slot and dial the number pam
had just given me.my call went through to a special family waiting room
inside the trauma center of general hospital in nashville.

lynne ...what's happened?how is she?i asked breathlessly when becky's
sister came on the line.i held on to the side of the phone booth, not
sure i really wanted to know.

oh, god, bill, it's awful.a drunk driver hit her head-on about midnight
out on andrew jackson parkway.She's really hurt bad.

for the first time i forced myself to say it: is she alive?i asked in a
voice i could barely control.

She's alive, lynne answered, but the doctors say the next forty-eight
hours are critical.most of the damage seems to be from the neck up.
She's got a million stitches in her face.She's all cut and bruised. they
say her brain is swelled real bad ...wait, here comes a doctor.talk to
him.

the voice on the other end identified himself as a doctor alexander.
your wife has been in an accident, he began.

i know, i interrupted.how is she?is she going to live?

i'd say the chances are about fifty-fifty right now, mister anderson, he
replied.her brain is bruised and swollen very badly.we have her on some
strong medication.if it works it should prevent any more swelling and
she should make it.but ...if it doesn't

then we're in trouble.i think you'd best get here as fast as you can.

lynne, i'll call you back, i said as soon as the doctor was off the
line.i'm in the middle of nowhere but i'll get a plane somehow.can
somebody pick me up at the airport?

i'll have marion come get you, lynne answered, referring to her husband.
but please hurry.you really need to be here.

i placed the receiver back in its cradle and stood staring mindlessly
for i don't know how long into a thicket of pine trees that dotted the
other side of the narrow country highway.the whole world seemed to be on
hold ...a kaleidoscope suspended in midair.wife ... death ...six-year
old .

the next thing i recall was standing inside the little market tightly
clutching a styrofoam cup of hot, black coffee that had somehow gotten
into my hand.mike Streeter, my drummer and close friend of more than
seven years, was standing beside me.he didn't say a word.and for the
longest time neither did i.then, almost as if on cue, i reached my arms
out around his shoulders and pulled him close.

oh, god, mikey, i cried.i'm afraid he's given me a mountain this time!

i arrived at the university of georgia in the fall of nineteen 55
determined to get a degree in journalism as fast as i could and then run
all the way, if i had to, to mesa, arizona.a baseball player with a
college degree.it had a nice ring to it.

i had decided on journalism as my major for two reasons.first, i'd
always loved to write.i had been sports editor of the weekly dekaib new
era newspaper in decatur my last two years in high school and had even
latched onto a stringer's job with the daily atlanta constitution on the
side.Stringer meant i was given specific assignments to cover, in my
case high school football and basketball games (notice i didn't say
baseball ...come baseball season i wanted not to write but to be written
about), and i was paid by the job.not much, mind you, something like
five dollars per game and out of that i paid my own expenses, but i
enjoyed it. i even thought once or twice that in spite of the obvious
lack of significant financial reward, sportswriting might be an
enjoyable way to try and make a living after my ball-playing career was
over.

the second reason i chose journalism was because it was the only course
i could find in searching through the university curriculum that didn't
require any courses in math to graduate.let me go on record here and now
as saying that i am not a mathematician.in fact, in my sixteen years of
schooling i flunked only two subjects: math and music! (actually the
music course i failed was called music appreciation.one day the
professor was telling the class something about beethoven and i asked
how that compared to something hank williams had once done, and he
roared that i was never even so much as to mention the name hank
williams in the same breath with beethoven again.i decided not to return
to music appreciation class after that.it was obvious i didn't
appreciate their music and they darn sure didn't appreciate mine!) of
course, math and music are the only two things from school that i've
used since i got out!

i enjoyed my first year at georgia.i lived in the freshman dormitory,
sharing a small third-floor room and bunk beds with an older student and
freshman counselor from fitzgerald, georgia, named cliff pickens.my
sophomore year i became a counselor myself and shared the same room with
a foreign exchange student from tokyo name hiroyuki Sugahara.you should
have heard me trying to explain country music to him!

i studied hard most of the time, made fairly good grades, fell in love
every couple of weeks or so, and tried to adjust to life away from home
for the first time.i pledged the kappa Sigma fraternity and, in an
effort to prove what a good and loyal brother i'd be, i got myself
thrown into jail on the Saturday night before my formal initiation into
the brotherhood on Sunday afternoon.

each of the pledges, most of whom were freshmen like me, was given what
were supposed to be ridiculous but harmless little tasks to perform as
part of our overall initiation rites.each of us had a big brother in the
fraternity, an older member to whom we were responsible, and it was the
big brother's job to decide what each little brother's initiation chore
was to be.my big brother was an upper-classman from albany, georgia,
named george thompson, and george had an old score he wanted settled.

before he had transferred to georgia, george had been a student at a
military college in the little north georgia town of dahlonega, and he
had gotten into trouble on more than one occasion while he was there.
the commandant of the school, an army lieutenant colonel who lived in a
nice house next to the campus, had meted out some pretty tough
punishment on him a few times, and george had been carrying a grudge for
years.

the whole time i was in school up there, he said to me at the frat house
on friday night, i tried to figure out a way to get back at that guy.
now you're gonna help me do it!there was a glow of sweet revenge in his
eye.

Right out in front of the house where he lives, on his lawn, is a little
sign.it's nothing fancy, just a small white sign with his name and rank
on it...and the word commandant.i used to pass his house and look at
that sign every day, and i wanted to yank it up out of the ground and
smash it to bits every time i looked at it. now i'm finally going to get
to do it, because you're going to go up there tomorrow and get that sign
and bring it back to me.aren't you?

do i have a choice?i timidly asked.

no, big brother answered.

then, yeah, i guess i'm gonna go get it.but won't that be stealing?

not if you don't get caught, it won't.but here's how you'll have to do
it: wait until after dark when everything in town is closed. that won't
be very late cause they roll up the sidewalks in dahlonega at ten
o'clock.then, when nobody's looking, you sneak up on the lawn, grab the
sign, and run like the devil.it shouldn't take more than just a few
seconds and you'll be gone. bring the sign back here to me and i'll
guarantee that you'll become a full-fledged kappa Sig Sunday afternoon.

i wasn't sure what to say.i'd never stolen anything in my life, and i
wasn't real anxious to start.on the other hand, i'd heard through the
grapevine that some of my fellow pledges were going to have to eat raw
eggs and swallow live goldfish as part of their initiation Saturday
night, and stealing a little sign sounded kinda tame compared to that. i
smiled at george, stuffed a couple of candy bars into the pockets of my
coat, and headed for the dorm to get some sleep.at ten o'clock the next
morning i was standing on the north side of athens trying to thumb a
ride to dahlonega.

i had better luck than i had anticipated in flagging down a couple of
cars, and i arrived in the former mining town (they discovered gold
there back in the 1800s) in midafternoon.i decided it was too early for
me even to begin thinking about carrying out my assignment, so i went to
work on trying to pass the time.i wandered in and out of the drugstore a
couple of times, checked out the dime store, then bought a newspaper and
sat outside on a park bench and read for a while.i started once to go
down to the barbershop and watch haircuts, but i never got quite that
bored.

the local movie theater opened about seven, so i decided to take in the
western that was playing.i bought a box of popcorn and a large cola
drink and settled in for a couple of hours of watching the good guys run
the bad guys out of town.i should have taken that as an omen.

true to george's prediction, thirty minutes after the movie let out
around nine-thirty, downtown dahlonega was deserted.i sauntered up the
hill from the theater and tried to get the lay of the land.Sure enough,
right at the top of the hill on the left side of the road was the
commandant's house, and about thirty feet from his front door, square in
the middle of his grassy, tree-laden yard, was my target, the little
white sign.piece of cake, i smiled to myself.i looked to my left and
then to my right.there wasn't a soul in sight.then suddenly i realized i
was about to act prematurely.my wait wasn't quite over. there were a
couple of lights shining from inside the windows of the commandant's
house. probably sitting up reading war and peace, i surmised, and i
walked aimlessly on up the hill.

it was a few minutes after midnight when i meandered back down by the
house for the umpteenth time and saw that all was finally dark and
still.perfect, i thought, and i tiptoed quietly up the little bank and
into the yard.i slowly eased my way along, careflil not so much as to
step on a twig.i didn't want to arrouse anyone s attention.i'd come too
far and been too careful to blow it all now.i was starting to want the
little sign as much as george did.

from one tree to the next, i inched my way, stopping to make sure no one
was watching, creeping ever so carefully through the darkness.ten feet
away, then five, three, two, until suddenly i was standing poised
directly above my prey.i looked all around one last time.no one was
there.i reached for the sign and gave it a tug.it moved a couple of
inches but that was all.hmmm, this might be a little harder than i
thought, i conjectured, but i never got a chance to find out just how
difficult removing the sign from the red georgia clay might have been. i
was suddenly distracted by the fierce glare of lights and the piercing
scream of sirens!

the front yard of the commandant's house must have been wired like a
mine field.all i know is that in far less time than it takes to tell it,
i was standing dead solid center in the penetrating yellow beam of the
army's or the sheriff's or somebody's hot, luminous spotlight and
telling some big dude in a uniform that it was all a mistake.i wasn't
trying to sabotage the united States army, i was just a college kid from
athens trying to join a fraternity.you can imagine about how that went
over.

in a minute here came the commandant roaring out his front door to see
what was going on.he was dressed in bright red-andwhite striped pajamas
underneath a dark blue bathrobe.if i hadn't been so nervous, i'm sure i
could have come up with a brilliant remark regarding his patriotic
choice of nightwear.

what's going on?he thundered, and i launched into my story about george
thompson and kappa Sigma and about how all i wanted was the sign for
good ole george, but now that i'd had some time to think about it i
really didn't want it all that bad, and why didn't he just keep his sign
and go on back to bed and we'd forget the whole thing.about fifteen
minutes later i was doing my whole routine again in front of an equally
unappreciative audience down at the county jail.

but i've got to hand it to the chief or the sheriff or whoever was in
charge, he was ok.he listened to all i had to say, kept me there for a
few hours, probably to frighten me more than anything else, then just
before daylight he let me go.even sent me over to a legendary
family-style dahlonega eatery called the Smith house and instructed me
to eat a good breakfast and be out of town by ten o'clock.i was out on
the side of the road with my thumb in the air long before that.

Rides were hard to come by that morning, though, and i didn't make it
back to athens until just a few minutes before the formal oath-taking
ceremonies at the fraternity house at two o'clock.and i walked into the
house minus the sign i'd been sent to retrieve.

it's a long story, big brother, i said to george as he rushed out to
meet me, but he didn't even question me as to why i wasn't carrying his
prize.he just reached up and hugged my neck.i found out later that he
and all the other brothers had been so nervous as to my whereabouts that
they didn't care whether i'd carried out my duties or not.they were just
thankful i was alive. they had been looking at their watches since early
morning and had about decided that i had been kidnapped, killed, or had
run off to join the foreign legion.not that they would have missed me
all that much, but they would have been held responsible. if i'd never
come back, the dean of men would have probably pulled the permit for
their next beer party!

i grabbed a quick shower, put on a borrowed tuxedo, and became a
full-fledged brother in kappa Sigma that afternoon.i guess it was fun
and i carry around some good memories from that period of my life, but
it wasn't long afterward that i decided i wasn t really cut out to be
joe college.i was starting to get too many other things on my mind.

for one thing, there was a big freshman talent show coming up, and i
wanted more than anything to enter.i did, wearing a bright red western
shirt with matching fire-engine red pants, a white western belt and a
pair of white buck shoes with red soles.can't you just imagine how that
went over on a college campus?i played my guitar and sang the same song
i had written and sung for the talent show in high school three years
before, what good would it do to pretend?and actually my act went over
pretty well.in fact, i won second place.a blind girl who played the
piano and sang came in first.i learned another valuable show business
lesson that night: never compete against a kid, a dog, or a blind girl
who plays the piano and sings.you'll come in second every time!

but the word quickly spread around campus that there was this oddball
kid in the freshman class who went around wearing red cowboy clothes,
picking a guitar, and singing through his nose. that prompted a phone
call one day from a couple of upperclassmen who had been in the military
and had come back to school to study under the gi bill.

we're thinking about getting together a country band, they told me, and
wondered if you'd like to join us.i asked them, is a flat-top guitar
flat?of course i'd like to join them.what they didn't tell me, though,
was that each of them played nothing but guitar (neither of them
exceptionally well), and with the addition of my talents, the band would
consist of three guitars.that's all, just three guitars.and nobody
really played lead.the strength of the group was obviously going to be
in its rhythm section!

but we didn't let that stop us.we formed the classic city playboys,
named after the town of athens which refers to itself as a classic city.
norman vaughn, later to be known as Sleepy norman of all-night disc
jockey fame on powerhouse w w v eigh, wheeling, west virginia; chuck
goddard, who came to georgia on a football scholarship and who would
later introduce me to my first wife; and the young kid with the red
clothes.three rhythm guitars, a couple of weekend bookings at a local
service club, and a half-hour show on radio station wRfc every Saturday
afternoon. yet, somehow, it lasted for almost a year.

norman was also the early morning dj on wRfc.our band would go to the
station once a week late at night to rehearse our show for the upcoming
Saturday.one night in early january after we'd finished practicing, i
asked norman if he could show me how to run the station's control board.
he sat me down, gave me a few pointers, and i went crazy.i can picture
myself now sitting there between those turntables with a stack of
records on one side and pages of news, weather, and commercials on the
other and a set of those awesome-looking headphones (we radio announcers
call them cans') stretched across the top of my head.i thought i was
Superman.i knew that night that i had to get a job as a disc jockey!

i suddenly forgot all about baseball.the pitchers and catchers were
beginning to throw and work out indoors, but i couldn't have cared less.
i was too busy writing letters and making telephone calls to every radio
station within a hundred-mile radius of athens, trying to find somebody
willing to hire an ambitious eighteen-year-old would-be disc jockey.

i got the same answer everywhere.have you had any experience?they'd
always ask.

no, i'd always reply.

well, we're only hiring people with experience.

how can i get any experience if i can't get a job?i'd ask.and they'd
mumble incoherently and i'd start looking up the next number.

when school was out for the summer, i got in my shiny metallic-blue
nineteen 47 ford, the one with just under two million miles on it, and
drove to towns like winder, monroe, madison, griffin, newnan,
carrollton, lagrange, looking for a job as a disc jockey. finally i
found one right under my nose, at wgau-am and fm in athens.

a genial, warm-hearted man named burl womack was station manager at the
time, and he'd had a policy down through the years of hiring college
students as part-time radio announcers.the first time i'd called on him
he'd had no openings, but near the end of june another student-announcer
left town for the summer and i had a job.i still didn't have any
experience, but i guess burl figured i wouldn't be any better or too
much worse than any of the others he'd hired.or maybe he could just see
in my eyes how badly i wanted to try.

my first duties at the station consisted of coming in at five-thirty
every morning, gathering the news and weather for burl to read on his
breakfast with burl show, and reading a few commercials myself. Soon i
was given a dj show of my own on the weekends and finally the three to
six pm.slot every weekday afternoon.i was happier than a pig in a mud
puddle!

Six weeks into my hard-to-come-by employment, however, my bubble burst.
the station was sold to new owners and my friend mister womack was
fired.i was heartsick.i just knew i'd be back out pounding the pavement
again any day.but, surprisingly, that didn't happen at all. a kind but
firm man named h.Randolph holder bought controlling interest in the
station and for some reason didn't run the new kid on the staff out the
back door when he came in the front.but he wouldn't let me play any
country music.

this is not going to be a country station, he said to me more than once
in the deep, authoritative voice that had distinguished him for years as
the town's leading newscaster at crosstown rival wRfc.if you insist on
playing country music, you can look for a job someplace else.

i had already seen that movie, so i followed orders and on my three-hour
record show in the afternoons played only the songs listed in
billboard's top 100 pop records chart.Remember, though, this was
nineteen 56 and a new thing called rock n' roll was just beginning to
burst upon the scene.i played a lot of rock n' roll!on several occasions
mister holder would hear me playing records by elvis or carl perkins and
once even fats domino, and he'd come charging into the control room to
accuse me of playing country music again.i'd calmly get out billboard
magazine, show him where the song i was playing was ranked among the top
100 pop records in the country, and he'd leave me alone.but he didn't
like it.

at the time, wgau was affiliated with the cbS Radio network, and we had
a standard policy at the station that if anything ever went wrong during
one of our local broadcasts, we were to hit the net, that is, punch the
button that would replace our local programming with the program
currently being aired on the network.

i was manning the control board late one Saturday night when an atlanta
crackers minor league baseball game we were carrying was halted by rain.
my specific instructions were right there in front of me written on an
alternate programming log: in the event of a rainout or a rain delay,
continue with programming from cbS.what the person who typed the log
didn't know, however, was that on Saturday nights cbS broadcast live
from Shreveport, louisiana, the louisiana hayride.and the hayride was
second only to the grand ole opry in those days as the top country music
show in america.

well, the rains didn't let up in atlanta and i did just as i was told. i
punched up the network and sat back in my chair grinning from ear to ear
listening to johnny horton, Slim whitman, and all the hayride regulars
singing their songs and doing their thing. and then the phone rang.not
the request line nor the news line, but the hot line.the one that rang
loud and flashed bright red in the control room.the line the boss used
when he was mad.or upset.or both.

what in the blankety-blank is that blankety-blank country music doing on
my radio station?mister holder bellowed into my ear.if i've told you
once i've told you a thous but, mister holder, i interrupted, i only did
as i was told.the log said to go to cbS and this is what cbS .

on monday morning mister holder wanted to see me in his office. he had
calmed down but only slightly.look, i've been thinking about this, son,
he said, and i know how much you love country music.but we're just not
going to play it here.that's all there is to it.we are not a country
music station.but i'll tell you what.a good friend of mine has just
gotten his permit to put a new station on the air up in commerce.i
called him today and told him about you.he said he'd like for you to
drive up next week and meet with him.i think you've got a good chance of
being hired there.of course, commerce is just a little town compared to
athens, but you can play country music up there to your heart's content.

that was the nicest anybody has ever been fired.and although neither of
us had any way of knowing it at the time, mister h. Randolph holder had
just proceeded to do mister james william anderson iii one of the
biggest favors of his young life.

for all that had happened over the past few year i in spite of the fact
that we'd had a major disagreement and in spite of the fact that we were
spending much of our time living in two separate places-never once, not
even for one split second, had i ever quit loving becky anderson.not
since the Saturday night in january, nineteen 67 when we'd been
introduced by a mutual friend backstage at one of my concerts in
charlotte, north carolina.

She was becky davis then, twenty years old, a country girl born and
raised in a modest white frame house that didn't even have indoor
plumbing until she was five or six years old.the closest town was
marshville, union county, north carolina, some thirtyodd miles southeast
of charlotte down u.S.highway 74 the shortest route to the beach.

as becky Stegall, she had attended forest hills high School where she
admits her two favorite subjects were basketball and boys.She graduated
in the spring of nineteen 64 but not before marrying a boy she hadn't
even been dating for very long.by the time i met her, the marriage was
on the rocks, and she had filed for divorce. She had moved back home to
live with her mother and stepfather and was working as a secretary in
the office of a hydraulics equipment company in charlotte. She was a
charming, attractive lady, but i had by no means been introduced to a
movie star.

Still, becky had a quality about her, a very natural easiness laced with
self-assurance, that i instantly liked.maybe it was warmth.maybe it was
her marvelous sense of humor.maybe i just sensed that in a world full of
plastic people she was real.i'm not sure.all i know is that from the
beginning i wanted to spend more time with her.i wanted to get to know
her better.

following my concert the night we met, i invited her to join me ifor
breakfast at a pancake house just down the road from the coliseum where
we'd played.my band had already left on the bus heading for pittsburgh
where we had two shows scheduled the next day, but i had elected to stay
behind and fly out Sunday morning. over a hot cup of coffee, i asked
becky if she'd come to my motel and pick me up at six eigh m.and drive
me to the airport.before she had a chance to answer, i'd already planned
my next line: easier than that, why don't you just stay?She saw it
coming and cut me off at the pass.

i can't pick you up at that hour, she replied emphatically, but i will
give you a wake-up call in plenty of time for you to catch a cab.i liked
that, and i liked her warm voice when she did call ù ..right on time!

i flew on to pittsburgh and then back home to nashville, but i couldn't
get the lady from north carolina off my mind.we stayed in touch, she
came to see me when i worked shows later that year in fayetteville and
winston-Salem, and we began to learn more and more about one another.
the more i learned, the more attracted to her i became.in the fall she
moved to atlanta, where she got a job working in state politics, first
as secretary to zell miller, who was then personnel director of the
board of corrections, then as secretary to the georgia State Senate
administrative affairs committee in the capitol.She moved to nashville
to work in a political campaign during the summer of nineteen 70 and i
asked her to marry me that october.

our road together hadn't always been smooth, not even since our
marriage, but we'd never faced a problem we hadn't been able to work out
together.we had climbed mountains together, walked through valleys
together, basked in the sunshine together, and huddled together against
the rain.and through it all, becky had become my closest and most
trusted friend.

our relationship had spawned many of my songs, everything from the
tender you and your Sweet love (never try to tell me it wasn't god
above/who sent me you and your sweet love) to the caustic Roller coaster
Ride (and the preacher should have said do you want to take a roller
coaster ride/cause that's all it's been since the day that you became my
blushing bride).but together was our byword from the very beginning, and
even though we were having trouble right then sorting out our
differences over where and how we wanted to live, somehow i think both
of us always knew there was an answer and that one of these days we were
going to find it.

all this and a million other things were churning inside my head as i
sat nervously behind a desk inside the little police station near
chester, South carolina, staring at a telephone, begging it to ring.i
couldn't locate an airplane to fly me to nashville.

it was still early on Sunday morning and code-a-phones and janitors were
answering most of the calls i tried to place.i had looked under aircraft
in the yellow pages of the local telephone directory and begun dialing
every air charter service listed anywhere in the carolinas, but i was
having no luck at all.i'd leave a message everywhere i phoned, but no
one was calling me back. Suddenly i remembered a card i'd carried in my
wallet for years from corporate air fleet, a company based in
nashville.i had chartered planes from them several times before when i'd
had close connections to make en route to a personal appearance. Surely
they can find me something, i thought.i took out the card and dialed
their number.

i got a live, on-duty person to talk with for a change, but he didn't
offer me much encouragement.i'll put it into the computer, mister
anderson, and see what i can come up with, he said. i don't want a
computer, i want an airplane, i grumbled under my breath, but i tried to
control my impatience and told him that would be just fine and to please
call me back.i hung up the phone and on a whim reached into my suitcase
and pulled out a copy of the official airline guide that i carry
everywhere i go.but it was just as i'd suspected.a commercial flight was
out of the question. i'd have to drive to charlotte or
greenville-Spartanburg to catch one, and i just didn't have the time.
the doctor had said fiftyfifty chance and come as soon as you can.i had
to get home!

and then i remembered that the national life & accident insurance
company, which for years owned the grand ole opry, once had their own
jet.in desperation i called bud wendell, a former manager of the opry,
who had become president of the entire opryland i wSm i nashville
network complex.i think i woke him up.in a sleepy voice but sounding
concerned, bud said the new owners, gaylord broadcasting, didn't have a
plane but he'd check with his friends at martha white flour, one of the
longtime opry sponsors, to see about my using theirs.he called back in a
few minutes to tell me we could use the plane, but the pilots had all
left for church and couldn't be located.

i tried phoning clyde culp, president of poe folks restaurants, the
chain for which i was the national spokesman, to see if he could reach
somebody ...anybody ...at the krystal corporation, poe folks' parent
company in chattanooga.krystal had an entire aviation complex there.i
knew, i'd seen it.Surely they could get a plane to me, maybe even a jet,
but clyde was nowhere to be found.

the crew on duty at the little police station couldn't have been more
accommodating.they provided coffee, two phone lines, and plenty of
privacy or company, whichever i needed.i alternated between the two.

mike Streeter had ridden with me and a police sergeant in a squad car
from the market where the bus had stopped to the combination police
headquarters and small county jail a few miles away.mikey, as i've
called him for years, was the closest to my age of the band members and
was the kind of guy i'd want next to me if we were at war and i were
stuck in a foxhole in enemy territory. he's what the folks down home
used to call solid ...a strong, quick-thinking, morally straight iowa
farm boy ...a family man and a christian but one who lives his faith
quietly and never tries to force his beliefs on anyone else. he stayed
right beside me during every painful minute of the ordeal i was going
through. when i wanted to talk, he listened.when i felt like just
sitting and staring at the wall, he sat and stared right along with me.i
honestly don't know how i'd have made it through those first few hours
without mikey.

i tried to telephone my mom and dad to tell them what had happened, but
they, too, had gone to church.my sister, mary, who has always thought of
becky as more of a sister than a sisterin-law, broke down sobbing when i
called her and told her the news of the accident.She promised she'd pull
herself together, though, and drive over to mom and dad's house and
break it to them as gently as she could when they got home. She and her
family lived less than a mile away from our parents.

i phoned my daughters, terri, twenty-three, and jenni, ei een, back in
nashville.terri wasn't home, but jenni be i extremely upset and
concerned when i told her of our impen crisis.She said terri was in the
car on the way over to her i and as soon as she got there they'd both be
glad to do any i they could.i asked both of them to be at the airport to
me i when i finally did get home.

i spoke by phone with a representative of Springs industrie' people who
were sponsoring that afternoon's concert for employees.i told him the
poe folks band was on its way t concert site (all but the drummer who
was with me, and sori from the police station would bring him over
later) and the would go on as scheduled even though there was no
possible could be there.the gentleman i spoke with seemed very i
standing, and i was told later that before the performance be three p m.
the entire audience bowed as one and prayed for e recovery.Springs
industries also insisted on paying me in f the show.i'll never forget
their warm expressions of concel compassion.in fact, two years later,
almost to the day, i wev to South carolina and gave them a concert for
free.

a few minutes before ten 0 clock, almost two agonizin i after my initial
phone call to them, corporate air fl nashville finally called back and
said they had located a pla that it was on its way to pick me up.it
would be comiri greer, South carolina, only a few minutes away.again, on
pilots had been in church, but they had succeeded in g i message to
him.at exactly 10:28 eigh m.by my watch (i' changed it from nashville
time), the blue i and-white twin king air swept down from the bright
morning sky, taxiec edge of the little landing strip that serves as the
chester and i climbed aboard.the pilots helped hoist my luggage c and
told me it would be about a ninety i minute trip back t city.

except for the two men in the cockpit, i was alone in tb i strapped
myself into a seat by the right rear window ar pensively out at the
bright sunshine, the scattered fluk\ clouds that floated leisurely by,
and the brilliant reds, gre oranges of the carolina autumn below.i tried
to rela couldn't turn my mind off.i tried to imagine what becky must be
going through at that particular moment, and i thought, i've got to be
with her.i squirmed in the seat trying to get comfortable and constantly
looked at my watch, hoping the pilots had overestimated the flight time
and maybe with a little luck we could pick up a tail wind and get home
sooner.

Somewhere over the Smoky mountains, flying along smoothly at seventeen
thousand feet, i decided i needed to talk to god . real bad.i wasn't
sure just what it was that i wanted to say and i was just as unsure of
how to say it, but i leaned forward in my seat, bowed my head, and
closed my eyes.for a long time i just sat there trying to figure out how
to put into words the crazy, mixedup thoughts that were racing back and
forth across my mind.i wanted to ask him to stay close to becky, to
please not let her die, and then to please give the rest of our family
the strength i knew we were all going to need to face the biggest crisis
any of us had probably ever faced.but it had been a long time.

uh, hello god...this is bill anderson.i just uh...you know, god,
whisperin' bill ...grand ole opry .

nashville, tennessee.look, i know i haven't been real good about stayin'
in touch...especially these past couple
of years or so ...but i really need .

i've never been the kind of person who wears his religion on his sleeve,
but i've always considered myself a christian.or at least a christian
under construction.i grew up going to Sunday school and church, and i've
never not believed in god.i just hadn't connected with him for a while,
particularly during the past couple of years while i'd been struggling
with becky's and my living arrangements.i wasn't real sure how to go
about reopening the lines of communication, but i knew i had to
try.Slowly but surely i got a few things out.and when i finished i felt
a lot better, confident that he had heard and somehow understood the
things i was trying to say.

terri and jenni were at the hangar when we landed and taxied in.even
though their mother and i had separated when they were seven and two,
respectively, and had divorced not long after, i had tried hard over the
years to maintain an honest, open relationship with each of my
daughters.i wasn't a live-in daddy during much of their growing-up
years, and there were times when that nearly killed me.but i did try to
talk with them every day or two, spend as many weekends with them as my
crazy schedule allowed, and have them with me as much of the time as i
possibly could in the summer and at christmas.i went to their school
programs, birthday parties, piano recitals, dance recitals, horse shows,
and anywhere else i could go where they were involved.it hadn't always
been easy for either them or me, and there had no doubt been times over
the years when they'd needed me and for one reason or another i hadn't
been there.but i'll never forget looking out the tiny window of that
airplane and seeing them both standing there for me, waiting and willing
to prop me up in any way they could.i thought my heart, heavy as it was
at the time, was going to melt and run right out on the ground.

terri: tall, blonde, statuesque, with the same sensitive but gentle blue
eyes she'd been born with, beautifully matured into the youthful,
graceful image of her mother.a graduate of middle tennessee State
university with a degree in criminal justice and employed by the
district attorney's office in nashville.and jenni: Shorter, with flowing
chestnut hair and laughing brown eyes; her round face, her olive
complexion, her joyous smile all undeniably anderson.a freshman at
western kentucky university in bowling green, working her way toward a
degree in goodness-knowswhat.but working hard at it just the same.i had
never been so glad to see any two people in my life.

i stumbled down the rear steps of the plane and literally fell into
their arms, squeezing terri in my left arm and jenni in my right with
all the strength i could muster.their eyes met mine and lingered in an
expression of both love and pain for only a fleeting moment.nobody spoke
a word.words weren't necessary.with my arms draped around their
shoulders and theirs encircling my waist, the three of us quickly made
our way out to the parking lot and into the back seat of my
brother-in-law's car.with the help of a police escort, we pulled up in
front of general hospital at exactly 12:15.

the events of the next hour or so all run together in my mind.i talked
to becky's sister and to her mother, and they brought me up-to-date on
the sequence of events that had taken place.i talked to several of our
closest friends, some of whom had heard the news before daylight and had
been there offering their support ever since.and i talked with the
doctors, only to learn that little had changed since i had last spoken
with them on the phone from South carolina.after doing his best to
prepare me for the sight i was about to see, one of the doctors led me
into the trauma center emergency room where becky was still being
attended more than thirteen hours after the accident.

it was a gruesome sight.there were cuts and bruises, stitches and
bandages, tubes and life-support systems everywhere.most of the damage,
as lynne had told me, had been from the neck up. most of her long,
beautiful hair had been shaved so the lacerations in her head could be
stitched.the hair that remained was matted with blood.She looked very
pale and seemed to be having an extremely hard time breathing.i couldn't
help but recall how that same blonde hair had been spread across the
pillow on the bed in lebanon just a few hours earlier.hours ago when we
had nothing to say to each other.and now, suddenly, there was so much i
wanted to say.

i reached down and took hold of her left hand and felt no response
whatsoever.i leaned over the bed and whispered into ears that could not
hear me, oh, honey, i'm so sorry this has happened.i love you so
much.please fight ...you've always been a fighter ... please fight.jamey
and i love you and we need you so much!the sound of what i was saying
shocked even me.i hadn't told becky i needed her in a long time, but
then i was standing there feeling a lot of things i hadn't felt in a
long time.Suddenly where we lived and how we lived didn't seem important
at all.the only thing that mattered was that she live.

the doctor quickly reached out and took me by the arm and told me i had
to leave.i kissed becky's hand, then turned and walked swiftly back out
to the family waiting room.i grabbed the phone and placed a call to the
person i suddenly wanted to talk to more than any other person i could
think of at that moment, the preacher who had married us, the Reverend
felix Snell.actually, he'd married us twice, once on october 2 nineteen
70 then again on october 2 nineteen 80 when after ten years we'd decided
to renew our vows and our commitment to each other. brother Snell, as
i've always called him, was at his home in suburban madison eating
Sunday dinner when my call went through.

i told him as quickly and as calmly as i could everything that had
happened.you don't have to come, i said.i know it's your afternoon with
the family.i just wanted you to know what's happened.and i want you to
say a little prayer for all of us.

i'll be there in fifteen minutes, he said, insisting that nothing would
do but for him to jump up from the table and drive to the hospital as
quickly as he could.i never will forget the compassionate yet quietly
confident way he looked at me when he walked in.

just remember, bill, he said as he took my hand in the hallway outside
the trauma center, the truth is the same today as it was yesterday.and
it will be the same tomorrow.the hands that made becky aren't about to
let go of her now.

Somehow i knew he was right.becky's fate was certainly out of my
hands.the next forty-eight hours were critical.all i could do, as
brother Snell told me, was to trust and believe.

but i was having a hard time letting go.i kept thinking i needed to do
something ...make something happen.what i needed to do most of all was
relax and realize god was in control, but i couldn't.not just yet.all my
thoughts kept coming back to an innocent little six-year-old boy having
to grow up without his mother ...a frightened country music singing star
having to stumble through the rest of his life more lost and alone than
anybody he'd ever written or sung about in even his saddest songs.

and the closest thing to a prayer i could come up with at the time was,
oh, lord, what in the world am i gonna do now?

commerce, georgia, was, in the late nineteen 50s, a dingy, sometimes
depressing little country town straddling u.S.highway 441 eighteen miles
north of athens and just south of the foothills of the blue Ridge
mountains.the most exciting thing a teenaged kid could find to do after
work, if he wasn't into stealing hubcaps, was to go for a double-dip ice
cream cone at the local dairy bar.there were three or four large textile
mills in commerce (at least one of them manufactured blue jeans), and
much of the local citizenry was employed there.there was also a railroad
track that ran parallel to the main street, dividing the heart of the
business district, but in all the years i lived there i don't think i
ever saw a train.just the tracks.i used to try and figure out which was
the right side and which was the wrong side of the tracks, but i never
came to any conclusion.i lived on one side and worked on the other, so i
really didn't care, but studying on it helped to pass the time.

commerce was inhabited by approximately forty-two hundred of the
kindest, friendliest, just plain nicest down-home folks i think i've
ever known, and the radio station there, wjjc, the friendly voice of
jackson county, turned out to be everything the station in athens had
not been.

i was there from the very beginning.i had gone to work at the station in
early june, a couple of weeks before we were scheduled to begin
broadcasting.my primary job was to organize the record library.i was
standing in the control room filing records the morning the telegram
arrived from the federal communications commission in washington saying
that as of that moment we were licensed to sign on the air.it was an
exciting and tense time. there had never been a radio station in the
little town before, and everybody was anxiously awaiting our first
broadcast.

the owners of the station, mister and missis albert hardy, had run the
local newspaper in commerce for years and didn't profess to know much
about radio, so they hired a young station manager named grady cooper
from cedartown, georgia, and entrusted him with the job of getting us in
business.mister cooper, who turned out to be a very capable and
dedicated manager (and in my case a very patient employer) decided we
should sign on that first morning by playing a recording of the
Star-Spangled banner, and then he thought maybe he'd like to open the
microphone and say the first few words.that sounded great to me, and i
stood nervously poised behind his chair as he flipped the switch to send
our national anthem echoing out across the hills and valleys of
northeast georgia.it was a proud moment.

the record ended and mister cooper opened his microphone. good morning,
ladies and gentlemen, he said authoritatively, this is grady cooper
signing on wjj .

click.dead silence.

in all the excitement of trying to get our new radio station on the air,
nobody had remembered to check the volume level of the microphone, and
when mister cooper threw the switch and started talking, the transmitter
overmodulated something fierce.our new little baby went right back off
the air just as quickly as she had come on.

i could picture radios all over town having been jarred off their
shelves by the roar and plummeting to the floor.all the planning, all
the preparation, and our first broadcast had lasted less than three
minutes.fortunately, our engineer, bill evans, was standing by and
quickly spotted the source of the problem.he turned down a couple of
knobs, and we did it all over again.this time it worked to perfection.

in less than an hour, at eleven-thirty eigh m.to be exact, i came on the
air for the first time, hosting the station's first country music record
show called, in the beginning, the dinnerbell jamboree.i loved my time
on the air and the fact that finally, after more than a year of trying,
i could at long last play country music on the radio, but every time i
said the name dinnerbell jamboree i cringed.i thought that was the most
awful name for a radio show i had ever heard.i didn't say anything about
it at first, but after we d been on the air for a couple of months and i
had begun to build up both a bit of confidence and a bit of a following
around the area, i began asking mister cooper if we could change the
name of my program.he wasn't too keen about the idea at first, but the
more i badgered him the more i began to wear him down. finally he gave
in, more to shut me up than anything else, i think, and from that moment
on the entire afternoon's programming became known as the bill anderson
Show.i was off and running!

mister cooper was a super boss, giving me a free hand not only to play
the country music i loved but to develop myself into a fullblown radio
personality as well.i took advantage (sometimes too much advantage) of
my newfound freedom.

my new show came on the air every afternoon at one o'clock, and for the
first two-and-a-half hours of my shift i played country music.nothing
but country music and all the country music i wanted.then about
three-thirty, when the area high schools began to let out and just as
soon as i figured the kids had had time to get to their cars and head
out of the parking lot, i rocked.i mean, up until the sun went down and
our little thousand-watt daytime station signed off the air, i played
elvis and jerry lee and chuck berry and the coasters and all the
rest.and i liked it.not as much as i liked country music, of course, but
in those days rock n' roll was new and was a synonym for success. more
than anything else in the world i wanted to be successful.

my radio program slowly but surely began to build an audience. the grown
folks liked the country music i played and they seemed to respect my
knowledge of the subject.the kids loved the loud rock and the fact that
they never knew what i was liable to say or do next.i screamed and i
yelled, i deliberately screwed up commercials, messed up artists' names
and their song titles.i told jokes, i laughed when i should have been
serious, and i played it straight when everyone else was cracking up.all
over northeast georgia it became the afternoon thing to do to turn the
radio dial to 1270 and partake of the craziness.

there were even a few times when our signal wasn't confined to northeast
georgia.i snooped around and found out where the knob was on the
transmitter that controlled the power output of the station, and i
learned how to ease it up past our assigned thousand watts.it was
illegal as robbing a bank, but when nobody was looking, i'd often do it.
Some days when the ground was wet along the creekbank by our tower and
nature was helping amplify our signal as well, listeners would phone me
from parts of north carolina, nearly one hundred miles away.i never got
called on the carpet for tinkering, but it's a wonder.i could have cost
the station a large fine and put our very license to broadcast in
jeopardy.

i guess i was just too hyper and too young to realize that what i was
involved in was something more than a big toy.to me it was all one big
lark ...making a little money doing something i loved.i even went so far
as to create an on-the-air sidekick, a talking duck named josh.

actually, chuck goddard, my old pickin' buddy from the classic city
playboys, found the little rubber duck for sale in a store somewhere,
bought him, named him, and taught him how to talk on the radio.chuck and
josh manned the airwaves at wmge radio in madison, georgia, about the
same time i was at wgau in athens, and, quite truthfully, chuck taught
josh most of his bad habits.in a couple of years chuck got an
opportunity to move up to wdol in athens, and they were so uptown they
didn't allow ducks on their station.So i adopted the poor homeless
creature and took him to commerce.

josh didn't actually speak.he just squeaked.i'd talk, squeeze josh, he'd
squeak his reply into the microphone, and i'd interpret for the
listeners what josh had said.usually it was something outrageously
stupid or else it was the duck trying to get the best of the disc
jockey.it was really not much more than my sitting alone in a dark room
and talking back and forth to myself, but i had a ball with it and so
did the listeners.i've thought since that josh was just basic training
for edgar, the talking jukebox, who was to come later in my life.

the younger kids especially loved josh.not long after the adoption
papers had been filed and it was legally confirmed that josh would be
with me permanently, i had a contest on the air to give him a middle
name, (hey, gang, a duck this important needs a middle name.there's
harry s truman, dwight david eisenhower ù ..we ve got to have josh
Something' mcduck!) and i received thousands of entries, most of them
from the kids.we ended up tagging him the distinguished josh
waddlesforth mcduck, and pretty soon he was getting more fan mail than i
was.when that started happening, i began to lie and tell the listeners
that josh was sick or out of town on business, and i'd do the shows by
myself, leaving the duck on the shelf for days at a time!

i also became known in commerce as peanut butter bill, a name that has,
pardon the pun, stuck with me all these years in that area.i came upon
it quite innocently.i had moved to commerce by that time and drove to
athens every morning to attend classes at the university until noon.
then i'd drive back along the winding roads from athens north to
commerce as fast as i safely could every afternoon and run into the
radio station only a few minutes before air time, out of breath and
always hungry.i'd keep a loaf of bread and a jar of peanut butter in a
back room, and while my first record was playing i'd sneak out and make
me a sandwich.

one day i mentioned on the air that i was eating a peanut butter
sandwich.from that day on, whenever i'd make a mistake reading a
commercial (they were all done live at small radio stations back then)
or reading the news (another task i performed to justify my princely
salary of fifty dollars a week), i'd just blame it on the peanut butter
sticking to the roof of my mouth.pretty soon i became peanut butter
bill.

one day during the last christmas season i spent in commerce, i got a
phone call from the local postmaster.come down here right now!he
ordered.everybody in this town must have sent you something made out of
peanut butter for christmas.packages are piled everywhere.this whole
post office smells like peter pan!

truly, it did.i found peanut butter cookies, peanut butter cakes, peanut
butter candy, and i couldn't count the jars of just plain old peanut
butter (both smooth and crunchy) that the listeners had sent me. in a
way it was funny, but in another way i was genuinely touched.my
listeners had cared enough about me and had identified closely enough
with me for them to want to send something special for the holidays.it
was my first introduction to the loyalty and the closeness that develops
between the people in country music and their fans.

it was while i was in commerce that i also began seriously trying to
write songs.i lived in a tiny bedroom on the top floor of the tallest
building in town, the hotel andrew jackson.it was all of three stories
high.every night after i signed the radio station off the air, i'd go
downtown and eat supper at the piedmont cafe or maybe across the street
at threatt's Restaurant.then i'd go back to my little room, study as
little as i could get by with, and then i'd pick up my guitar and start
strumming.i loved to write, loved to create anything, and i began to put
my thoughts down on paper and to make up little tunes to go along with
them. one of those little tunes turned out to be my magic carpet to
nashville.

it was written on the back of a wjjc radio station envelope.in pencil.
and because i dated all my compositions in those days, i know i wrote it
august 27 nineteen 57.not in my room, however, but on the roof of the
hotel.

it was a stifling hot night, and the little window air-conditioning unit
in my room wasn't strong enough to cut through the abusive heat and the
grueling georgia humidity.on nights like that i'd often take my guitar
and retreat to the top of the hotel, flop my long legs down across their
one and only lounge chair, and sing my heart out into the darkness. this
particular night there wasn't a cloud in the sky.i began looking up at
what seemed like a million stars above and down on what few lights there
were in commerce, georgia, and i wrote:

the irright array of city lights as far as i can see
the great whiteway shines through the night for lonely guys like me .

my dad said later that he knew i had the imagination it took to become a
great songwriter if i could look at commerce and write about a great
whiteway.it was more like two or three traffic lights, and even they
didn't work all the time.but those few words opened the doors to the
world of country music for his son.

and who would have dared dream, on that hot, muggy night in august
nineteen 57 that twenty years later almost to the day the people of
commerce would erect a marble monument on a downtown sidewalk just a few
blocks away from the old hotel that would read:

bill anderson, country music hall of fame Songwriter, wrote his first
hit, city lights, in commerce, georgia.

what an unforgettable occasion it was for me the day the monument was
unveiled.it seemed like everybody i knew in the whole world turned out
for it.they proclaimed it bill anderson day in north georgia, and becky
and i flew all night from california to be there.

by that time the little hotel where i'd lived and written my song was no
longer in business; the building had been converted into a bank.the
bank, along with wjjc radio, became the official sponsor of my
homecoming and spared no effort in welcoming me back.

the bank lobby was filled to bursting with old friends, fans, and
well-wishers when i walked in, almost two hours later than i'd been
scheduled to arrive, thanks to some bad flying weather en route.but the
people had stayed and waited patiently, and they cheered and applauded
like mad when i finally got there.the bank officials unveiled a plaque
that they said would be mounted in their lobby, marking the building as
the spot where my first hit song had been written.then, before i knew
it, my old college buddy, newspaperman, disc jockey, and local
entrepreneur, billy dilworth, grabbed me by the arm and said, come go
with me. we've got something else to do.

i didn't have any idea what was happening, but i followed him outside
the bank, down the street a couple of blocks and across the railroad
tracks to the other side of the main drag where another large crowd had
already gathered.i looked out and saw my mom and dad standing there,
both my daughters, all my band members, buddy killen from nashville;
grady cooper, still the manager of wjjc; bob waters, the mayor of
commerce; and even the lieutenant governor of the state of georgia, my
dear friend of many years, and becky's former employer, zell miller.i
still didn't know what was going on, but i figured something mighty
important must be about to take place.

billy dilworth moved to the center of the crowd, held up his hands for
quiet, and began to talk, saying all kinds of nice things about me and
about commerce.then the politicians talked, saying much of the same, and
then somebody called my name and told me to step forward and untie a
large rope that was holding a big piece of yellow canvas over the top of
something standing five or six feet high in the middle of the sidewalk.
i did as i was told, reached down and gave the cover a yank, and lo and
behold beneath that canvas was the shiny marble monument paying tribute
to me.i was flabbergasted.

i tried to talk, but the words wouldn't come.i was completely overcome
by the excitement and the emotion of the moment.later that night, we
performed a benefit concert before a packed house at the commerce high
School football stadium, and i opened the show with city lights.i tried
to tell the people then how much the monument and all the other events
of the day meant to me. but i wonder if they ever understood how deeply
i had been touched by it all.

you see, it was the people of commerce, georgia, who adopted me and
believed in me long before anybody else did, and i've never forgotten
that.i don't get to go back there very much anymore, but a big part of
my heart lives there all the time.and it probably always will.

i finished writing city lights the night i started it, and in a matter
of just a few weeks i had made a recording of it in an unfinished tv
studio in athens and mailed the tape to bob tanner at tnt (tanner n
texas) music, inc., in San antonio.i asked him if he'd like to publish
the song and perhaps release my recording of it on his tnt label.he
didn't exactly do cartwheels.

bob had published and released the first song i'd ever had recorded back
in nineteen 56 no love have i, by arkansas jimmy burton, on tnt, and
he'd released my first record, take me, with empty Room on the flip
side, a year later.nothing good at all had happened with either record,
but he had encouraged me to keep writing and to send him anything new i
came up with.you never know where the next big hit is coming from, he
had written in response to the first letter i ever wrote him.in those
days i was seeking out the names and addresses of music publishers all
over the country and writing them letters, begging somebody to please
just listen to a few of my songs.bob tanner's name was just one of
hundreds on my list, but of all the companies i contacted, he was the
only one who even took the time to write me back.

not very many people remember the first record of mine that bob put out,
thank goodness.it was pretty awful.i wrote both sides, take me (which
Roger miller used to love to call take that), an upbeat, lyrically bland
little ditty that billboard magazine called an elvis presley type
country-rocker sung without preslian power.on their
one-hundred-is-perfect rating system for new records, mine got a
sixty-five.Somebody once told me that the worst rating any record ever
got was a forty.take me'' didn't beat that by much.empty Room, the
ballad on the other side, was recorded about two keys lower than i was
capable of singing.i can't believe i ever talked anybody into releasing
it.

looking back, i guess the most outstanding thing about my first record
was the engineer.i cut the songs in the studios of radio station weaS in
decatur and used one of their local dj's to set up the microphones and
twist the knobs.he might not want it publicized, but his name was Roy
drusky.he went on to have a pretty good career in country music as a
singer/songwriter in spite of the fact that his being associated with my
first record could have buried him early.

bob tanner most definitely didn't make any money on my first release,
and he was understandably hesitant about the prospect of releasing the
second one.finally, i told him i'd buy a couple of hundred copies myself
if he'd just press them, because i knew i could sell that many to my
radio listeners.he owned a pressing plant, so he agreed and shipped me
the first box a few days later.

naturally, i played my new release on the air the first afternoon it
came in, and by that night i had sold the first copy.well, really, i
didn't sell it; i traded it to a cute little waitress at the piedmont
caf6 for a plate of scrambled eggs and pork chops.i didn't put any green
folding money into my pocket until several days later.

it seems strange recalling it now, but city lights was actually released
as the b-side of my record.Remember, the music of the late fifties was
not hard-core country but rockabilly and rock n' roll.i had written a
bouncy, driving little tune called (i've got) no Song to Sing that was
supposed to be my a-side.i had begun singing it on a few show dates
around georgia, and it was driving the kids in the audiences wild.in
fact, i worked a show in Swainsboro, georgia, with mel tillis, who was
then a struggling writer and performer himself, and when mel heard the
response to no Song to Sing, he asked for a copy of my record.he took it
back to nashville and recorded the song himself on columbia Records. it
was not successful for him at all, and i tease mel to this day because
had he taken the time to listen to the flip side, he might have recorded
city lights and had himself a number one smash!

fortunately, a man in nashville named charlie lamb did hear the b-side.
at the time he was publishing a weekly trade publication called the
music Reporter, and i'd mailed him a copy of my record hoping to get a
review in his magazine.there weren't nearly as many records released in
those days as there are now, and when my record came across charlie's
desk, he took the time to listen closely.city lights struck him as a
powerful piece of material, and he knew my version on tnt Records
wouldn't have more than limited distribution, so he took the song to
chet atkins, the head of artists and Repertoire for Rca victor.

chet listened to my record, agreed with charlie on the commercial
possibilities of the song, and in a matter of just a few days produced a
great record of it on his label by a young stylist named dave Rich. dave
was a singer like willie nelson, in that for many years he was simply
ahead of his time.he was a tremendous singer, but the general public
never quite caught on to the acrobatics he could perform with his voice.
he had the vocal ability to move from one note to another in much the
same sliding way as a pedal steel guitar, and he sang the living fire
out of city lights.he took the word array in the first line and turned
it into five syllables.he was incredible.unfortunately, though, most
people perceived him the same way as one lady who told me, gosh, he sure
sings through his nose, doesn't he?dave eventually gave up on the
country music business and went to preaching and singing only gospel
songs, but i was thrilled to death by his recording of city lights, even
by the sight of my name (b.anderson) in little bitty letters on the Rca
victor label.if nothing else had happened, i'd have been satisfied.

but things were just beginning to happen.dave Rich's record didn't set
the world on its ear, but it accomplished one major thing: it got my
song onto the airwaves of the leading full-timt country music radio
station in nashville.and in nashville you never know who's listening to
the radio.

it turned out that Ray price, who was just beginning to make his move
into super-stardom about that time, was riding to the golf course one
afternoon with the legendary ernest tubb when the disc jockey on weno
decided to play dave's new record.the two of them turned up the volume
and listened closely.

that song sure sounds like one you could sing, son, ernest said to Ray.

yeah, but i've already got my next record cut, Ray replied.in fact, it
ships next monday.

well, if i were you i'd cancel that release and record this song, ernest
prodded.throughout the entire round of golf that afternoon he never let
up.every time the two of them would meet on the green, ernest would
start in again.you'd better cut that song, son, he'd say over and over
until finally, and fortunately for me, ay relented.he phoned goddard
lieberson, the president of columbia Records, and told him to hold up on
releasing his next tit single.the following thursday he called a special
recording ses- it sion and cut city lights.

i have since been told by several people who were at the session that it
was a very emotional evening.after Ray and the musicians had rehearsed
the song several times and had become confident that the arrangement was
just the way they wanted it, Ray halted the proceedings and called all
the musicians and background singers together in the center of the room.

now, he said, i want you all to really think about what the ole boy in
this song is going through.listen and try to put yourself in his
place.imagine you're in las vegas, you're all alone, and it's cold and
the wind is blowing and it's about to snow.you've just gambled and lost
the last dime you have in this world.you don't know where you're gonna
go, how you're gonna eat, what you're gonna do next.you pull the collar
of your coat up around your neck and you walk out the door of the
casino.all you see is the bright array of city lights as far as you can
see.now ...let's cut the song!

and cut it they did.city lights by Ray price on columbia Records was an
immediate smash hit, rising to number one on the charts and staying in
the charts for something like thirty-two weeks.Such diverse talents as
soul singer ivory joe hunter and debbie Reynolds (yes, the debbie
Reynolds) covered the song in the pop field.in several of the year-end
polls, it was voted both Song of the year and Record of the year for
nineteen 58.

the day i learned that Ray price had recorded my song, i was on duty at
wjjc.School was out for the summer, and i was working a split-shift,
signing on at five-thirty in the mornings, working until eight o'clock,
then coming back at one for my regular afternoon show.for some reason,
however, this particular morning i was still at the station around ten
o'clock when the phone rang.the receptionist told me it was Roger miller
calling from nashville.

Roger and i had met a few years earlier at the old tower theater on
peachtree Street in downtown atlanta when he was stationed in the army
at nearby fort mcpherson and i was a kid with a guitar wandering around
town looking for someplace to play.we quickly became friends, meeting
every time a big country show would come to town, standing off to the
side of the stage in the darkened corners and singing each other songs
we'd written, dreaming of the day each of us would become a big enough
star to step out onto that stage and into the spotlight.

Roger said he was from erick, oklahoma, but what he wanted more than
anything in the world was to say that he was from nashville, tennessee,
and that he made his living writing and singing.funny, i was beginning
to want to tell people that's what i did, too, but for the longest time
the closest either of us came to stardom was wandering through the
corridors of the old building that had once been known as the erlanger
theater, home of the famous wSb barn dance, and staring in awe at the
performers who happened to be working there.

one Sunday afternoon wanda jackson was in town appearing as part of the
hank thompson Show, and i nearly fainted when Roger got up nerve enough
to knock on her dressing room door and ask if we might come in and talk
with her awhile.She very graciously said sure, and while we were sitting
there asking her all kinds of stupid questions about the music business,
Roger spied her shiny new martin guitar sitting in its case over in the
corner. would you mind if i borrowed your guitar and sang my friend here
a couple of new songs i've written?he asked.wanda, evidently taken back
by such a request, said she didn't mind, but the look on her face told
me she really did.

Roger grabbed the guitar and, not wanting to bother wanda anymore,
motioned for me to follow him out the door.he led me over to the edge of
the stage where no one could see us, and he played and sang for me for
about fifteen minutes.then he handed me the guitar, and i played and
sang to him for fifteen or twenty more.we were knocking each other out,
telling one another how great we were, and marveling at how good wanda's
guitar sounded. pretty soon, though, it started closing in on her time
to go on stage, and she started looking around for the two clowns who
had disappeared with her guitar.She couldn't find us anywhere.finally
she called her dad in on the case.he spotted me and Rog over in the
corner pluckin' away.he walked over and, in a voice much calmer than
mine would have been under the circumstances, asked us if we'd mind if
his daughter got her instrument back.please. Roger handed it to him like
a parent giving up a baby for adoption.when her dad was out of earshot,
he turned to me and said, i'll have a guitar like that someday, and i
said, Sure, and so will i.we stood there looking at each other like a
couple of lying fools and broke out laughing.

Roger moved to nashville the day he received his discharge from the
service and began to make his mark as a writer and as a performer not
long afterward.he toured for a while as a fiddle player with minnie
pearl, then became a member of Ray price's renowned cherokee cowboys.
meanwhile, i went to athens and then to commerce.the miles came between
us, but we always managed to stay in touch. hey, anderson, guess what,
he roared excitedly over the longdistance wire.price cut city lights'
last night!it's gonna be his next release.i've got the other side, a new
thing i just wrote called invitation to the blues'!how bout them apples?

i was blown away!Roger and i hung on the phone like a couple of
schoolkids, laughing and giggling and talking about how all our dreams
were starting to come true.then before i could come back down to earth
the telephone rang again.this time it was bob tanner calling from texas.

bill, i just found out Ray price cut city lights' last night.it's going
to be his next release!i dared not burst his bubble, so i acted
surprised and congratulated him since he held the publishing rights to
the song.

i was still bouncing off the ceiling when in less than an hour the phone
rang for the third time.this time it was the head of tree publishing
company in nashville, buddy killen.Roger had become a staff writer at
tree and told buddy he knew this young disc jockey down in georgia who
also wrote some pretty fair songs. buddy had no financial interest in
city lights but called with the news anyway.congratulations, he said. i
acted surprised again and answered what for?as if i didn't know.

Ray price cut city lights' last night, haven't you heard?it'll be his
next release.let me hear any new songs you might be writing, ok?

i assured him that i would.wow!tree publishing wanting to hear my new
songs!what was going to happen next?

it didn't take me long to find out.about two o'clock that same afternoon
the late jim denny, former manager of the grand ole opry and president
of the giant cedarwood publishing company in nashville, called.in his
calm, understated yet very authoritative voice he said, bill, i think
i've got something you'll be interested in.

what's that, mister denny?i asked.

well, if you'll sign a contract to write all your future songs
exclusively for cedarwood publishing, i think i might be able to talk
Ray price into recording city lights.'

welcome to show business, peanut butter bill!

it was approaching midafternoon when i realized that in spite of a 111
had already been through on this Sunday, my most important and most
difficult task still lay ahead.i had to go home and tell my young son
the frightful truth about what had happened to his mother.

after i was convinced that becky was in good hands and there was nothing
more i could do by staying at the hospital, i asked my brother- in-law
to drive me to the condominium.all the way there i kept rehearsing over
and over in my mind the things i knew i had to say to jamey.and i
thought how inconceivable it was that as little as seven years ago i had
been resigned to the fact that there was never even going to be a james
william anderson the fourth.

Since my dad was an only child and i had been the last male born onto
our particular branch of the anderson family tree, i had begun to
assume, after having had two daughters by my first wife and seven
childless years with my second, that the name would die when i did.

by nineteen 77 becky and i had become rather independent and set in our
ways.we enjoyed our freedom-coming, going and doing as we pleased. from
time to time we had talked about maybe having a child someday, but we'd
usually end up laughing and saying we were getting too old for that kind
of foolishness.

truthfully, what we had become was not old but selfish.when i had to go
on the road and becky wanted to go along, she went. there was nothing at
home to tie her down.neither of us ever considered subjecting her to the
day-after-day grind of the grueling one-night stands, but when a trip to
europe or a caribbean cruise or even a tour along the west coast or a
business trip to new york city came up, we always knew we were free to
turn it into something we could share and enjoy together.and we often
did.

at the same time i knew becky would make a terrific mother.i had seen
her interact with terri and jenni, i had seen her with her various
nieces and nephews, and she was marvelous.it was always obvious to me
that she genuinely liked kids, she related well to them, and they liked
her.i used to think what a shame it was that she didn't have any
children of her own, but every time i'd mention it she'd say, well, why
don't you try staying home off the road more often?and we'd laugh some
more.

i did stay home on the afternoon of my fortieth birthday, and it turned
into a unique surprise celebration.becky had decided to give a small
party for me and had invited the members of my band, my office
employees, and a few close neighbors and friends to come by our house on
old hickory lake and share some birthday cake and coffee with us.it was
a very warm but low-key, unpretentious gathering.i listened to all the
lordy, lordy, bill's turned forty jokes, and somewhere around five
o'clock everybody congregated in the living room and i began to open a
few small gifts and some birthday cards.

when i picked up the stack of cards from the table and first shuffled
through them, i noticed a white envelope with the word dad written on
the front in a handwriting that seemed familiar.my daughters weren't
there, and i casually thought, well, becky's done it again.She's very
thoughtfully included my girls in my birthday party and they've sent me
a card.i put the unopened envelope back down in the middle of the stack
and without giving it another thought began opening the cards that were
on top.

Some nine or ten opened cards later, the dad card surfaced again.well,
i'll open it even though they're not here, i thought, knowing i'd
probably see them later that night.i tore open the flap.on the front of
the card was inscribed a plaintive life begins at forty.i smiled and
opened the cover.i was surprised when i saw no printed inscription at
all.i lowered my eyes to a few handwritten words:

dear dad:

as the saying goes, life begins at 40 and i am beginning for you.

i don't know if i'm your son or your daughter but .

my eyes came to a screeching halt.wait a minute, i thought. what does
that mean i don't know if i'm your son or your daughter'?of course
they're my daught ...Suddenly it hit me. no wonder the handwriting had
looked familiar.i had seen it a thousand times.but it wasn't either of
my daughter's handwriting at all.it was becky's.

i looked across the room to where becky was seated on a footstool. there
was a smile on her face as wide as the channel of the lake that flowed
gently outside our window.and just above the warm, loving smile a lone,
solitary tear slowly appeared and began to trickle down her left cheek.

nobody else in the room had even noticed.they'd been busy talking and
eating, and they didn't pay any attention at first when i jumped up, ran
across the room, and squeezed becky so hard she had to beg me to quit.
careful, you'll hurt the baby!' she exclaimed, and the two of us stood
there laughing and crying all at the same time.

by this time heads were starting to turn all around the room.:1:
everybody knew something was going on, but nobody had any ideas what it
was.i raised my hands and asked them for their undivided attention.i
have a very important announcement to make, i said.the room grew quiet.

i want to tell you about a very special birthday present, i began, my
arm wrapped firmly around becky's waist and a smile creasing my face
from ear to ear.this pretty lady here just informed me that she found
out this very morning that she and i are going to have a baby!'

i sure hope it's a boy!' becky said to me at least a thousand times over
the next eight months.i've asked god to give me a healthy little bill,
she'd say, and to please forgive me for asking for a boy.but i want him
to be just like you.

don't pray for something you don't really want, i'd reply. god does
answer prayer, you know.are you sure you could handle two of us around
here?She'd assure me that she could and we'd both laugh.

to be truthful, i wanted a son, too ...i really wanted a son but i asked
god only please to make the pregnancy easy on becky and to give us a
normal, healthy child.

we knew from the beginning that the baby would be born sometime toward
the end of june or in early july.as the time began to draw closer,
however, our whole family began asking the question: is there any chance
the baby might be born on june 25th?we all began crossing our fingers
and hoping there was.for we all knew that his or her entry into the
world would then come on a very special day, the sixty-seventh birthday
of james william anderson, jr., my father and grandfather to our child.

it seemed too much to ask, too much even to hope for.but when the baby
hadn't come by the 22nd...didn't come on the 23rd...or the 24th..- and
when becky woke up with funny little pains in her stomach on Sunday
morning the 25th, i knew we were being blessed in a very special
way.little james william anderson iv took his very first breath at 6:22
pm.that afternoon.

there had never been any question as to what his full name would be, and
we'd told everyone.great, my good friend george hamilton iv laughed one
night at the opry.when he grows up he can wear all my old stage coats
with the iv' on the pocket! but becky and i had decided we'd wait until
we actually saw our baby the first time before deciding whether we'd
call him jamey or andy, the nickname a lot of people named anderson end
up with. i never even gave a passing thought to saddling him with billy
or bill.

he looks like a jamey, becky said the first morning she held her newborn
son in her arms and fed him his bottle.i agreed, and jamey it was.

from the beginning it was obvious that our prayers for a healthy baby
had been answered.he had all his fingers and toes, a powerful set of
lungs that made everyone ask, are you sure this is really whisperin'
bill's son?and, for better or for worse, he came into this world with a
high, wide forehead, deep brown eyes, and a head full of dark brown
hair.becky got her wish.her son was the spitting image of his father.

on the afternoon he was born, i told becky's doctor, doctor joe michael
edwards, at the last possible minute that i had to go into the delivery
room with him and watch the birth of my child.i don't know what to do, i
confessed, cause i never went to any classes or anything.but i can't let
y'all go in there without me. you've got to let me go!

i must have played the role of Super-dad to the hilt because doctor
edwards looked at me for only a minute and relented.will you be calm and
promise not to pass out?he asked.we'll have enough to do in there with
becky and the baby without having to stop and scrape you up off the
floor.i promised him i'd stay cool as the center seed of a cucumber.he
smiled and handed me a mask and a gown.go wash your hands, he said, and
come on.i'll trust you.

i wouldn't take anything now for the experience of having gone into that
delivery room and having seen my son being born.when i heard his first
little cry and realized that i truly did have a son, a newborn child to
carry on our anderson family name, it was one of the most thrilling and
emotional moments of my life.

here, you carry him down to the nursery, the nurse said to me as soon as
jamey was bathe and wrapped in his first blanket.and she turned to hand
me the warm, fragile little body that i already loved so much.

i didn't realize parents were allowed to hold their babies so soon.
won't he get germs or something?i asked nervously.

well, try not to sneeze directly in his face, she deadpanned.i reached
out and took my son into my arms for the very first time.

it was only a hundred feet or so from the delivery room to the nursery,
but i decided it would be as good a place as any for young james william
iv and ole james william iii to have their first man-to-man talk.he lay
quiet and still in my arms as i carried him gingerly down the hallway
and talked to him about all the things we would someday do together.[i!

little man, we'll go to baseball games, i said, looking at his tiny
fingers curve and wondering how and with which hand he'd grip a curve
ball, and we'll play music and we'll sing together and we'll go camping
and fishing, and you'll be the most wonderful son and i'll try hard to
be the best daddy in the world.and i squeezed him as tightly as i dared.

at that very special and joyous moment, i decided there should be a law
prohibiting people from having children before reaching the age of
forty.i was the happiest man in the world.this nightmare of a Sunday
afternoon that i was now living was a million light years away.

i'll never forget the surprised look on jamey's face when he opened the
door to the condo and there i stood.what are you doing home, dad?he
asked innocently.you aren't supposed to be back until monday.

i need to talk to you about that, son, i said, stepping inside and
placing my hand on his little shoulder.

mom's in a meeting, he exclaimed almost gleefully.She'll be back in a
little while.

i need to talk with you about that, too.we were interrupted by the
ringing of the telephone.

boy, the phone sure has rung a lot today, he said.we've really had a lot
of calls.

come on upstairs with me, son, i said as calmly as i could. pam can get
the phone.i need to talk with you.

we climbed the stairs holding hands.at the landing we turned left and
walked into his mother's bedroom and sat close to each other on the edge
of her king-sized bed.i wrapped my arm around his little shoulders and
began to talk.

Slowly and deliberately i told him everything i knew.how his mom had
been on the way home from the movie late last night, alone in her car,
and how a man who had been drinking too much alcohol had gone to sleep
at the wheel and hit her car head-on with his pickup truck.there had
been a service rack mounted over the bed of the truck, and on that rack
the driver had been carrying some long steel pipes.i told him that when
the truck crashed into the car, the pipes had evidently shifted forward,
torn through the windshield of mom's car, and crushed the top of the car
much like he might crush a paper sack before he threw it in the
trash.his mother's face and head had been hit by the pipes and cut open
by the glass, and she was hurt awfully bad.

and, yes, mom had on her seat belt.and, yes, she tried not to hit the
man.She'd seen him coming down the wrong side of the road and had even
pulled her car all the way off the road and up against a fence.She was
nearly stopped when he ran into her.and i told him how a policeman who
was off duty and on his way home had been following the truck and saw
the entire accident.he called for help on his police radio, and he held
mom's hand until the ambulance came and the fire trucks came and the men
could help get mom out of the car and to the hospital.

i was careful from the very first word to never say mom was or wasn't
going to be well.or come home.that she was or wasn t going to die. i
didn't want him ever to come back at me and say his dad told him a lie.
and i was very careful to conduct the entire conversation sitting close
to him with my arm tightly around his shoulder.i wanted him to feel
secure even though i was not.i wanted him to feel safe although i was
fearful.and most of all, i wanted him to feel loved.

i had some experience to draw from.becky and i had discussed as recently
as a few weeks earlier how if anything were ever to happen to either of
us, jamey should be our first concern.She knew from her own childhood
how important that could be.her father had been killed by a train when
she was eight years old.

nobody had ever told her what happened.all she knew was that her daddy,
whom she idolized and dearly loved, had gone to the ice house in
marshville, north carolina, early one morning to take some meat out of a
frozen food locker to bring home for breakfast.She was still asleep when
the northbound Seaboard Railway passenger train crashed into the side of
her father's black chevrolet less than a hundred yards from her bedroom
window. She awoke to the commotion of friends and relatives all running
around in a state of confusion, and she remembers someone saying the
baby was too young to be around all this.She was immediately whisked
away.nobody ever said to her, becky, your father is dead. nobody ever
held her close and comforted her or helped love her through this
shocking tragedy.perhaps it was because as the youngest of four
daughters nobody thought she was old enough to feel the pain or
understand the situation like the older girls. maybe it was because the
family doctor had come quickly and given her mother a strong sedative,
and through the cloud of her own pain she hadn't been physically able to
look after the children adequately.i choose to think somebody just
didn't understand because what they did to her has haunted her all her
life.She didn't even go to her father's funeral, and not until several
years after we were married was she able to seek professional help and
come to grips with her constant nightmares surrounding his tragic death.

for that reason, we had prepared ourselves for the eventuality that i
was now facing.my primary concern was jamey.i tried to explain to him
everything i knew at the time as fully and completely as i could and in
language i felt he could understand.i didn't try to mask my emotions
either.i figured if he saw my hurt he'd know not to be afraid or ashamed
of his own.he listened attentively to alll had to say but showed no
emotion at all.when i finished i said, do you have any questions?

yes, he said.where is that man who hit my mom?

i answered that i didn't know for sure.

probably out hurting someone else, he said with a tone of both anger and
disgust in his voice.then, before i could respond, he said something
i'll remember as long as i live.

i guess there's good news and bad news, dad, he said.

how's that, son?i replied.

well, the bad news is that mom's in the hospital.but the good news is
that you and i will be spending a lot more time together.

i pulled him closer and held him tightly.neither one of us knew at that
moment just how right he was. almost everything that was happening
musically in the late fifties. it was a traditional, three-chord, cryin'
country song, and it stood out like a sore thumb among the likes of wake
up, little Suzie, whole lotta Shakin' goin' on, and great balls of fire
on the country radio airwaves.it was almost a throwback to another era.
maybe that's why it was such a smash.the public was obviously ready for
a song of that type.

buddy killen, true to his word, did want to hear some more of my
material, and i began making frequent trips to nashville to show him the
new songs i was working on.i was falling in and out of love on a daily
basis surrounded by all the beautiful coeds at georgia and the sweet,
innocent little country girls from commerce, and i never seemed to be
lacking for new ideas for songs. Some were happy, some were sad, but
nearly all my early writings had two things in common: they were based
on my true experiences, and most of them were written to the exact same
melody.

anderson, everything you write sounds like you stole the tune from the
baptist hymnal, killen would say, and he'd sit patiently with me for
hours, teaching me the art of crafting a song.he'd show me how one line
had to build off the line in front of it and how a writer had to
construct a song to reach a certain climax at a certain point.mostly,
though, he worked with me on my melodies. the lyrics always seemed to
come easier to me, and i'd try to let the lyric suggest a melody.in
other words, if i were writing a happy song, i'd try to come up with a
happy sounding melody.the same would be true in reverse if i were
writing a sad song.but i wasn't as creative melodically as i was
lyrically.

i signed an exclusive songwriter's contract with tree publishing
company, and buddy and i became not only business associates but close
personal friends as well.i confided in him one morning about the lastest
catastrophe in my love life, and before the day was over he and i had
collaborated to write i may never get to heaven, a heartfelt ballad
everybody from don gibson to b.j. thomas to aretha franklin would record
before conway twitty would finally take it to number one nearly twenty
years later.

and it was buddy killen who in the late summer of nineteen 58 asked owen
bradley if he'd come by the tree offices one afternoon and listen to
some songs written by the skinny disc jockey from commerce, georgia, who
wrote city lights and, perhaps, to consider this dj as a recording
artist for decca Records where mister bradley had recently been named
chief of nashville operations.

a great musician and record producer like owen bradley didn't need to
make house calls, but out of respect for buddy he came. and i sang, just
me and my guitar, and he listened.after about a half-hour or so owen
said, well, son, you're not the greatest singer i've ever heard, but you
sure do write some terrific songs. and your voice is different ... you
certainly don't sound like anybody else i've ever heard.if you'll keep
writing songs as good as these and if you'd like to try, i think we
might be able to make some hit records together.and as simple as that i
became bill anderson, decca recording artist.

owen and buddy told me my job was to get busy writing some new songs for
my first recording session; they'd take care of getting all the legal
documents drawn up and the paperwork in place.i went back to commerce
and back to school.once or twice i returned to the roof of the little
hotel and tried to write, but lightning never struck there again.i did
write some new songs but in other places.in a few weeks my recording
contract arrived in the mail.i didn't even read it.i was so excited i
just signed it and sent it back before anybody had a chance to change
their mind.

i flew to nashville and cut my first record for decca in owen bradley's
legendary quonset-hut studio on 16th avenue South in august nineteen 58
and before winter quarter began at school i had become the only student
in the history of the university of georgia to have a record in
billboard magazine's country music charts. heck, i was probably the only
student in university of georgia history who had ever heard of the
billboard magazine country music charts!

Recording in nashville with owen bradley for decca Records was a far cry
from recording in an empty tv studio in georgia with a bunch of cronies
and pals for tnt.i was scared half to death just looking around the room
and seeing musical legends like buddy emmons poised behind his steel
guitar, tommy jackson with his fiddle, hank Sugarfoot garland and grady
martin on their guitars, bob moore on base, and buddy harmon on the
drumiss these were the cream of the crop, the pickers whose music i
played every day on my radio show back home, and now they were in the
studio waiting to play behind me.

and the equipment!i had never even seen a gold-plated german-made
telefunken microphone before, much less ever sung into one.and the first
time i heard my voice played back on the huge studio speakers, in
stereo, no less, it was almost more than i could comprehend.

owen didn't hire a vocal group to sing in the background on my first
session, and i was a bit disappointed about that.groups like the
jordanaires and the anita kerr Singers had become the rage in nashville,
especially on records aimed at the new, lucrative crossover market, and
i had had just enough local success with my rockabilly no Song to Sing
to have my heart set on recording for decca in a similar style.

no, we're going to record you straight country, owen said when the
subject came up a few days before the session.he said it in such a
decisive, forthright manner that i knew there was no room for argument.
i'm glad now he never allowed me to voice my opinion.what if i had been
able to change his mind?i might be a washed-up rock n' roller today.

we cut two sides on my first session, and both were songs that i had
written.one was a straight-ahead country ballad very much in the vein of
city lights called that's what it's like to be lonesome.the flip side
was a wordy, more up-tempo love song entitled the thrill of my
life.instead of ooohs and aaahs and doo-wops in the background, though,
owen had buddy killen and a newcomer to nashville named donny young
blend with me on some high-lonesome three-part harmony on the
choruses.in later years donny young was to achieve a certain degree of
fame and notoriety under the name of johnny paycheck, but on this night,
for my first recording session, he was my tenor singer.

as we all gathered around the giant stereo speakers in the control room
and listened to the playbacks when the session was over, everybody felt
that's what it's like to be lonesome had turned out to be by far the
stronger of the two sides we'd cut.owen said it sounded like a hit to
him and that he'd ask decca to release and promote that side.he turned
out to be right.the record came out in late autumn and broke into the
national charts on christmas day.by february it had climbed as high as
number 15.but, unbeknownst to me, Ray price was once again somewhere
listening to his radio, heard my new song, and recorded his own cover
version to release as a follow-up to city lights.as soon as Ray's record
reached the radio stations, most of the disc jockies quit playing my cut
and started playing his.before it was over, Ray price had his second
consecutive number one hit with a bill anderson song.

a lot of people said to me, gee, that's too bad, when i told them Ray
had covered my record, but i didn't feel that way about it at all.
actually, it put me in a no-lose situation.i wrote the song, and i knew
i'd be getting much larger writer's royalties as a result of his record
than i would have off my record alone.he was, after all, an established
star who had just spent over half a year in the charts with a number one
record.i'd be getting paid two or three cents for every copy of the
record he sold whether it was on a single or in an album. in addition,
i'd be receiving another few pennies from broadcast music, inc., every
time either my record or his was played on the radio or performed on
television.it might not sound like much, but i knew a few cents here and
a few cents there could eventually add up.besides, my own record had
already opened a lot of doors for me prior to Ray's cover.one of those
doors came in the form of a phone call from a small booking agency in
nashville one day early in march.

bill, i just wondered if you'd like to go along on a little personal
appearance tour i'm putting together for george morgan in a few weeks?
the voice on the other end of the line asked.we're going out west for
about twenty-one days, and your record's done real well out there, and
we'd like to have you go with us.whatta you say?

i was speech less.me, a student at the university of georgia, a disc
jockey in commerce, georgia, going on tour with grand ole opry star
george morgan!i was just a greenhorn kid who had never been anywhere
outside of five southeastern states.i nearly jumped through the roof.
would i like to go on a tour?does a fivestring banjo have strings?

i told the agent heck, yes, i'd love to go.but as soon as i hung up the
phone, i started wondering just how i was going to manage. i could take
a leave of absence from the radio station, i knew that, but i had no
idea how to get out of school.finally i just i aid to heck with it, this
is a once in a lifetime opportunity and i'm not about to pass it up.i've
never regretted it either, even though by going on the tour i set my
college graduation back a few months and ended up not earning the
u.S.army officers commission i was only a few weeks away from receiving
through the Rotc it program at georgia.i was pickin' and grinnin'
somewhere the day they gave the final military Science exams, and i
learned shortly thereafter that the army is a bit fussy about handing
out officer's commissions to young men who'd rather tote a guitar than
tote a rifle.

my dad nearly had a coronary, though, because he just knew i'd end up as
one of uncle Sam's buck privates someday.i never did. in fact, i was
never called into the service at all, but even if i had been i honestly
don't think i'd have cared.i figure i learned things out on the road on
that trip that i couldn't have learned staying home and studying and
taking exams for the rest of my life. besides, to this day, the memory
of that first tour serves as a constant reminder of how bad things can
get in this business, and it inspires me every day to try and never let
my career deteriorate to the point that i might have to go through
something like that again.

the cast of the show consisted of longtime opry great george candy
kisses morgan as the headline attraction and featured his all-star band
of little Roy wiggins (legendary from his days with eddy arnold) on
steel guitar, the incomparable dale potter on fiddle, Sammy pruitt (one
of hank williams's original drifting cowboys) on lead guitar, veteran
bill Slayman on base, ken loosh marvin on rhythm guitar and as master of
ceremonies, and a seventeen-year-old rookie named willie ackerman (later
of hee-haw fame) on drumiss this group was hired not only to play behind
morgan but to play the music on my songs as well.they also were asked to
back up two other young male singers and one female singer who had been
invited to join the tour.

each of the three young men on tour had had only one 45-rpm single
record released at that time, none had ever recorded an album, and i
dare say not one of the three attracted one paying customer to a single
show.today, however, they just might.their names were Roger miller,
donny young (johnny paycheck), and bill anderson.the obligatory female
was a tall, pretty lady named wanda jones, who never quite made it in
the music business.

morgan was one of the finest, purest singers country music has ever
produced, but unfortunately had not had a big hit record in quite some
time.the tour opened at a club called Rosa's in fort worth, texas, then
swung out through west texas into places like Sweetwater and San angelo,
on to hobbs and alamogordo, new mexico, phoenix, tucson, prescott, and
flagstaff, arizona, before mercifully ending some twenty-two days later
back at cain's academy ballroom in tulsa, oklahoma.in three grueling
weeks, we hadn't drawn, as loosh put it, enough people to flag a hand
car.and there's nothing worse, i found out, for your ego or your
pocketbook than to be thousands of miles away from home singing your
heart out in an empty club, auditorium, or arena night after night after
night.

but crowds or no, i was having a ball.every day was full of new
excitement, new adventure, and i came to respect george morgan to the
point of almost idolizing him.i'd stand in the wings during the shows
and watch his every move, watch the way he could touch whatever audience
we might have with just the right combination of seriousness and humor,
and i'd yearn for the ability to be able to do the same.i was so in awe
that i never spoke to him much, but he was watching me.one night after a
show in a nearly empty roller rink in alamogordo, new mexico, he came up
to me and in his most sincere manner put his arm around my shoulder.

anderson, he began earnestly, i've been watching you.i've been watching
all you guys, in fact, and i've decided you are going to be the biggest
star of all three.

i beamed.i glowed.i swelled with pride.thank you, sir, i managed to
whisper.

do you know why you are going to be a big star?he asked.

no sir, why?

because you are different.you may be, in fact, the only guy in the
history of country music who can hit an e-chord on his guitar and come
in singing in the key of c!

i was crushed for days.

a lecture in intonation, a big dose of united States geography, and the
knowledge of how to survive on two cheap, thin hamburgers a day weren't
the only lessons that i learned from my first tour.i also got exposed to
a few things my somewhat sheltered life had thus far protected me
from.in particular, those staples of the road: pills, booze, and women.

we weren't fifty miles west of nashville riding in miller's blue
nineteen 54 cadillac with the clear plastic seatcovers and the four
recap tires when one of the band members turned to me, opened his hand
to reveal a half-dozen or so little yellow pills, and said, wanta
bennie?

So this was what they looked like!benzadrine, i think, was their proper
name, and i knew musicians often took them to offset the rigors of
travel and the pressures of the road.i also knew they could keep you
awake for days at a time.i'd never taken one, and just the thought
frightened me.what if i liked them?what if i never wanted to go to sleep
again?what would my conservative methodist mother say?So i politely
declined.to this day i've never taken an upper, although miller swears
that one night when he and i were en route to a show in florida, i took
a no-doz pill with a cup of coffee, got back in the car, rolled down the
window, beat out wild rhythms on the dashboard, and sang at the top of
my lungs all the way to panama city.if that's true, then i'm glad i
never tried anything stronger!

actually, i didn't need a thing on that first trip to keep me awake. the
thrill of being on the road, sitting in the back seat of that big blue
car, knowing i was heading for texas was all the upper i needed.

when the tour opened at Rosa's in fort worth, i found myself smack-dab
in the middle of a world that was as foreign to me as downtown moscow. i
wouldn't have admitted it at the time, but i had never actually been
inside a nightclub until that very moment. not only had i never
performed in one, i had never been in one, period.oh, i had played in a
few american legion halls and amvetS clubs back in georgia, but not in a
real, honest-togoodness texas-style honky- tonk.

i'm sure my naivete' showed in my performance, too.i wasn't used to
people drinking beer and dancing and hollering and carrying on while i
was trying to sing.and the people who came to Rosa's hadn't come for
prayer meeting.they said they liked our music, but i wasn't sure they
even heard any of it.when it got to be my turn onstage, i sang a couple
of songs and then tried telling a few jokes, but nobody paid any
attention.finally i decided to just shut up and sing.it took years for
me to adjust to the audiences in texas and some of the other
southwestern states because the biggest compliment they can pay an
artist there is not to applaud him but, rather, to like his music enough
to stop talking and get up and dance to it.

and then there was the drinking.liquor was something i'd never been
around much either.i'd seen and smelled lots of it when i'd been in
college, but drinking had never been a part of my family, and it seemed
to go against all my upbringing.but they drank lots of beer and booze in
Rosa's and in most all the other places we worked on that first tour. as
our crowds shrank and our expenses mounted, the liquor got to flowing
rather heavily among some of our cast members as well.i never was
tempted to join in, though.fact is, i was almost twenty-seven years old
before i ever let my hair down far enough even to taste beer, wine, or
hard liquor.

i'll never forget the first time i ordered a drink.i was in new york
city, working as part of a gigantic two-day country music spectacular at
madison Square garden.at the time, i don't think a larger country show
had ever played the big apple.it was an exciting time, and after the
Saturday night show my wife and i decided to go out to a nice restaurant
to celebrate.

we found a quiet, intimate spot with a small band playing softly in the
corner.the waiters were all dressed in tuxedoes, and the ifood coming
out of the kitchen smelled delicious.i was feeling great.i decided it
was time for the bashful kid from georgia to broaden his horizons a
bit.i signaled for the waiter, but when he got to our table i realized i
hadn't the foggiest idea of what to order or how to go about ordering
it.

uh, sir, you see, i've never ordered a drink before, i stammered, and i
don't really know what i want.we're here to celebrate, though, and .
..well, we'd just like something to relax. what do you suggest?

he looked at me with that sardonic new york look on his face and said,
why don't you try dancing?

i ended up ordering a whiskey sour and nursing it for three or four
hours.i wasn't much of a drinker then, and i've not become much of one
since.today i drink very little and never when i'm working.

texas dance halls, clubs, honky-tonks, skull-orchards, or whatever you
want to call them are not only loud and boisterous.they can also be the
smokiest places in the world.it can be awfully rough on a singer when
he's up on the bandstand inhaling all the fumes floating around
him.especially one like me who has never smoked himself.

cigarettes, like liquor, have just never been much of a temptation for
me.i tried them, like every kid does, when i was a teenager, but i never
liked them very much.i recall vividly the last time i ever lit one up.i
was fifteen or sixteen years old, about the age when a kid thinks he
knows everything, and i'd gone down to radio station weaS in decatur to
watch a disc jockey/recording artist named texas bill Strength do his
afternoon dj show.bill was quite well known in those days, particularly
in the South and Southwest.he'd made a few records for some of the major
labels, guested on the grand old opry a few times, and as such he had
become one of my heroes.for no real reason he had always been extremely
nice to me, inviting me to his home on several occasions, and always
letting me come out on stage and sing a couple of songs as a warm-up act
when he'd promote concerts by the major stars around the atlanta area.if
texas bill Strength had told me to jump off a cliff, i'd probably have
asked him which one?and done it.i looked up to him that much.

but ole texas bill, as i suspected then and confirmed in later years,
was quite a rounder.he smoked, he drank, he partied a lot, and he didn't
care who knew it.So when i walked into the radio station with a
cigarette in my hand this particular afternoon, i didn't think anything
about it.i was just doing something i'd seen texas bill do on many
occasions.

what are you doing with that cigarette, boy?he growled when i came into
the control room, where he was seated between the turntables spinning
the top country hits of the day.don't you want to be a singer when you
grow up?

yes sir, i answered timidly.

well, put that damn thing out and don't you ever let me catch you
smoking another one, you hear me?

but you smoke, i protested.

yeah, and you know what?i can't hit the high notes like i used to
either.and i cough a lot, sometimes right in the middle of a song. and
it i s cause i've messed up my throat with them [blankety-blanki
cigarettes.nobody ever told me like i'm telling you not to smoke.i wish
they had.now put it out!

i did, and i was never tempted to smoke again.

i once heard a major country music star tell a disc jockey, when
questioned on the air about his personal habits, i don't take pills, i
don't drink, i don't smoke, and three out of four ain't bad!i've always
assumed the fourth vice to which he could not claim abstinence was
women.

i'll admit i've always enjoyed the members of the opposite sex myself.
as the old stage gag goes, i've liked girls ever since i found out they
weren't boys!by the time of my first tour, i had dated quite a bit, gone
steady a few times, been engaged to be engaged once, whatever that is,
and had my heart broken on more than one occasion.

but at the same time, i was still quite naive where the ladies were
concerned.Remember, this was the late fifties and where i came from
girls didn't even call boys on the telephone.So the first time a sweet
young thing in skin-tight blue jeans and high-heeled cowgirl boots
waltzed her curvaceous little body up to me in one of the nightclubs
where we were working and said, dance with me!' i didn't know whether to
wind my watch or take a bubble bath. i'm not saying i didn't like it. i
just wasn't real sure how i was supposed to handle it.

Since then, i've learned a lot more about the kinds of women a singer
and/or musician meets when he's out on the road.i've found that they
don't all fit into the same category by any means.

i've already confessed to meeting the lady i'm married to backstage at a
concert, so obviously not every female who finds her way behind the
footlights is a warrior on a mission to attack and destroy the morals of
every young, virile guitar picker she runs into.country stars do have
their groupies, of course, who chase after their bodies just like their
well-publicized counterparts in the rock field (a creative country
singer, who shall remain anonymous, once nicknamed our groupies snuff
queens or diesel sniffers), but the majority of women i meet at our
shows are nice, decent, perfectly honorable ladies.they come in all
ages, shapes, and sizes, and most of them are just big country music
fans who want to get as close to their favorite stars as possible.they
seek out our dressing rooms loaded down with autograph books, polaroids
and/or instamatic cameras, and sometimes even an armful of fresh-baked
homemade cakes, cookies, and pies ...tributes to bestow upon the people
whose music is pleasing to them.

for some reason, most of my fans happen to be women.not the screaming,
fainting, throw-their-panties-on-the-stage type of women, but women just
the same.and, quite truthfully, i'd much rather sing my songs looking
into some lady's beautiful baby blues than at some truck driver's
six-day growth of beard!i'm proud to have a lot of male fans, too, and i
appreciate every one, but i guess my soft singing style just appeals
more to housewives than it does to construction workers.willie nelson
may have summed up how a lot of men feel about my singing when he told
phil donahue, they drink beer in texas louder than bill anderson sings!

most of the guys who do come to see my shows come to bring their ladies.
that's why i've always tried to have at least one goodlooking female on
stage with me on my tours.that way those men who may not be into my
music can at least have something pretty to look at and listen to while
they're there.

i'm not a sex symbol-never have been and never will be i ven though i've
had women tell me they think some of my soft spoken songs are sexy.i'm
glad they think so, but if you want the real truth, follow me into a
crowd sometime.in almost no time at all you'll see a slinky, sexy young
thing approach me with an autograph book in tow.invariably she'll smile
warmly and introduce herself to me, tossing her long hair back over her
shoulders.then she'll wiggle her trim little body in kind of a circular
motion as if she's trying to ease just a tiny bit deeper into her
clothes.this will be followed by the blinking of her dark eyelashes
right in my face and a soft voice cooing, oh, bill .. . may i please
have your autograph?and then just as my blood pressure and my
temperature start to rise and my pulse begins to quicken, she'll plead,
please, bill, it would mean so much.it's for my mother!

to say that my first tour was a financial disaster would be to say the
burning of atlanta was a nice little bonfire.i had been promised fifty
dollars per working day by the promoter, and out of that i was to pay my
share of a hotel room and buy all my own food.my transportation was to
be furnished.it wasn't much money, but for a kid who'd been used to
making fifty dollars a week as a disc jockey (in cash so that nobody in
the local bank could see my check and know how little i made), i thought
i'd struck gold. what the promoter didn't tell me or george morgan or
any of the others on the tour, however, was that he was depending
totally upon the gate receipts from the shows to pay the talent.he had
no cash reserves, and, as it turned out, most nights he didn't have any
money to pay us.

today, a booking agent would never allow his acts to leave town without
the promoter having put down a sizeable cash deposit for the tour, but
country music booking agents weren't nearly as sophisticated in those
days as they've become in recent years.too, in the years immediately
following the rock n' roll explosion, long country music tours just
weren't that easy to come by.it was almost a case of the artists taking
whatever they were offered, and once the promoter got the acts out on
the road, they were pretty much at his mercy.every day our promoter
would lie and tell us, boys, we've got a great advance sale building up
in the next town. hang in there with me one more day and everything will
be all right.and we'd eat another hamburger and keep heading west.

about two weeks into the tour, tired, broke, and hungry, we found
ourselves in tucson, arizona, without enough money even to buy
breakfast, much less a tank of gasoline to get us to our next gig a
couple of hundred miles north in prescott.it really looked like the end
of the line.to make matters worse for me, the night before i had walked
into the cold, cavernous dressing room backstage at a place called
tucson gardens, where we were performing, and been greeted by a letter
from the dean of the journalism school at the university of georgia.he
had written to tell me that he'd been trying to find me since the end of
the winter term. Somehow my credits had been added wrong, and while i
had been told i was going to graduate when i got home in june, in
reality i was still some six hours short of having earned the required
credits. not only were we broke, not only was i tired and hungry, but
now they were telling me that the college diploma i thought i had
coming, and which i always figured i could fall back on in the face of
disaster, was really not mine at all.i was still on cloud nine from
having been on the tour, but i was confused by some parts of big-time
show business.it made for a bittersweet time.

fortunately, things got better.before leaving nashville, Roger miller
had crammed a small record player into the trunk of his car saying, we
might want to listen to our records while we're gone. i had laughed.

the record player had never been out of the trunk until tucson. but
early that morning while we were all sitting in the hotel coffee shop
pondering our fate and slowly wilting from hunger, Roger hit upon the
solution.be right back, he announced and left the rest of us sitting in
a booth sipping ice water and stalling the waitress. in a few minutes he
returned, proudly waving fourteen crisp new one-dollar bills in the
air.eat up, guys, we're rich!he exclaimed. i hocked the record player!

we didn't know it at the time, but there actually would be a decent
crowd waiting to greet us that night in prescott.we'd still be cutting
it close, but by watching the nickels and dimes we'd be able to make it
back to nashville in just a few more days.a belly full of Rice krispies
and two cups of strong, hot coffee later, i put my college diploma way
back in the corner of my mind.i walked outside with my buddies, kicked
off my shoes in the front seat of the old cadillac, propped my feet up
on the dashboard, and rode off into the sunrise one more time, doing
something i've been doing all of my life... humming an old country song
and chasing a dream.

n a way i've always been thankful that my first tour turned out the way
it did, because as soon as we limped back into nashville riding on three
skin-slick recap tires and one patched up innertube, totally exhausted
and stone broke, i got myself back down to georgia and back into school.

i looked for the shortest summer school session i could find and located
one that lasted only five weeks at tiny oglethorpe university in north
atlanta.the credits i earned there could be transferred toward my degree
at georgia.i paid my tuition with my second royalty check from tnt music
for city lights, something like four hundred dollars.(my first royalty
check wouldn't have covered it.it was for exactly $2. 52.i never even
cashed it.i put it in a frame!) i had no intention of becoming a
full-time student again, but in order to get the few remaining credits i
needed for graduation, i knew i had to hit the books hard and heavy one
last time.i had seen first-hand that all that glitters in show business
is not gold, and i figured i was going to need all the formal education
i could get.the tour had given me a large dose of the informal kind.i
didn't tell anybody in nashville about it for a long time (for reasons
i'll discuss later), but i managed to graduate from college in august
nineteen 59.

while i was back in athens for the graduation exercises, my life took
another strange turn.i phoned the night i got to town to talk to my
buddy chuck goddard, only to have his wife, leeann, tell me that while
i'd been gone on tour she and chuck had separated and he had moved away.
She thought he was in Swainsboro working at the radio station.

but please come by while you're here, she said encouragingly. i'd love
to see you and, besides, bette's here.i know she'd like to see you too.

bette louise Rhodes was leeann's youngest sister from atlanta. chuck had
introduced us several years earlier on one of her weekend visits to
athens, hoping to spark a romance, i think, but i'd always considered
her just a friend.She was still in high school, for goodness sake, and i
was in college.i thought there was too big a gap between us.that is,
until i went to see leeann the night before graduation.

bette had grown up.She was in nurse's training at georgia baptist
hospital in atlanta, and suddenly we had a lot more to talk about than
we'd ever had before.we spent almost the entire rest of the night doing
just that, talking.after leeann had gone to bed and we'd emptied the
pantry of all the cookies we could find and drunk up all the cokes in
the house, we walked outside into the front yard, leaned up against my
car, and talked some more.i told her all about the tour i had been on
with george morgan, how much fun i'd had and how little money i'd made,
but how, in spite of that, just as soon as i got my diploma that next
morning i was going to move to nashville and try to get into the music
business full-time.i was sincere when i told her i hoped she'd write me
and stay in touch.She assured me that she would. Several dozen letters,
a couple of hundred phone calls, and four months later, bette Rhodes and
i got married.

it's easy to see now that we simply weren't old enough (she was nineteen
and i was all of twenty-two) and didn't know each other nearly well
enough to have taken such a big step.She was an attractive girl, tall,
brunette, a bit shy, and in spite of our brief courtship we made things
work pretty well for a while.we even became the parents of two beautiful
daughters, but bette and i came from backgrounds that were very
different.our expectations of life turned out to be quite different,
too, and we eventually grew to be two entirely different people from the
kids we were in nineteen 59. there's a line in an old country song that
says, we didn't grow together so we grew apart.that pretty accurately
describes what happened to us.

bette's father had been a city policeman in atlanta all of his adult
life.She grew up with a man-figure who left home at sixthirty in the
morning, worked eight hours at his job, came home at three-thirty in the
afternoon, didn't bring any of the problems of his job home with him,
and built barbeque pits and poured concrete patios for his family in his
spare time.a hillbilly singersongwriter doesn't exactly keep those kinds
of hours nor have the hands-on abilities of a cop.at least, this one
didn't.when we bought our first house, i had a hard time digging the
hole in the ground for our mailbox to sit in, and i nearly got an ulcer
trying to string a clothesline between two poles.

for a long time bette tried to understand me and my way of life, but i
think show business and its high-profile lifestyle confused her.it was
so different from anything she'd ever been around.i probably didn't help
a whole lot myself.i was so intense and so intent on making it big that
i know i often neglected to put my arms around her and guide her slowly
into this strange and foreign world as i should have.there were other
problems, of course, there always are, but had i not been cut out of
such ambitious cloth and had i realized that life moved at any speed
other than full open throttle, our marriage might have lasted a bit
longer than it did.bette and i began to drift apart around nineteen 64
we separated in nineteen 68 and a year later in june, nineteen 69 our
divorce became final.

fortunately, my career was headed in a more positive direction than my
personal life.i was living in nashville full-time, and the hit songs
were pouring off my pen: the tips of my fingers for me and Roy clark and
eddy arnold, Riverboat and face to the wall for faron young, i missed me
and losing your love for jim Reeves, happy birthday to me for hank
locklin, when two worlds collide for Roger miller, and in nineteen 61 a
hit of my very own called poe folks.i say of my very own because up to
that point it seemed like every time i wrote a song and recorded it
myself, a more well-known artist would cut a cover version of the same
song and theirs would become the better-selling record. owen bradley was
frustrated, saying, we're cutting the best and the most expensive demos
in town!

but nobody tried covering poe folks, thank goodness.for the first time a
song finally gave me some identity as a recording artist and not just as
a songwriter.and so many of the good things that have ultimately
happened to me in my life and my career started with poe folks.for one
thing, it was the song that led to my being invited to join the cast of
the grand ole opry.

i was guesting as an opening act on a big star-studded opry package in
panama city, florida, one Saturday night when poe folks was right at the
peak of its popularity.i didn't know it at the time, but the manager of
the opry, ott devine, was in town for a fishing trip in the gulf of
mexico, and he had heard about our show and decided to come in off the
water long enough to see us that night at the city auditorium.it was a
great night for me in that the audience wouldn't let me leave the stage.
i was called back time after time for just one more verse of poe folks'
before the crowd finally stopped applauding.mister devine saw it all and
evidently was impressed.he came backstage after the show to congratulate
me and to tell me i'd be hearing from him soon.i simply assumed he meant
he'd be calling and inviting me to do another guest appearance on the
opry, since he had already been quite generous in that regard for the
past several months.i thanked him but soon learned that i did not attach
nearly enough significance to his remark.

i was sitting at home a few weeks later watching the all-Star baseball
game on tv (they played them in the daytime back then) when the phone
rang.i almost didn't get up to answer it.who would have the nerve to
call in the middle of such an important event anyhow?i finally pulled
myself away from the game and caught the phone on the fourth or fifth
ring.

bill, this is ott devine, i can still hear him say.and without wasting
any time on pleasantries, he added, how would you like to become a
member of the grand ole opry?

me?a member of the opry?that was like asking me if i wanted to go to
heaven when i die!i mean, this was the same grand ole opry, wasn't it,
that my mother and daddy had brought me to nashville to see the summer
before my junior year in high school?the one where we had the seats
downstairs under the old confederate gallery balcony at the Ryman
auditorium and somebody upstairs spilled a soft drink on the floor and
it leaked down between the cracks and dripped all over mama's pretty new
dress? the same grand ole opry that i used to listen to down in georgia
by pinching the aerial on my little arvin radio and twisting and turning
the receiver until i could get the signal from wSm in nashville strong
enough to hear Red foley and hank williams and minnie pearl above the
static.did i want to become a part of that show?is a g-chord made with
three fingers?i hung up the phone and screamed loud enough to be heard
in downtown atlanta!

they made me the sixty-first member of the opry onstage at the historic
old Ryman a couple of Saturday nights later.there was no elaborate
ceremony, no coronation of sorts, just a simple introduction by host
billy grammer and a million butterflies in the pit of my stomach.i wore
my shiny purple western suit with the gold trim and the white snowflakes
all over the front and my white boots.i sang poe folks and the audience
called me back for an encore.i don't think i've ever experienced a
bigger thrill.unless it was the night in july, nineteen 86 when i
celebrated my twenty-fifth anniversary as a member of the opry cast.

you see, not just anybody can become a member of the grand ole opry.
it's nothing that can be achieved, nothing that can be earned.an artist
has to have had a certain amount of success in the country music field,
of course, even to be considered for membership, but that membership is
issued by invitation only.it does not automatically come with x-number
of hit records or x-amount of sold-out concerts.you must be invited to
join.that's part of what makes being an opry member something so very
special.

nobody ever forgets the first time they walk out onto the opry stage.
for me it happened almost five years before i became a member of the
cast, and on my first trip across those hallowed boards i didn't even
carry a guitar.i carried a camera.

my georgia buddy, chuck goddard, had been invited to come to nashville
as the guest of the folks at wSm Radio to spend a weekend serving as
their mister dj, uSa, an honor the station bestowed each week upon a
disc jockey somewhere out across the land who played country music
records on his station back home. at the time chuck played a lot of
country music on wmge in madison, and he was thrilled to death over the
prospect of plying his craft for a couple of hours on the 50000-watt,
clear-channel powerhouse in music city.but i told him the minute he
called and said he'd received the invitation that there was no way he'd
be going to nashville without me.i packed my bag on thursday after
school, drove to athens to meet him as soon as he got off the air, and
the two of us roared out of town at sundown heading for tennessee.

we were in the hallways of wSm before the early morning announcers even
logged in on friday.we had no idea what lay in store, but we quickly
learned that the station sure knew how to roll out the red carpet. chuck
was the one who was their special guest, of course, but they treated
both of us to a super weekend.

on friday night, he got to spin records and interview several country
music stars live over wSm.i stood over in the corner of the studio
completely awe-struck, listening, hanging on every word.Saturday evening
chuck was the special dinner guest of veteran opry announcer, grant
turner, at one of nashville's finest downtown restaurants.after dinner
grant presented him with a sterling silver medallion, engraved with the
date, the wSm insignia, the words mister dj, uSa, and chuck's name on
the back. but the biggest moment of all was yet to come.at ten-thirty
Saturday night at the grand ole opry itself, grant turner would
introduce chuck to the audience and invite him to walk out onto the opry
stage and say a few words.from the minute chuck found out that was going
to happen, he was a nervous wreck, but when the time actually rolled
around it was hard to tell who was more nervous, him or me.

here, willy, take my camera, he said to me hurriedly just seconds before
grant was to head for center stage to call his name. go out in the
audience and take my picture.i've got to have a picture of me onstage at
the grand ole opry.they'll never believe it back in madison!

i took the camera and started to walk toward the backstage exit and out
into the auditorium when grant grabbed me by the arm. you don't have to
go out there to take his picture, he said. here, follow me.and he
started walking out in front of the open curtain and onto the left-hand
side of the stage.

whoa ...i can't go out there, i protested.

why can't you?grant asked.Sure you can.i said it was all right.

but ...but that's the stage of the grand ole opry!i cried. i can't go
out there!'

grant didn't have time to stop and argue with me.the song preceding
chuck's introduction was almost over, and grant was about to take
charge.So instead of his trying to convince me any further, he simply
walked around behind my back and gave me a shove that literally pushed
me from the wings out onto the most special stage in all the world. then
he calmly walked to the microphone and introduced chuck.

i nearly broke my fingers trying to get the camera set and in focus to
take chuck's picture.i snapped it twice and took off running back behind
the curtain as fast as i could go, shaking like a leaf.never in my
wildest dreams had i ever imagined that i would someday walk out on the
stage of the grand ole opry.and i surely never thought after that night
that i'd ever go back out there again.

but i did.less than two years later, in fact, i was back, this time as
mister dj, uSa myself.the following year i made my first guest
appearance on the opry as a performer.four months later i was invited
back for my second visit, this time as the featured guest on the nbc
network portion of the opry that was broadcast on radio stations all
around the world.and now here i was just two short years after that
becoming a regular member of the opry cast.a little less than five years
from cameraman to star.don't tell me dreams don't come true!

the opry has provided me with some of the most memorable of all the
moments in my singing career.one night at the Ryman i was in the middle
of a song, went to take a deep breath, and a bug flew right into my
mouth and down my throat.i began coughing, then choking, struggling to
get my breath, and i know the audience must have thought i'd flipped my
wig, especially the radio audience who couldn't see any of what was
going on.one of the musicians from someone else's band was standing not
far behind me on stage and realized immediately what had happened. hey,
anderson, he called out, let the bug sing!

Standing ovations at the opry are about as rare as playboy bunnies at a
convent, but i've had a few and i'll never forget them. my first one
came one Saturday night at the Ryman when my mother was in the audience
and i did mama Sang a Song.i received several more when my record of
where have all our heroes gone?first came out.but the most memorable of
all the standing ovations i ever witnessed at the opry came not when i
was on the stage performing but when i was out front watching the show
from the audience.

it was in the spring of nineteen 74 and it was one of the most emotional
and historically significant weekends in the history of country music.
this was the time when the opry was about to leave its home of more than
thirty years at the Ryman auditorium and move across the cumberland
River into the sparkling new facilities of opryland uSa.

it was a move that had to be made.the Ryman, an old gospel tabernacle
built in the late 1800s by a former riverboat captain named Sam Ryman,
had grown too tired, too worn to keep up with the music industry's
burgeoning growth and its impending charge into the last quarter of the
twentieth century.for one thing, the old building could be adapted for
television only very painfully.the wiring was antiquated, the production
space backstage was severely limited, and there was no air conditioning
whatsoever to offset the heat from both the sweltering tennessee summers
and the searing tv lights.due to the age and the location of the
building in downtown nashville, it could be neither modified or
expanded.there was virtually no convenient parking for the performers or
the fans, the area immediately surrounding the Ryman was rapidly
becoming overrun with seedy bars, strip joints, and adult book stores,
and with country music gaining acceptance and respectability on an
ever-widening front, its vanguard show had to keep pace.So on friday
night, march 15nineteen 74 we stood on stage, all holding hands, and
sang will the circle be unbroken?as the tattered old curtain came
together for the final time in the building that had come to be known as
the mother church of country music.the following night we stood proudly
but misty-eyed as Roy acuff sang the wabash cannonball and the rich
velvet curtain rose high into the rafters above the stage for the first
time in the glistening new grand ole opry house just a few miles north
at opryland.as a symbol of the circle remaining truly unbroken and as an
assurance that the opry would never lose touch with its past, a large
circle of wood had been cut out of the old Ryman stage and implanted
into the center of the new stage at the very spot where the stars would
stand to perform.

there has never been a night at the opry filled with quite as much
electricity as opening night at the new opry house.all the regular
members of the cast were there, dignitaries and vips came from
everywhere, even president and missis nixon flew down from washington
for the festivities.i was so excited i forgot for a moment that i was
one of the stars of the evening.all i wanted to be was a fan.

i was scheduled to be the second person to sing on the new stage, but i
didn't want to wait my turn standing in the wings.i wanted to see and
hear the opening song and the inaugural ceremonies just like the folks
out in the audience.So i left my comfortable perch backstage and made my
way out into the crowd.i still get goose bumps when i think about what i
saw.

the auditorium was packed.there was a pulsating feeling in the air, an
excitement i had never felt before, and when the house lights dimmed and
the first strains of music began to filter down from the magnificent
cluster of speakers hanging high above the stage, forty-four hundred
people rose as one and began applauding ù ..softly at first, then
louder, and then louder.and i stood right out there among them and
applauded just as loud as anyone.

but the first few notes of the music we heard were not being played live
on the stage.a large, thin white scrim had been hung like a movie screen
down across the front of the stage, and a movie projector out in the
house was flashing old black-and-white motion pictures of a young Roy
acuff and his Smoky mountain boys off it. they were playing and singing
the wabash cannonball in a scene from a movie they had made in hollywood
back in the early forties.the opry stage itself was totally quiet and
completely dark.

and then slowly but surely a few beams of light began to appear behind
the scrim.faint at first but growing brighter ...then brighter. and the
strains of the recorded music began gently to fade ... fading ...fading
...as the first notes of live music started to flow, rising softly at
first, then louder, then louder.the same song, the same key, the same
singer.even many of the same musicians.

and the scrim began slowly to rise.the Roy acuff of the forties, dressed
in a plaid shirt and overalls, began to disappear and the Roy acuff of
the seventies, white-haired, distinguished, dressed in a bright yellow
sport coat and tie, strode to center stage and took over right where his
image on the screen had left off.i'll never forget that moment as long
as i live.i laughed and i cried. mostly i just stood there and cheered.

but i had a song to sing.i stopped applauding and took off running as
fast as i could from my spot out in the audience up through the
backstage door and into the wings.i had only a minute to catch my breath
before they introduced me.when my name was called, i bounded out into
the spotlight and headed straight for the old Ryman circle. Somehow i
felt that if i could just make it to there, i could relax. i'd be home.

i welcomed the crowd and told them i wanted to sing poe folks because
that was the song that had been responsible for my being on the opry in
the first place.i sang it and received a warm round of applause.a short
while later i came back onstage again and stood with the rest of the
cast as we watched mister nixon yo-yo with Roy acuff and joke with him
and talk and get caught up in the spirit of this momentous occasion.
then i joined in with everybody else and sang along as the president
played the piano and led everyone in singing god bless americeigh my
goose bumps were starting to get goose bumps!

the great ernest tubb, who had been an opry member since the early
forties, was standing next to me onstage, and it suddenly struck me to
turn to him and ask him a question.

ernest, did you ever dream back in those early days that the president
of the united States would someday come to the grand ole opry?

he thought for a minute.no, i didn't, he replied softly, and i'm glad
he's here.but to tell the truth, i wish it had been another president.

every interview any of us granted to the media for at least a year after
that night included the question, how do you like the new opry house
compared to the Ryman?most of the reporters asked it in such a way as to
imply that they preferred the older setting. my answer was always the
same: if you'd ever been a member of the opry on a fourth of july night,
tried to find a place near the Ryman to park your car, fought your way
through the thousands of people lined up on the sidewalks trying to beg,
borrow, or steal a ticket to the show, then once inside tried to locate
even a corner where you could change into your stage clothes, rehearse a
song with your band, and at the same time not die from the heat and
humidity, you'd never have asked that question.i have many happy
memories of our days and nights at the Ryman, but i wouldn't want us to
have to go back.it's like dolly parton's song about the good ole days
when times were bad.i've never taken an official poll, of course, but i
would venture to say that ninety-nine percent of the other opry
performers wouldn't want to go back either.

i've heard people say in recent years, particularly managers and agents
representing some of the industry's younger performers, that the opry
doesn't help an artist's career in today's country music market.it
bothers me to hear things like that.the newer artists are the future of
this business, and i want every one of them to love the opry as much as
i do, to respect what it is and what it has done for the music industry
they represent.and i want every one of them to want someday to be a part
of it just as much as i did.

it's true that the opry doesn't have the impact on country music radio
and country music record sales that it once had, for there was a time
back in the forties and fifties when an artist could sing a new song on
the opry on Saturday night and their recording of that song would be on
the airwaves of every radio station and in the bins of every mom-and-pop
record shop in america by monday morning.that's not true today.but the
opry can be very important to an artist in many other ways.

first, discounting the value of the radio and television exposure for a
minute, an artist can appear on the opry for one week during the summer
and perform live for over thirty-five thousand people from all over the
world!the opry house seats over forty-four hundred people, and they fill
it eight times (a tuesday matinee, a thursday matinee, two friday night
shows, a Saturday matinee, two Saturday night shows, and a Sunday
matinee) every weekend from memorial day to labor day.there aren't many
country artists out on tour playing to as many as thirty-five thousand
people a week!

Second, millions of people still stay home to watch and listen to the
grand ole opry.currently, it's broadcast in its entirety live over wSm,
whose clear-channel signal blankets north america, and over sister
station wky in oklahoma city.in addition, the nashville network sends a
half-hour segment each Saturday night into more than forty million
additional homes via cable television. when a performer walks onto the
opry stage, it's staggering to think of both the number and the scope of
the people he's reaching.

i'm ashamed to admit it, but there were times earlier in my career when
i used to wonder if anybody was listening to the opry anymore myself,
only to go out on tour somewhere and have dozens of people come up to me
at a concert and tell me the only way they knew i was coming to their
hometown was because they'd heard me announce it on the opry.Say
something stupid on the opry (like i did one night not long ago when i
was hosting a portion of the show sponsored by beechnut chewing tobacco
and i announced, we'll be right back after this word from Red man!) and
see how quickly your mailbox fills up.the listeners are still out there,
believe me.

Sure, the opry is yesterday ...that's part of its charm.it's a
reflection and a reminder of a simpler, easier day and time.the opry is
also family.it's home.it's a place to come back to, a place to hang your
hat, visit with old friends, sing a few songs, have a few laughs, and
relax from the pressures of the business.besides, the opry looks after
its own.

the i i day before thanksgiving following becky's accident, i was at
home with her and jamey at the condo when the doorbell rang. i answered
it and there stood a messenger from the opry holding in his arms a fully
cooked turkey dinner, complete with all the trimmings, for me and my
family.up to that point i hadn't even considered what we might have for
thanksgiving dinner, but it wouldn't have been much.on top of the turkey
was a small card.i opened it and read:

happy thanksgiving from your friends at the grand ole opry.

me ever leave the opry?they'll have to run me off!

a few months after having had the hit record poe folks and having joined
the grand ole opry, the biggest things of all began happening in my
career.in early nineteen 62 i wrote and recorded a semiautobiographical
recitation (the first of many talking songs i'd be doing over the years)
called mama Sang a Song, and it surpassed anything i had ever done,
climbing all the way up to the top of the national country charts.it was
my very first number one record.it was such a smash hit that it even
entered the pop charts, not only my version but a cover version by jazz
legend Stan kenton (he might have been a great bandleader, but he did a
lousy country recitation) and later by walter brennan, who put all the
emotion and feeling into the song you d expect from an actor of his
stature. there were several weeks when all three of our records were
high in the pop music charts despite the song's heavy religious
overtones.i didn't know it at the time, but the stage was set for the
big explosion in my career.

owen bradley, however, clearly saw what was going on and put it into
words.well, bill, he said after mama Sang a Song had reached number one
and had begun to slide back down the charts, we've finally had a number
one country record, and i'm happy for you. but, because you're primarily
known as a country artist and because mama Sang a Song' was so religious
in nature, your record couldn't go any higher in the pop charts or sell
any more records than it did.but now we ve got some momentum going for
us.if you can write a love song that fits the same formula as mama Sang
a Song ...you know, a little singing and a little talking
ù .i honestly believe you're ripe to bust the country charts and the pop
charts wide open.

i listened intently.now, don't make this song you re going write
religious, he emphasized.make it about a man and a woman.we want the
appeal to be as broad as we can get it.

gosh, owen, i said, that's a big order.i don't know whether i can do it
or not.

Sure, you can, he encouraged me.you can do it and it'll be the biggest
thing you've ever done.he was prophetic and one hundred percent right.

fortunately, the song i needed to write almost wrote itself.the best
ones often do.and like most of my best songs, it was inspired by
something that actually happened.

i had gone back to atlanta to visit my folks in the fall of 62 and while
i was in town the producer of the leading local morning television show
phoned the house and wanted to know if i'd come by the station sometime
during my visit and do a live interview. Sort of a local boy makes good
type of story.i said sure, i'd be glad to, but it wasn't until after i'd
accepted the invitation and hung up the receiver that i remembered one
of my former girlfriends from college worked at that very station. i
hadn't seen her for several years, and i wasn't too sure i wanted to.

you see, there had been a time when i had been crazy about her, but she
had jilted me-a small-town country disc jockey in commerce-to run off to
atlanta, take a job at the city's largest i: tv station, and marry the
station's top-rated local weatherman.i mean, how cruel can you get?

yet, just a few years earlier, she and i had almost run away together
ourselves.in those days when you ran off together'' you iusually got
married, so i guess we'd have probably done that too.

because of the regional success of my record of city lights on tnt, i'd
had a feeler from the louisiana hayride in Shreveport concerning the
possibility of my joining the hayride as a performer and joining the
staff of the hayride's originating radio station, kwkh, as an announcer
and disc jockey.being terribly in love and not wanting to go all the way
to Shreveport alone, i considered making the move only if this lovely
woman-child would agree to go with me.She worked in radio as well, and i
figured she could get a job somewhere in the market herself and bring in
a few extra bucks to help put groceries on the table.it sounded too good
to be true.turned out it was.enter the weatherman and a long spell of
cold, rainy weather for me.i never did get to check out the climate in
Shreveport.

and now, four years later, i was agreeing to go to the television
station where she and ole partly cloudy himself both worked and do an
interview?my first thought was to call the producer back and cancel my
appearance.then common sense and pride took over.hey, dummy, i said to
myself, she's probably not even working there anymore.and what if she
is?all that stuff was over years ago.act like a man.go!So i went, but
all the way to the studio i wondered how i'd feel and how i'd act if i
did happen to run into her.

i didn't have to wait very long to find out.i pulled my car into the
parking lot and, not being familiar with the layout of the building,
began searching for anything that looked like an entrance.Suddenly my
eyes came to rest on a double-wide plate glass door behind some high
shrubbery, and i eased my car closer in order to get a better look.

and there she was, standing right behind that very door peering out.i
learned later that she'd been standing there for nearly an hour waiting
for me to arrive.

i stopped and stared at her through the window of the car, through the
glass door, and i could tell every inch of her was still the beautiful,
vibrant young woman i remembered.then i thought of how quickly the worm
had turned and how i was now a much bigger star than her darned ole
weatherman.and i smiled as i pulled my cadillac into the parking space
next to her chevrolet.

up to that point, everything was fine.but i had my car radio on, and, as
fate would have it, just as i went to get out of the car and stride
confidently into the television station, the disc jockey on the station
i was listening to decided to play george jones's record of just a girl
i used to know:

just a girl i used to spend some time with just a friend from long ago
i don't talk about the nights i cry without her i say she's just a girl
i used to know.

i came bounding back down to earth in a hurry.that song had always moved
me, but this time it was like an earthquake.i started thinking, started
remembering, and i wondered if i was as over my old girlfriend as i had
thought i was.

but i took a deep breath and walked right on in through the wide double
doors.i smiled, we said hello, made a little small talk, and she led me
to the studio where my interview was to take place. the show came off
without a hitch.i made it through the interview just fine, made it
through seeing her again with no problems-i made it through
everything-everything, that is, except the night.

i drove back to nashville late that afternoon, went home and tried to
pretend the whole day had never happened, but when it came time to try
and fall asleep, i couldn't do it.finally, around three o'clock in the
morning with my brain racing ninety miles an hour down a dead-end
street, i climbed out of bed, walked into my little pine-pane ted den,
and in almost less time than it takes to tell it i sat down at my old
manual underwood typewriter and wrote the words and music to a song
called Still:

Still ...though you broke my heart Still...though we're far apart
i love you still Still ...after all this time

Still ...you're still on my mind i love you still.

i've been asked a thousand times over the years who i wrote Still for
and i've always carefully dodged the question.actually, i didn't write
Still for anybody.i wrote it because of somebody and because of a
situation i found myself in.i was not still in love with my former
girlfriend, but i had experienced the feeling of being in love with her
again, and that's what i wrote the song about.it's a thing called
empathy, and it's the greatest friend a songwriter can have.i'll discuss
it in more detail later.

to be honest, in the beginning i didn't think Still was all that great
of a song.even today i think i've written several songs that are a lot
better.but somehow i was able to write into this very vanilla lyric
(Remember, vanilla still outsells all those thirty-one other flavors of
ice cream, owen bradley loved to say) the feelings, the thoughts, and
the emotions of hundreds of thousands of people.i can't begin to tell
you how many people have come up to me over the years and said, my
husband and i fell in love to your song Still''' or, we were about to
get a divorce and he/she sent me a copy of that record and we got back
together, or, that was our song while i was in viet nam...it kept us
going.Somehow my song struck a nerve with virtually every segment of the
population, every age group.if i knew how to do it again, i'd do it
every time i write a song.So would every writer.it's that magical little
something that you search and search for, and if you're lucky you find
it once in a lifetime.

if Still was a good song, then owen bradley turned it into a great
record.first, he encouraged me to slow down the tempo.i had originally
written it a bit brighter, but he knew it needed to be a more mellow
ballad.Second, he added a few passing chords to the melody that i didn't
even know how to find on my guitar.and they were beautiful. third, he
worked and worked the day of the session with both the engineer and the
anita kerr Singers to get that bright little ringing sound every time
the group sang the word still.he called it like a little bell, and
nobody before or since has been able to duplicate it. many have tried
but none has succeeded.the secret lay in the fact that owen didn't
really have the group sing the word as much as he had them say it on
pitch and then let the echo chamber take over and make the word ring.if
you think that i think owen bradley is a genius, you're one hundred
percent right!

Still did exactly what owen had predicted it would do.it streaked up the
country charts all the way to number one in almost no time and it stayed
there.then, because of that just-right combination of elements he'd gone
searching for and found, the record slowly began to be accepted by the
pop audience as well.at first it was just a city at a time.today toledo,
tomorrow cleveland, the next day pittsburgh, the next day
philadelphia.then one day somebody at the powerful wmca Radio in new
york city got turned on to the record somehow and decided to air it on
that station.from then on it was katy i bar-the-door.by the time the
dust settled some eight or nine months after the record had first been
released, Still had reached number one on the country charts, number 5
on the pop charts, sold a million copies, been translated into several
foreign langauges, inspired both parody and answer records, and had
changed my life forever.after all this time, the one song people around
the world most closely associate with whisperin' bill anderson is still
Still.

awhen the song was at its peak, i was running back and forth across the
country like a madman promoting it everywhere i could. i was booked onto
every major country music tour i could possibly be a part of.i toured
the South with a big rock n' roll review featuring many of the top pop
stars of the day.i went with movie star james macarthur to Rochester,
new york, to perform at another rock extravaganza, and he and i stood
backstage and wondered how two fish like us managed to get so far out of
our native waters.while some teenaged be-bop group was blasting away on
stage, we gave up, snuck out a side door, and went back to our hotel.

the crowning jewel for a singer with a pop hit in the late fifties and
early sixties, however, was to be booked for an appearance on dick
clark's american bandstand television show.there was no bigger show
anywhere for a recording artist to be on (with the possible exception of
the ed Sullivan Show), and i was thrilled the day the bandstand producer
called and said they wanted me.but the week they'd be using me, he said,
dick would not be doing the show from his customary studio in
philadelphia.instead, he would be on location outdoors on miami beach.
that sounded even better to me.lie on the beach, soak up a little sun,
and appear on national tv.what else was there?

abc flew me to miami, put me up in a big, swanky hotel, and i went out
and bought a new sport coat to wear.i mean, this was major league, and i
didn't figure the purple suit with the snowflakes was exactly what i
needed for a teenage dance party by the sea.

i was scheduled to be the last artist to appear on dick's final show of
the week on friday afternoon, and i was some kind of pumped up.the
cameras were set up outside around the swimming pool at the hotel, the
atlantic ocean rolled gently in the background, and as we rehearsed that
morning the bright blue florida sky glistened overhead.there couldn't
have been a more beautiful setting.

the show went on the air live, coast to coast, around four o'clock that
afternoon.i stood off to the side and watched the other performers who
went on ahead of me, my heart pounding loud enough to wake up people
sleeping in fort lauderdale.finally there was nobody left to go on but
me, and i stepped from the shadows out onto my mark.dick spent what
seemed like five minutes introducing me, saying all kinds of nice
things.finally he called my name, the recorded music started rolling,
and i was on.

Still ...though you broke my heart ...Still ...though we're far apart
...everything was going perfect.but suddenly from out of nowhere came a
sound that i'd never heard on the record before.then i heard it
again.what was that?i wondered as i struggled to maintain my
concentration and my composure. but in less than a heartbeat i knew
exactly what it was.it was thunder.

i wasn't two lines into the recitation on the first verse of my song
when the heavens opened up and the bottom fell out.it rained like i had
never seen it rain.Rain on my face, rain on my hair, rain all over my
new sport coat, rain on the cameras, rain everywhere.and we were on the
air live.what was i supposed to do?

dick clark provided the solution.pro that he is, he quickly motioned to
one of the cameramen to swing his camera off of me and turn it instead
on him.he was just as soaked as i was, but as the camera picked him up
he took off running madly away from the swimming pool and directly
toward the open waters of the ocean, slinging water everywhere. the rain
was coming down in sheets by now, and here was this nationally known tv
celebrity streaking wildly over the sands toward the atlantic . ..still
dressed in his dark, conservative suit and tie.

he never broke stride.he dove like a porpoise headfirst into the
breakers, came up for air, waved good-bye to the camera, and the credits
rolled and the show went off the air.i stood dripping wet back by the
swimming pool, bewildered, wondering if my career had also just gone out
with the tide.

but dick was marvelous.he came back up onto the patio area wringing wet
and apologized to me like the rain had been his fault. and he promised
me that when my next record came out, my follow-up to Still, whatever it
might be, he'd have me back on his show from drier quarters in
philadephia.and it wouldn't matter, he said, whether the song was in the
pop charts or not.he'd still have me back.

he kept his word.the following winter i had a song out called 8 x 10 and
i flew to philadelphia and performed it in a nice warm, dry american
bandstand studio.

back in nineteen 63 there was no such thing as a country music awards
show on network television.there was not much country music on
television, period, particularly at the network level, which was another
thing that made my two appearances with dick clark so very meaningful.
when it came time to pass out the plaudits for achievement in the
country music field each year, everybody just gathered in nashville in
late october or early november for the annual disc jockey convention and
grand ole opry birthday celebration.that's when the performing rights
society, broadcast music, incorporated, the organization that collects
the monies and pays the songwriters and music publishers for the radio
and television performances of their songs, held their small annual
banquet open only to a few composers, publishers, and invited guests,
and handed out their citations of achievement to the people responsible
for creating the biggest hits of the year.the various music trade
publications like billboard, cashbox, the music vendor, and the music
Reporter banded together during that time as well to present their
trophies and plaques.these were the only country music awards back
then.the country music association wouldn't enter the awards business
for another four years.i've often wondered what the impact would have
been on my life and my career had Still come along after the nationally
televised cma awards became the career-making event they are today.

the best you could hope for back in nineteen 63 was to have your name
called out at a breakfast for convention participants held in the
cavernous nashville municipal auditorium.if you won an award, you walked
on stage in front of a few hundred folks who put down their sausage and
biscuits long enough to applaud politely, you posed for a few snapshots,
talked into a few tape recorders, and that was about it.

the breakfast and awards presentation that year happened to fall on
november 1 my twenty-sixth birthday.and because of Still, i won just
about everything they gave away.billboard named it Song of the year and
Record of the year.cashbox said it was the most programmed country
Record of the year on radio stations. music vendor saluted me as male
vocalist of the year, and the music Reporter honored me with their most
prestigious award, the number one award, for being as they called it,
the number one artist of the year.Still also won for me as a composer
both a country citation and a pop citation from bmi.i had never had a
birthday party quite like it, and even though i've had three or four
extremely memorable birthdays, nothing will ever quite match that one as
far as gifts are concerned.i left the auditorium carrying so many prizes
i looked like i'd just robbed a jewelry store.

the ever jolly and always acerbic faron young spotted me as i was
leaving the breakfast struggling to make it out the door and to my car
with all the loot.in the midst of all the well-wishers and right into a
battery of open radio microphones, his voice loud enough to be heard in
memphis, he bellowed, what's the matter, anderson?is that all you could
win?hell, i thought for sure you'd figure out a way to win female
vocalist of the year, too!

there was no i doubt in my mind, nor in anybody else's, that the key to
my budding success in the music business was my songwriting.all my early
hit rec&d i poe folks, mama Sang a Song, Still, -were songs i had
composed.as a recording artist, i'd begun to develop a bit of a style,
but i knew i wasn't a great singer. chet atkins once told me the world
is full of great singers but the only ones who are successful are those
who have a supply of great songs to sing.he was right.

for some reason there seems always to have been a universal fascination
with the business of writing a song.it has often seemed to me that every
housewife who ever stood over a sink washing dishes or walked behind a
vacuum cleaner, and every man who ever dug a ditch, built a house,
plowed a field, drove a truck, or sat on a creekbank with his fish hook
dangling in the water has, at one time or another, tried to write a
song.it appears to be an easy enough thing to do, and if you're not too
picky about the end result i guess writing a song is relatively easy.but
writing a good, solid, commercial song with the potential to become a
bestseller is not very easy at all.

the two questions i've been asked more than any others over the years
are (1) how do you write a song?and (2) of all the songs you've written,
which one is your personal favorite?i've also been asked nearly every
day of my professional life by an aspiring songwriter somewhere how can
i get my song published?but that's another story for another time.

there are as many different ways to write a song as there are different
songs to be written.there's no formula, no roadmap.i can speak only for
myself and from my own experience, but i find that writing from a
lyrical idea or from a catchy phrase or hook line is the best place for
me to begin.if i have real-life inspiration like Still or an experience
similar to the one on the hotel roof that produced city lights, then i'm
that much farther ahead of the game.but i've never been the kind of
songwriter who had to get drunk to write about getting drunk.

to me, the greatest asset a songwriter can have is empathy, the ability
to put himself in another person's place to think like another person
thinks, to feel what that other person feels.the biggest compliment i
can be paid as a songwriter is for somebody to come up to me and say,
you must have written that song just for me.your song says exactly what
i feel but i didn't know how to say.that's when i know i've hit home.

when john d.loudermilk was writing some of the best songs and biggest
hits coming out of nashville in the sixties (waterloo, then you can tell
me goodbye, tobacco Road) he'd often go downtown and hang around the
blue-collar bars or spend the night just sitting in the local bus
station talking to the winos iin search of that very thing, empathy.i
guess it worked for him, but i always preferred to close my eyes at home
and imagine myself in those places.i got more rest that way, it was
cheaper, and with a little creativity i always felt i could transport
myself mentally to the places i needed to visit.

when you write songs from an idea, you find that the whole world becomes
one big constant song idea flowing through your mind.a talented painter
looks at a gorgeous sunset and sees brilliant yellows, bright oranges,
soft pinks, and vivid blues dancing in front of his eyes.and by simply
picking up his paint brush he is able to transfer those images
beautifully to canvas.that's his world, colors and images, captured by
the touch of a master's hand. as a songwriter, however, i could look at
that same sunset and not be able to draw even a good broomstick cowboy
but i might write:

i watched the sun go down this afternoon and paint the city s face all
red

then i wished upon a silver star that crept into the pink sky overhead
..

the painter and the songwriter saw the very same sunset.we were both
moved to want to preserve the beauty of the moment forever, and each of
us attempted to do so in our own way.he painted with colors and i
painted with words.maybe it's called having songwriter's eyes.to me, it
simply means looking at everything that you see, hear, and feel in the
world around you and thinking at least subconsciously how those things
might fit together in a song.

i was having dinner in a restaurant one night at a big round table
packed with friends when suddenly one of the guys pushed back his chair,
tossed his napkin onto his plate and announced, well, gang, i've enjoyed
as much of this as i can stand.and he got up and walked away. everybody
else at the table roared with laughter, but i simply reached into my
coat pocket, took out a pen, and scribbled the words he had just spoken
onto the back of a scrap of paper.before the night was over i had
composed a song that would soon become a number one record for porter
wagoner called i've enjoyed as much of this as i can Stand.any one of
the other people at that table could have written down that same phrase,
but nobody else heard it in the same light that i did.i was just
accustomed to listening with songwriter's ears and observing through
songwriter's eyes.

i went into a small dry cleaning establishment out on my end of town one
day to pick up some clothes.when i walked in the door, i noticed the
owner of the shop standing there with a bewildered look on his face.
what's the matter?i asked.

you won't believe what just happened, he said, his eyes glazed over in
bewilderment.this guy walks in here about five minutes ago and asks to
pick up his cleaning.i bring it to him ...it was a pretty large bundle
...and he turns and walks outside to put it in his car.i assume he'll
put it down and come back in here to pay me.instead, he gets in his car
and roars out of the parking lot. Stiffs me on the ticket.i can't
believe i i you know the guy?i asked.

never seen him before in my life, he answered.then he shook his head,
shrugged his shoulders and said, well, i guess if he can live with it i
can live without i

bingo!Right between the eyeballs it hit me.what a great title for a
song, except not about a guy stealing his laundry but about a man-woman
relationship where one of them breaks off the marriage or the commitment
and splits.and the one who's left behind says, well, if you can live
with it i can live without it ...if you can face your conscience i can
face my pride.i have a plaque on my wall that says it was a pretty good
idea.i wrote the song, recorded it myself, and it went to number one in
the charts.

when you look at and listen to the world constantly thinking song, song,
song, you find that ideas for songs are all around. they're in
advertisements for products, in the scripts of television shows and
movies (the daytime soaps are a great source of material ...of course,
these days you have to clean most of it up before you can use it!),
they're in newspaper articles, magazine stories, and sometimes ideas for
new songs are even buried deep inside the lyrics of old songs.

i got the idea to write i love you drops, one of my bestknown songs and
biggest hit records from the mid-sixties, by picking out an obscure
phrase in chuck berry's classic rocker memphis.there's a line hidden
deep in the words of that song where he talks about hurry home drops on
her cheek, and when i listened closely and realized what he was saying,
i thought to myself, what an unusual way to describe tears.he called
them hurry home drops and it stuck with me.there was nothing illegal or
immoral about my using that one phrase and writing a totally new song
called i love you drops.i didn't have to split the copyright with chuck
berry, nor would he have expected me to.

i've had people write songs from phrases and thoughts i've put into my
own songs many times.you can copyright a song, but you can't copyright a
song idea.and a song title is not exclusive to only one musical work
either.a few years ago the pop group, the commodores, had a big hit with
a song called Still.it was the same title as my most famous song, but
all i could do was hope maybe i'd accidentally get some of their
royalties.i couldn't stop them from putting it out.one of billy joel's
biggest hits was titled my life.i had the number one country Record of
the year by that same title in nineteen 69.(i really did get some of his
performance royalties by accident, but somebody caught on and i had to
give them back!) and a rock group once cut a song with the title wild
weekend.in country circles that title is synonymous with bill anderson,
but again there was nothing i could do but wish them well.

i once wrote another hit for porter wagoner called i'll go down
Swinging.baseball nut that i am, i had heard that phrase all my life,
but it wasn't until i heard a tag line at the end of a hank Snow record
called breakfast with the blues that i realized swinging didn't
necessarily have to involve a ball and bat.my song had nothing to do
with our national pastime.

the charlie louvin number one hit i don't love you anymore was inspired
by a joke i heard Ray price pull on one of his band members during a
show one Sunday afternoon at the queen elizabeth theater in vancouver,
british columbia, canada.i was standing in the wings watching his show
when i heard Ray tell the audience that one of his band members didn't
drink anymore.of course, Ray added, he doesn't drink any less!my
songwriter's antenna went up instantly, and i transposed the drinking to
loving and went back to my room at the georgian hotel and wrote a song
about a guy who says he doesn't love his lady anymore.trouble is, the
lyric goes, i don't love you any less.

one of my very first fans and dearest friends over the years, missis
margaret patterson, was taking me to the bus station in her hometown of
Roanoke, virginia, late one night following a show i'd done there early
in my career, and she got to telling me a bit about her family.She'd
gone through a long list of sons, daughters, aunts, uncles, and cousins
when she came to a person she said was the black sheep of the family.
oh, he'd probably be all right, she said, if he wasn't afraid to go out
and get a little dirt on his hands.

again, whammo, home run!i asked her if i could borrow a piece of paper
and a pencil, and in the back of a dark, rockin', rollin' greyhound
between Roanoke and bristol, midnight and idawn, i wrote get a little
dirt on your hands, a song i recorded once as a solo and once as a duet
with david allen coe.it was a reasonably successful song in the united
States, but it was recorded in australia by a pop group called the dell
tones, and in that country the song is legendary.

becky an, d i were having dinner one evening in a little restaurant
across the street from the church we attend, and we were enjoying a
glass of wine with our meal.Suddenly i looked up, and several of the
church members were coming in the door.my first inclination was to slide
my glass of wine behind the menu propped up on the table.i wasn't sure i
wanted the elders and the deacons to know i was imbibing.

becky refused to be a partner in my little act of subterfuge. hey, the
lord knows i'm drinking, she said.i got mashed potatoes and gravy all
over my elbow falling across the table reaching for a paper napkin.
becky calmly finished her meal.i totally lost my appetite.i was too busy
writing on the napkin the words to a song about an ole boy who was
having a few drinks in a little neighborhood bar one night when a
self-righteous woman from the church came in and started preaching to
him about his sinful ways.he told the lady, just as becky had told me,
hey, the lord knows i'm drinking.that was the hook line, the title of
the song, and i've got all kinds of awards hanging on my wall today
attesting to the fact that a lot of people identified with the message.
the song was a number one country hit for cal Smith and even earned me a
pop award from bmi due to the tremendous amount of airplay it received
from all formats of radio.

not everybody writes songs the same way.Some writers compose a melody
first and then add lyrics to it.i'm sure that works fine for them, but
it's never been comfortable for me.then again, melodies have never been
my long suit.

i've heard people who knew hank williams say that he believed if a song
couldn't be written in twenty minutes it wasn't worth writing.i agree up
to a point.Sometimes when an idea strikes, it hits so hard the song
almost seems to write itself.one minute 4you're staring at a blank piece
of paper, the next minute the words to a song are staring back at
you.nearly every successful writer i've ever talked to has at one time
or another experienced the overwhelming phenomenon of suddenly having a
song appear and not being able to recall writing it.yet nobody has ever
been able to explain how it happens.in my religious song i can do
nothing alone, i wrote, i held the pencil, but he wrote this song. how
else can a writer explain a song suddenly arriving on an empty sheet of
paper?i believe there are definitely times when a composer's thoughts
and inspirations come from a higher power.

mel tillis, who has written some of the greatest country songs ever
composed, evidently agrees.when i asked him recently if he'd been
writing any new songs, he shook his head and said, no, i haven't.

why not?i asked.

i'm not real sure, he replied.it could be that the lord only gives you
so many.maybe he's already given me all of mine.

of course, not all good songs or successful songs are written in twenty
minutes.many are just as much perspiration as they are inspiration.i
have written songs in less than twenty minutes, and i once agonized over
a song for three years before i was finally able to finish it.and it was
one of the simplest songs i've ever put together in terms of the silly
idea and the plaintive sing-along chorus.

the song was called peel me a nanner, and it was an awardwinning song
for me thanks to the fine recording of it by Roy drusky.for three years
i carried these lines around in my head, unable to add anything to them:

peel me a nanner...toss me a peanut and i'll come swinging from a
coconut tree

peel me a nanner...toss me a peanut cause you sure made a monkey out of
me.

as you might expect, i've been teased and kidded about that song for
years, but if you knew all the trouble i had writing three verses to go
with that crazy little chorus you wouldn't laugh at all. it nearly drove
me nuts!first, the chorus and the idea are both so ludicrous that the
temptation was to try and write nonsensical verses.but i'm no comedian,
and how much silly can one song stand anyhow?So i tried writing the
verses in a serious vein.but how serious can you be when you're writing
about monkeys swinging from trees?after struggling with this thing off
and on for over three years and not being able to get it off my mind or
come up with a solution, one day i was driving along in my car when zap!
out of the blue i hit on the way to connect the chorus and the
verses.the result was part serious, part foolishness, but it worked:

there i was in all my innocence loving you with all of my might
come to find i didn't have any sense you had a different darling every
night.

although nobody wilt ever confuse peel me a nanner with beethoven's
fifth Symphony, i was happy with it when i quickly

added two more verses and realized all the pieces finally fit.i tell
people it's a song that took me three years and twenty minutes to

write!

i've never worked very much with cowriters.most of the songs i've
written over the years have started and stopped with me.

there were a few exceptions along the way, however, the most notable
being a song written years ago in the back seat of Roger

miller's bright green Rambler station wagon in the middle of the night
somewhere between nashville and San antonio, texas.

Roger had seen the science-fiction movie when worlds collide not long
before and had become convinced that the title of the

movie could and should be transferred to a country song.you know, he'd
say, it'll be about the separate worlds of a man and a

woman being on a collision course.and i would argue, but we can't steal
the title of a movie and make it into a song!

ok, so we'll change it a bit, he agreed, and we did.when the song came
out, it was called when two worlds collide, and

it became a big hit for Roger himself and later for several other
artists, including jim Reeves.

the night we finally got it written, we were travelling to a string of
personal appearance dates in texas and had a young

singer named johnny Seay in the car with us.Roger was under the ii
wheel, johnny was riding shotgun, and i was in the back seat

directly behind the driver when the juices began to flow.Roger
immediately stopped the car and told johnny to slide under the

wheel and drive.he reached into the back of the wagon and pulled out his
guitar, climbed into the back seat with me, and i

grabbed a piece of paper and a pen.the only light we had was from the
headlights of an occasional passing car and a big silver

moon high in the sky overhead.Roger would come up with a line and i'd
write it down.then i would think of a line and feed it to

him, and he'd keep singing it over and over for fear he'd forget the
melody.we couldn't afford the luxury of a portable tape recorder

in those days, and since neither one of us actually composed music, we
just wrote down the words and hoped we wouldn't forget

the tune before we reached a place where we could record it.we were so
knocked out with what we were writing that even though we finished the
song somewhere around midnight, we didn't dare go to sleep for fear we
wouldn't remember it when we woke up the next morning.when we pulled
into San antonio around eight eigh m., neither one of us had closed our
eyes all night.but we knew our new song awfully well!

we checked into the old gunter hotel, Roger singing the song over and
over-in the lobby, on the elevator, all the way up to our floor.as soon
as we reached our room, he got on the telephone and called a disc jockey
buddy of ours in town named neal merritt (who was later to write a hit
song himself called may the bird of paradise fly up your nose) and
instructed him to come over quick and bring a tape recorder!neal did,
and there in that little hotel room Roger and his guitar cut the
original demo of when two worlds collide.only when we were finally
assured that the machine had worked and the song was safely on tape did
we allow ourselves to fall limply across the beds and go to sleep.

cowriting songs is the big thing in nashville songwriting circles these
days, but back then it was rather rare.there were only a few people i
felt comfortable enough around to want to share my very iheart and soul
and guts with.and that's exactly what you do when you compose a song.
you pour it all out, and it's not easy working on a song, creating your
own little baby, only to have somebody listen to what you've written and
say, hey, your kid is ugly! you've got to have a special relationship
with someone to open yourself up that far.and they've got to trust you
as well.

jerry crutchfield, who has in recent years become one of nashville's top
record producers, wrote some songs with me in the early sixties, the
most memorable of which was a brenda lee hit called my whole world is
falling down.we intended to write that song to the tune of london bridge
is falling down, but we got our nursery rhymes mixed up and it came out
to the tune of mary had a little lamb instead.jerry and i wrote mostly
what i'd call light songs and nothing very heavy lyrically, but we had a
few hits.

buddy killen and i wrote several songs together, usually combining my
lyrics with his melodies.i may never get to heaven was probably our most
successful.most of the other songs on which i'm listed as a cowriter
were one person's idea (usually the other person's) and my actual
composition.

Steel guitarist/record producer walter haynes brought me a song in
nineteen 64 called just an old 8 x 10 a story about a child finding a
faded photograph of his parents.i didn't care for the song very much,
but the phrase 8 x 10 really caught my eye, especially the way it was
written with the letter x being used for the word by.i took that germ of
an idea and wrote my hit 8 x 10 which by the time i finished it had
become not a song about mom and dad but a lament of lost love.i figured
it was more commercial that way.

a lady named jerry todd, a fan of mine from cleveland, ohio, later
brought me a song called 3 eigh m., but there was nothing whatsoever in
her lyric that i could use.but, again, as with 8 x 10 there was
something about 3 eigh m.that jumped off the page and hit me square in
the face.i wrote my own song from her idea, and it, too, was a big
record for me.jerry and walter are each listed as cowriters on the songs
for which they supplied the ideas, and they have, over the years, shared
in the royalties the songs have earned.

there is a difference, however, between the case of somebody who
deliberately sets out to give a writer an idea for a song and ithat of
someone who casually makes a comment in passing and the songwriter later
takes that comment and turns it into a song.the former should definitely
be listed as a cowriter and expect to participate in whatever monies the
song might bring in.but a person who casually says boy, it's a beautiful
day, to someone who then goes home and writes a song called boy, it's a
beautiful day, should not necessarily expect to be rewarded with a
cowriter's percentage of that song.the writer might be generous and
offer a share to the person, but that's up to the writer's discretion.

i was once in the right place at the right time and got partial writer's
credits on a song that i had nothing to do with conceiving but which
turned out to be an award-winning smash.don wayne had written the first
two-thirds of a clever story song called Saginaw, michigan, but as he
began to reach the end of the song, he didn't know how to bring his
story to a conclusion.the idea was that a young couple lived in Saginaw
and fell in love, but the girl's father was very much against the boy
and against the relationship. iSo in an effort to impress the father
with both his resources and his ingenuity, the young man left Saginaw
and went to alaska in -search of gold.it was don's idea that the young
man return from alaska to face the father and claim the girl, but at
that point he hit a stone wall.he just wasn't sure how to make it all
come together.

i suggested the idea of having the boy come back and tell the ifather
that he'd found this tremendous amount of gold up in alaska but for a
price he'd be willing to sell the rights to his claim to the father. the
old man fell for the lie hook, line, and sinker, and took off to alaska
himself looking for the gold i never found.while he was gone, of course,
the boy and girl got married and began to live happily ever after.

in the beginning i didn't even consider my being listed as a cowriter on
the song because i had intended to record it myself.i figured the work i
had done on it would be more than justified if my recording turned out
to be a hit.but i made a big mistake.i took the song to my next
recording session but never got around to cutting it.instead, i recorded
a song i had written about another town, cincinnati, ohio. before i
could set up another session, don pitched Saginaw, michigan to lefty
frizzell and the rest, as they say, is history.it became the last number
one record of lefty's illustrious career.

after lefty cut the song, don wayne did a very kind and honorable thing.
he offered me a percentage of the song and had my name added to the
copyright as cowriter.unfortunately, the first copies of lefty's record
had already begun to ship to the radio stations and record stores by
this time ...without my name on them.i received credit on later
pressings of the single, and my name was always listed on the album
copies, but for a long time i had trouble convincing some people that i
wrote part of Saginaw, michigan.if you have a copy of lefty's original
single, you might want to check and see if there are two writers listed
or only one.if there's no b.anderson on the label, it could be that you
have one of those rare early pressings.hang onto it. Someday it might
just be a collector's item.

it's not always easy to write an ending to a song.many's the time i've
written myself right into a corner with a song, much like a painter
might back himself into a corner while he's painting a room.and there
have been times when there has appeared to be no exit.

that's exactly what happened when i was writing one of my favorite
songs, the cold hard facts of life, a third composition of mine which
porter wagoner took to the top of the charts in the late sixties.i began
the song by telling the story of a man who had been out of town,
presumably on business, but had come back home a day before he'd planned
to.he thought about calling his wife to tell her he was home but decided
to surprise her instead. the surprise turned out to be on him, however,
when he found her at their house having a wild party with lots of
friends and a stranger.

in my lyric, the hero of the song stops in a little wine store on the
corner to buy a bottle of champagne to take home for his wife.while he's
there he overhears another man asking the clerk for two bottles of your
best.the man tells the clerk, her husband's out of town and there's a
party.he winked as if to say you know the rest.' our hero leaves the
store two steps behind the stranger and realizes as he's following the
man in his car that the stranger is headed to his house to see his
wife.the story was gripping and spine i tingling as i was writing it,
until i suddenly realized i didn't have the foggiest idea how my little
soap opera was going to end.i had exactly sixteen bars of music, about
four lines of lyrics, and possibly a tag line with which to wrap the
whole thing up, and i wasn't sure quite frankly if it could even be
done.

i tried every angle i could think of, then finally decided to have imy
hero burst into his own home and confront both his wife and her lover
face to face.throughout the story the singer had been referring to the
entire scenario as his witnessing the cold hard facts of life.So, i felt
it only fitting in the climax of the song to write:

lord, you should have seen their frantic faces.

they screamed and cried please put away that knifr i guess i'll go to
hell .ù .or i'll rot here in this cell

but who taught who the cold hard facts of lifr?

yes, who taught who the cold hard facts of life?

where in the world i came up with the who taught who line i'll never
know, but it was perfect.it was my payoff.and it got me out of my
corner.but it's also a lot easier telling it here than it was coming up
with it then.it was just one of those fortunate things that happened
when i needed it to happen most.

when a young, aspiring songwriter comes to me for advice on how to
perfect his craft, i stress three things.first, i talk about empathy,
but i've about decided over the years that empathy is something you
either have in your psychological makeup or you don't.i'm not sure it
can be taught or acquired.

Second, i tell would-be writers, So what if you can't be great? you can
be original.and, who knows, that originality might just be your key to
greatness.they didn't understand willie nelson around nashville for
years, but it wasn't because he wasn't just as great then as he is now.
he was just so very original that the rest of the world needed more time
to catch up to what he was doing and join in his parade.

i saw firsthand Roger miller's struggle for acceptance, writing those
crazy little do wacka do type songs.when the world finally caught on to
what he was up to, they said, gee, how original!but it took time. and
Roger and willie and all the others who've been successful with their
originality also never gave up.that's the third thing i stress-total
dedication and commitment.without that, you may as well hang it all up.

i've often wondered if a song lyricist's craft isn't more difficult to
perfect than, say, a newspaper i columnist's or a novelist's, because a
songwriter has such a limited number of subjects he can write about.
whereas a writer of prose can go on forever writing about nuclear waste
dumps and old men chasing whales at sea, a songwriter must operate
inside much more restrictive and confining ibarriers, both in terms of
subject matter and style.nobody tells a novelist, for example, that he
can only write x-number of pages that can be read in x-amount of time.
but a songwriter has three or four minutes at best in which to get his
entire point across.plus, his words have to rhyme and conform to some
kind of meter and cadence.

Still, the greatest challenge a writer of songs has is to say what he
wants to say in a way that it's never been said before.his primary
objective must always be to think original, write original, and be
original.it's tough, but if it's any comfort, it's exactly what every
successful songwriter before him has had to face as well.

i once had a young soldier in uniform bring me a song he had written
which, he said, would be perfect for you to record.i played his tape and
read along with his handwritten lyrics.it took only the first eight
lines or so for me to tell it wasn't anything i'd be interested in.but i
kept on listening, nonetheless, because there was something about his
melody that struck me.that's really a nice tune, i began thinking, and
then suddenly i realized i'd heard the melody before.

hey, that's the tune to the old hank williams song you win again, ' i
said.

it sure is, the soldier beamed proudly.

but you can t use that, i informed him.

why can't i?he asked defensively.

because, i replied, not sure this conversation was actually taking
place, it was hank williams's melody.it belongs to him.

hell, the soldier answered.if it was good enough for ole hank it's good
enough for me!

obviously, no one had taken the time to preach him my sermon on
originality.

i never got into the songwriting business for the money or for the
glory, even though i confess i've enjoyed what bits of both i've been
able to attain.i'm particularly proud of my induction into the nashville
Songwriters' association hall of fame.in fact, that may just be the one
thing in my whole career that means the most to me.

but i never sat down to write a single song with the idea of making
money from it or winning an award because of it.why then, you wonder, do
i write?i've asked myself that very question on many occasions, and i
don't think i could put it into more revealing, more insightful words
than did the author who wrote the following.i clipped this from a
newspaper years ago, pasted it into a scrapbook, and it's so yellow and
faded now i can hardly make it out.i have no idea who wrote it, but it
says:

if you have the stuff of which artists are made, you cannot be
discouraged.you will continue to produce work, not because

you like to but because you must.the artist's compulsion is very much
like the addict's.

nor does the artist require a slight push.he is self propelling; he
cannot be torn away from his mission.he will

write, paint, or compose, whether his children are starving, his wife
has deserted him, or the world treats him like a lunatic.

i am not saying that these are optimum conditions for the artist; i am
not making the foolish and insolent middle-class

assumption that such scorn and sacrifice are actually good for the
artist; i am simply pointing out that these are the

dynamics of his nature.

i was out of town on the Sunday night in october, nineteen 75 that the
nashville Songwriters' association announced they had voted me into
their hall of fame.when maggie cavendar, executive director of the
association, learned that i'd be gone, she'd called and urged becky to
come to the awards dinner and represent me. naturally, becky went.

harlan howard, a Songwriters' hall of fame member himself, asked to be
the one to announce my induction because, as he put it, bill anderson
inspired me to be a better songwriter.every time he'd write a great
song, i'd try that much harder to write a great song myself.harlan read
my credits to the crowd and presented my manny (short for manuscript) to
becky.

i was on stage at the veterans' auditorium in des moines, iowa, in the
middle of singing a song, when one of the emcees from the local radio
station walked up beside me and pulled the microphone right out of my
hand.ladies and gentlemen, he announced to the stunned audience, i hate
to interrupt bill's show like this, but we have just received a very
important phone call backstage from nashville, tennessee.i could hear a
big gasp rise up from within the crowd.it was like they expected to be
told of some great tragedy.

it seems that while this man has been here on this stage singing his
songs for you tonight, the emcee continued, back in

nashville he has been named the newest member of the nashville
Songwriters' hall of fame!

i stood there totally speechless.twelve thousand people rose to their
feet and began to cheer and applaud wildly.i looked around

behind me and every member of my band was standing and applauding too.i
tried to talk, but i wasn't able to do a very good

job of it.a big tear welled up in my eye and trickled slowly down my
cheek.

and i stood there thinking that this wasn't what i'd had in mind at all
that night up on the roof of the hotel in commerce

when i'd written city lights.nor was it what i'd thought about the
afternoon i'd wheeled my car into a filling station in some

little town in michigan, grabbed a paper towel that was supposed to be
used for cleaning windshields from out of the dispenser, and

leaned over onto the roof of my car and written a song called then and
only then, a hit for connie Smith.i hadn't thought

about mannys or bmi awards or the Songwriters' hall of fame then or on a
single one of the hundreds of other days or nights that

i'd stopped in the middle of whatever i was doing, wherever i happened
to be, and begun to write a song.i had written for all

the other reasons ...the musts, the self-propulsion, the dynamics of
nature.but i had to admit that it sure was a nice, warm feeling

to be standing there on that stage in des moines and be told in such a
meaningful and lasting way that what i had done had been

recognized.and appreciated.

there are two of my compositions that i feel deserve a little more
attention, even though i've referred to them earlier.one is

poe folks and the other is mama Sang a Song.both of these songs have
been extremely important in my career.

people have asked me for years, were you really as poor as you sing
about in your song poe folks'?and if you weren't, how could 4 you write
about it like you did?

the answer is no, i did not grow up as poor as the lyrics of poe folks
might suggest.but i know people who did, and i called on

that feeling again-empathy-and i tried to write those lyrics with the
same feelings and sensitivity i would have felt myself had i grown up
that way.

when i first started writing the song, it wasn t even called poe folks.
my working title was the South Side.i had written:

there's a whole lot of people lookin' down their noses at me cause i
didn't come from a wealthy family

there was ten of us living in a two-room shack on the banks of the river
by the railroad track

and we kept chickens in a pen in the back cause that's how it is on the
south side .

i liked the first few lines but somehow the title didn't seem to click.
there was no snap to it.i decided to keep working on it, though, and
carried the idea with me on tour to california.one day i was visiting
johnny cash at his home in encino, and i picked up his guitar and sang
him the first few lines.what do you think?i asked him.is there anything
here?

he smiled and said he liked it.he took the guitar and fooled around with
it a while and said we ought to call it one mule

i i i i i i it reminded him of back home in arkansas where a lot of
people had to work big farms with no machinery at all and only one ole
mule to plow.we kicked that idea around for most of the afternoon, but
somehow it didn't really seem to work either.

one day after i got back to nashville, i was singing the first few lines
around the house, still trying to make them connect, when my
mother-in-law overheard me.Sounds like you're singing about po folks to
me, she said innocently.my search for a title was over.

i wrote much of poe folks with my tongue planted far over into my cheek.
the part about if the wolf had ever come to our front door he'd have had
to brought a picnic lunch was only my exaggerated way of trying to
inject a little humor into the song while attempting to illustrate a
point.the real objective of what i wanted the song to communicate was,
hey, it doesn't matter one iota about the material things we may or may
not have in this life. what matters is how we feel about ourselves and
about each other.So when i ended the writing, we patched the cracks and
set the table with love, i summed up everything i intended for the song
to say.

(a fan once sent a handwritten note to me on stage at a concert wanting
me to sing poe folks, but she couldn't think of the title. do that song,
she wrote, where you sing about if the fox had ever come to the back
door he'd have brought a bucket of chicken!)

mama Sang a Song is probably my favorite of all songs i've ever written,
and for years i've introduced it on stage by saying it's a page out of
my life.and it is.actually, it's more than that.it's many pages out of
many different parts of my life.

perhaps the lyrics bear repeating here:

mama Sang a Song god put a song in the heart of an angel
and softly she sang it to me
4igettothinkinglotsoftimesaboutbackwhenlwasalad
of the old home place where i grew up ...of the days both good and bad

my overalls were hand-me-downs, my shoes were full of holes
i used to walk four miles to school nearly every day through the rain,
the sleet, and the cold .

i've seen the nights when my daddy would cry for the things his family
would need

but all he ever got was a bad-land farm and seven hungry mouths to feed.

and yet ...and yet our home fire never flickered once.

cause when all these things went wrong mama took the hymn book down
...and mama sang a

song.

what a friend we have in jesus .

oh, i've been rocked to sleep many a night to the tune of what a friend
and then come morning and Rock of ages would wake me gently once again

and then i remember how daddy would reach up and he'd take the
bible down...and he'd read it loud and long and i always felt our home
was blessed when daddy would
say mama, sing a song .

Sister left home first i guess ...and then bob, and then tommy, and then
dan

by then dad's hair was turning white and i had to be mama's little man
but, you know, it seemed that as daddy's back grew weak, my mother's
faith grew strong and those were the greatest days of all ...when mama
sang a song.

Rock of ages ...cleft for me let me hide myself in the .

i guess the old house is still standing ...i don't get to go home much
anymore

no voice is left now to fill those halls ...and no steps to grace the
floor

for you see, my mama sings in heaven now...up around god's golden throne
but i'll always believe this old world is a better place because one
time ...my mama sang a song
precious memories flood my soul.

again people are always asking, is that song really about your mother?
and the answer is yes.but it's also about my grandmother, both my
grandfathers, my father, and perhaps even one or two other people who
have touched and influenced my life.and it's only about one side of my
mother.

i am very blessed by the fact that my mother is still living, which
makes the last part of mama Sang a Song not true.also, mama would be the
first to admit that she never was what you'd call a very good singer.to
be honest, she couldn't carry a tune in a bucket!but anytime she sang,
you always knew it came from deep down inside her heart.when she'd sing,
just as i am ...without one plea, you knew she was honestly and
sincerely bringing herself and her problems to the lord without any pomp
or frills.She came just as she was.

having grown up as the daughter of a minister, mama has always had a
deep and abiding faith in god.at the same time, it would be very unfair
for me to give the impression that all my mother ever does is walk
around with an open bible singing hymns.She's one of the most
fun-loving, full-of-life people i know. life to her is a treasured gift
and she lives every day of it to the fullest.i've heard her say many
times that she doesn't believe the lord wants his children to walk
around with long faces.he wants us to be happy.and even though life has
dealt her some tough blows, like losing her mother when she was in her
teens, leaving mom to raise her baby sister as if she were her own
daughter, mama has always managed to be a positive, upbeat lady.

people always seem to be surprised to learn that one of her true loves
in life is sports.whatever sport is in season-baseball, football,
basketball-it doesn't matter.mama will watch it on tv, listen to it on
the radio, and keep up with it in the newspapers.i guess i'm to blame
for much of her addiction, because when i was growing up if she wanted
to communicate with me she had to talk about either sports or country
music.She learned a lot about both, i'm sure, in self-defense.

one year when i was about ten years old, i decided the greatest gift i
could give her on mother's day was to take her to a baseball game. heck,
that's what i'd have wanted someone to give me.it never dawned on me
that the reason mama had never seen a baseball game in her life might be
because she had never wanted to.i saved my money and bought us two
box-seat tickets right behind first base to see the atlanta crackers
play the nashville vols at old ponce de leon park in atlanta.i bought
her a scorecard and told her who all the players were, and during
infield practice the nashville shortstop threw a ball over the first
basemans head and it landed squarely in mama's lap.it wasn't thrown hard
enough to hurt her, thank goodness.She quietly picked the ball up and
looked at it, much like one might inspect an egg if a bird suddenly flew
overhead and laid one on an unsuspecting soul ibelow.

not having a lot of use for a baseball, not even an official Southern
association model, and knowing her son and his friends often played with
a ball held together by large globs of black tape, plus just being the
sweetheart she is, mama gave the ball to me.

today she's the biggest baseball fan you ever saw.and come football
season, she and dad travel all over the country following the university
of georgia bulldogs.they have season tickets to the games in athens and
always seem to have some kind of business that needs tending to in the
very same towns where the dogs just happen to be scheduled for their
road games.every two years becky and i know they'll be coming to see us
in october, not because we're high on their list of favorite people,
mind you, but because georgia will be in nashville to play vanderbilt.
when i think of all the gifts my parents received on their fiftieth
wedding ianniversary, i believe the one they enjoyed the most was the
trip mary and i gave them to california to see the Rose bowl.

mom stays in great physical condition, too, and has kept her figure trim
by following a strict self-imposed exercise regimen and carefully
watching her diet.hardly a day goes by that she and dad don't walk at
least a couple or three miles, and the routine never varies, not even
when they travel.

travelling to new places, seeing new things, meeting new people are all
things my mother loves to do.when mary and i were growing up she never
went anywhere, seldom even downtown to the movies, but over the past few
years, and particularly since dad retired, they've travelled to just
about every state in the union and visited all kinds of exciting places
overseas.it amazes me sometimes just to have a conversation with my
mother.She talks to me in one breath about riding to town in a horse and
buggy when she was a girl and living in a house with no electric lights,
and then in the next breath she'll tell me about flying across the
pacific ocean in a 747 and visiting the Royal palace in tokyo.i
constantly marvel and am continually thankful for the scope, the depth,
and the fullness of the life my mother has lived.

when mom and dad got married in the early nineteen 30s, the years
following the great depression, things weren't easy.they both had to
work long and hard for what they achieved, and they sacrificed
constantly so that my sister and i might have a few of the advantages in
life that they had never enjoyed.i know now that it was mama's faith
that got her through many of her most trying hours.

mary tells of coming home one night not long after we'd moved from South
carolina to georgia and seeing mom standing on one leg in the tiny
kitchen of the small apartment where we lived, shelling beans, for
supper.her other leg was draped over an open cabinet door, the varicose
veins bulging so badly that she couldn't bear to put weight on the leg
at all.dad had quit his job, lost the medical insurance coverage he'd
had through his company, and his new business wasn't yet bringing in a
dime.the last thing our little family could afford was an operation for
mama.She knew that.So she endured.

many nights as a boy i watched mama stand over a sink full of dirty
dishes, washing and drying by hand, masking her anxieties by singing
what a friend we have in jesus, or Rock of ages or amazing grace, songs
she had literally rocked me to sleep with when i was a child.those songs
seemed to calm her fears, sustain her hopes, and restore her
strength.and they made a deep, lasting impression on me.

my dad is a fine christian man himself.his integrity, his loyalty, his
honesty are a shining example to everyone who comes in contact with him.
he started his own business on a shoestring when he was thirty-five
years old with not much more going for him than a dream and a heart full
of persistence.he had to work hard, he had a wife and two children to
support, but he always - i seemed to find time to serve in the latest
county-wide Red cross campaign or the lions' current drive to raise
money to aid the blind, or any of a number of other local campaigns and
causes. and he always found time to take me to the Sunday afternoon
double i header baseball games at ponce de leon park.my dad is one of
the most patient and unselfish people i've ever known; in fact, when
people ask me who my heroes are, he is always at the 4top of my list.

at the same time, he was not in reality the one who took the bible down
and read it loud and long, as i wrote in my song. that would have been
my grandfather the minister.and many's the time when i, as a little boy,
was sure i was going to starve to death at mealtime waiting for him to
quit praising the lord and blessing the food.once when i was very young,
i even interrupted ihis bible reading one morning.

igrandaddy, i said with all the innocence and guile of a fouryear-old.
you read the bible at the table.my daddy reads the newspaper!

i was actually inspired to write mama Sang a Song while sitting around
my house one afternoon not long after i'd moved to nashville, thinking
back on an old-time camp meeting revival we'd once had at our church
when i was in my early teens.the Reverend homer Rodeheaver, a well-known
evangelist, songwriter, and singer, had been in town all week conducting
the services, and a big part of what he did every night before preaching
his sermon was to break out his big, loud trombone and lead the
congregation in singing the old gospel-type hymns.

the sanctuary of the church my family attended at the time was shaped
like a capital letter t.when you walked in the rear door, you were
standing at the bottom of the t, and the pulpit was directly in front of
you.that meant that as the minister faced the congregation there was
section of the church off to each side of him that could not be totally
seen by others seated in the back of the building.there was also a small
balcony above the main floor in the rear.

the Reverend Rodeheaver always made a big issue out of dividing the
congregation according to where the people were seated and having each
section of the church try to out-sing the others. and he was in rare
form this particular night.

i had gone to the services with some of my teenaged friends, and we were
seated off to the right-hand side of the pulpit on the back row.from
where we were, i could not see around the corner and into the rear of
the church very well, and i could not see the balcony at all. therefore,
i had no way of knowing that my mother and my sister had come into the
services late and were the only persons seated in the balcony.

the hymn Reverend Rodeheaver had picked out for us to work on was the
old favorite brighten the corner where you are.

let's just see which corner of this church we can brighten the most!he
cajoled us.let's see which group can sing the loudest!

and with that he began blowing his trombone, the organist joined in, and
the rafters really started to ring.

ok, we'll start with the left side, he said, and everybo, d, y over
there opened up with brighten the corner where you are at the

top of their voices.now the right side, he said, and my buddies and i
let fly.now the main floor, and finally, now the

balcony!

well, you can imagine what it sounded like after all the big booming
voices filled the church with their rich baritones, basees, altos, and
sopranos, when my mother, the only adult seated upstairs, came out
singing by herself about four keys flat: bry-tun

thuh caw-nuh (i forgot to mention her deep Southern drawl!)

whah-uh you ahhh!!my buddies fell to the floor laughing.i wanted to
crawl under the pews and never come out.mary said

everybody in the main sanctuary suffered whiplash from turning around to
see where that awful voice was coming from.

but thinking back on it years later as an adult, i realize that my
mother had simply done what she'd always done.She had brought

her faith and her love to the lord the only way she knew how.

there were dozens of people there that night who sang that song right on
pitch but didn't have any idea what they were singing or

why.my mother did, and the corner where she sang was truly brightened.

i've got to believe that god probably laughed a little bit at the time,
but i'll bet later on he gave her an e for effort.that's why i
ended my song by saying, this old world is a better place...

because one time ...my mama sang a song.there's no doubt about it.it
truly is. it.

ive always felt that i got into the country music business at the best
of all possible times.the late fifties marked the end of the

hillbilly era, the end of the let's tie the big upright base fiddle to
the top of the car and go out and hit the road mentality that had

ruled country music since day one.(actually, on our famed west ern tour,
we did tie the big upright base to a luggage rack mounted
on top of Roger's faded blue cadillac.that worked fine until it started
to rain and we had to bring big bessie inside the car to ride
with five cramped and extremely irritable musicians.i'm con vinced the
two greatest inventions in the history of show business
have been the electric base and the blow dryer!) the early sixties
turned out to be the formative years of both the art form and the
country music industry as we know it today.i got to nashville just in
time to see it from both sides.

i never thought about it at the time, but my compadres and i had come to
launch a whole new generation of country music.the

torch was about to be passed from the legends of the thirties, iforties
and fifties to a totally new group of players.within a matter of just a
few years nashville became home to bill anderson, Roger
miller, harlan howard, hank cochran, willie nelson, mel tillis, itom
t.hall, loretta lynn-all energetic, creative young people who came to
town and changed the face of the music they com posed and performed.it
was the new day of the singer-songwriter, the creator who wrote the song
then went into the recording studio and out onto the stage and performed
it.it was a fun time, innocent in a way because none of us were very
sophisticated musically, yet the words we wrote and the melodies we sang
in those days have more than withstood the test of time.

i'm sure the young entertainers who come into our business today-the new
new generation-would find a lot of the things we did back then strange,
awkward, and hard to believe, particularly those of us who tried to
build careers as singers as well as songwriters.for example, today a
record company offers a new artist a recording contract; then either the
company or some wealthy group of investors puts up money for tours,
buses, bands, and all the rest. in nineteen 64 i was coming off my third
consecutive number one record, 8 x 10 and i was struggling to make ends
meet with a two-piece band.

can you imagine a major country star attempting to tour with a two-piece
band today?but back then that was all i could afford. nowadays if an
artist had had three consecutive number one hits, one of which was a
gigantic crossover smash in the pop field, he'd have six or seven
musicians touring with him, two or three pretty female backup singers,
and he'd be commanding upwards of twenty-five thousand dollars per
performance.at least!he'd probably have two tour buses, a sound and
lighting truck complete with crew, a separate truck and crew to
merchandise his souvenirs, at least one manager on the road with him, a
half-dozen or so gophers and flunkies to cater to his every whim, and
he'd be working more or less when and where he chose.i was so excited
that i threw a party in nineteen 64 the night i worked my first gig
where i got paid as much as five hundred dollars!

actually, five hundred dollars a day in nineteen 64 was really pretty
good money.the top acts in the business were only making $750 to $850
per working day.that would have been the headline attractions like faron
young, ferlin husky, carl Smith, kitty wells, marty Robbins, and
others.i think i heard someone say - i once that jim Reeves had cracked
the one-thousand-dollars-per-day barrier at some point before his death
in august of that year, but don helms, the great steel guitar player
with hank williams s drifting cowboys, told me that so far as he knew
hank never made as much as a thousand dollars for any one show he
performed his entire life.

i realize that five hundred dollars a day sounds like an awful lot of
money to someone making two or three hundred dollars or less per week,
but let me break that down a bit.first, an artist has to pay at least
ten and possibly fifteen percent of his or her fee to a booking agent
for arranging the performance.let's say it's ten percent to the agent
and another ten percent to the artist's manager, who stays home and
handles all the various details of the iartist's life and career.on a
five-hundred-dollar appearance, that leaves only four hundred dollars of
real money.now, let's say the musicians are making forty dollars a day,
which is about what the american federation of musicians union scale was
in the early sixties.with a four-piece band, that brings the artist down
to $240 or less, depending on whether or not one member of the group
gets paid a little extra to serve as band leader and/or road manager.

now, the artist has to furnish both the transportation and the lodging
for his musicians.that means a car, car insurance, gasoline, oil, tires,
maintenance, and all that goes with providing transportation, including
the possibility-no, the probability i f two or three breakdowns during
the year and the artist's having to rent cars or furnish airline
tickets.hotels can run anywhere from the top of the line to the bottom,
but stars aren't going to put their musicians nor stay themselves in
fleabag hotels.putting four musicians into two double rooms and himself
into a single costs another seventy-five to a hundred bucks.and we're
talking nineteen 60s dollars, remember.today it's a whole lot more.

musicians are responsible for their own food on the road but not their
own stage costumes.unless you let your group work onstage in the same
clothes they've been travelling in all day (and i've never allowed
that), there goes some more of the profit.you can readily see that while
the artist working for five hundred dollars a day might clear a few
bucks, at the end of the day he's going to be a long way from being
rich.

but i don't know of a single artist in the entertainment business who
got into this line of work to make money.i certainly didn't. in fact, a
friend of mine once said that planning to get into the music business to
make money is about like planning to go to a monastery to meet girls.
most people play music for one reason and one reason only: because they
love it.and the money, as somebody else once said, is just one way of
keeping score.at the same time, if we lost money every time we went out
to sing, none of us could afford to stay in the business very long.

one key to the tremendous difference between what country stars made in
the sixties compared to what country stars make today lies in the fact
that what it cost a fan to see a country concert back then was a drop in
the bucket compared to what it costs today.Somebody recently sent me a
poster advertising a tour i worked through iowa and minnesota in the
late sixties.i was the headline attraction, hank williams, jr., was my
opening act (that in itself shows how the times have changed!), and the
ticket prices topped out at four dollars for the best reserved seat in
the house. general admission tickets were $2.50 and children's tickets
cost one dollar.i thumb through amusement business and p'ùtformance
magazines today and routinely see country concert tickets selling for
anywhere from $seventeen .50 to twenty-five dollars. plus, the arenas
are much larger now and can accommodate many more people.

but, of course, it's not just country music that's more expensive, it's
life.what did a loaf of bread cost in nineteen 67?a tank full of
gasoline?a sideman (a musician working in an artist's band) only made
$18.75 per working day when i first came to nashville in nineteen 59.
Some salaried players working the road now pull down as much as fifty
thousand dollars a year or better.ted williams was the highest paid
baseball player of his time, and people cringed - with disbelief when he
signed a contract in nineteen 57 guaranteeing him $100000 for the
season.a ballplayer making $100000 today is among the lowest paid on the
team.

even though i'd gladly work in this business for free if i could afford
to, i look around me and wonder sometimes if i wasn't born about twenty
years too soon!

when i hired my first two musicians in the summer of 63weldon myrick,
recognized today as one of the premier steel guitar players in the world
but at that time a newcomer to nashville fresh off the police force in
big Spring, texas, and a young lead guitar player from near
Steubenville, ohio, named jimmy lance-i put them on a weekly salary.i
honestly don't remember how much i ipaid them, but i do remember hoping
every week that i'd be able to meet the payroll.

i wasn't yet able to afford the luxury of hiring a base player or a
drummer and, as you might suspect, that made for a lot of funfilled and
exciting evenings on the bandstand.weldon, jimmy and i would roll into a
strange town, and if we weren't working as part of a package show with
other opry stars where we could borrow a icouple of pickers from out of
their bands, we'd have to get on the phone and try to pull a couple of
musicians out of a local group isomeplace.more often than not these guys
would be god-awful ibad.maybe it was my material.my songs were not the
type many local bands included in their repertoire like they did the
buck owens and Ray price songs of the day, and when we'd start into
songs like Still'' with all its passing chords and mama Sang a Song with
its intricate arrangement, the local players would usuially throw their
hands up in horror.finally, after almost a year of trying to make it
with only two musicians, i had no choice.extra expense or not, i knew if
i was going to survive in this business i had to have my own band. in
self-defense if nothing else.

i started out by adding to weldon and jimmy a chubby, reticent former
record salesman from atlanta named len miller to play drums and a guy i
had grown up watching on Red foley's ozark jubilee tv shows, jimmy
gately, to play base, fiddle, and front the band.(fronting the band is
country for emceeing the show.) because of my nineteen 61 hit and
another real lack of creativity on my part, i cleverly named my newly
formed group the poe boys.they said based on the way i paid them in the
beginning, the name was fitting.

at the start, the five of us travelled in my car pulling a luggage
trailer behind us loaded down with our costumes and instruments. i was
proud of that little trailer (i bought it used from former opry great
cart Smith) because having it meant we no longer had to tie anything to
the roof of the car.i had my name and the name of the band painted on
the sides of the trailer and across the back in big black letters that
glowed when hit by the headlights of a following car: bill andeRSon &
the poe boyS...gRand ole .......naShville, tenneSSee.i thought i was the
king of the road until we pulled into our very first motel to check in.

we're bill anderson and the poe boys from the grand ole opry, jimmy
gately said proudly to the lady at the front desk. that's our trailer
out there!

what'cha got in it?came her caustic and uninterested reply. ponies?

you've never lived until you've taken off on a thousand-mile journey
across north america in a car packed with five itinerant musicians.it
sounds glamorous in the beginning-seeing the country, riding the wind,
singing your songs-but it's amazing how quickly it turns into mile after
boring mile of sitting upright in one uncomfortable but fixed position,
the radio blaring loud enough to clear your sinuses and cure your
grandpappy's gout (we don't want the driver to fall asleep, now do we? )
and you so exhausted that you finally nod off to sleep on the shoulder
of the guy sitting next to you, only to be awakened by the slamming of
the brakes, the screeching of the tires, and the screaming of the
driver: damn, i almost hit that pig!and it slowly dawns on you that
you're a slave to the habits, idiosyncrasies, and manners of the others
cooped up inside that tiny, ever-shrinking vehicle with you.if they
smoke, you inhale.if they pass gas, you hope you're sitting by the
window.

there s rarely any time built into your travel schedule to stop and eat
a meal at a decent restaurant, so it's usually a lap full of fast food
on the run and catsup running down your pants leg. there's no such thing
as pausing en route between towns to shave, change a shirt, or take a
shower.it's hurry up and get to the next place you're playing so you
won't miss the show ...and miss getting paid.the most exciting part of
your day comes when you see a sign reading Rest area next exit and you
know the driver needs to rest.

when you add to that mix one band member, the drummer, who is so jittery
he talks nonstop mile after mile, day after day, who screams in fear
every time you meet a passing car, and who keeps his drumsticks lying
loose in the area up behind the back seat so that every time the car
goes around a curve they r-r-r-roll to one side and then on the next
curve they r-r-r-roll back to the other, your father's insurance agency
back in good ole decatur, georgia, or your uncle cyrus's feed n' seed
store down in gumlog, arkansas, starts looking better and better all the
time.

from the very beginning len miller was a nervous wreck.he couldn't relax
no matter where he sat in the car or what time of the day or night it
happened to be.he was constantly afraid we were about to have a wreck.

and he'd try to cover up his anxiety by talking.he would jabber nonstop
at the top of his voice mile after mile after mile.

for the rest of us there was no place to hide.a car doesn't exactly come
equipped with private soundproof compartments.one night

ithe other guys in the band decided none of them would talk at all, not
even respond to anything len might say, just to see how long he'd babble
on.they put a stopwatch on him and timed him
talking without interruption for twenty-two minutes and twenty five
miles.

look out!he'd cry every time we'd pass a side road.that car's gonna pull
out in front of us and we're gonna be snuffed out!

and then he'd pick up his drumsticks, which i could never talk him into
putting in a stick bag and stashing in the trunk of the

car, and he'd beat nervous rhythms on the back of the front seat.

i'd tell him to cool it, but in thirty seconds he'd be turned around
doing the same thing up behind the backseat.all the time yelling

every time we'd meet a car or truck, we're gonna be snuffed out, i just
know it!Snuffed out!

i finally backed off the accelerator driving somewhere through the
dakotas late one night, turned around and told him, len, i

am sick and tired of hearing you run your mouth.and i'm telling you if
you say snuffed out' one more time i'm gonna dock your

paycheck.and that's not all.i'm gonna introduce you on stage tomorrow
night as Snuff' miller!Sure enough, he did, sure

enough, i did, and nobody has ever called him len miller since.

Snuff soon became Snuffy, and the heretofore shy, pudgy i little drummer
quickly began to take on a whole new extroverted

personality to match his colorful new nickname.he used this new persona
as the basis from which to launch a fresh, spontaneous

comedy act that he and i developed together.i ended up playing the part
of Snuffy's straight man for more than six years.

we built our stage routines around his constantly agitating me, which
was typecasting at its finest.Snuffy was marvelous at get ting under my
skin both on the stage and off.at certain points in
the show he would deliberately goof up playing the drums and i'd light
into him.from then on he was liable to do anything to me
and i was liable to say anything to him.and the more we fought, the
funnier it usually became and the more the audiences loved it.

he'd sit behind me at the drums and mimic my facial expressions while i
was singing.he'd hide a pair of custom-made drumsticks about the size of
baseball bats behind his stool, and 1'when i'd stop and accuse him of
not playing right, he'd wait until i had turned back to face the
audience, pick up the sticks, and act as though he were going to bring
them crashing down across my head.after a while our timing became
impeccable and the act which started quite by accident became a
highlight of our stage show.

we eventually found certain routines that worked so well they became a
permanent part of the show, but everything Snuffy and i did in the
beginning was strictly ad-lib.i never knew what he might do next, he
never knew how i might respond, and that was a big part of what made it
funny.

the routine we became best known for occurred near the end of our show
when Snuffy would say to me in mock disgust, whisper, you're just not
with it tonight.i've been watching you real close and you're just not
putting enough feeling into your songs.let me come up there and show you
how to do it., , he'd unhook his snare drum and, before i could stop
him, he'd be standing center stage. now, this is how you're supposed to
do it, , he'd say, and the band would break into Still. Snuffy would
stand there with a pained expression on his face, kick his right leg
back behind him like i used to do when i played guitar and sang, and
with an exaggerated whisper in his voice he'd make fun of the way i
recited the second verse of my biggest hit song:

this flame in my heart is lifre an eternal fire for every day it burns
hotter and every day it burns higher

and if this flame burns any hotter or any higher you'll come home and
find that i've made an ash of myself!

and the audience would roar!later, when jan howard joined our show as
the featured female vocalist and my duet partner, Snuffy would tie a
ladies' scarf around his head, come up front with the two of us, and
play the role of the other woman in a song about a three-sided love
affair called the game of triangles.he could be hilarious and the crowds
at our shows loved him.even one of the major newspaper critics in hard i
to-please new york city once reviewed our show at the taft hotel in
manhattan and called our routines cornball humor done well. the done
well part is iunderlined in red ink in my scrapbook.

Snuffy could be funny in ways the audience never saw or heard itoo.on a
night when i might be having trouble getting the crowd warmed up and
into the flow of the show, he'd call out encouragement from his perch
back on the drums: hang in there, willy, you'll get em.just rare back
and whisper!

in addition to his being a pretty fair country drummer (he was igood
enough that owen bradley hired him to play on most of my recording
sessions) and a crowd-pleasing comedian, Snuffy was also not a bad
singer at all.i'd try to let him sing on our concert dates when time
permitted, he sang frequently on our syndicated television shows, and he
sang at least one solo on each of the record albums the poe boys cut in
the late sixties.he enjoyed the center spotlight and decided one day in
the early seventies that he wanted ito get serious about perhaps
launching a full-time singing career. his voice was good enough that
pete drake, the great steel guitarist and record producer, signed him to
his label, Stop Records.i wrote what i thought was a solid, commercial
song for him to record called i Sure do enjoy loving you, encouraged him
to sing it on stage, and smiled when the fans applauded and told him how
much they liked it.but with each round of applause, each bit of critical
acclaim, Snuffy the funny-man, the comedian, the goofy-acting drummer
that everybody loved, began to take himself more and more seriously.

he went from being comical and lovable to being uptight and difficult to
deal with at times.he seemed to lose all interest in playing the drums
and in playing comedy.he wanted to be a star, and he started acting like
one.one Saturday night in tulsa, he laid the crowd in the aisles with
his antics and his singing, so much so that he decided it would be all
right if he rested up for the next night's performance in oklahoma city
by sleeping through the Sunday afternoon matinee.i had to go to merle
haggard, who was working the dates with us, and ask him if he'd let his
drummer, biff adams, back me up that afternoon, which he graciously
did.when Snuffy showed up for the night show all fresh and ready to go,
i took him out to the bus and told him i thought it might be ibest from
that point on if we went our separate ways.

it was really a hard thing for me to do because deep down inside i've
always loved ole Snuffy, and he had become an important part of my act.
for the first few months after he was gone, in fact, i felt like a lost
little puppy out on stage without him.

Snuffy's singing career lasted only a short while.he played drums
briefly for dottie west and later for nat Stuckey, then finally decided
to get off the road entirely and pursue other interests.thousands of
people who saw us work together, though, still remember the routines we
used to do and are always asking me where Snuffy is now and what he's
doing.

a few years ago at the country music fan fair in nashville, i held a
bill anderson Reunion Show and invited back all the pickers and singers
who had been associated with me down through the years.Snuffy came, and
he and i performed the old routines for the first time in over fifteen
years.we didn't rehearse at all, and i was amazed at how much of our
timing was still intact and how well our comedy bits had stood the test
of time.

these days i seldom see Snuffy.i know he produces record albums for
comedian jerry clower, and in the summer he occasionally drives the bus
for the nashville Sounds baseball team.i just hope he doesn't sit up
under the wheel late at night and keep the players awake yelling, help!
...we re gonna be snuffed out!

in the beginning, i never quite believed i could hire jimmy gately to be
a part of my group.after all, he'd been in the music business for years
in and around his hometown of Springfield, missouri, and along with his
duet partner, harold morrison, had been a big part of the cast on the
Red foley shows on abc television in the early fifties.i just couldn't
imagine anybody with that kind of background wanting to play base in my
fledgling band.

but he did, and it was my lucky day when i hired him.he had moved to
nashville from Springfield after the ozark jubilee had folded, and in
the beginning he was primarily interested in working as a songwriter.
he'd written a couple of pretty fair country hits, the minute you're
gone for Sonny james and alla my love for webb pierce, and from all
outward appearances his career was in good shape.but he missed the
excitement of performing live, and i just happened to be in the right
place at the right time.he heard i was looking for a base player, gave
me a call, and joined the poe boys in april nineteen 64.he stayed with
me for thirteen years.

jimmy (we all called him gate or j.g.) wasn't a great base iplayer, and
as soon as i could afford to expand the band to five members i let him
out of that job.what i primarily wanted him to do onstage was to open
our shows, welcome the people, relax ithem, sing a song or two and get
them in a good receptive mood for the rest of the evening.and he was
great at that.

when the curtain would go up, he'd come out and get things moving by
singing a good peppy song, then slow it down with a pretty ballad or
two, tell a couple of funny stories, and finally he'd tear into his
rousing version of orange blossom Special on the fiddle.and jimmy was an
excellent fiddle player.

i heard him play the blossom so many times over the years that sometimes
i can close my eyes and almost hear him . dragging that big, resined bow
across the finely tuned, tightly stretched strings, filling the night
with the sound of the whistle of an onrushing steam locomotive; plucking
a couple of the open strings with his fingernail to emulate the sound of
a ringing cowbell, daring Snuffy and the rest of the band to play fast
enough to keep up.even if nothing else in the show had clicked up to
this point, by the time that old train sped around the last bend and
headed for home, jimmy had the crowd in the palm of his hand. iwhile
they were still applauding him, he would introduce me.all i had to do
was hit the stage running.gate had already made sure the audience was on
my side.

during my part of the show, he would step quietly to the rear and play
either rhythm guitar or fiddle behind me, depending on which song i was
singing.and he'd sing harmony with me.and we'd check out the
good-looking ladies in the audience and laugh and have a ball.

ijimmy gately meant a lot to me onstage, later on records, and ithen on
television for several years, but it was offstage where he came to mean
the most.he was the only band member i've ever had who was older than
i.in those days i was not only young, but i could also sometimes be
extremely impatient and moody.occasionally i'd become so intense that
i'd let my feelings overrule my better judgment.i know now that i just
had a very large case of insecurity.i was afraid i'd wake up one morning
and find this had all been just a dream and i was back in georgia
somewhere picking peaches.

but jimmy gately, more times than i could ever begin to count, was the
calming force that cooled me down.he never seemed to get upset himself,
and he always seemed to know just what to say to me and how to say it
when i'd let my emotions get the upper hand.he could smile his way
through any situation and was one of the funniest people offstage that
i've ever been around.

his humor didn't run to the side-splitting, rib-tickling style of a
comedian but was rather the heartfelt, soft-spoken wisdom of someone
who'd been down a few roads and learned a few lessons along the way.
i'll never forget how he'd stop right in the middle of something he was
doing and, with a serious, almost pained expression on his face, say to
me, willy, i'm really worried.

i'd fall for it every time and take him seriously.what's the matter,
gate?i'd always ask, truly concerned.

it's nothing really, he'd reply.i'm just worried.i'm afraid i won't ever
be this happy again!and i'd crack up.

on the rare occasions when we were able to eat a big meal in a nice
restaurant out on the road, he'd inevitably lean back in his chair after
dinner, pat himself on his full, round belly and sigh, boys, i'm
sufferin' in comfort!or he'd smile and say, i wonder what the poe folks
are doin'?i know, he'd reply to his own question.they're playin' rock n'
roll!

and he'd tell stories about the country people he grew up -around in
rural missouri, like the ole boy who thought the shiny metal inlay on
the front of his car was called the hood ointment, and the farmer who
wandered into the local radio station one -morning while jimmy and
harold were taking a break from their show and a newscast was on the
air.peering into the studio through the glass-enclosed partition in the
hallway, the farmer -ibecame very upset and called jimmy over.hey, he
said indignantly, pointing to the newscaster on the other side of the
glass. that news-teller is readin' that news!

but my favorite story jimmy used to tell concerned an elderly, almost
blind musician who once toured with the foley show and was constantly
begging someone in the group to let him drive the car.we can't let you
drive, gate told him.you can't see well

ienough.

Sure i can, the old man answered.just give me a chance.

finally one night when he'd stayed awake driving about as long as he
could, jimmy relented and let the old fellow under the

wheel.jimmy slid over by the window and immediately fell asleep.

he woke up suddenly just before dawn when he realized the car was
stopped.he sat up with a start just in time to see the old man

iroll down the window, lean out, and ask directions from a mail box!

jimmy gately and i had more than an employer-employee rela tionship.we
had to for it to last almost thirteen years.most

musicians are gypsies at heart and not many are willing to stay in one
job for that long.and, quite frankly, not many employers

want people around that long.but jimmy was special.we wrote isongs
together, the most well-known of which i still use as my

theme song at the grand ole opry, bright lights & country music, ' we
fished together, played golf together (once on an

iunfamiliar course in durham, north carolina, he got a hole-in one only
to learn later he'd hit the ball into the wrong hole!), and

our wives became good friends.jimmy had a swimming pool built in his
backyard when his son and daughter were growing up, and

becky and jimmy's wife, esther, spent a lot of time lying out beside it
working on their tans.during the time we lived on the lake, the

gatelys lived on the banks of the cumberland River, and we'd often take
our boat through the locks at old hickory dam and

cruise down to see them.we'd tie up to a tree in their backyard, swim in
the pool, and cook burgers on the grill.jimmy and i would sit for hours
and just talk.he loved baseball and we'd argue
for hours over the cardinals, his favorite team, and my favorites, the
Reds and the braves.

the last conversation we had was on the telephone in early nineteen
85.jimmy had just returned home from a stay in the hospital, and i was
confined to my bed with back pain.we must have spent an hour one Sunday
night lying flat on our backs, laughing and

talking about old times.his heart had been causing him some problems,
but he felt sure the doctors had everything under con trol. he sounded
happy to be back with his family and assured me that he'd be up and
around again in no time.less than two weeks later mary lou turner called
and told me jimmy had died.i cried like a baby.

it still hurts to think about it because jimmy was so young and still
had so much life to live.his daughter, teresa, had made him a
grandfather, and he worshipped his grandkids.but his heart, which was
probably larger and warmer than just about any i've ever known, finally
gave out on him.he had become a devout christian several years earlier,
devoting the last few years of his life to writing and singing mostly
gospel music.he left behind a treasury of good songs, country and
gospel, much of which has never been heard.Someday, i hope, the world
will discover some of it. but more than that, he left behind a lot of
beautiful memories.i miss ole gate tremendously.

-, jimmy gately and Snuffy miller were probably the two people more
responsible than anyone for getting the poe boys out of the car we
travelled in and into our first bus.looking back, i don't know if i
should have thanked them or blamed them.

the trip that convinced me there surely must be a better way to travel
than by car was when we had to drive and pull our trailer all the way
from prince george, british columbia, canada, about four hundred miles
north of vancouver, to new york city in slightly over three days.it was
the most brutal trip imaginable. when the guys came to me a few days
later and told me they'd located an old bus for sale in mansfield,
ohio-cheap!-i listened.

actually, they made me an offer i couldn't refuse: willy, if you'll get
us a bus, we promise you'll never have to drive on the road ever again!
up to that time i had been driving a regular shift iiin the car just
like everybody else.we'd each get under the wheel for three hours at a
time and then we'd rotate our sitting places in the car.the worst spot
of all to ride was in the middle of the back seat.Right over the hump,
with somebody sitting next to you on each side.there was no place to
stretch your legs and very little padding beneath your bottom.we
affectionately nicknamed that most miserable of all saddles big Sid.

__________________________________________________________________ t and
you'll never have to ride big Sid' again, either.we promise!if you'll
get a bus we'll do all the driving.we'll clean it, we'll take care of
it, everything.please!i should have made them put it all down in
writing.in blood.

but for something like forty-five hundred dollars, they finally
convinced me to purchase what was left of an old gmc Silversides, the
bus greyhound ran on the road for years, the one that had the picture of
the big leaping dog down the side.that particular model was also
referred to by many as ole frog eyes because of the weird appearance of
the two small rear windows above the engine.before i was through with my
particular Silversides, however, i called it a lot worse things than
frog eyes.

not many country stars were travelling in buses back then.the larger
bands, like hank thompson's and ernest tubb's, were in ithem, and i
think maybe johnny wright and his wife, kitty wells, transported their
large family entourage via bus, but basically it was still a relatively
new way for entertainers to travel.there weren't, therefore, many
companies experienced in converting buses from coaches full of seats to
travelling houses on wheels complete with beds, baths, and many of the
conveniences of home. we found a carpenter to strip out the seats, nail
together a few ibunks, put in a toilet and a door or two and that was
about it.it wasn't much better than a car for travelling-it wouldn't
even go as fast-but at least we could get up, stretch our legs, and not
have to stop as often at rest'' areas.

ithe people who sold me the bus had said, Sure, she has heat iand air
conditioning!and she did.lots of heat in the summer and plenty of cold
air in the winter.once, right after i bought her, we had to take her up
east for a couple of days.it was in january and during the time after
the bus seats had been taken out but ibefore the bunks had been put
in.everybody had agreed it would be no problem, we'd just bring sleeping
bags and pillows and sleep on the floor.kinda like a rolling boy Scout
campout.

well, we should have brought some sticks to rub together.the morning we
headed back to nashville i woke up frozen to the floor.there was a sheet
of ice about a half-inch thick covering the entire floor of the bus.it's
a good thing i didn't have any matches. i'd have probably tried to start
a bonfire right then and there and blown ole frog eyes to bits! bill
andeRSon

because of the color the bus was painted when i bought it, we
immediately nicknamed her the green goose.actually the green i and i
white paint job didn't look too bad, but when Snuffy decided to surprise
me one day by having the bill anderson Show painted down the sides in
brilliant red lettering, the ole goose lost a bit of her charm.i never
wanted to choke anybody as bad in my life as i did Snuffy when i first
saw the paint job.and to make matters worse, he had the sign painter
send me the bill.

buses today are a far cry from the old green goose.i've owned four of
them in my lifetime and had a couple of them outfitted pretty fancy. but
still it's hard to explain to someone who's never been inside an
entertainer's bus exactly what they're like.

oh, you mean it's like a van?they usually say.

no, i reply, it's like a bus.except it doesn't have any seats in it and
it sleeps twelve.

and then they say, yeah, i gotcheigh my uncle wilbur has one of those
except he calls his a camper!

i guess it is hard for normal folks to understand that somebody would
actually take a bus-a forty-one passenger Silver eagle bus like many of
the major bus lines run on the highway-rip out all the seats, and spend
upwards of a quarter-million dollars putting in things like wall-to-wall
carpeting, a couple of color tv sets with vcR's, a refrigerator, am-fm
stereo sound systems with the latest state-of-the-art equipment, private
bedrooms, showers, baths, closets, desks, wall safes, burglar alarms,
intercom systems, trash compactors, microwave ovens, and built-in vacuum
cleaner systemiss uncle wilbur's twenty i one-foot winnebago is pretty
fancy, but you just carry a broom and sweep it out whenever it gets
dirty.

and i guess there really is something that just doesn't sound romantic
about saying you travel in a bus.i remember the crusty old man in
overalls who knocked at the door of our bus one time when we were parked
behind the stage at a fairgrounds in north carolina.

you boys come over here in that thang?he asked.

fighting the temptation to say, no, we stopped by the rent-all and
picked it up after we got here, i answered, yes, sir.

ernest tubb was here a few weeks ago, and he come in a is that right?

iyep, a gold cadillac.i thought you was doin' at least as good as
iernest tubb.why ain't you got a cadillac?

ii do, i answered, but it's at home.besides, you can buy a dozen
cadillacs for what it cost to buy this bus.'

yeah, but i thought you'd a-come in a cadillac.

well, and i was getting a bit testy by this time, we prefer to travel by
bus.

hell, the old man said as he spit the juice from his plug of chewing
tobacco at my right front tire.Stars are supposed to ride in cadillacs.i
can ride in a bus!

and then there was the time we were travelling through georgia and i saw
a young kid hitchhiking by the side of the road carrying a sign that
read athens.thinking he was probably a university student on his way
back to classes, i told the driver to pull over and pick him up.

oh no, the boy exclaimed when i opened the door and invited him to come
aboard.i can't afford to ride on a bus.'

it's not gonna cost you a thing, i laughed, realizing he thought we were
a commercial vehicle.come on ...it's free!

he stood there a bit dazed and looked the bus over thoroughly ifrom
front to back.finally he couldn't think of any good reason not to climb
aboard, and he began to ease himself slowly into the doorway.

iat the time i was the only one awake other than the driver, and ithe
bulkhead door just behind the front lounge was closed.this imeant our
new passenger couldn't see past the tables and chairs in the small
lounge area up front and didn't know there were bunks and closets and a
bath and large stateroom to the rear.all he could see was the front
one-third of the vehicle.

wow!he exclaimed staring wide-eyed at his new surroundings. from the
outside this bus sure looks a lot longer!

of course, i don't go everywhere on the bus.if we're opening or closing
a tour in portland, oregon, for example, i can guarantee iyou this
cowboy is going to hop an airplane.that's just more miles than i care to
see through a windshield, one at a time.besides, i figure my time is one
of the most valuable assets i have, and i can use the hours i would be
spending riding across the country on a bus doing something much more
productive back in my office in nashville.but on a trip, say, east of
the mississippi, travelling by bus is often by far the best way to go.

let's say we're working a show in cleveland, ohio, on a Saturday night.
we can work the f i day night opry in nashville, load the bus around
midnight, pull out of town at one o'clock in the morning, and arrive in
cleveland some ten hours later.i can get on the bus, relax with the band
members for a while, crawl into my bed between clean sheets, prop up on
my pillow and read awhile, watch a little tv, and still get eight good
hours of restful isleep.when we get to cleveland the bus delivers me
right to the door of the hotel or motel where we're staying.and when i
get to the auditorium or the fair or the park where we're performing, my
clothes are there hanging neatly in my closet.i have a place to dress,
to eat, and to relax.the bus really becomes a home on wheels.

but let's say i send the band to cleveland on the bus and i decide to
fly.i can go home after the friday opry and sleep in my own bed, but i
have to get up no later than eight o'clock Saturday morning, pack my
bag, get dressed much nicer than i'd have to dress if i were riding the
bus, and be at the nashville airport no later than ten.i have to check
my bags and walk halfway to cincinnati searching for my gate.my flight
leaves at ten-thirty, which is eleven-thirty cleveland time, and arrives
there just before one.no lunch is served en route, so i have to grab a
bite to eat at the airport snack bar when we get in.

then i have to round up my baggage and hope it all arrived in one piece.
i have to catch a cab or rent a car or depend on someone to pick me up
at the airport and take me to the hotel.by this time it's midafternoon
and i'm already feeling like i've put in a full day's work.i still have
to get from the hotel to the gig, lugging my suitcase and wardrobe bag
all the way.by the time i walk on the bus and greet the group, i'm ready
to plop down on the sofa and take a nap.but there's no time. i've still
got a show to do.

i'm often asked, isn't it hard to sleep on a bus rolling down the
highway?Sometimes it is, like maybe the first night of a tour after
you've been off the road for a while.by the second night, though, you're
sleeping like a baby.after a long tour, night after night, travelling
mile after mile, it's sometimes hard to come home and sleep in a bed
that doesn't move.

get up and shake the bed for a while, will you, honey?has been the plea
of many a musician in from off the road.and, darling, if you really want
to make me feel at home, he adds, how about spraying some diesel fumes
around the bedroom!

Robert Sheldon of the new york times once wrote, vaudeville never died,
it just moved to nashville.in a way, i guess he was right, because those
of us in the country music business do keep a lifestyle similar to that
of the old vaudevillians of the early nineteen 00s. we pack and unpack a
lot of suitcases, eat meals at places we probably wouldn't be caught
dead in if we were at home, sleep everywhere except in the comfort of
our own beds, and ply our craft in far-flung places with strange names
like ottumwa, oshkosh, oneonta, oneida, and opelika.we are gypsies of a
sort and not everybody understands.many's the time i've been asked, why
do you work the road?why don't you just stay home and write songs?
Sometimes i'm not too sure of the answers myself, but the bottom line is
probably that in spite of all the hardships and inconveniences of such
an existence, i still love it.i don't know of anything else i could be
doing that i would enjoy as much.and any entertainer will tell you the
same thing: there's no feeling in the world quite like the feeling you
get when you're up on that stage performing for an audience.when i'm
clicking on all the right cylinders and the crowd is responding, it's a
high like no other high i've ever experienced.and even after all these
years, the excitement is still there.on the other hand, nobody applauds
when i write a song. maybe i just haven't come to the point yet where
i've been ready to make that trade.

besides, i'm lucky to be able to entertain people for a living. not
everybody who wants to can do it.it's what i've worked for, what i've
strived for.there are thousands of people in the world iwho would gladly
swap places with me in a minute.i know that, iand i guard my
opportunities jealously.

the travelling and the touring are just part of the dues one pays for
the privilege of being an entertainer.if i'm going to make phonograph
records, appear on television, and work to have a icareer in show
business, then the unwritten portion of the contract i make with the
world says that i will also make myself available for personal
appearances.that i won't go hide in a closet, but rather i'll ride up
and down the highways and byways thanking my fans for their support and
singing personally for them the songs ithey've heard me sing on the
radio and on tv.it's not much to ask, and fortunately for me i've built
up a long and varied list of songs over the years that people have
wanted to hear.

following the success of 8 x 10 in nineteen 64 my next hit was a sad,
somewhat prophetic song about the inspiration a father received from his
child following the death of his wife, called five little fingers.we
knew when we cut it that this song didn't have ithe crossover potential
of a Still or an 8 x 10 but it was a solid country success just the
same.next came a couple of even more traditional country offerings,
three eigh m.and bright lights & country music, followed by another
crossover success, i love you drops.the flip side of i love you drops
was also a top-ten country hit, the poignant golden guitar.written by a
young texan named curtis leach, golden guitar was my first hit recording
of a song i didn't write.

the first up-tempo record i ever had to go to number one, i get the
fever, came in nineteen 67 and was the first in a chain of hits i wrote
and set to a musical beat that was quite different for that day and
itime.musicians around town called it the fever beat or the bill
anderson beat for years, but it was simply music played four beats ito
the measure with equal emphasis given to both the downbeat and the
upbeat.in effect, that made it sound like eight beats to the measure.

today it's commonly called straight eights, and it's a rhythm ipattern
used on both up-tempo songs and ballads as well.i used istraight eights
or some variation thereof on subsequent hits like get while the gettin's
good, wild weekend, and my country version of the first edition's but
you know i love you.for a while this unusual rhythm pattern became
almost as much a part

of the bill anderson signature as the soft-sell talking and singing
sound that preceded it.

by the late sixties and early seventies i had had hit records of several
different types and began feeling secure enough as an artist

to begin experimenting musically and reaching out a bit.in nineteen 69 i
got caught up in the emotion and turmoil of my personal life, and

in answer to my wife's charges that i'd be throwing away my life if i
allowed our marriage to dissolve, i wrote the biting my life

(throw it away if i want to), the humor and poignancy of which was
totally lost on both her and her divorce lawyer.billboard

imagazine liked it, however, enough to name it the number one country
record of the year.in a 180-degree turnaround just one year later, i

stirred up nationwide feelings of both patriotism and anger when i
coauthored and recorded where have all our heroes gone? interpreted as a
flag-waving anthem by some but in my mind, at the outset, simply the
posing of a social question.

the song was born quite innocently.i was sharing the concert bill with
merle haggard one Sunday afternoon at mammoth cobo

hall in detroit when his okie from muskogee was at the height of its
popularity.the huge auditorium was packed to the rafters, and when merle
broke into the opening line, we don't smoke marijuana in muskogee, the
place nearly came apart.Spotlights

danced across the gigantic american flags draping down from the ceiling,
eighteen thousand people leaped to their feet screaming
and applauding their approval, and tears of patriotic pride welled up in
every eye in the house.we were in the heart of a city, remember, that
had only a few months before been racked by dissension and strife, fire
and bloody riots in the streets, and
merle's politically conservative message was exactly what the white,
blue-collar detroiter wanted to hear.

i was standing off to the right-hand side of the stage visiting with a
detroit newspaperman named bob talbert when the erup tion took
place.bob, who is originally from columbia, South carolina, as i am,
turned to me and said, boy, this is exactly
what these people need right now-a real hero.look at that .

merle is their hero.where have all our heroes gone, anyhow?

iwe started talking about the people we admired and looked up to when we
were kids going to the movies and to ball games and itù listening to the
radio back in South carolina.bob started rattling off names like joe
dimaggio, Stan musial, Roy Rogers, gene autry, eisenhower, macarthur,
and i said, whoa!wait a minute!you're going too fast.but this is a great
idea for a song.take all that you're saying, put it down on paper, and
send it to me in a letter.i believe i could sort it out and make a song
out of it. iwhatta you think?

ibob liked the idea and went right to work on it.in just a few days i
received from him sheet after sheet of single-spaced typewritten
thoughts at random about america's heroes of the past, our lack of
modern-day heroes, and even the presence of the anti-hero in our current
society.within a few weeks i had condensed bob's rambling thoughts into
a narrative for a song, written a melody and sing-along chorus, and
prepared a speech designed to convince owen bradley that i should record
it.owen didn't even put up a fight.i sang it for him one time, and we
cut it immediately.

i have never, before or since, released a song that created the impact
of where have all our heroes gone?Radio stations started playing it the
day the record came in.when people heard it, they jammed the phone lines
at stations all over the country wanting to hear it again.Record stores
couldn't get copies in stock quick enough to meet the demand. the first
week the record was out it came in on the hot 100 chart at number.
37.the second week it was nnumber 12 and the third week it hit number
one.and it stayed and it stayed.

the story of the song was built around a man who overheard a igroup of
young boys talking about the contents of a magazine they were reading
one day while out on the playground.Supposedly the youngsters were
enamored by the pictures and stories of the longhaired, hippie,
headline-grabbing anti-heroes that our society seemed to be producing in
abundance back in those days.as the man listened to the boys' comments
and heard their professed adulation for the people whose behavior he
abhorred, he was shocked into wondering out loud how our society had
managed to sink to such depths.are these the people these young boys
look up to?he asked.are these their idols?are these the heroes of the
now' generation?

to me, my thoughts and musings weren't anything all that shocking.i had
read numerous newspaper and magazine articles that said virtually the
same thing i was saying.youth leaders all across the country were
voicing similar concerns.So were ministers and teachers and guidance
counselors.everybody was wondering where the admirable people in our
society had wandered off to. all i had done, to my way of thinking, was
condense their thoughts into a three- or four-minute narrative and put
some music behind it.for that reason, i was totally unprepared for the
reaction my record received.

i was called to be on the today show, and all the other talk shows
wanted me, too.Suddenly my political views were being sought out, people
were labeling me everything from super patriot to super idiot, and most
of america was missing the entire point of what bob and i had been
trying to say.it was such a time of polarization in this country-the
viet nam war, the riots in the streets, the emerging drug culture-that
people saw themselves and others as either liberal or conservative,
either right or left, black or white.there was very little patience with
anything gray.we hadn't been trying to make a political statement but
rather a social statement.kids were looking up to the free-living joe
namaths, the rebellious joan baezes, the angry huey newtons, and we were
simply saying, hey, where are the john waynes and gary coopers and lou
gehrigs when we need them?but very few people bothered to hear it that
way.

my record was strictly a love-hate record.people either loved it or
hated it.fortunately, most of my fans loved it.we started selling out
concert appearances everywhere we went and receiving five- to ten-minute
standing ovations every time we performed the song. promoters were
bringing american flags into the coliseums and theaters where we were
performing, and while i was singing they'd have the spotlight operators
focus one pin-spot on me and the other one on the flag.the crowds would
go into a frenzy.i had never seen anything like it.

but on the other side of the coin, the program director of a radio
station in aspen, colorado, wrote mca Records and said, don't ever send
us another mca Record and expect us to play it. any company who would
release such a piece of maligning bulls--t as bill anderson's where have
all our heroes gone? doesn't deserve our support.at the same time a
right-wing organization from florida petitioned me to go back into the
studio and overdub my voice on the record to include the name of
lieutenant william calley, of my-lai massacre fame, among my list of
heroes. i couldn't win for losing.

a friend of mine helped me put it all in perspective, though, one
Saturday night backstage at the opry.i started telling him how
unsettling it was to be written about in the press nearly every day, how
hard it was to have to listen to all the criticism that was being dished
out, even though i could also hear the cheers ringing in the background.
are they spelling your name right?he asked. i said they were.he reached
out his hand and touched my arm. ithen don't worry about it, , , he
smiled.and from then on i didn't.today i'm proud to say that bob
talbert's original letter to me and my original lyrics to where have all
our heroes gone? are on display in the songwriters' section of the
country music hall of fame and museum in nashville.

i thought it best, however, that i return to more traditional themes for
the subject matter of my songs that were to follow.i warbled such
noncontroversial lines as, always remember i love you, don't she look
good in the new dress i bought her, and we called it magic ...then we
called it tragic ...finally we called it quits.the today show wasn't
calling, but i wasn't getting any hate mail either.and i was working the
road to the tune of some two hundred dates nearly every year.

when people realize how much i've travelled and the places my itravels
have taken me, their first reaction is, boy, i wish i had a job like
yours.you get to go to so many exciting places and see so imany
interesting things.that must be the greatest life in the iworld!' in a
lot of ways they are right.

but two hundred days a year is hard work.that's two hundred working
days, so you add in at least another fifty to seventy-five days or
part-days for travel.that's more than seventy-five percent of a year
spent away from home.and on the days at home, an entertainer doesn't
exactly get to loaf.if he did, when would irecords get cut, publicity
photos be taken, television appearances be taped, and all the other
thousand i and-one things that go to make up an artist's career get
accomplished?

but the travel can be enjoyable, particularly if you look at it as part
of the overall learning experience.that's how i've tried to approach it
over the years, particularly the times i've had the opportunity to
travel outside the united States.

Some entertainers don't like to travel overseas.it's tiring and often
difficult to adjust to the time change, the food is different, the
hotels aren't what they are at home, there's no twenty-four hour room
service, no mcdonald's right outside the window.but i've enjoyed seeing
other countries, other lifestyles.had it not been for the music
business, i'd probably still think the world started and stopped at the
city limits of commerce, georgia.

i've had the opportunity during my career to perform in germany,
england, ireland, Scotland, holland, norway, and Sweden, as well as
every state in the union and every province of canada. i've found in my
travels that people are people wherever you go and that music is an
international language.it can cross a lot of boundaries.

by that i mean, people might not always understand the words you say to
them, but they can always feel the music you sing and play for them. for
example, once in the early seventies i was touring europe with conway
twitty and loretta lynn, and we ventured north into Scandinavia where
none of us had ever been before.it was our opening night in bergen,
norway, which is probably the most beautiful place i have ever been, and
our concert was being televised live all across the country.i was the
first act to go on stage.after my opening medley of songs, the audience
applauded generously.then with no warning at all their applause t turned
into a loud, rhythmic f00t i stomping.it began softly at first ù ..and
slowly...then it became more staccato. ..then louder ù ..and louder
...until alll could think of was pictures i'd seen of german soldiers in
world war ii marching in that highkicking, goose-step motion.i didn't
know if the audience was organizing into a mob about to storm the stage
and lynch me or not. they just kept on stomping and clapping louder and
louder.

finally, i held up my hand for quiet and i said to these people in my
slowest and most deliberate english i ...do not ... understand.what
...does .ù .this ...mean?

the auditorium grew strangely still and quiet.then a young man seated by
the aisle about halfway back in the house stood up iand said in halting
english, it means ...we love you!

with that, i turned to the band and motioned for them to join me, and we
started clapping and stomping our feet right back at the audience.we
love you too, i shouted, and the crowd went berserk.i don't know of
another single moment in my career when i've felt so much love fill one
hall.and it was all because of the music.the music spoke to everyone
there regardless of their nationality or their native tongue.there has
been only one other night in my career that could possibly have matched
that one for me emotionally.that came several years later in belfast,
northern ireland.

people seem surprised when i tell them that i have performed in belfast.
actually, i've gone there twice, and i'll admit both times it was scary.
the first time i went i had never been any place where people were
fighting a war, and it wasn't exactly what i'd icall a Sunday stroll in
the park.

becky went with me, and when we arrived at the belfast airport ifrom
london, we had nothing in our possession but the clothes on our backs.
the authorities had confiscated our wallets, the ladies' purses,
everything.in fact, before the flight ever boarded in ilondon, they had
taken us all, one at a time, behind little privacy curtains and frisked
us from head to toe.they were afraid we might be trying to smuggle in
weapons or ammunition or someithing.then on the bus ride into belfast
from the airport, we rounded a big curve in the road and were suddenly
face-to-face with an armored tank rolling in the opposite
direction.Soldiers with guns were peeking out the top, looking all
around.i remember thinking, boy, i hope those guys like country music!
but they passed us right on by.

things were so bad between the catholics and the protestants on that
first trip to belfast that our tour promoters wouldn't even ilet us stay
at a hotel in town.they feared for our safety.they put us up in a little
inn way out in the country where they said we'd be less likely to have
any trouble.as soon as we checked in, i went to ithe room and sacked
out, but becky wasn't tired at all.She took a shower, got dressed, and
went down to the restaurant to get a bite to eat.when i woke up she told
me, boy, this sure is a nice hotel.everybody downstairs was dressed so
nice.

what do you mean?i asked.

well, when i was down there eating, there were all these men sitting
around the lobby in three-piece suits reading newspapers. Several others
were in the dining room, and they were all dressed real nice, too.even
the men walking outside in the garden were all dressed up.

i pulled the curtains back and looked out the hotel window. Sure enough,
becky was right.well-dressed men were walking around everywhere, but i
knew immediately what they were. those aren't just hotel guests, i told
her.those guys are detectives or policemen or something like that. lord,
i hope they're on our side!'

turned out that's exactly who they were and what they were. they were
there to protect us, to make sure no incidents took place while we were
there.it was scary.

on my second trip to northern ireland, we stayed right in downtown
belfast, but our hotel was completely surrounded by barbed wire and was
staked out twenty-four hours a day by uniformed, armed security guards.
a week after we left, i read in the paper where that very hotel had been
bombed.i don't know about anybody else, but the night we were there i
slept with one eye open!

the emotional part came at the show itself.you see, they don't get much
entertainment there, as you might imagine, and people came from
everywhere to see our show.they walked, they rode bicycles, they came
anyway they could just to be there.there was a curfew on how late they
could be on the streets in their cars, so most people just left their
cars at home.the concert hall was packed, and i didn't find out until
long after the show was over that in addition to all the fans, there had
been over sixty armed guards, plainclothesmen wearing bulletproof vests,
scattered throughout the audience.they, too, had been there, we were
told, for our protection just in case.fortunately, everything came off
without incident.

it was the opening night of our tour and the promoter, jeffrey kruger,
was anxious to see our show and time the individual segments.this was
because there were to be future dates on the tour where the amount of
time we'd spend on stage would be critical. Some of the theaters we were
to play were only in the two- to three-thousand seat range, and in order
to accommodate the crowds there would have to be both an early and a
late show the same evening.So on this particular night in belfast he sat
in the audience with a stopwatch to clock our numbers.

as we were told to do, we stayed on stage for exactly sixty minutes.i
sang a variety of the songs i figured they'd heard over the years-a few
of the fast ones, a few of the slow-and the reaction was incredible.
when we came off, i met jeffrey in the hallway backstage.he was staring
at his stopwatch as if he didn't believe what it was telling him.do you
know that ten minutes iand thirty-seven seconds of your sixty minutes
was taken up by applause?he asked.i've never seen such response in my
life!go back out there and sing them a few more songs, and we did. again
the applause was deafening.

i came offstage the second time emotionally drained and out of ibreath.
and then i learned why they had accepted us so warmly. most entertainers
won't even come here, an elderly man said to me softly as he stopped me
outside my dressing room, deep lines creasing his brow.we're so thankful
you came, and i noticed a tear beginning to form in the corner of his
eye.he reached out his burly arms and gave me a big bear hug. thank you,
he said. thank you for helping us forget our troubles for a while.may
god bless you and keep you safe, ' and then he broke down sobbing. many
of the other fans followed suit, coming up to embrace us, shaking our
hands warmly, and begging us to please come again! i was very touched to
think that all i had done was something that i loved to d i play and
sing my music-and in the process i had made so many people so very
happy.

the ladies who cooked in the kitchen of the little country inn where we
were staying baked us a rich layer cake and a fresh fruit pie to take
with us on the return flight to london the following morning.you must
come again, one of them said to me, when things are better.i thanked her
and assured her that we would. but the look in her eye told me she
expected that to be a long, long time.

life on the road can be very tiring, very draining emotionally, but it
can also be very funny.i've probably laughed harder, longer, and louder
over things that have happened on the road than over things that have
happened anywhere else.and some of the warm est memories i have are
woven around this nomadic existence i've enjoyed for over a quarter of a
century.

i've never seemed to attract the really wild, roaring-crazy musi cians
to my band, and i guess some of the fun we've had over the

years probably pales in comparison to tales other groups could tell.

Sure, i've had some guys (and a few gals, too) who liked to take a
1drink or two after a show and party and cut up a little bit, but i've

never employed anybody who was on drugs, anybody who had a serious
drinking problem, or anybody whose behavior was of a

destructive nature.i have had many musicians with me on the road,
however, who were extremely attracted to members of the
opposite sex.

once years ago we were working a week-long engagement at a nightclub in
a major northern city, and one of my band members

had invited a female acquaintance from another state to come see some of
our shows.She arranged her work schedule so that she was

able to accept his invitation.She flew into town and checked into the
hotel where we were staying.at the same time another

acquaintance of this same musician found out she could get off work that
week, so she, too, hopped on a plane, buzzed into town, and checked into
our hotel.neither lady was aware of the presence iof the other.one lady
had a room on the third floor, the other a

room on the twelfth.my buddy's room was on the fifth floor.

the rest of us tuned in to what was going on right away.musicians learn
to spot pretty ladies sitting alone in a crowd about the same time they
learn to go from a g-chord to d.maybe sooner. -we'd see both these young
ladies sitting in the audience night after night, both very attractive
and both apparently unescorted.then ibetween sets we'd watch as our
pickin' pal would go to their separate tables and visit first with one
and then the other.he would then table-hop all around the room and visit
with our other ifans so that nobody got suspicious. each lady thought
she was the one and only special lady in this guy's life.the masquerade
went on for days.

iwe all began to wonder about the fourth or fifth day, however, just how
our friend was managing to juggle things so as to keep each lady
ignorant of the fact that the other one was there and had come
specifically to see him.and i was starting to wonder if and when this
guy was getting any sleep.the mystery finally began to unravel late one
afternoon when i overheard him on the house phone in the lobby of the
hotel taking to one of his companions.

ihoney, i won't be able to get with you tonight after the show, he said.
would you believe bill has called a rehearsal for midnight?you go on
back to your room after we get through tonight and i'll check with you
as soon as i get in.don't wait up, though, because it may last a long
time.

then i heard him hang up the phone and dial another room number.the
conversation sounded a lot like the first one with one major change:
honey, i won't be able to be with you very long tonight, he said.would
you believe bill has called a rehearsal for isix o'clock tomorrow
morning?we can be together for a little while after the show, then i'll
have to leave.but i'll call you the minute i get back in.and the sly ole
fox hung up the phone.

i've often wondered what the ladies must have thought of me. they no
doubt figured i was the slave driver to end all slave drivers.of course,
i had called no rehearsals at all.

we were all getting a big kick out of watching what was going on,
though, and we marvelled at our friend's ingenuity, skill, and stamina.
but his luck ran out the very last day we were in town.

ithe club where we were working had a policy of opening its doors on
Saturday afternoons for a matinee performance designed for families and
children.a special section of the club was roped off where no alcoholic
beverages were served, and a nice lunch was offered.it was a very
popular feature, and the house was usually packed.this particular
Saturday afternoon was no exception. when we took to the stage for our
show, there wasn't an empty seat in the house.

in fact, while the band was tuning up, the hostess was working her way
in and out among the crowded tables making sure that no seat was left
unfilled.people were being asked to make room for strangers at their
tables and ...you guessed it.our musicianbuddy walked to the stage,
looked out into the crowd, and turned as white as a ghost when he saw
one of his two lady friends being escorted to sit at the table of the
other.i'd have given anything to have had a camera to capture the
expression on his face.

when the show started, the rest of us couldn't hold it in.we laughed
until we ached.we could see out into the audience and tell that the
ladies were conversing with each other across the we could only imagine,
however, what they must be saying. iup on stage our pal squirmed, he
fidgeted, and the more he suffered, the more we rubbed it in.i lied to
the audience at one point and said i had a special request to sing three
hearts in a tangle. the band cracked up. i didn't sing it, but if i had,
he'd never have made it through the first verse.i told every joke i
could think of about love triangles.if the song trying to love two women
had been out then, i'd have sung it a half-dozen times.the guys in the
band and i were having a ball.we deliberately stretched the show and
made it last as long as we could. our buddy was in agony.

as soon as the show was over, he left the stage like he'd been shot out
of a cannon.the ladies calmly got up from their table and left the club
together.we didn't see our friend again until showtime that night, and
we never did see either one of his companions again ... ever.we kidded
our don juan unmercifully for days, and for a while we almost had him
believing that the girls had gotten together, compared notes, and were
coming after him with a gun in the next town we were headed for.we
thought it was hilarious.he threw a crick in his neck looking over his
shoulder.

travelling musicians form something of an unspoken fraternal bond among
themselves, sort of a modern code of the old west. they do for each
other ...and they often do to each other as well.guys who share bumpy
bus rides, lousy restaurants, crummy imotels, long hours, days, weeks,
and months together away from their families sometimes become closer
than brothers.and brothers, as you know, often have no mercy on one
another.

one night in wichita, kansas, for reasons that will forever go unknown,
Snuffy miller decided he'd put some soap on jimmy gately's fiddle bow.
he knew if he put enough of the waxy substance on the hairs of the bow
they couldn't rub against the strings of the fiddle and the fiddle
couldn't make a sound.he also knew
1i'dhadahotrecordinwichitawithbrightlights&country music and that it had
a fiddle intro.and he knew i'd be awfully upset if jimmy stepped up to
the microphone to kick off that song and no sound came out of his
instrument.

which is exactly what happened.i gave the song a powerful introduction
...folks, here's a song you made a big hit here in iwichita.i hope you
remember it, and i hope you like it.jimmy istrode into the spotlight at
center stage, placed his fiddle under his chin, and dramatically raised
the bow.he brought it crashing down against the strings and ...dead
silence.he tried it again. again no sound. believing the third time to
be the charm, he went through the whole exercise again and still nothing
happened. i looked at jimmy, not understanding exactly what had happened
myseff, and there was a horrified look on his face.Suddenly he took his
fiddle out of his left hand and switched it over into his iright.he
began pounding his left ear with the palm of his hand.it never occurred
to him that his bow had been tampered with.the poor guy thought he had
gone deaf!

everybody laughed like the dickens.that is, everybody but gate.he was
too bent on revenge.he got it, too, in short order.i had used a trumpet
to play the introduction to my recorded version of but you know i love
you, and on stage Snuffy had become quite proficient at playing his
snare drum with one hand and the intro on a trumpet with the other.
never quite forgetting or forgiving Snuffy for the soap-on-the-bow
incident, jimmy decided to stuff the horn of Snuffy's trumpet with
kleenex.the effect was the same as with the fiddle.no sound could come
out.in fact, no air could pass through the instrument at all. this time
when i cued the intro for my song, Snuffy took a big deep breath, raised
the trumpet to his lips, and nearly blew his brains out!

(not long ago i ran into my buddy of many years, johnny western, who is
now a disc jockey at kfdi Radio in wichita.at the time of the soap i on
i ffie-bow and the i 55ue i in i ffie i trumpet episodes, johnny was a
recording artist and touring performer himself and had been a part of
the tour where these monkeyshines took place.he remembers the incidents
well but contends that all these years i've been blaming the wrong
persons for what happened.he swears the true culprit was the show's
comedian, don bowman, who actually instigated both incidents.if so,
apologize belatedly to gate and Snuffy.i can't wait to talk to bowman
and hear his side of it!)

fun on the road comes in all shapes and sizes.i once organized a
softball team among the members of my group, and for a while we almost
forgot we were travelling musicians.we thought we were the king and his
court, eddie feigner's touring softball-playing legends.we'd get
ourselves booked into a town for an evening's concert and then arrange
an afternoon softball game pitting our band against a team of local disc
jockeys, musicians, or the local chapter of little Sisters of the poor.
we weren't too choosy about our competition.we just wanted to play.

we'd come bounding off our bus at the local ball field, sometimes with
several thousand people in attendance, wearing our black-and-white
softball uniforms trimmed in gold, trying our best to hold our stomachs
in and let our athletic prowess hang out.the games were always played
for a local charity, so in addition to providing us with an outlet for
our pent-up energies, we raised a lot of money over the years for a lot
of worthwhile causes.

once in hattiesburg, mississippi, the immortal dizzy dean served as our
umpire.and Ronnie milsap, the great blind singer and musician, snuck up
behind me without my knowing it at a game in nashville dressed in full
regalia.i was at bat, and the pitcher threw a pitch that
sailed at least five feet over my head.i heard the ump yell, Strike
one!the crowd roared, and i turned around to jump all over the
umpire.when i saw Ronnie standing there in his umpire's uniform and
wraparound dark glasses, i yelled hey, what's going on?

don't you scream at me, he barked, i calls em like i sees em!

ibail playing at our ages was sometimes more dangerous than i ihad
realized.prior to a game one night, i was hitting some fly balls to our
outfielders when my piano player, monty parkey, walked right in front of
a blistering line drive hot off my bat.it hit him square in the face and
blood came gushing from everywhere.it scared me to death. i thought i
had killed him.i rushed him to the hospital, and he ended up missing
several concert engagements suffering from a broken nose.

Rounding third base at tim mccarver Stadium in memphis one night, i got
tangled up in my own feet and did a triple somersault iright across home
plate.i lay there in the dust and the dirt afraid to move, frightened
that i might have separated the shin bone iconnected to the ankle bone.
the crowd was evidently afraid that something much worse had happened,
for they grew quiet as a mouse.when i caught my breath and realized i
was all right, i ijumped to my feet, dusted off my uniform, and trotted
to the dugout to the tune of a standing ovation.i politely tipped my cap
just like i'd seen the big boys do on tv.i thought i was ty cobb
reincarnated.

i not only played softball, but once i even got back into playing
baseball for a while.a group of country music stars, musicians,
songwriters and others who worked in our industry decided in the
mid-seventies to form a team.they called it the nashville pickers and
rounded up some sponsors to furnish uniforms, others to furinish
equipment, and an ex-major league player, dick Sisler, who lives in
nashville, to serve as manager.they came up with a unique way to promote
and market the team and at the same time have a lot of fun.

they would sign contracts each season to bring the ball team to a
half-dozen or so major league cities on the day of a regularly
ischeduled game.an hour or so before the big league game, the pickers,
many of whom were well-known country stars, (charlie pride, Roy clark,
johnny duncan, bob luman, and charlie mccoy among them) would challenge
a team made up of local radio, television, and newspaper personalities
to a baseball game. ithey'd play three or four innings, or as much as
time would allow, then turn things over to the real ballplayers.after
the major league game, the stars would come back out and give an
hour-long concert.

it was a tremendous concept, and there were very few big league clubs
who weren't receptive to the idea.Some of the larger cities with minor
league clubs went for the idea as well.over the years, there weren't
many baseball parks of any size around the country that didn't receive
at least one visit from the nashville pickers.

when the team was first organized, i was working so many dates on the
road every summer that, even though i wanted badly to be part of it, i
just couldn't fit it into my schedule.finally one year things eased up a
bit, and i made it to a few of the games.

i'll never forget the Sunday afternoon i got to play first base in the
astrodome in houston.the montreal expos were in town for a game with the
astros, and i was like a kid at the circus.i guess i might have been a
bit too nervous because i came to bat twice in the game and both times
hit weak little rollers back to the pitcher. i was thrown out at first
base by twenty yards each time.

when the game was over, my longtime friend, tommy helms, who had played
for years with the cincinnati Reds and was finishing out the last days
of his career as a member of the astros, called me over to the houston
dugout and gave me one of his customcrafted louisville Slugger baseball
bats.i guess he figured i needed something to help me hit the ball
better than i had done that afternoon.i was thrilled with the bat and
could hardly wait to get it back to nashville and show it off.

but there was one rather pertinent question: how was i going to get the
bat home?it was too big to fit in my suitcase, i'd have felt like a fool
carrying it on my shoulder through the houston airport, and besides i
figured they wouldn't let me on an airplane carrying a ball bat
anyhow.what was i going to do?

finally, i hit on a solution.i was carrying my stage costume in a
leather hang-up garment bag.why couldn't i just slide the bat down into
the garment bag and carry it on the plane with me? Sounded like a good
idea to me.

the next morning johnny duncan and i caught a cab to the airport, and i
told him what i was doing.i'll bet they stop me at security, though, i
said.they'll think i'm gonna use the bat to hit the pilot over the head
and hijack the plane or something.' but, surprise, when i put my bag on
the conveyor belt to be x-rayed the security guard let it pass right on
through.

i picked up my bag as it came off the far side of the belt and was about
to walk on to my gate when the guard tapped me on the shoulder.i'd like
to take a look inside your bag, please, sir, he isaid.

iuh oh, here it comes, i thought.he'll never let me take this bat on
board.guess i'll have to leave it in houston.'

the guard never said a word.he unzipped my bag, reached in behind my
clothes, and pulled out the shiny louisville Slugger.he looked at it
carefully, rolled it around in his hands once or twice, then put it back
in the bag and zipped it up again.then he handed the garment bag to me.

iaren't you going to confiscate my bat?i asked him, puzzled by his
actions.i could use it to hit the pilot over the head, you know.

he looked at me and never changed his expression.i saw your igame at the
dome yesterday, he said softly, and i'm not worried. in your hands that
bat is no weapon!

i got so serious about playing ball there for a while that it began to
affect my business.i signed our team up to play in a city league in
nashville and found myself cancelling and moving show dates around so we
could play softball every wednesday night.in a double-header league no
less.one night it dawned on me that while i was having tons of fun
playing ball, i was really starting to ineglect my career.i had chosen
years ago to be an entertainer, not a ball player.i began to rethink my
priorities and decided i'd best put my bat and ball back in the closet
and get back in the music ibusiness where i belonged.

i've never been much of a card player, but there didn't used to be a
band in the business that didn't play a lot of poker or other icard
games while riding down the highway looking for a way to pass the time.
i once had three or four extremely serious poker players in my group who
would break out the cards the minute the bus was loaded after a show
(you wanta look at a few?was their byword invitation to one another) and
still be playing when we'd pull into the next town the following
morning.i don't think the stakes were ever very high, but evidently they
were high enough to attract poker players from some of the other bands
we'd be touring with.i remember one tour when del Reeves, jack greene,
and kenny price rode more miles on my bus than they did on their own
just to play cards with my band.today the younger musicians are into
video games, and they often sit before the tv set on the bus and play
for hours.

i miss the old package show tours where several artists would travel
together for long periods of time.it was always fun to have other
singers and musicians climb on our bus, and i'd often ride with them on
theirs.today i might work a show with two or three other artists and
never even get a chance to speak with them. they come into town from one
direction, we come in from another, they check into one motel, we check
into another. they'll then stay secluded on their bus until showtime,
and our paths never cross.i don't like that.we're all missing out on a
lot l of fun.

i especially used to love to work in the Sunday package shows with
george jones and tammy wynette when they were married. itammy would put
a pot of beans on the stove in their bus and a ham in the oven prior to
the matinee performance and let them cook slowly while she and george
were on stage singing.between the matinee and the night show, she'd mix
up a pan of cornbread and invite the other entertainers on the show over
for dinner.i used to tease and tell them their bus was one of the best
truck stops on the circuit!

Some of the best socializing among entertainers can take place on the
tour buses.grandpa jones, one of my favorite people in the world and one
of our business's greatest characters, was once visiting on my bus at a
little county fair.we were sitting around swapping stories, waiting for
the time for us to go onstage.the bus was parked directly behind the
stage, and when the local band opened the show and began to play, the
noise from the power generator running the lights and air conditioning
on our bus began drowning them out.they turned to the promoter of the
show, who was standing off in the wings, and asked him to ask us if we'd
either turn the generator off or move the bus a few feet away from the
stage.

Since the day was a scorcher and we didn't want to sit there with no air
conditioning, we decided on the latter.our driver cranked up the big
diesel engine and backed up a good hundred yards from the stage.in about
ten minutes here came the promoter again telling us the generator was
still too loud on stage.So we backed up another hundred yards or
so.believe it or not, this still did not satisfy the musicians who must
have had supersonic hearing, so for the third time we were asked to back
the bus up even farther.all this time grandpa hadn't said a word. he'd
just sat there watching and listening.

finally we had moved the bus as far away from the other band as possible
without leaving the fairgrounds.grandpa looked out the front window at
the other performers who were now just a small spot on the horizon.
well, he said in his patented nasal tone, ipronouncing well as if it
rhymed with pail, we'll have to book a date between here and the stage!

for several years in the late seventies and early eighties, i placed in
back of me and the band on stage a backdrop comprised of three large
movie screens, behind which we mounted up to as many as nine
computerized slide projectors, and at various times throughout my
concerts i would show pictures on the screens to illustrate the music
the band and i were performing lyve.Several artists carry screens and
slides today, some even show video tapes, but at that time my slide show
was something quite innovative.as you might suspect, in those days there
was still a lot of room for improvement in the equipment.

when our slide show worked right, it was one of the most effective and
stunning presentations imaginable.but when it didn't, it could be
disastrous.

i used it only at certain strategic points in the show, one of which was
when i sang a medley of songs from the sixties.i would pull out one of
my old custom-made rhinestone suits from that era and put on the jacket,
talk about the sixties and ask the audience to remember the music that
went with the times.as we played and sang our songs, slides would appear
illustrating the current events of the decade.

later in the show i did a tribute to the history and the roots of
country music with a different set of slides.my opening line was, in the
beginning, there was just a man and a guitar, and an old black-and-white
picture of a farmer sitting on the front porch of a

little log cabin picking his guitar would slowly fade up on the
screen.it was quite dramatic.as the slide slowly eased into focus, the
guitar player in my band would begin picking out the melody to wildwood
flower on his acoustical guitar.

by now i'm sure you're ahead of me.we were working at a big fair up in
new england and i was about to close the show with the

country music medley, when somehow the computer and the slide projectors
got their signals all crisscrossed.the lights went down, and i began
talking about how country music began, saying slowly and dramatically,
in the beginning, there was just a man ...and
a guitar.the guitar player went into his soft, emotional version of
wildwood flower.but suddenly i noticed the audience shifting
nervously in their seats.a couple of them were looking at the screen
with puzzled looks on their faces.one or two were even
snickering.

what's so funny?i thought, and i turned to look at the screen behind
me.but instead of seeing the picture of the old farmer

quietly strumming his guitar, i found myself looking directly into an
eight i foot-high picture of the sneering face of Spiro agnew!it

was no doubt the only time in history that the former vice presi dent of
the united States had ever been credited with founding

country music.

my audio-visual show was such a hit with audiences all over the country,
though, that i was once invited to showcase it before one
of the most influential and prestigious groups of all, the national
association of fair buyers at their annual convention in las vegas.

these were the ladies and gentlemen responsible for booking most of the
acts into the biggest fairs around the country, and it was an

honor to be asked to appear before them.i knew if we did a good job we'd
get booked at a large number of major fairs the following

season.

the showcase was set for the large auditorium inside the beauti ful
aladdin hotel.we got to town the day before the showcase, and our
technical crew spent all the next day making sure everyii thing was in
perfect working order.but, alas, when i went to wrap

up my performance with in the beginning, there was just a man and his
guitar, a field of beautiful yellow flowers appeared behind me on the
screen.

i stopped and told the fair buyers that something had malfunctioned, and
we started over again.this time, the man and his guitar turned out to be
the silhouette of two lovers rubbing noses in the twilight.the buyers
roared.they had all been through the experience of a ferris wheel
breaking down or a merry-go-round that wouldn't work at their fairs.they
knew what i was going through, and they were laughing because this time
it was me suffering instead of them.when on my third attempt at getting
it right still another wrong slide appeared on the screen, i turned to
the audience and said, aw, to hell with it.if you want to see this thing
work right, you'll just have to book me!and i walked off the stage to a
standing ovation!

i've had the opportunity to meet many people, see many places, and
witness many special events in my lifetime that i'd never have gotten
the opportunity to be a part of were it not for the fact i was an
entertainer travelling the road.i've been invited to the white house,
i've been to two Super bowls, to the world Series, to the bottom of the
grand canyon and to the top of pike's peak.i've been able to go on seven
caribbean cruises, and i've taken my band members and their spouses with
me.we've seen shows on broadway, been to both the baseball and the pro
football halls of fame, watched them make beer at a brewery in
wisconsin, manufacture maple syrup in vermont, make cereal in battle
creek, and build guitars in kalamazoo.i've have fans take my picture,
ask for my autograph, and pay their hard-earned money to sit in the
audience and applaud my music and laugh at my jokes.one night at
memorial hall in downtown dayton, ohio, a lady dressed in a full-length
dress and a mink coat walked up on stage in front of several thousand
people while i was singing Still and started taking off her clothes. and
i've had people say to me just about every conceivable thing imaginable.
like the lady who told me after a concert just recently, i would have
been at your show the last time you were in town, but i had something
else to do.and another one who said, oh, bill anderson, it's such a
thrill to imeet you.i've liked you ever since back when you used to be
ipopular!

my favorite may have come last winter, though, when i was driving a new
four-wheel-drive vehicle i had just bought in florida back to nashville
and had to stop and check into a motel in northern alabama to avoid an
oncoming ice and snow storm.(i bought the car to help me navigate the
icy, snowy hills in the section of nashville where i live, then i
couldn't even get it home because of an ice and snow storm!) i signed
the guest register at the motel and handed the lady behind the counter
my credit card. She looked at my card, looked down at the name i'd just
written, glanced back at my card, then looked up at me.

bill anderson, she said slowly as if trying to remember where she'd
heard that name before.bill ...anderson.bill ...?Say, didn't there used
to be somebody famous named bill anderson?

i looked at her and smiled.yeah, i think there did, i said. but it was a
long time ago.

Really?what did he do?she asked seriously.

i just laughed.i don't know, but i bet he had a lot of fun doing it,
don't you?She stared at me blankly.

i winked at her, picked up my key, and headed for my room.i'll guarantee
you ole bill anderson, whoever he was, had a lot of fun, lady, i mumbled
under my breath.yes m'am.he had a heckuva lot of fun!

the young entertainers today may travel in faster, more expensive buses,
sing into more sophisticated and more elaborate sound systems, and
employ bigger and better bands than i ever did, but most of my cohorts
and i from the nineteen 60s put the newcomers to shame in one area of
the business: we bought much gaudier wardrobes to perform in!

i've never been in favor of country artists rolling out of their ibunks
and going directly onstage wearing wrinkled t-shirts and dirty jeans,
but, lord, i wish i had back all the money i sent to inudie's Rodeo
tailors of north hollywood, california, to purchase custom-made stage
wear for me and my band.i wish i had half the money back.i could quit
working and go fishing for a couple of years!

i've always believed in dressing my band to look the part of ishowmen.
and i feel a certain obligation to the fans not to walk onstage myself
dressed like the guy sitting in the second row.trust me, for years i
never did!

nudie Suits, named after the man who made them, nudie cohen, and not
because they were made out of see-through mateirial, were the ultimate
in stage wear in the fifties and sixties. inudie made a few outfits for
elvis and some of the other rock n' irollers, but his costumes were
mostly for country singers and silverscreen cowboys.they were
western-cut and decorated with embroidery and rhinestones until they
almost glowed in the dark. iand the poe boys had pink ones and green
ones and yellow ones iand blue ones, and i had contrasting white ones
trimmed in gold, black ones trimmed in silver, purple ones with
snowflakes, red ones embroidered with flowers, and just about any other
lavish combination you might name.in true show-biz fashion, i figured
anything worth doing was worth overdoing.

by the time i was able to afford to get the poe boys into nudie suits,
the band had expanded to six members.i had added a fulltime base player
and a piano player.at somewhere around $750 a pop, plus the boots, the
neckties and other accessories, that meant it would cost me well over
five thousand dollars for just one set of outfits.the suits were mostly
made from wool and mohair, which meant they were heavy and hot, and
there was no way to wear them beneath the bright stage lights without
perspiring like crazy. that meant we always had to have three or four
complete sets in good shape just to be able to stand next to each other
the last few nights of a long tour.there's never any time on the road to
go to the dry cleaners.

my own outfits were naturally fancier than the band's, and that usually
meant somewhere between twenty-five hundred and three thousand dollars
apiece for mine.i've even paid higher.my white boots were always
custom-made, and they cost an additional several hundred dollars (i once
went crazy and had a pair covered acompletely with rhinestones!), most
of my shirts were customtailored, and when i'd rip the seat out of my
britches, like i did one night jumping down off the stage to sign
autographs after a ishow in providence, Rhode island, and again a few
weeks later doing the same thing at a fair in hopkinsville, kentucky,
there would go another couple of grand slip-sliding away.

i began easing out of the flashy but costly costumes and into more
casual and less expensive stage wear in the early seventies. but i'll
confess: i have never felt as much like a star in what i have worn since
as i did in the old rhinestone suits.once my manager made a deal for me
to endorse a line of j.c.penney's sportswear by wearing it on my
personal appearances.the clothes were lighter aweight than the nudie
suits, and it didn't cost me a dime to outfit myself or the band, but
one day i stood on stage and counted four people sitting out in the
audience dressed just like i was.penney's loved it.but i hated it!

after he'd hired a band, bought a bus, and outfitted all the band
members in the most ornate costumes imaginable, the next thing any
self-respecting touring country music star would do back in the sixties
was add a girl singer to his entourage.i was no exception.

iby the end of the decade, i was playing more and more places iwhere the
promoters of my concerts expected me to provide the entire evening's
entertainment, and there was no way to please everybody in the audience
all night long (especially the men) by giving them nothing but a
half-dozen hairy-legged ole boys to stare at the whole time.porter
wagoner faced the same problem and hired pretty miss norma jean to tour
with him.the wilburn brothers introduced to the world a young girl from
the coal mining iregions of kentucky named loretta lynn.and thanks to an
unusual sequence of events, my female counterpart became a talented but
feisty little redhead from west plains, missouri, named jan howard.

i had started a weekly syndicated television show in early nineteen 65
called, oddly enough, the bill anderson Show.the original cast consisted
of myself, the poe boys band, singer-comedian grandpa ijones (this was a
couple of years before hee-haw came along), and icountry songstress jean
Shepard.our show was videotaped in charlotte, north carolina, at the
facilities of jefferson producitions, where we'd gather once a month to
crank out four thirtyminute programiss Syndicated meant our show was
sold to television stations all across the country on a
station-by-station basis rather than being offered to them as part of a
network.it was my first regular television exposure to a nationwide
audience, so in ispite of the hardships of having to tape the shows five
hundred miles from nashville, i was thankful for the opportunity of
doing the show, period.i didn't really care where it was done.

jean and grandpa, however, weren't exactly as thrilled about it as i
was.jean was consistently in the country charts with her recordings in
those days and could work all the personal iappearance dates she wanted
to with or without the exposure from ithe tv show.grandpa had always
been an outstanding act on any icountry show, especially at the fairs
and the outdoor festivals, and while i think he enjoyed television,
those dreary ten-hour rides from nashville across the mountains to
charlotte (no interstates ithen, remember?) seemed to get longer and
longer each time.jean and grandpa made the trips for a year with no
complaints, but when their paychecks from the producers began taking
longer and longer to come in, they began to grow more and more unhappy.
finally, when the checks stopped coming in at all, they each decided
that there had to be a better way for them to spend their time.in
january, nineteen 66 they somewhat angrily quit the show.

grandpa, in particular, had a short fuse back in those days, and i'll
never forget one of his last taping sessions with us when he was getting
fed up with the whole situation.my band was attempting to play an
instrumental following a song grandpa had just sung, and they couldn't
get it right for anything.at that time there was no such thing as
editing videotape, so every time the band would make a mistake, the
director would yell cut!and stop the tape. this meant we had to go back
to the point of the last commercial break and start over.So grandpa,
who'd sung his song perfectly every time, had to come back on the set
and sing his song again. and again.and again and again.i thought if i
heard methodist pie one more time i was going to change my religion.or
give it up altogether!

and if you think i was upset, you should have seen grandpa. finally,
after at least a half-dozen attempts, the band played their song well
enough for the director to be pleased.but then the guitar player said he
didn't like his part and asked if he could play it just one more
time.whereupon i looked over into the corner of the studio and spotted
grandpa.he had shoved his banjo down in its case and had picked up a
broom from back in the prop room.and he was moving like a madman
ninety-to-nothing across the studio floor with that broom.

what in the world are you doing, paw?i asked.

he shot back, i'm a-sweepin' me off a place to have a fit!

i wasn't getting my paycheck most of the time either, but the exposure
from being on a hundred or more television stations all across the
country each week was helping me in a lot of ways that veteran
performers like jean and grandpa didn't necessarily need. the show was
helping country fans to put a face and a personality with my name.
people who had only heard me sing on the radio or jukeboxes up until
then could now invite me right into their homes and watch me as well.
and i learned real fast that no medium in the world creates closeness
between performer and audience like television.

i also realize that i look better on the radio than i do on television,
but i weighed my options and decided i'd be better off iin the long run
by continuing to do the tv show than by pulling out.occasionally the
producers would toss a nickel or a dime my way and i'd buy some gasoline
and keep on trekking across the mountains.

iduring the year we had been taping in charlotte, jan howard had
appeared on our show two or three times as a special guest. the producer
liked her singing and her personally, so when he got wind of jean's
planning not to return, he offered the permanent female singer's job to
jan.She asked me what i thought about it, and i told her not to plan on
spending all the money she'd be making in one place.She got the
message.but at the same time she had made a new commitment to her career
and was as anxious as i was to add to her exposure.She accepted the job
eagerly. funnyman don bowman, who had just begun recording a series of
comedy albums for Rca, signed on in grandpa's place.

with our new cast and new look, we continued to tape our programs in
charlotte until the fall of nineteen 66.quite a few new stations began
to carry our show, and more and more artists with records to promote
began asking me if they could come to charlotte and tape guest
appearances with us.i was always glad to welcome my friends to the show,
but i invited one artist that, had his appearance not been a smashing
success, could have cost me my job.

charley pride was new on Rca victor records and had just begun to
promote his songs and work on his career.there weren't many people who
had even heard of him at this point, and i doubt the ones who had, had
the slightest idea that he was black.at that time there had never been a
black singer in the field of country music.

charley had also never been on television.when i realized i had a chance
to be the first person in the country to present him to a tv audience
and found out how badly he wanted to come guest on my show, i extended
him an invitation.and he accepted. only trouble was i didn't tell the
producers he was coming.

the morning of the taping i figured i'd best tell somebody that i was
about to have the first black country singer in history on my show, so i
went upstairs to the jefferson production offices and decided i'd go
right to the head man.no use beating around the bush with the peons. i
told him everything.

you've done what?i can still hear him yell.you can't have a black man on
your show!we just went on the air in meridian, mississippi .. .jackson,
mississippi ...alexandria, louisiana for god's sake!we'll lose all those
stations, don't you know that? you just tell him you're sorry, that you
made a mistake.but you can't put him on.it'll be the end of your show!

no, sir, i'm not going to tell him that, i answered.you'll have to tell
him.but i don't think it'll hurt the show at all.in fact, i think it
will help it.he's never been on tv.we've got a chance to have him
first.don't you think that's worth taking a chance for?

mister boss man didn't like it one bit, but after giving me all of his
reasons and listening to all of mine, he finally gave in.after all,
charley was already in the dressing room downstairs and getting ready to
go onto the set and rehearse with the band.when the tape started to roll
early that afternoon and charley pride walked on camera to sing his
first song, everything in that entire building came to a standstill.
every executive, every secretary, every person who could crowd into the
little viewing room high above the studio was there, looking down
through the thick plate glass, watching something they didn't understand
and could scarcely believe-a black man singing country music.and bill
anderson committing professional suicide.

fortunately, charley never knew until i told him years later that
anything out of the ordinary was going on.he was nervous enough just
standing in front of the camera.he certainly didn't need anything else
to worry about.he sang both sides of his first release, the Snakes crawl
at night and the atlantic coastal line.and he sang them well, even
though he has told me many times since that he was scared to death.

the show began to air on stations around the country about three weeks
after we taped it, and the reaction from our viewers was unbelievable.
whereas in a normal week our show might have generated a couple of
hundred letters nationwide, this week they brought mail to me in a
bushel basket.hundreds upon hundreds of cards and letters, all with
something to say about that new singer, charley pride.they loved him.
mississippi loved him, louisiana loved him, every single letter but two
said, in effect, that they thought charley pride was fantastic.we didn't
lose one station or one single viewer that i ever knew of.the only
negative letters i received were one postmarked chicago and another from
milwaukee.i threw them both in the trash.

it had nothing at all to do with charley pride's appearance on our show,
but before the year was out we left charlotte and moved the production
of our show to the studios of cklw-tv in windsor, ontario, canada, just
across the river from detroit.we had a new producer and new syndicators
by this time, and the new folks had promised us if we'd make this move
they could get our show onto stations all across canada as well as
keeping us on all the stations that were already carrying the show
throughout the united States.it sounded like a good idea to me. besides,
we could get to windsor about as easily as we could get to charlotte,
and cklwtv saturated the metropolitan detroit market on channel 9.plus,
they wanted us to add another ninety minutes of prime-time programming
every week in the nation's fifth largest market to the coverage we
already had for our weekly half-hour in the rest of the country.that
meant we'd have two hours of tv exposure every week in detroit alone as
well as the exposure across canada.i figured we couldn't lose on a deal
like that, and even though the canadian part never fully materialized, i
was right.in addition, once or twice we even got paid!

about the same time jan howard was asked if she'd like to join our
television show, she was in the process of dissolving her recording
affiliation with capitol Records and had begun negotiating a move to the
label where i was recording, decca Records.as soon as she came with us
on tv, it seemed like the natural thing for us to begin singing duets
together.our voices had a unique blend, iand we began to receive a lot
of extremely favorable mail from our viewers.the next thing i knew jan
had signed her contract to record for decca, and we were badgering owen
bradley to let us record together.he agreed that it might work, it did,
and a whole new career was born for both of us.

jan's and my first duet release was a remake of the old Reno and Smiley
classic, i know you're married (but i love you Still), and as soon as
people heard it they began to whisper that some kind of wild offstage
romance must be going on between us.otherwise, why would we be singing a
song like that?then when our second release, for loving you, turned out
to be an even mushier, gushier ballad, the tongues really started to
wag.especially when we'd perform the song live and i'd say to jan:

for loving you ...my life is so much richer you've given me so much to
live for

and i never really lived before ...before loving you.

and in return she'd say to me:

and for loving you ...my faith is a little stronger for a world that
could give you to me

couldn't be as bad as it's made out to be there was good there i just
could never see

before loving you.

neither one of us composed those words, but when we recorded them and
our record started racing up the charts toward one many people began to
assume we were actually living all the things we were saying and
singing.nothing could have been further from the truth.

for some reason, folks seem to have a hard time believing that a man and
a woman can travel together and sing together and work together as
closely as jan and i did for seven years without there being something
sexual going on between them.jan wrote in her marvelous autobiography,
Sunshine & Shadow, that bill never appealed to me as a man, which hurt
my feelings, of course, but which was also the truth.jan and i became
good friends, but the basis for that friendship was always our
professional relationship and our music.and we worked hard to keep it
that way.

i first met jan in the early days of my career when she and her
songwriting husband, harlan howard, lived in a modest little house in
gardena, california, long before they ever moved to nashville.at the
time my impression was that jan was much more interested in being a good
wife and a good mother to her three sons than she was in becoming a
singing star.

i had gone to california early in t960 to work a few club dates, a few
radio and television shows, and to try and get my name known a bit on
the west coast.i had come to know and admire harlan through his terrific
songwriting and a few phone conversations i'd had with him from
nashville, but we'd never met face-to-face. he'd already written such
hits as pick me up on your way down, the key's in the mailbox, and mommy
for a day, and i wanted badly to meet this man whose work i admired.

jan had made a couple of records at the time, including a hit called the
one you Slip around with and a successful duet with wynn Stewart titled
yankee go home, records i had played on my dj shows back in georgia. She
primarily looked upon herself, though, as someone to help harlan make
demonstration tapes of the songs he had written and someone to cook
supper for him and the boys when they got home.when harlan would write a
song he thought would be right for a female singer to record, he'd teach
it to jan and she'd sing it on the demo session, but i honestly don't
think at that point jan cared one iota about being an entertainer
herself.

i was a couple of thousand miles away from home and living alone in a
small motel in what were then the far reaches of the San fernando valley
when jan and harlan called one day and asked me if i'd like to join them
for dinner at their home the following Sunday afternoon.i told them 1'd
love to come, and i drove out in my rented car.

there were six of us there, the three adults and jan's three sons,
jimmy, corky, and david, whom harlan had adopted.jan was, and still is,
a great cook, and she sat us down to a delicious roast beef dinner with
all the trimmings.i gorged myself.i think it was the only home-cooked
meal i had the entire three months i was in california.

harlan and i hit it off immediately, and after dinner we sat up until
the wee hours of the morning passing his guitar back and forth, bouncing
our newest song creations off one another and swapping lies.i ended up
spending the night in a small bedroom in their home, sharing bunk beds
with the three boys.it was a happy and innocent time.i've thought back
to that night many times, especially since jimmy's death in viet nam and
david's suicide. back then they were both so young and full of life and
full of energy ...just boys being boys.in a way it's a shame they ever
had to grow up and become men.

the professional coming-together of bill anderson and jan howard in the
late sixties provided me with some of my most memorable times in this
business.good friends or not, we had ups and downs like anybody would
have living and working so closely together all the time, but i've
always figured if jan hadn't liked me a little bit she wouldn't have
saved my life one night on the bus in fort worth, texas.

we were working a Saturday night gig at the infamous panther hall in
cowtown, and i was alone on our parked bus in back of the building a few
minutes before showtime.jan had gone inside with the rest of the group
to get ready.i was brushing my teeth when somehow i became choked on the
toothpaste.i could not catch my breath.

i tried raising both my arms over my head, then dropping one arm and
pounding myself on the back with it as hard as i could, but nothing
would unclog my windpipe.i was becoming frantic and began stumbling
toward the front of the bus to try and go for help when, for some
reason, jan just happened to walk back on board.She immediately sensed
my problem and came running toward me, hitting my back with her fist.
She liked to have beat the living daylights out of me, but whatever was
stuck in my throat soon dislodged and i caught my breath.i doubt that i
could have made it up the tall stairs and inside panther hall before
passing out had jan not come along.i might have become the late and
not-sogreat whisperin' bill long before my time!

(in jan's book she says she was sitting in the front of the bus filing
her fingernails when i became choked.i distinctly remember that no one
was on the bus when i first made my way to the front lounge.i guess that
proves that even after all these years she and i still can't agree on
everything!)

one of the things that made jan and me different from the other
male-female duets of the day was the fact that when we performed our
songs onstage or on television we'd always look directly at one another
rather than looking out into the audience or staring headon into the tv
camereigh much of our material was the intimate boy-talks-to-girl,
girl-talks-to-boy type, and somehow it always bothered me to perform it
staring away from the person i was supposed to be communicating with.
but more times than not, it was extremely difficult for me to look
directly into jan's eyes and keep a straight face while reciting or
singing those highly personal songs.i'd always think about something
that had happened on the bus on the way to the show or some goofy thing
we had been italking about backstage, and i'd start laughing.jan was
just too much of a buddy for me to be very serious with her.finally,
after ifar too many times of my cracking up and laughing in the middle
of our serious songs, i hit upon what i thought would be the perfect
solution.i'd pick out a spot on jan's forehead and stare at it rather
than trying to look her directly in the eyes when we sang.it was the
only way i knew to act serious and not break into uncontrolilable
laughter.

from the audience no one could tell i wasn't looking jan directly in the
eyes, but she could tell it.try sometime talking to a person just a few
feet away and look at their forehead instead of into their eyes while
you're speaking to them.it'll drive them crazy.She'd beg me every night,
please look me in the eyes, but i couldn't do it.

finally, on the last day of a long canadian tour, she couldn't take it
any longer.She went out that afternoon and bought a copy of mad magazine
and found a picture of the most repulsive, disgusting bloodshot eye you
could ever imagine.and in her dressing room before the show she cut the
eye out of the magazine and glued it to the spot on her forehead where i
usually stared.then she combed her hair down over the paper eye, and i
never knew it was there.

about halfway through our closing song, for loving you, when i was
staring at her forehead and reciting the part about how much i loved her
and how much i needed her, she slowly started to move her hand up to her
face and gently began sweeping her hair off to one side.and then in a
soft whisper that only i could hear she said slowly, i said, look me in
the eye, dammit!'

well, i totally lost it.there i stood staring into the most hideous
picture of an eye i had ever seen.Right in the middle of jan's
iforehead!i knew immediately what she had done and why, and i went into
convulsions right there on the stage.the audience, of course, hadn't
noticed a thing, and they were totally stunned to see this long-legged
hillbilly all of a sudden begin to flop and fall all over the stage.but
i honestly could not help it.

i finally began to gather my composure enough to explain to the silent
crowd what had happened.once they understood, they laughed as hard as i
did.jan had made her point.from that moment on i was afraid not to look
her in the eyes ever again.

following the success of for loving you, we had several more hit duets
together, including if it's all the Same to you, a country version of
the Supremes' Someday we'll be together, and a song we cowrote with her
son corky called dissatisfied. we even recorded the original version of
Satin Sheets as a duet long before jeanne pruitt hit big with it as a
solo, but we didn't have enough sense to release it anywhere except in
an album.we recorded a gospel album together, and our tv show grew to
become one of the most widely seen of all the country shows in - i
syndication.on several occasions the various country music fan magazines
and trade publications around the country named us country music's duet
of the year.

people have asked me for years why jan and i broke up and stopped
singing together, and i've simply said that jan wanted to pursue her own
solo career.that's only partly right.actually, jan and i split after the
death of our manager, hubert long, in nineteen 72. we disagreed deeply
over who should handle our careers at that point, and it turned into
something we simply could not resolve.i felt strongly one way, and she
apparently felt equally strongly another way.we decided it was best to
part professionally while we could still be friends.it was a good
decision because today i don't have a better friend in the world than
jan howard.

in many respects i didn't want to try and find a replacement for jan
after we split.i wanted to tour with just the band for a while. but the
promoters of our concert dates had become so used to my show's being a
complete package that my agent was afraid if i didn't continue with
myself, the band, jimmy gately (who had become a featured act himself),
and a girl singer, it would hurt our bookings.plus i did need to add a
new girl to the tv shows.So i launched a nationwide talent search,
complete with tons of publicity, to try and locate the best female
artist available.

as soon as the word got out that i was looking for a singer, hundreds
upon hundreds of applications began pouring in from female singers all
over the world.i sifted through every single one of them, but i ended up
hiring someone who didn't even know the search was going on.

mary lou turner was performing in relative obscurity on the ijamboree
uSa show in wheeling, west virginia, when i saw an album review of her
newest release in cashbox magazine.the review, which was superb,
reminded me that i had seen and heard mary lou on several occasions when
i had appeared as a guest in wheeling and that i had been impressed with
her talent.i phoned glenn Reeves, talent director at the jamboree, and
asked if he'd mind my talking to her about the job.he said no, even gave
me her telephone number, and i gave her a call.

why haven't you applied for the job?i asked when i got her on the line.

what job?she replied.

i explained that jan and i had decided to go our separate ways, and i
told her i was looking for someone to take jan's place.we'd be working a
show in vero beach, florida, in a few days, i explained, and if she'd
like to go along and sing a few songs and let me listen to her, i'd be
glad to let that serve as her audition.that is, i said, if she were
interested in working with me at all.

She said she was most definitely interested and took me up on my offer.
She came to nashville, had dinner with becky and me in our home, asked a
million questions about the job and all it might involve, then rode to
florida with me and the band on the bus. when we got to the show in vero
beach, however, she walked out on stage and promptly forgot the words to
the song she'd come all that distance to sing.She thought for sure she'd
blown her big chance, but i thought she covered it up so well and
handled the situation in such a professional manner that i hired her
right on the spot.

mary lou stayed with our show for six years.She was a delightful lady to
work with, pleasant to be around, and my fans liked a lot.when i first
hired her, i envisioned her singing only on the television shows and
touring with us on the road.i hadn't intended for us to make records
together, thinking it might not be fair to all concerned for her to come
along so close on the heels of my recording career with jan. (mary lou
broke you and jan up, didn't she?was a comment i'd already heard more
than once during those days.) but i wrote a song while we were on tour
in england in nineteen 75 that i knew was a smash.it was one of those
songs that didn't care who sang it, it was going to be a hit anyhow. i
figured mary lou and i might as well have the hit as anybody, so when we
got home we cut it.i was right.the song was called Sometimes.

in the lyrics i would say to her:

hello beautiful ..are you married?

and she would reply:

Sometimes.

the plot thickened from there.not only did the song go to number one on
the charts, it put a lot of bill-and-jan rumors to rest for good!

mary lou and i followed Sometimes with another hit duet -called that's
what made me love you, a song that nobody remembers by that title.
everybody calls it champagne in a dixie --cup or motel in dallas, two of
the key phrases from the lyrics of the song.later, we had some chart
success with where are you going, billy boy?and after that with i'm way
ahead of you, a clever song in the same vein as Sometimes, but one where
we each anticipated and interrupted what the other had to say.

but mary lou didn't just record the duets with me.She signed her own
recording contract with decca!mca and a couple of times she came real
close to having a hit record herself.her version of my song it's
different with you got high in the charts but never managed to get over
that hump that separates minor hit records from major ones.everybody in
the business, disc jockies, show promoters, newspaper critics, believed
in mary lou, though, and figured it was just a matter of time before
she'd hit big on her own.but it never quite happened.

there came a time when she finally began to wonder, as jan had sometimes
wondered before her, if being primarily known as bill anderson's girl
singer wasn't more of a detriment to her than it was an aid.eventually
she decided that if she were ever going to make it on her own in a solo
career she needed to give it a try while the opportunities gleaned from
our years together were still there.She left me in nineteen 79 and went
out on her own.She recorded some good records, but they never were quite
commercial enough to help her turn the corner.after a while she quit
singing country and turned to gospel music.then one day a couple of
years ago she decided that maybe it might be best if she moved away from
nashville altogether.She and her husband, david, and their two children
packed up and moved to branson, missouri, where she began singing during
the summer months with boxcar willie's show.david hired on as boxcar's
full-time piano player.it must be agreeing with her because the last
time i saw mary lou she looked happier and seemed to be more at peace
than i had known her to be in years.

i've had a couple of other interesting experiences with female singers
in my lifetime.

in august nineteen 63 when Still was at its peak and people figured
anybody with a record that big must know the answer to everything, i was
asked to help judge a talent contest at a country music park called
frontier Ranch just east of columbus, ohio.the deal was that i'd appear
on the show myself that afternoon, sing a few songs, and then take a
seat alongside two or three local dignitaries out in the audience and
help them decide who among the area's hopeful young artists was the most
talented.the winner would then be invited back to sing on our night show
and would be richer for her efforts.the promoters of the contest spared
no expense. first prize was five shiny silver dollars.

but it turned out to be no contest at all, not after a tiny, young lady
with long blonde hair and sparkling blue eyes walked out onstage wearing
a white-fringed homemade cowgirl outfit and white boots, playing a
guitar almost as big as she was, and singing like nothing that i or any
of the other judges had ever heard before.three notes into her song, the
five silver dollars had a home.

the song she sang was one jean Shepard had made popular called i thought
of you, but it was the singer and not the song that turned all the
heads.none of us could believe such a big voice was coming out of such a
petite lady.i actually wondered for a minute if she were pantomiming
somebody else's record.She sounded that good.

her name was connie Smith.constance june meader Smith, to be exact, and
i told her backstage after the contest was over that if she ever wanted
to come to nashville and try to make it in the music business i'd be
there to try and help her.i knew instantly she had the talent it took to
be successful, and i told her so.

but no, she said, she didn't think that was what she wanted to do right
then.She hadn't been married very long, she had a new baby boy, and she
was happy just being a housewife and a mothe She travelled once a week
or so over to west virginia to sing on a television show, and that was
about all she cared to involve herself with right now, thank you very
much.and i told her if she ever changed her mind to let me know.

that was about it.in fact, i didn't even see her again until one Sunday
afternoon in january of the following year.i was performing at the
municipal auditorium in canton, ohio, and she and her husband, jerry,
drove through a blinding snowstorm from their home in warner, ohio, to
come see me.they had been thinking more and more about my offer to help
connie launch a singing career, and they wanted to talk with me about
it.that is, if i were still interested.i assured them that i was, and
the three of us sloshed our way through the snow to a small nearby
restaurant between the matinee and evening performances to have dinner
and continue our discussion.connie confessed that she'd been thinking a
lot about my offer, and if it were still open, then maybe now was the
right time for her to give the music business a fulltime shot.i told her
it wasn't going to be easy, but i was game if she was.we trudged back to
the auditorium through more snow, making plans for her and jerry to come
to nashville in the spring.

(i've often thought it somewhat ironic that connie and i reached our
decision where we did and when we did.the auditorium i was working that
day was the same one hank williams had been en route to on new year's
eve, nineteen 52 when he'd died in the backseat of his car near oak
hill, west virginia.and the very same day connie Smith came to canton to
see me, a group of four young singers calling themselves the kingsmen
had driven up from southwest virginia through that same snowstorm to
audition as background singers for johnny cash.when connie and i got
back to the auditorium after dinner, we stood in the wings and watched
these four young men tear the audience apart with their unique vocal
harmonies and hilarious comedy routines. johnny hired them right
there.today they're known as the Statler brothers.) i left canton and
went back to nashville to begin concentrating on writing some songs for
this new female discovery of mine to sing.my first step had to be to
find her a recording contract, and i knew that her having good songs
would be the key.i came up with three new ones that i believed in and
went to talk with owen bradley about the possibility of his recording
her for decca.

She sings great, bill, owen said after listening to the demo tapes she'd
made, but you know i've just signed this new girl the wilburns brought
me named loretta lynn, and i think i need to concentrate on her right
now.

well, i just wanted to give you the first chance at her, i replied, and
i hope you won t mind if i take her to somebody else.owen assured me
that he didn't mind at all and thanked me for my loyalty.the next move
was already calculated in my mind. i wanted chet atkins to listen to her
at Rca.

there was no way chet could not have been impressed when he heard connie
sing, but after my manager and i played him the tapes he expressed
concern about her ongoing supply of good song material.

we've got more girl singers already than we've got good songs for them
to sing, he said.our people are constantly looking for songs for Skeeter
davis and norma jean and dottie west.if this girl hits, where are the
rest of her songs going to come from?i don't have time to go looking for
them.

i assured chet that i could write hits for connie, and those i couldn't
write i'd help to find.it wasn't like me to make rash promises, but i
believed in her that much and i believed in myselœ i felt like the two
of us were a winning combination.chet agreed to let me give it a whirl.

we began to lay the foundation.connie took her first airplane trip and
flew to nashville in march to appear on the ernest tubb midnight
jamboree.in may she came back to town to record some demos, in june she
returned to sign her Rca contract, and in july she came to sing.to
really sing!

connie's first recording session for Rca victor Records took place july
16 nineteen 64 not even one full year after the talent contest at
frontier Ranch.true to my word, i provided three of the first four songs
she recorded: i'm ashamed of you, the threshold, (cowritten with my
friend chuck goddard), and once a day. She cut them in that order. the
fourth song, written by willie nelson and hank cochran, was called
darling are you ever coming home?

weldon myrick, jimmy lance, and Snuffy miller from my band -all played
on the session.the producer, bob ferguson, was on staff -.at Rca, but he
said since i knew connie better than he did at the time and since the
songs she'd be singing were mostly mine any-how, he'd allow me to have a
good deal of input into what went onto the tape if i wanted to. it
turned out to be a collaborative effort on everybody's part.we all got
excited and pitched in.then when the session was over and the tapes
began to circulate among -the Rca executives over the next few days, the
whole company started to grow as excited as we were about the future of
the little girl with the big voice.

there was no doubt in any of our minds but that the most -commercial
record we'd made was once a day.Rca agreed, coupled it with the
threshold, and released it to the disc jockies in late august.most of
them loved it and put it on the air ùimmediately.listeners started
calling in and asking to hear it --again.it began to play like crazy on
jukeboxes, and it was making -cash registers ring at record shops all
across the country.it raced up the charts like wildfire and the week of
the annual dj convention and grand ole opry birthday celebration in
november once a day became the number one song in the nation.and connie
Smith was suddenly the hottest new act in country music.

from that point on things broke fast and furious.i signed connie to a
management contract, arranged for the wil-heim agency --to handle her
concert bookings, and the career which she hadn't even been sure she'd
wanted only a few months before, shifted into high gear.

looking back on it now, i guess a lot of it happened too fast. one day
this immensely gifted, beautiful young lady is a wife and a new mother
and in less than a year she's got the number one record in the country
and people are saying she's the greatest thing since sliced bread.
george jones, who had always been connie's idol as a singer, was going
around saying connie Smith was his favorite isinger.it often became more
than the shy little housewife could cope with.

connie says now that she never had time to learn, never had time to
build her career one brick, one step at a time like most iartists do.
She had hit the ground running before she even knew what track she was
on.

i didn't have any idea what was happening, she confessed to me one night
not long ago sitting in my dressing room backstage at the opry.i even
started feeling guilty because i felt like here i was having all this
success and i hadn't earned it.i hadn't paid any dues.it really messed
my head up, too.i'd go onstage and see somebody like loretta lynn
standing over in the wings watching me, and i'd forget the words to
songs i had sung a thousand times. then i'd start to withdraw, to hide
because i felt guilty and i was so insecure.people started thinking i
was stuck up but really i was just scared!

i helped to get her guest spots on the grand ole opry and eventually an
invitation to join the cast as a regular.She began to appear on national
television, starred on the jimmy dean Show when it was the hottest
country program on television, and flew to california several times to
appear as a guest on the lawrence w i lk Show.She was once even offered
the chance to become a regular member of the welk cast but turned it
down.i had trouble understanding why.

ithe show's not country enough, was her answer at the time, and they
make me sing standing too far away from the band.i can't hear.i thought
she was making a mistake and told her so.it was years before she finally
admitted the real reason she didn't take the job was because it nearly
killed her to leave her young son and fly all the way to california.

She began to tour, taking her husband and her boy with her whenever she
could, but often having to leave them behind for days, weeks, even
months at a time.this was a part of the business she hadn't counted on,
and she didn't like it at all.even as the world was beating a path to
her doorstep and calling hers the cinderella story of the decade,
cinderella herself was slowly beginning to grow very confused and very
unhappy.

from the beginning liked connie a lot personally and tried to her and
her husband as best as i could, but i didn't ever seem to get through.
i'd tell her how she had the opportunity millions of people would die
for, and she'd just shrug.i'd make suggestions as to how she might
better balance her family life and her career.i'd - i talk to her about
saying and doing the right things with the fans and with people in the
industry, but nothing worked.She was quickly gaining a reputation of
being short and snappy with the --fans and uncooperative with the
media.i'd talk to her about it --until i was blue in the face, but most
of the time it was like talking to a stone wall.She says now it was just
a major case of insecurity, -ùbut i'm not sure i'd have believed that at
the time.i didn't see how anyone with a voice like hers could be
insecure about anything. the lady could flat-out sing. lord, how she
could sing!

by the time her second record was released, another song of mine called
then and only then, she was booked constantly. the world was literally
her oyster, yet she seemed to dwell in perpetual frustration.i was
stubborn, she says now.i don't know why.i guess i was just born that
way.

i remember clearly the day she was about to leave on a long tour to sing
her first record and promote her second one, and i handed her a stack of
several hundred postcards.

here, these are addressed to disc jockies all over the country, i told
her, and they're all ready to mail.all i want you to do is send a few of
them each day wherever you are on the tour.just write a couple of short
lines ...you know.thanks, tom, for playing once a day. Sure hope you
like my new record.then - i and only then.love, connie Smith.and drop
them in the mailbox at the hotel.that's all there is to it, and the guys
will love - i you for it.you'll have another number one smash before you
know it!

i thought she'd be thrilled, but she looked at me as if i'd just told
her she had to go to alaska without an overcoat.i'm not going to do
that, she snapped.if i have to do that, i'll just quit this business and
go back to ohio.you could have blown me over with a feather.

looking back on it now i realize i probably should have told her to go
on back to ohio.there was no way she'd have gone, and deep down i knew
it.

i just didn't have any concept of the business, she admits today.i
thought something like mailing those postcards would be like trying to
buy the dj's approval.i didn't have the sense to know it would be
showing them i appreciate their help.i didn't have a fan club for years
because i didn't want the fans to feel like they were obligated to buy
my records or come to my shows.i never wanted to consider myself a
product.but i know now that i am a product.i just have to be able to
separate where connie Smith the product stops and connie Smith the
person begins.

as connie's manager, my idea was to try to help her build a career that
would last, one that would be more than a flash in the pan, and i knew
that kind of a career needed roots, it needed a foundation laid not only
in good music but in good will.and 1 continued to try and help her until
her attitudes finally became more than i could handle.one day i just
said to heck with it.i took the contract i had with her and tore it into
tiny little pieces, laid the pieces in the palm of her hand, wished her
well, and walked away.

it might sound funny after all i've just written, but connie Smith is
still and will probably always be my favorite female country singer. and
she's one of my favorite people.She's more than paid me back for any
help i might have given her in the beginning.at last count she had
recorded forty-something songs of mine, including one entire album
entitled connie Smith Sings bill anderson.i saw her go through the
unhappy phase of her life, two failed marriages, repeated bouts with
depression, and although she never knew it, i hurt right along with her.
then when she turned to her faith and sang nothing but gospel music for
a while, i rejoiced with her.i hoped every day she'd somehow be able to
find the peace she was looking for.

today i think she's there.She's back singing country music at the opry,
carrying a six-piece band and travelling the road on a limited
schedule.the little boy she was holding in her arms that day at frontier
Ranch has now made her a grandmother.he lives in holland, is married to
a lovely blonde from norway, and works as a missionary.her third
marriage is closing in on twenty years and seems to be rooted in solid
ground.

- i Sometimes, though, i look at connie and i wonder if she appreciates
my getting her into this business or if she hates me for it. She says
that over the years she's done a little of both.for so long i blamed the
business for all my problems, she says, but that was before i had the
guts to look at myself.

i hope she's happy because to me she's a remarkable lady.and i'll
promise you there's not a one of those hotshot new female - i singers in
country music today who can wrap their voice around a country song any
better.

not long after my experiences with connie Smith, i tried to help another
female singer break into the music business.the story didn't turn out
quite the same way.

a friend of mine had just taken over an important producing job with a
major record label and was looking for a girl to record. he called and
asked me if i knew where there might be another connie Smith out there
somewhere.i remembered a girl i had seen while out on tour not long
before, and in an effort to help my friend i called the girl and asked
her if she'd be interested in recording and perhaps even relocating in
nashville.She sounded thrilled, and i suggested she come to town as soon
as possible.

She did, and the night before i was to introduce her to my buddy, the
record producer, i thought it might be best if i talked with her a while
about everything that was going to take place. She was very young,
totally inexperienced in the business, but i knew if she played her
cards right she could be well on the way to having all her dreams of a
career in music come true.i wanted to make certain she understood that.

i took her out to a nice, quiet dinner, and we talked.i tried carefully
to explain to her how she needed to say and do all the right things, how
she was about to have the chance some girls would kill for.

after dinner we walked back to the lobby of her hotel and i continued
talking, more like a big brother than anything else. you've got to keep
your nose clean in this town and earn their respect, i emphasized.
you've got the talent ...just sing your songs and you can be a big
star.but once you start hopping in and - i out of bed with every
producer, singer, musician, and executive in this town, they'll write
you off in a minute.do you understand

that?'

She looked me right in the eye and said, i sure do.and 1

iappreciate you telling me that, too.and then she got up from where
she'd been seated, walked over to where i was standing, reached out, and
touched me on the arm.She looked seductively up into my eyes, a look on
her face as serious as cancer.

now, she whispered softly, sighing as if the weight of a heavy - burden
had been lifted off her shoulders, you wanta come up to

my room? t lt l i read somewhere once that anderson is the sixth or
seventh most common last name in the united States.i know that in nearly
every telephone book i've ever opened i've been able to find at least
one bill anderson or william anderson or john william or james william
anderson.i don't have an unusual name.

- i in the beginning of my show business career i thought that was an
asset.i wouldn't have to try and come up with a stage name. my real name
was easy enough to pronounce and easy enough to remembe i but i have
found out over the years that it's also easy to forget and easy to get
confused.i've been called bill alexander, bill andrews, or bill
henderson more times than i care to remember, and once in wisconsin a
lady from a local tv station was introducing me onstage and forgot my
name completely.

you folks are gonna love this next act, she told the crowd, nervously
peering over at me in the wings trying to get some kind of clue as to
who i was.he's real handsome, ladies, she stalled, and he's wearing a
gorgeous black suit.finally, she realized she had no idea what my name
was and it was not going to come to her.with a big sweeping gesture she
turned toward me and said, come on out here, boy, and tell em who you
are!'

Somehow i don't think that would have happened had my name been
engelbert humperdinck, or cleofis thigpen, or ferdly crumpacket that's
why i'll always be grateful to don bowman, the little silver-haired
comedian who joined my syndicated television show after grandpa jones
departed.don was the first person ever to call me whisperin' bill.

in the spring of nineteen 68 we had moved the production of our tv show
again, this time from canada to the general electric broadcasting
company facility in nashville.g.e.had taken over ownership and
syndication of the show, and since they also owned wnge-tv the abc
affiliate at the time, it made sense for them to bring us all together
under one roof.and it didn't take me long to appreciate the fact that
their studios out on murfreesboro Road were a lot closer to my house
than the studios had been in charilotte or in canada!

on taping days we'd usually begin wandering into the station around four
o'clock in the afternoon, videotape two half-hour programs before a live
audience that evening beginning around eight o'clock, and by ten or
eleven o'clock that night we'd be through. don was single at the time,
he slept during the daytime, and he'd usually be wide awake and raring
to go when our tapings were over. many nights after we'd finished he
would wander up to the studios of wSm Radio where Ralph emery was the
all-night country music disc jockey.he'd join Ralph on the air over the
fiftythousand-watt, clear-channel station, and Ralph would ask him what
he'd been up to.

oh, i've been out taping tv shows with ole whisper, don would reply.

who is ole whisper'?Ralph would ask.

oh, you know Ralph, ole whisperin' bill anderson.the one who says all
those songs!

and in those days i guess i did say a lot of my songs.actually, 1 sang
on most of them, too, but the sing-a-little, talk-a-little format that
we began to develop on mama Sang a Song and Still distinguished me from
the other country singers of the day. i'd used it on 8 x 10 and on five
little fingers, and i spoke all the lyrics on golden guitar.i never made
a concerted effort to whisper, but neither did i want my records to
sound like i was doing a commercial for a used car lot.i mostly wanted
them to sound believable, and for me to do that it had to come out soft.

in those days, every disc jockey in the country listened to Ralph emery
late at night to find out what new songs he was playing (he often had
advance releases from the major companies) and to -listen to his
personal interviews with the stars.and whatever Ralph played and
whatever he said at night was repeated by the local dj's on the smaller
stations all across america the next day. - i therefore, when Ralph
emery began calling me whisperin' bill, iiso everybody -in the beginning
i was sensitive to it and wasn't quite sure how -ito handle it.i figured
maybe if i'd ignore it, it would go away. then several of the major
stars took to impersonating me in their stage acts, and i had no place
to hide.

i remember well a tour when i was opening for ferlin husky.i'd go out on
stage every night and do my bit, then retreat to the side of the stage
to watch him do his.and there has never been an artist in any form of
musical entertainment who could entertain an audience like ferlin husky
could when he was right.he'd sing his hits like gone and wings of a dove
and then launch into his alter-ego character, Simon crum.and Simon would
do impressions of other country stars.he'd sing like ernest tubb and Red
foley and even kitty wells.but his biggest hand and his biggest laughs
always came when Simon imitated whisperin' bill.ferlin would slide his
right leg back behind him in an exaggerated imitation of my stance on
stage and whisper real breathy into the imicrophone and do his own
rewrites of my songs.and the people who had been applauding me just a
few minutes before would then be sitting out there laughing their heads
off.i laughed a lot myself because it was truly funny, but down deep
inside it stung me a little.

i'll always love ferlin for picking up on my sensitivity.he came to me
one night after a show and he said, that bothers you when i imitate you,
doesn't it?

i admitted that yes, sometimes, i guessed i did.

well, let me tell you something, he said.in the first place if you
weren't different i wouldn't have anything to imitate.think of all the
singers who are just plain singers, and there's nothing that -makes them
stand out enough for anybody to imitate them.you're different and you've
got your own style and people recognize it. you should be grateful for
that.

and in the second place, he continued, moving swiftly from the deep,
sincere voice of ferlin husky to the whimsical, whiny tones of Simon
crum, hell, if i didn't like you, i wouldn't give you the publicity!

my attitude changed from that moment on.i became proud to be whisperin'
bill.it gave a special name and unique identity to isomeone with a very
common name.it gave me a hook ...a ihandle.there wasn't another
whisperin' bill in a phone book -anyplace that i knew of. i loved
it.nowadays when they imitate me, i laugh louder than anybody. in fact,
if i'm on a show with someone who i know does a bill anderson impression
when i'm -not around, i'll do everything i can to get them to do it with
me looking on.i once walked onstage behind billy crash craddock with a
baseball bat cocked high above his head, daring him to leave his
impersonation of me out of his show.if they're going to imock me behind
my back, i figure the least they can do is mock me to my face.and most
of them will.

a distinctive voice like mine can also be a liability, as i have found
out on more than one occasion.i lost my cool and snapped at a
long-distance telephone operator out on the road one night -when she
couldn't get my call right.i didn't figure she knew me from adam, but
when the call finally did go through she said, thank you, mister
anderson.i had no idea she'd recognized my voice.i wanted to leave town
on the next fast freight.

my face is pretty recognizable these days, too, due primarily to -all
the television exposure i've had over the years.but when people
recognize me walking through an airport or a shopping mall, i'm never
sure just where it is they know me from.most people, of course, know me
from country music.but nowadays some know me only from game shows.
others as a performer on a soap opera.Still -others from my endorsements
and commercials.

one of my favorite being-recognized-in-public stories occurred on an
airplane when the stewardess on my flight knelt down very -quietly by my
seat and said, i don't want to embarrass you, but may i please have your
autograph?

Sure, i smiled.what's your name?

cindy, she replied.

i began to scribble on the slip of paper she handed me ...to cindy-with
love-bill anderson.

i have a lot of your records, she said.

thank you.i answered.

and i love to watch you on tv!

you're very kind, i said, as i handed her the autographed paper.

oh my goodness!she exclaimed when she saw what i'd writ ten.and i could
see her pretty face begin to redden.

what's the matter?i asked with a wide grin.didn't anybody ever write
with love' to you before?

oh, no, that's not it, she blushed.it's just ...uh ...i ithought you
were Roger miller.

i was recently checking into a large big-city hotel when the bellman
helping me with my luggage decided he'd seen me some where before.did
anybody ever tell you that you look like a country music singer?he asked
on the way up to my room.

oh, some people will tell you anything, i smiled.

well, i'm a big country music fan, he confessed.and i know who you
are.you're mel twitty, i t you?

every entertainer who's been around the business a while has dozens of
stories of this type, but i still enjoy collecting them and

sharing them.like the one that happened not too long ago when i stopped
by a nashville restaurant dressed in an old pair of jeans, a

sweatshirt, tennis shoes, and a baseball cap, my favorite offstage
wardrobe.a lady who was obviously more accustomed to seeing

me on television wearing a coat and tie eased over to my table a - - bit
hesitantly.

are you bill anderson?she asked.i admitted that i was.

well, i wasn't sure, she blurted out.this is the first time i've ever
seen you with clothes on!'

and then there was the lady who came down front at the opry one night
during the recent christmas season.i was hosting a

- i half-hour portion of the show and had just cued the announcer on the
side of the stage to take over and read a commercial.i was

standing quietly at center stage waiting for him to finish so i could
introduce the next act when i saw her standing there with her

camera poised and pointing up toward me.She looked for all the world
like she was about to take my picture.Since nothing else

was going on in that area of the stage at that time and since i'm a big
ham anyway, i stretched out my arms, put one foot dramat ically in front
of the other, and shot her a big grin about a foot wide.i expected to
see her flash go off at any minute.instead she

looked up at me real disgusted, dropped her camera down by her side, and
said, that's real nice, but would you mind getting out of the way.i'm
trying to get a picture of the christmas tree!'

and i'll never forget the mother who brought her eight- or nineyear-old
son to see me one day at an autograph session.there had been a long
line, and they had been patiently waiting their turn. when they reached
the spot where i was signing pictures, i looked up and said, hi.

do it, jason, the mother immediately said to the boy.do it!

i assumed she meant for jason to ask me for my autograph, and, figuring
he might be a bit shy at that age, i reached down and roughed up his
hair a little bit and said, how you doin', jason? jason never said a
word.he just stood there staring at the floor.

do it, jason, the mother prodded.if you don't do it right now, i'm
taking you home.now do it!

with that, the little boy, still looking down at the floor, began
whistling.no tune, no melody, just whistling loud and rather aimlessly.i
wasn't sure exactly what i was supposed to do when his mother solved the
puzzle for me.

See there, she said proudly.when he grows up, he's going to be just like
you, whistlin' bill!i didn't have the heart to tell her she'd missed the
point.

fans, however, aren't the only people who zing me from time to time. not
long ago a friend pulled this one:

a waitress was pouring coffee for several of us who were killing time in
a little restaurant in the town where we were to do a concert later that
evening when she handed me a paper napkin and asked me to sign it.i saw
her nametag and wrote, to nancy-love-bill anderson and handed it
back.She broke into a big smile and said, oh, thank you so much.i just
love your singing.i have all of yours and tammy's records!and with that
she walked away.

i was stunned.Suddenly it hit me, and i turned to the guy sitting next
to me.good lord, i said.She thinks i'm george jones!

no she doesn't, he replied.She thinks you're jim bakker!

while on the subject of mistaken identity, let me bring up another
matter that never seems to go away-my relationship to

country singer lynn anderson.for some reason, no matter how many times
each of us announces that we are not kin to each other

in any way, shape, form, or fashion, somebody picks up that we are man
and wife, brother and sister, 0r i good grief!- father and j daughtet
actually, we are none of the above.the next time somebody mentions it to
you, please show them this page where it's

written in black and white:

lynn anderson and bill anderson are not related to each other at all!

and neither of us is related to john, although the other day an airline
pilot knelt down beside my seat on a flight to nashville and

asked for my autograph.i just love your music, mister anderson, he
said.Sign it i just i a i swingtn i .

i smiled.that was john anderson, i said.my name is bill anderson.he
didn't hear a word i said.

--yessir, he went on.i believe that Swinging' is my favorite record that
was ever made.Sign it now i just i a i swingiff i john

anderson. - - i started to try and explain to him one more time just who
i

was, but then i remembered a story burl ives had told me one time
several years ago.Seems he was having dinner in a restaurant in

new york not far from the theater district when a lady who had obviously
just been to see a play spied him sitting at his table.She

rushed over, thrust a piece of paper and a pen onto the tablecloth in
front of him, and said, oh, mister ustinov, you were just mar velous in
the play!may i please have your autograph?

like me, burl started to explain.no m'am, you see i'm i just believe you
are my favorite performer in the whole world, mister ustinov!the lady
continued, and burl realized that nothing -he could say was going to
make her change her mind about who he

was.So he graciously reached out, took the pen, and wrote my best
wishes, peter ustinov and handed it back to het the lady

was absolutely thrilled.She thanked him profusely and walked away, never
knowing she'd gotten an autograph from the great burl

ives.

i decided i wasn t going to try and change the pilot's mind
either.besides, he liked john anderson so much, what the heck.i signed
the paper just like he told me to, jist a a swingin', john anderson and
handed it back to him with a smile.he never

knew the difference.but i'll bet the next time he sees ole john on tv
he's going to turn to whoever is there watching with him and

say, you know, that ole boy don't look the same on tv as he does in
person!

i've been told by some people in this business that i don't have enough
of the temperament of a star, that i don't have a big

enough ego.they suggest i should put more distance between i - myself
and the public, that i sign too many autographs, meet too

many of my fans up close, that i'm too available.maybe they have a
point.but i have one as well.

first, i don't ever want to be so big a star that i can't go shopping at
wal-mart, take my family out for a hamburger, or ride

the ferris wheel at the state fair without being besieged by an adoring
public to the point where i'd have to retreat to my privacy

elsewhere.elvis's life was sad to me in many respects because he i.was a
prisoner of his own success.if he wanted to go to a movie, he had to
rent the whole movie theater to keep his fans away.i've heard dolly
parton often has storekeepers come to her hotel room

to fit her with clothes and shoes because she can't so much as go into a
store and shop like ordinary folks.to me, that's not glam orous.it's
sad.i have just enough recognition to feel good about it and to be proud
of it, but i honestly don't think i would want any

more.

Second, long before i was a star i was a fan, and i still remember what
it feels like.i've stood in line for autographs only

to be brushed aside by somebody i admired, and it hurts.i've written fan
letters and watched my mailbox for days on end just to

get a simple reply and have been crushed when none ever came.

once when i was in the seventh or eighth grade i wrote a letter to hank
williams and asked him to send me a list of all the records

he had ever made because i wanted to be sure i had them all.

maybe he never got my letter.maybe i sent it to the opry at a time when
he wasn't even with the opry.maybe my dad forgot to

mail it.i don't know.all i knew was i never got an answer from my idol,
and i was hurt.So hurt, in fact, that i traded all my
hank williams 78 rpm records to a friend for all his Spike jones
records.wonder what those hank williams originals would be
worth today?

i don't want to sound like i'm trying to be some kind of super hero or
anything, but i've tried hard never to break anybody's

heart like some of the people i admired broke mine.i'm sure 1've
probably slipped up somewhere along the way, and there's probably

somebody out there who thinks i'm the biggest jerk in the world because
i didn't cotton to them like i should have.if that's true, i'm sorry.all
i know is i've signed autographs until my hand ached so bad i had to go
soak it, and i've stayed at my office until long

after midnight many times signing fan mail and sending out pic tures.
especially to kids.i don't know that i've ever proved a thing by it, but
i've done it this way far too long to think about chang ing now.

having been both a disc jockey and a newspaper reporter, i have probably
also had more of an i i derstanding of the press and the

electronic media than many entertainers.i've always tried to coop -.
erate with them, too, realizing they have a job to do.overall, the media
have been good to me, but i was once burned awfully bad.

--it was in the mid i seventies just after john denver and olivia
newton-john had won some major cma awards, and several of the

more traditional country artists were upset.in a move that was totally
unrelated but awkwardly timed, george jones and tammy

wynette called a large group of us together at their big franklin Road
mansion one night not long after the awards show to discuss

- i the music business in general and to socialize a bit.out of this i
meeting was born an organization called ace, the association of

country entertainers.we decided we needed to be closer as a group and
have some picnics and parties during the year, there was

some talk about our trying to start a retirement home for country
entertainers, and that's about all there was to it.however, the

press was not invited nor allowed to attend our gathering.they had no
idea what was going on, but some of them got together and

decided we must be perpetrating some kind of evil against the pop stars
who had won country music awards.and they had a field day.

they wrote that we were bitter and angry and that we'd had this secret
meeting to discuss boycotting the country music associa tion, maybe even
pulling out of the cma to start our own organi zation.there was no
foundation whatsoever for the things they

were writing, but they began to get attention and attention sells i
newspapers.So they didn't let up.in an effort to combat the lies i they
were writing and saying about us, we met at george and i tammy's again
and decided to hold a press conference the follow ing day to set the
record straight.the other entertainers elected me to be spokesman for
the group. i i faced a battery of microphones and cameras early the next
morning and read from a statement prepared by a lawyer who had
been at our meetings as the invited guest of a major performer.i i don't
remember everything i said or exactly how i said it, but it - was
something to the effect that we weren't mad at anybody and we weren't
bitter and we just decided this was a good time to i organize all the
entertainers into a group.after all, the music publishers had an
organization and the talent agents had an organi zation, why couldn't
the entertainers themselves have an organiza ition? it was as simple as
that.

after the press conference was over, however, a couple of reporters
cornered some of the other stars who were there and i asked them their
personal opinions about the recent cma awards. i one of the artists, and
i honestly don't know which one, sup posedly made the statement,
outsiders are coming in here and trying to take our music away.

when the papers hit the streets that afternoon, it was quoted all over
the country that, ace spokesman bill anderson says, i they're coming in
here and trying to take our music away.' i nothing could have been
further from the truth.not only did i

not say it, i didn't even feel that way.and even if i had felt it, i
wouldn't have been stupid enough to say it.you cannot imagine

how upset i was. - i stayed up half the night calling the papers and the
wire ser vices pleading with them to print a retraction.nowhere on any i
tape recorder (and there had been dozens of them at the press
conference) could they produce a copy of my saying the words i

was supposed to have said.but they realized immediately that they had
created a newspaper-selling monster, they were getting tons of

publicity from it, and they loved it.they weren't about to let something
as relatively insignificant as the truth interfere with their fun.

but for me it was too late.by the next morning i was getting phone calls
from people all over the country calling me everything from a fool to a
pinko commie pig.paul harvey talked about me on his newscast.at the time
i had a record that was number 5 with a bullet in the national charts,
the bullet signifying that the song was still strongly on the rise.the
next week it fell tonumber one i with no bullet.the following week it
disappeared from the charts forever.

a columnist for billboard magazine wrote a lengthy piece taking me to
task within the industry, and there were actually radio programmers who
read her garbage and said they'd never play another bill anderson
record.i wrote a personal letter to every major station in the country
telling them my side.most of them, once they heard the truth, believed
me.

tom t.hall wrote me a very nice letter in which he said he really felt
sorry for me in the controversy over the good work you did with ace and
the bad publicity you received in return.he went on to say, i am sure
there are people who must look after the it own interests in writing
these press releases, but it's a pity that they must make someone else
look small in order to make --themselves look big.i appreciated his
sensitivity to my plight and, more than that, the fact that he took time
out to write and let me know.

in time it all blew over and things returned to normal, but i learned in
that one episode how powerful and how vicious the press can sometimes
be.and how helpless most of us really are to it. fight
because i have never deliberately isolated myself from the public and
because of my well i publicized role in the establishment of connie
Smith's career, i have also been for years a target for every would-be
singer and songwriter in america.they all seem to think if they can just
get a tape and a picture and a bio into my magic hands, i can wave a
wand and make them all stars overnight.it ain't so, joe.

in the first place, if i listened to every song i receive and tried to
help every aspiring artist who asks me, i'd have no time for my own life
or my own career.it pleases me to have been able to have helped out a
few folks over the years, but that's something i've done as a sideline
to my other activities and not something i ever -intended to make a
career out of.but still the requests keep coming.

please help me, a man wrote recently.i want more than anything to be a
songwriter but i only write the words.can't you

please take my words and write lyrics to them?

another gentleman cornered me one night at a rodeo in texas and shoved a
couple of copies of his new single record into my

hand.his name was something like john Smith and his record was i on the
j.S.label, which was a dead giveaway that he'd paid for his

session and his record pressing himself.but he had an unusual angle.

i want you to help me, ' he pleaded, because, you see, this record was
almost on Rca.yes sir, he said in a whisper as if chet i atkins were
listening at the door, it was almost on Rca.

what happened?i asked. i well, they said they'd release it except i was
too well i unknown!'

as far as i know, he still is.

the late tex Ritter, as kind, gentle, and benevolent a man as i i've
ever known, was like me in his attitude toward the press and i the
public.but like all of us, tex also had his limits.once he was
approached during a private moment by a well-meaning fan who

said, mister Ritter, i hate to bother you ...whereupon, before the fan
could finish, tex snorted, then why do you? i on the other hand, i often
saw tex display the patience of job.

once he was being interviewed for a newspaper story while he was
backstage getting dressed for a performance, and he invited the reporter
to make himself at home.this he did, following tex to i the mirror as he
tied his tie, sitting beside him on a wooden bench i as tex shined his
boots, and finally trailing him right up to the urinal in the men's
room.as america's most beloved cowboy

reached for his fly, the reporter asked, tex, what's the main difi
ference between country music stars and pop music stars?

before tex could answer, a fan burst into the room waving a piece of
paper and a pen and demanding, hey, tex, gimmee your

autograph.

undaunted, mister Ritter calmly let go of his zipper, took the pen,
wrote his name on the paper, affixed the date of the occasion i
underneath, and returned it to his admirer.he then turned back

open-flied to the reporter and said, in answer to your question, i sir,
we are accessible!

most of my life i've been lousy at keeping secrets, but until about the
time Still became a big hit, i didn't tell anybody in

-nashville except my very closest friends that i had been to college.

never mind that i had paid most of my own tuition with money i had
earned playing music and working in radio, i just didn't want

-ithe subject brought up.it wasn't that i was ashamed of it, but rather
i was afraid my college degree might keep me from being

accepted by others in the music business.most of the pickers and singers
from the late fifties and early sixties simply had not had the

opportunity i'd had to attend college.most of them came from rural or
small-town backgrounds, many had no formal education

past grade school or early high school, having had to drop out in order
to work and help support their families.music had been their

magic carpet off the treadmill to oblivion, and i didn't want any body
thinking that i thought i was better than they were just

because i happened to have been lucky enough to finish sixteen years of
school.

in fact, when i first got to nashville i didn't talk very much about my
background at all.besides my insecurities about my

having gone to college, i was also very sensitive to the fact that i had
not grown up on a farm.or even in the country.except for

the short time we had lived with my grandparents in griffin, i had been
a city boy all of my life.how honest would they think it was

in nashville for a kid from the city to be trying to write and sing
country music?today it wouldn't matter at all, but back then i

didn't want to take any chances.i figured the less that was known about
 me and where i had come from, the better off i'd be.

i don't know what role, if any, my education had to play in my iinitial
approach to show business, but from the very beginning i iwas able to
recognize this industry as being just what the name implies: half show
and half business.and in my early days i spent whatever time i wasn't
spending trying to absorb the show part attempting to learn alll could
about the business itself.

i was left somewhat to my own devices, however, because for several
years after i got into the business i did not have a manager. and in
show business a good manager is almost a necessity.

an artist can't go around telling people how good he is, but his manager
can.besides, a creative person should be free to create and let his
manager worry about the day-to-day dealings with the business world, the
contracts, the lawyers, the accountants.and, as my first manager told
me, a good artist-manager relationship ihas to be almost like a
marriage.it requires a lot of faith in the other person and a lot of
give and take on both sides.

in the beginning i had a hard time finding very many people who believed
in me as an artist.there was no doubt i could write -hit songs and all
the music publishers went out of their way to court me, but as a
performer i was someone with a unique style as opposed to someone with a
technically great singing voice.i was different, and sometimes
difference has to grow on people.

buddy killen helped guide me in my early career decisions, introducing
me to talent agents and promoters and helping me obtain my first
appearances on the opry, but buddy was not in the italent management
business.he was a music publisher.Roger miller and i both tried long and
hard to convince buddy to open a italent agency division at tree
publishing because we both wanted ito make a home there for all facets
of our careers, but buddy, probably very wisely, declined.

in those days in nashville one person often functioned as both an
artist's manager and his booking agent, and one of the most successful
and well-respected of these was a gentleman named hubert long.hubert was
a protege of colonel tom parker, having worked for the colonel long
before the elvis days when parker had managed country stars eddy arnold
and hank Snow.hubert had left colonel tom to start his own talent
management firm and booking agency in the early fifties, and when i
arrived on the scene he was the guiding force behind the
super-successful careers of both ferlin husky and faron young.unlike
most of the other talent agents in town, however, he didn't try to sign
every artist who knocked on his door seeking representation.he was very
particular about his artists, deliberately keeping his roster and his
office staff small and manageable.it was almost an honor for an artist
to say he was represented by hubert long.by late nineteen 62 i had
knocked around town working in and out of the various agencies long
enough to know that i wanted hubert long to manage me and guide my
career.but how was i going to be able to convince him to do it?that
became the $64000 question.

i knew hubert was never going to sign to represent me based on my
singing ability alone.but two other things caught his eye. first, my
songwriting contract was about to expire at tree, and hubert was in the
process of starting a new company called moss Rose publications.
obviously he wanted me to write songs for his company.in fact, in true
managerial style he told me early on that if he were ever to agree to
manage me he would want to manage --every phase of my career.
translated, that meant he wanted to publish my songs.i wasn't too sure
about that for a while.the second thing that worked in my favor,
however, was the fact that hubert long was very attracted to my attitude
toward country music as a business.

i remember well the day it all came to a head.i had been sitting in his
office since early afternoon listening to him work his magic on the
telephone, booking concert dates right and left for faron and ferlin.

between a break in his phone calls, we started talking about what we'd
each done the night before.hubert, a confirmed bachelor who never spent
very many dull moments in his life was telling me about a party he'd
attended and a special new lady in his life.he then asked me what i'd
been up to.

i stayed up until after midnight writing disc jockies, i told him.

what do you mean writing disc jockies'?he asked.

oh, i just drop short notes to all the radio guys i've met in my travels
and thank them for playing my records.and then if i've got anything new
coming out, i'll ask them to give it a special listen when it comes
in.that's all.

- i who pays for all that?hubert asked.

what do you mean?

well, who pays for the postage?

i do.

and the letterheads and the envelopes?

Same person.

and who does the typing?he asked, not sure of what he was hearing.

i do, i told him truthfully.

boy, you sure must want to be in this business awfully bad, he said.

more than anything else in this world, i confessed.

he sat there a minute and just looked at me.well, i've got a feeling
anybody who wants it that bad is going to make it, ' he smiled.and i
think i'd like to be your manager!

before i could thank him, laugh, faint, or jump up in the air, he
reached into his desk drawer and pulled out a big roll of postage
stamps.here, use these next time, he said, tossing them into my lap.
then he stood up and we shook hands.that handshake was the only contract
we ever had, and it lasted for ten years until hubert's untimely death
from a brain tumor in nineteen 72.he was only forty-eight years old.

i'm not sure nashville will ever see another hubert long.he was a big
man physically, standing well over six feet tall and at one -time
probably tipping the scales at close to 250 pounds.he had slimmed down
to around 185 or nineteen 0 by the time i met him, however, after having
been diagnosed as diabetic and told by his doctors that he had to rid
himself of the excess baggage.he had -only a few strands of sandy hair
left to comb across the top of his perpetually tanned head, but his
quick smile and genteel, almost chivalrous warmth charmed everyone who
ever met him.he was a shrewd businessman, but more important than his
business acuimen, hubert long brought class to our business at a time
when imany people looked upon us all as a bunch of hayseeds.he was
impeccably honest, he'd bend over backwards to be fair to his artists
and his clients alike, and he had a genuine affinity for the -people he
represented.

we artists were hubert's family, and he was available to each of us
twenty-four hours a day, seven days a week.many's the time i called him
in the wee hours from some tiny dot on the map with a problem of some
sort, and he never failed to help me solve it. when i separated from my
first wife, it was hubert who scouted and found me a place to live on
old hickory lake.being close to the water will be good for you, he
declared.because he had lived high upon the banks of the cumberland
River for years himself, i knew he spoke from experience. the water will
help you relax and give you a good frame of mind so you can create, he
said.he was right, and i lived in the house he found for me for twelve
years.Some of my biggest hit songs were written inside those walls.

when becky and i married, hubert was my best man.but he didn't stop
there.i always accused him of producing our wedding --because he knew we
needed dishes and silverware, and he told each of the invited guests
just what gifts to bring.had it been anybody but hubert, such actions
might have been considered gauche or ill-mannered, but everybody just
laughed and went along.

hubert, along with me, george hamilton iv, and bud wendell, i-was in on
the original conversation that eventually led to the establishment of
the country music fan fair, the annual pilgrimage that now draws some
twenty-five thousand country fans to nashville each june, an event which
has replaced all others as the major gathering of our industry.the four
of us were standing in a stairwell at the old capitol park inn in
downtown nashville during the yearly disc jockey convention complaining
that we couldn't get close enough to the disc jockies to talk and visit
with them because of all the fans who'd come in.maybe we need to have a
separate convention just for the fans, one of us said.bud's eyes lit
up.you know, that's actually not a bad idea, he said.maybe we should
give it some thought.less than two years later fan fair was a reality.

hubert served as both president and chairman of the board of the country
music association and was one of the primary sounding boards used by the
management of wSm in the planning and building of opryland.he didn't
live to see fan fair become a reality or to see the doors to the new
opry house swing open, but he left an indelible mark on this business
and on me personally. -the night he was named posthumously to the
country music hall iof fame in t979 i stood on the front row of the opry
house with tears in my eyes and cheered louder than anybody.

when hubert died, i lost not only my manager but a business partner (i
finally had signed to write for his moss Rose publications, and we also
had gone into some other music publishing iiventures together, including
the of my own i uyli) i i would i ever be able to replace such a loss?
fortunately, someone was looking over me again.

in nineteen 70 my close friend, dean booth, a brilliant young attorney
-from atlanta, had been in new york representing abc television in some
kind of legal capacity.one night over dinner with one of the vice
presidents of the network, dean casually mentioned my name and my work
in the music business around nashville.

bill anderson is one of the most successful artists in the country music
business today, dean told the executive, and he has one of the top
syndicated television shows on the air.but everyithing he does comes out
of nashville.he very seldom appears on the networks.he needs to be seen
on some of the bigger shows.i'd like to help him find somebody up here
in new york, where all you heavyweights in the industry are located, to
work with him and advise him and help him expand his career. do you know
of anyone here who might be able to help him?

the abc representative, who didn't know bill anderson from bill monroe,
recommended that dean contact a man named bobby brenner.bobby, he said,
had been a major talent agent in inew york for years, working with large
companies like music coriporation of america and ashley famous artists,
and representing such clients as ed Sullivan, eddie albert, peter
duchin, and othiers.but he had recently turned his back on the corporate
life and gone into business for himself as an entertainment
consultant.he might be just what dean was looking for.

iSo dean gave bobby a call, arranged to go by his office in manhattan
the next day to talk with him, and then scheduled me to fly to new york
in a couple of weeks to meet with bobby myself.

from that very simple beginning came not only a whole new world of
television exposure for me and a dozen or more new avenues for my
career, but this energetic, brilliant little man from new york ended up
becoming my manager, my business partner, my very close friend, and
eventually even godfather to my son.

but when bobby and i met for the first time and discussed my objectives
and my career goals, there were a lot of unanswered questions on both
sides.he didn't just automatically jump in and agree to manage my
career.in the first place he'd never even seen me perform and knew very
little about me in general.he had once been ed Sullivan's representative
in nashville, responsible for booking the country artists who had
crossover hit records onto the ed Sullivan Show, but even with the
success of Still, somehow our paths had never crossed.he needed to know
much more than he did in regard to what bill anderson was all about.

likewise, i knew very little about him.i'd spent more than ten years
living in nashville and listening to all the horror stories of those
terrible new yorkers who come down here and rip off the poor
hillbillies, so my approach to him was a cautious one, too.i kept my
eyes and ears wide open.

finally i realized after several rounds of verbal sparring that if we
were ever going to get anywhere in this relationship we'd have to quit
tiptoeing around each other and get down to business.So i crossed my
fingers, plunged in and did what he asked me to do.

first, bobby said, he wanted to see me onstage.So i arranged for him and
a press agent friend of his, bernie ilson, also from new york, to fly to
western pennsylvania and join me and my band for a county fair date we
were to be working in the little town of clearfield.bernie came along
because bobby had said that if he did decide to represent me, one of the
first things he would want me to do was to hire a press agent.he figured
if he'd never read about me in the national magazines and newspapers,
the chances were that millions of other people hadn't either.before he
could begin to make some connections for me in the world of television,
he said, we'd have to generate some publicity.it all sounded mighty
big-time to me, but once i decided to make the move i became anxious to
get started.

on the morning of the show in pennsylvania, i caught a plane in
nashville and met bobby and bernie at the small airport in altoona,
where we rented a car and drove to the fairgrounds in clearfield.i tried
to say and do all the right things, but i was excited.i couldn't wait
for bobby and bernie to see our show.i had told the band i was bringing
these two hotshot new york

agents to see us, and they were climbing the walls too.maybe, just
maybe, this was the big break we'd all been waiting for.

we were all so hyper and pumped up with energy that when i hit the stage
that night and ripped into my first song, i could just i see ed Sullivan
falling at my feet.as it turned out, however, fate had a plan of its
own.

about two-thirds of the way through my very first number, for a reason i
still don't know to this day, all the electricity on the i entire
fairgrounds went out.there i stood, a big smile on my face, every little
hair on my head combed perfectly, dressed impeccably, with two
powerhouse new york agents looking on, and i was suddenly surrounded by
nothing but pitch-black darkness.Surely

they'd get the power back on in a minute, i thought, but one minute
became five and five minutes became ten and there i

stood.the audience, a large, impressive crowd just like i'd hoped i for,
couldn't see us because the lights were out.they couldn't hear
us because, of course, the sound system was out as well.we i couldn't
play our electrical instruments because there was no
power to the amps.we just stood there dying a little more with every
ticking second.the length of time ed Sullivan might be
willing to grovel was beginning to prey heavily on my mind.

there was a dirt racetrack between the stage where we were standing and
the covered grandstand beyond.Suddenly i looked up

from out of my misery and saw that a car was being driven onto the
track, its headlights shining brightly up onto the stage.in a i few
minutes here came another car, then another, then another. pretty soon
the entire stage was bathe in the light from these six

or seven automobiles. i then i looked out and saw that the several
thousand people who

had been seated in the grandstand were now up and walking i toward the
stage.they're gonna lynch us, i said to a fair official i standing
nearby.no, they're not, he said.they just want to come closer where they
can hear.

hear what?i asked him.we don't have any power to our i amplifiers. the
only instruments we can play are the accoustical i guitars and the banjo
and the piano.and there's no p.a.system
for us to even sing into.we can't do a show like that!

but i was wrong.all those people wanted was to see us make an effort, to
show them that we cared for them enough to play a couple of songs as
best we could under the circumstances.they knew it wasn't our fault the
power had gone out any more than it had been theirs.So with the
headlights of a half-dozen automobiles providing the light and two
flat-top guitars, one banjo, and a badly out-of-tune piano making the
music, i stood in front of two or three thousand country music fans and
two new york agents, looking sadly out of place in their neatly tailored
threepiece suits, and sang my heart out into the night.

it was called making the best of a bad situation.bobby and --bernie
excitedly called it showing them you're a pro!they left clearfield with
us on the bus and rode to binghamton, new york, as fascinated with us
and our lifestyle as we were with them and theirs.it was the beginning
of a marvelous association with each of them that lasts to this day.

to look at bobby brenner and me together you'd immediately call us the
odd couple.i'm about six-foot-two and weigh close to 190 pounds. bobby
stands no more than five-foot-three and weighs about 135.he is jewish, a
new yorker by way of Scranton, pennsylvania.i'm a waSp, a nashvillian by
way of a whole bunch of wide spots in the road in the deep South.

because of the nature of my business, i have to be reasonably fashionand
style i conscious.i shop often for new clothes.bobby has been known to
have new collars and cuffs sewn into his old dress shirts.my hair is
medium length, bobby wears a crew-cut.i drive a late model car, bobby
drives a nineteen 62 ford falcon.i love air conditioning. bobby wears
thermal underwear in the summertime and sleeps with the heat on.you can
usually set your watch by my punctuality.bobby will be two days late to
his own funeral.yet, in spite of our differences, perhaps even because
of some of them, we have an incredible personal and professional
relationship.i shudder to think what might have happened to my career
following hubert's death had bobby not come along.

at first, he was not my manager but only a consultant in the area of
television and worked closely with hubert.later, when the responsibility
for my entire career came to rest on his shoulders, he devised a
brilliant master plan.

your basic appeal, will, (he never calls me bill ...it's always will or
kid of if he's mad at me it's james william'') is to women. women buy
most of your records, women are the ones who come to your concerts.now,
when do women watch television?'

i wasn't real sure what he was driving at.

women watch television in the daytime, ' he said.now, here's my idea:
let's let all the other country stars keep chasing after iguest spots on
the tonight Show and on the the prime-time speicials, and let's us go
after getting you onto daytime television.i think it will work.i wasn't
too sure.

but work it did!by this time bernie had generated enough ipublicity for
me to sink a battleship.tons and tons of articles with my name, my
picture, my dog's picture and my mother's favorite recipe i anything to
get bill anderson's name into circulation.i iwas having other country
artists tell me that they'd go into a town ifor a concert and pick up
the local paper to read about their show and instead all they'd find was
a story about me.it was a bit embarrassing, but our mission was being
accomplished.

it was only a matter of a few weeks until i appeared on nbc's today
show.i was the first country artist to appear on the mike douglas Show
(this will set our show back ten years!i overheard one of the staff band
members mutter when he saw me and the igroup coming into the studio
lugging our guitars), and i probably appeared with mike as much or more
than anybody from nashville during the years his show was on the ai i

ibobby booked me on all the top entertainment-talk shows with all the
top hosts-david frost, doctor joyce brothers, dinah Shore, della Reese,
john gary, and so many others i can't remember them all.and then one day
he really snuck up on my blind side.

will, i want you to start doing guest appearances on some of ithe
daytime game shows, he said.

game shows?i exclaimed.what for, bobby?i don't even watch game shows!

well, start watching them, was his answer.

but i don't even like game shows!i protested.i mean, all ithey are is a
bunch of people coming to a studio dressed like pepperoni pizzas and
acting like they have about as much sense as ione.yukkk!do i have to?

no, you don't have to, but i've booked you a spot next week on match
game at cbS in hollywood.it's for six shows, five of the daytime
programs and one nighttime shot.i think you should take it, but if you
don't want it, i can probably switch them over to tom t.hall.

bobby has always had a way with words.

i started watching match game and decided it really wasn't so bad after
all.gene Rayburn, the host, seemed like a nice enough guy, and with a
supporting cast that included i i i 0r-not i yet i turnedgame i show i
host Richard dawson, the quick i witted charles nelson Reilly, and jack
klugman's bubbling ex-wife brett Sommers, it came across like a bunch of
zanies throwing a big afternoon party and having a good time.i found
when i flew to california and taped six episodes that the cast did,
indeed, to put it mildly, enjoy their work.

match game was the show where a contestant was asked to fill in the
blank in a question (marshall dillon said, miss kitty's real name isn't
kitty.we call her kitty because she eats blank!') and a panel of
celebrities tried to anticipate and match the answer the contestant
would give.it was a serious game in that the contestants had a chance to
win some big bucks, but it was played in a none i too i serious manner
by the panel.they told us to try our best to match the contestants but
to have fun doing it.and if we could throw in something halfway witty in
the process, feel free to do so. i don't remember how many matching
answers i came up with that first time but it must have been a few and i
must have acted semiinsane doing it, because they asked me to come
back.and then back.and back again.

and then bobby, having gotten my foot inside the hollywood game i show
circuit door, carried his madness one step further.he turned becky into
a tv stat he booked us an appearance together on another cbS show called
tattle tales, a program where three celebrity couples would try to match
the answers their spouses or partners might give to personal questions
about themselves and i.their relationships.the couple who matched the
most answers in each daily half-hour segment was declared the winner.as
with match game, we were contracted to six shows.

the questions were sometimes silly but provoked some interesting
responses.(you're staying with friends in a house with two iguest
bedroomiss there is one single bed in each.husbands, will your wife say
that you would want to sleep in separate bedrooms or in the same single
bed?).the ad-lib answers, as you might imagine, could sometimes get
rather personal and pretty crazy.

becky was a little nervous before we went on tattle tales the first
time, but it didn't take her long to relax and fall right into the flow
of things.after about two questions and a couple of small igiggles from
the audience when she'd come up with a cute answer, she got to feeling
her oats and didn't really care what she said. -hey, it's not my career,
she'd laugh, and then give some outlandish response to whatever the
question happened to be.the more the studio audience and host bert convy
would laugh at her answers, the more turned-on she'd become and the
crazier she'd act.most of the time it was funny and i'd laugh too, but
once we got into a terrible argument over something she said.

the question had been, ladies, which one of the two of you will your
husband say eats more junk food, you or him?' well, ibecky has always
been a junk-food junkie and i can either take it or leave it. naturally,
i answered that she ate the most.She had said that i did.

why i don't eat junk food!i exclaimed on nationwide tv. you're the one
who's always reaching your hand down in a sack of potato chips or into a
can of cashew nuts.and you're always drinking a pepsi!

oh, no, you've got that all wrong.you're always making a turkey sandwich
at midnight or eating an extra piece of lemon pie for dessert, ' she
squealed.

but that's not junk food, i protested.that's nourishment!

the crowd in the studio roared and the producers were loving it.convy
was egging us on, and the more we argued the better they liked it.but i
was becoming more and more irritated.i felt like becky was sacrificing
the truth in an effort to get the audience ion her side.in the dressing
room after the show i confronted her iand asked, why did you have to say
something so wrong and so istupid just to get a laugh on tv?

She said, i ell, you know good and well you eat more junk food than i
do, and the argument started all over again.i couldn't believe what she
was saying.we ended up going back to our hotel iin separate cabs.

i,
___________________________________________________________________________________________

becky enjoyed her celebrity status as a frequent guest on tat tletales.
her favorite moment came in a drugstore in miami when she and i were
doing some last minute shopping prior to leaving on

a caribbean cruise.a lady walked up to her-not to me, but to her-and
said, hey, aren t you on television?before becky could

answer the lady said, yeah, i've seen you on tattle tales.you're becky
anderson.you're the wife of the one they call whisper in'

Somebody.becky has teased me about that for years!

we've also had some good laughs over another incident that --took place
on tattle tales.again the question was to the ladies:

girls, what will your husband say was his most embarrassing moment?the
panel that day consisted of author mickey Spillane

and his wife, Sherri; game show host allen ludden and his wife, the
marvelous betty white, and us.when it came becky's turn to 7 answer, she
launched into the story she'd heard me tell of the time in high school
when i went onstage with my pants unzipped.

however, when she came to the punch line about my having held my guitar
in a rather unique position, she said, he held his guitar

down around his knees.' the studio audience howled, whereupon betty
white flashed the camera one of those patented astonished, dry looks of
hers, raised her eyebrows, leaned forward and said, well, becky, i have
just gained a whole new respect for your husband!

becky was good on television because she was herself.She was honest, she
was funny.they call it being real.we announced to

the public for the first time that we were expecting a baby on one of
our appearances on tattletales.for a couple of years following

her automobile accident, i couldn't bring myself to watch the tapes of
those old shows because becky was so far from being that won derful,
full-of-life person she was back then.but now, as i've watched her fight
back, so determined to regain that which was

taken away from her, those shows are an inspiration to us both.

tattle tales isn't on the air right now, but i hope someday a show will
come along that the two of us can do together again.i'm

prejudiced, of course, but i think we made a pretty darn good team!

i had no way of knowing it at the time, but my appearances on match
game, tattle tales, and later on password, hollywood Squares, and other
daytime game shows were leading to something elsesomething a whole lot
bigger-that was ultimately to have a profound effect on both my life and
my career.for i found out in the iearly spring of nineteen 77 that i was
about to be asked by mark goodson, the king of the game show producers,
if i'd like to audition for ithe role of host of a new game show he'd
just devised, the pilot for which he had sold to abc.when i first heard
about it, i was told ithe show was to be called the Stronger Sex and
would feature a male and a female as cohosts, something that up until
this time had never been tried in game show television.

lord, howard, i said to howard felsher, a longtime friend of ibobby
brenner, one of the top producers at goodson-todman and the man who had
brought me to mister goodson s attention in the ifirst place, i'm just a
guitar-pickin' hillbilly singer and songwriter from nashville.what do i
know about hosting a hollywood game show?but the idea both intrigued and
excited me, even though it ifrightened me a bit as well.i knew if the
opportunity actually did present itself that i'd have to give it a try.

(i often use the term hillbilly in referring to myself and my ifriends
in the country music business.i realize that to some readers that term
might seem inaccurate and perhaps even derogatory.let me explain:

first, hillbilly is a perfectly acceptable, almost flattering term or
one country musician to use in referring to himself or another person in
this business.over the years we've always called ourselves hillbillies
or billies.we haven't always liked it when outsiders, such as newspaper
and magazine writers from new york, for example, have called us
hillbillies because they've often used the word as a put-down.but in
calling ourselves that it's almost like saying, hey, we're part of a
very special club or fraternity.we're hillbillies and you're not!

a public relations man from the east once took me out on a promotion
tour to visit radio and television stations as well as several major
newspapers and magazines in a half-dozen major -.northern cities, and
he'd get angry every time he'd take me into a prestigious spot like the
washington post and i'd refer to myself as a --hillbilly.don't call
yourself that, he'd say.you are not a hillbilly!

oh yes, i am a hillbilly, i answered, and i'll call myself that alll
please.just be careful when you call me a hillbilly!)

understand now, the show isn't yours to host by a long shot, howard
felsher emphasized.all you're being offered is an audition, a chance for
you to see and us to see if you can handle it. and all you'll win if you
pass the audition is a chance to cohost the pilot, not the series, if in
fact there's even going to be series. at this point that's not even for
sure.but what do you say?

the whole scenario was full of if, perhaps, and maybe, but i knew howard
was one of the very top people in the whole game show profession-at the
time he was the producer of abc s toprated family feud-and i had all the
confidence in the world in his judgment and his ability.if he felt
strongly that i should do it, then maybe i should.too, i've always loved
a challenge, and hosting a game show would most definitely be a
challenge.

people ask me all the time why i involve myself in so many careers aside
from my primary career in country music, and i tell them it's because
i'm a lot like the guy in the tv commercial who comes down from climbing
the high mountain and his friend asks him, why did you climb that
mountain?and he answers, because it was there.many times in my life i've
gone chasing after something simply because it was there.why should this
be any different?Sure, coach, i said to howard, i'll play your game.Send
me in!

i was told that before any new show goes on the air at a major network a
test program or pilot episode has to be taped.the idea is to give both
the producers and the network officials a way to look at the show and
judge how well all the elements blend together prior to committing to
invest hundreds of thousands of dollars in actual production costs.
Sometimes audiences are even brought into the studios and shown tapes of
the pilot programs to test their reactions.not all pilots that are taped
get on the air, and many shows reach the air only after many revisions
and changes are made.Sometimes those changes include even the stars of
the shows themselves.

ibut at least i was going to get a chance.me and twenty-seven other
would-be male hosts.before it was over, goodson-todman would audition
everybody they could pull in off the street in an effort to find not
only, as they put it, some fresh new faces, but a host and cohost who
could work well together and blend the elements of the
male-versus-female concept of the game into a cohesive unit.i was warned
that when a producer said he wanted a fresh new face that usually meant
he would try out a bunch of people who'd never worked in this particular
area of show business before and then at the last minute retreat to a
trusted game show veteran like bill cullen or tom kennedy when the tape
began to roll and the chips were on the line.but my attitude was still,
what-the-heck, let's go for it.it's a chance to learn from and be
critiqued by the best minds in the business.i figured when it was all
over and i was sent packing back home to nashville i could at least look
back upon the experience as my having taken advantage of a
once-in-a-lifetime opportunity.like the old country song says, i'd
rather be sorry for something i did ...than for something that i didn't
do.

the first thing i had to do after saying yes, i'd like to try, was to
promise the producers i'd spend every available minute over the next few
weeks in southern california learning the premise of the new game and
how i might best negotiate the move from country singer to game show
host.i caught a lot of red-eye airplane flights in and out of the los
angeles international airport, and i put in many long and tedious hours
in the goodson-todman offices under the watchful eye of i i i i i i ive
i producer i to i be i ira Skutch, learning just what it is that a game
show host is supposed to do.

i couldn't have had a better teacher than ira, a lanky, bespectacled,
transplanted new yorker who had worked around game show television ever
since he was employed as a page at nbc as a teenagel i had worked with
ira when i'd been a member of the celebrity panels on match game and
tattletales, since he produced both shows, and i had come to love his
sense of humor and to respect his i nowledge of game shows and the game
show business. but this was different.here he was training me to be in
charge, to run the show myself.if i were to get the job, a large part of
the success or failure of the entire show was going to be resting
squarely on my shoulders.ira knew that and brought me along slowly,
showing me step i by-step how to execute each move, patiently explaining
to me as we went along just why each piece of business had to be handled
in a particular way and why it was necessary for me sometimes to speak
in specific scripted language.

the use of that specific language turned out to be one of the toughest
things for me to learn.not having come from a background in the theater,
i was a lot more used to ad-libbing my way through certain situations
than i was memorizing lines.but on a game show if you say just one word
out of context, you run the risk of changing the entire meaning of what
you're trying to communicate.that's a luxury a host can t afford.he
might end up giving away a million dollars to a contestant who just
missed a question all because he got his tongue tangled up.these little
nuances were confusing and hard for me to master at first, but the whole
thing was also extremely fascinating. and there was no doubt that i was
being tutored by some of the masters of the art.

finally, after several weeks, when ira and producemto i be bobby Sherman
thought i had a good enough grip on the basic mechanics of the game to
attempt some actual i un i throughs, they began teaming me up with the
various ladies they were i onsidering as cohosts.i hosted a mock version
of the game with a former miss america, nancy fleming, and she was very
pleasant.in fact, i flew back to nashville thinking she and i might make
a good team, only to be called back to california almost immediately to
try out with another potential cohost, author joanna barnes. before it
was over i must have done i un i throughs with at least a dozen ladies,
including patty duke, who was never considered as a cohost but who came
by one afternoon to help out as a favor to ira. it took less than five
minutes in her presence for me to know i was in the company of a real
pro.

the procedure as a whole was exhilarating, but at times it could also be
very rough on my nerves.we'd play the game on a simulated set built in
the goodson-todman offices with office staff members posing as
contestants.after each half-hour run-through the production staff would
leave without a word and disappear inside their private offices down the
hall to talk about what they'd ijust seen and heard.then they'd come
back into the rehearsal room and give us their critiques, sometimes
pages upon pages.each time they'd return i'd feel like i should stand
and address them as ladies and gentlemen of the jury.they were mostly
kind in their iremarks, but i never received from them any indication of
how my performance was stacking up against the others in the running.
ithat only added to the intense pressure i was beginning to feel.

periodically when things would reach the point where the brain itrust of
the show (producers, writers, directors, etc.) thought i was ready for
the next step, they'd call in mark goodson himself, and i'd have to
perform everything i had learned thus far for him. Sometimes he'd make
suggestions and offer me invaluable criticismiss other times he'd decide
there were some little changes he wanted to make in the game itself, and
i'd have to spend hours after he left the room unlearning things i had
been struggling so ihard during the previous hours to learn.every few
days, just to add to my load, i'd look up and not only would mark
goodson be scrutinizing my every move, but fred Silverman, the head of
the ientire abc-tv network, would be standing there glaring at me as
iwell.at the time fred Silverman was the single most important man in
american television, and i had to pinch myself the first itime i
realized he'd come to watch and listen to me.he made me inervous,
probably because i never saw him smile.

more than once i wondered if being the host of a network game show was
really worth all the effort i was having to put into it, all the
tension, all the stress.i'd sometimes close my eyes there on iSunset
boulevard in the middle of hollywood and pretend i was back in nashville
listening to the ringing of an open e-chord on my ole flat-top guitar.
and i'd think about writing a song or climbing on the bus and heading
out somewhere to perform for people who put no pressure on me at all.i
don't need to be a game show host, i'd tell myself.i've already got a
pretty good job.but i stuck with it, and i've lived to be extremely glad
that i did.

given the fact that i knew over two dozen other men had tried out for
the job as cohost of this new show, including several who'd had network
game show experience, i figured when it came time for mister goodson and
his staff to choose the host for the taping of the pilot my chances of
landing the role rested somewhere between slim and none.i had, in fact,
about given up hope of being chosen when my phone rang at home late one
night and ira gave me the surprising but happy news.

now, this doesn't mean you'll get the series, he cautioned, but they do
want you to host the pilot.and that's the first step.i knew ira had been
in my corner from day one, and i thanked him profusely.

even though i was more than a little surprised when the call came, there
had actually been several things working in my favor from the beginning,
not the least of which was the political climate of the country at the
time.jimmy carter, a southerner, had just been elected president, and
southern lifestyles and southern people were very much in vogue.more
than once i had heard mark goodson say, bill has that soft, southern
manner about him, he's a fresh new face, and i think the timing might
just be right.after having been in show business for nearly twenty
years, i hardly considered myself a fresh new face (i'd look in the
mirror sometimes and swear i could see the road map of the world
imprinted there!), but i was fresh and new to the world of game shows.
now at least the pilot, if not the series, was mine.

i was determined not to worry about the series and whether or not it
would ever get on the air.i planned just to relax and have a good time
taping the pilot.and i did.my cohost turned out to be none of the ladies
i had worked with in the run-throughs, but rather a tall, striking
blonde who at the time was hosting good morning, los angeles, sort of a
local version of good morning, america, on kabc-tv in l.a. her name was
Sarah purcell.

Sarah had never worked on a game show either, so in that respect we
started out even.in fact, at that time, Sarah hadn't been working in
front of a tv camera very long, period.She was a former secretary at a
television station in San diego who got pressed into on-the-air duty one
night when the local tv weather girl didn't show up.the show-biz bug bit
her so hard she never returned to her typewriter and steno pad. mark
goodson hadn't met Sarah when he first spotted her either, but he liked
what he saw on the local show and called her in for an audition.

Sarah and i more or less inherited one another, but we hit it off
iimmediately and i can't tell you how relieved i was.i'd had visions of
having to share the stage with some air-brained hollywood egohead, and
Sarah was the complete opposite.She was lively, witty, just flaky enough
to be real cute, and above all she was a lady. when she found national,
prime-time stardom as one of the hosts iof Real people a few years
later, nobody was happier for her than i iwas.

in spite of my resolve to relax and have fun, there was a tremendous
amount of tension in the air the week we taped the pilot. large amounts
of money and several jobs were at stake, not just mine and Sarah's, but
the dozens of staff positions that would need to be filled if the show
went into production.it might not seem like it watching at home, but a
game show requires many people working behind the scenes to make it
click-writers, contestant coordinators, production assistants-each
performing intense, spe- - cialized tasks.each of these people had his
or her own special ireasons for wanting the pilot to succeed, and since
i had gotten to know quite a few of them during the run-throughs, i
wanted to do a good job for their sakes as well as for mine.

i had to mark off an entire week on my schedule to tape the pilot.i flew
into los angeles late on a Sunday afternoon, and on monday morning we
moved from our tiny make-believe studio at ithe goodson-todman offices
into the honest-to-goodness real abc-tv studios on prospect avenue.there
we set up shop on a shiny new stage that i was told was the most
expensive, elaborate set ever constructed for a game show. they said it
cost over threequarters of a million dollars just to build.and then,
with real icameras beneath real lights and with real contestants for
what seemed like a hundred days and nights on end, i practiced making

the rest of my transition from being a country music singer to being the
host of a network game show.

after the first few days i thought i could begin to feel the pieces
slowly but surely falling into place.i wasn't sure, but i thought i

could feel myself relaxing.i could feel Sarah and me becoming r more and
more used to working together.i could feel the show - - becoming more
and more a part of me and me a part of it.Some where around the third or
fourth day in the studio we actually

videotaped one of the rehearsals and gathered around the studio monitors
afterward to watch the playback.i was happy, but i could

sense mister goodson wasn't totally pleased with what he saw.

what he turned out to be unhappy with had nothing at all to do with me
or with Sarah, but rather with the game itself.there was a small part of
it that he felt just wasn't jelling.i don't know if it was brashness or
naivete' on my part, but i sensed his mood and

spoke up and offered him a suggestion i thought might help.as soon as
the words were out of my mouth, though, i wanted to draw

them all back in.

the studio grew strangely quiet.every head in the room turned toward me,
every eye focused on the tennessee hillbilly who
hadn't been around hollywood long enough to know that you didn't tell
mark goodson how to repair his creation, no matter
how badly it might be sputtering.i learned later that everyone fully
expected goodson's renowned wrath to come crashing down
on the top of my head.but instead he paused, puffed on his pipe a time
or two, and said, that might just be a good idea.let's try it
once that way and see how it works.luckily, it worked well, and he
incorporated my idea into the permanent structure of the show.

from that moment on i felt this legendary man began to look at me in a
different light.i felt that perhaps for the first time he was

truly on my side.

we taped three half-hour pilot episodes of our new game show on friday
night before a live, jam-packed studio audience.i was so

pumped up with excitement and fear that i barely remember it, but i
assumed by all the handshakes and pats i on i the-back i received when
it was over that i must have done a fairly good job.

at the very least i was convinced beyond any shadow of a doubt that i
had made the right decision to have gone for it because even if the show
didn't sell or even if it sold and somebody else became the host, i knew
i'd gotten to siphon knowledge off the top of some of the greatest minds
in the television business.and even if i never appeared on another game
show in my life, i knew i could take this experience and transfer it
into whatever other areas of show business i might someday find myself
involved in.as i dressed, left the studio, and headed for the airport to
catch the midnight flight back to nashville, i smiled, comfortable in my
belief that i had done the best i could do.besides, i told myself, if i
approached it casually rather than pinning all my hopes on becoming a
game show star, it would make it a whole lot easier to take when the
proverbial ax came swinging down across my neck. which is exactly what
happened.

i'm sorry, bill, ira Skutch said to me over the long-distance iwire from
l.a.one Sunday afternoon about three weeks after the taping of the
pilot.we all thought you did a helluva job, all of us idid, but
Silverman just won't buy you.he doesn't think you're right for the
show.mark, all of us, we've talked til we're blue in ithe face, but he
won't budge.abc likes the show and wants it to go on the air in july,
but i'm afraid we're going to have to go with someone else.

who's going to get it?i asked, trying to hide my disappointment.i had
been chasing the dream so long by this time that i had really begun to
want to capture it.

probably wink martindale.

and Sarah?

Silverman likes her.

iwell, give her my love and tell her i wish her the best.and, ira,
thanks for the chance.i learned a lot from all you guys and i'll never
forget it.please thank mark for me, too.it's really been great getting
to work with the best there is!

i hung up the phone and called bill goodwin, my booking iagent.i told
him to get busy booking me some concert dates for the summer.my brief
career as a game show host was over.

a few weeks later, i was signing autographs inside my fan club booth at
the country music fan fair in nashville, the world of hollywood and game
shows a million miles from my mind.Suddenly, above the noise and
commotion generated by ten thousand

t country fans who'd come to nashville from all over the world to see
and meet their favorite stars, i could hear my name being called over
the loudspeaker system.Someone was paging me to come to the telephone.

being totally surrounded by humanity, flashbulbs, and autograph books,
unable to move more than a few steps at a time, i turned to becky and
asked her if she'd mind going to find out what it was and bring me any
message.

She came back in about five minutes out of breath and pale. you'd better
go to the phone quick, she said, and i conjured up all sorts of images
of tragedy.

what's the matter?i asked anxiously, pushing the crowd aside.

it's from california, she panted.Silverman has changed his mind. you've
got the show.

by the time our show got on the air in july nineteen 77 the name had
been changed from the Stronger Sex to the better Sex, but for some
reason the general public always seemed to want to call it the battle of
the Sexes.i never cared what they called it as long as they watched
it.today i meet people who only vaguely remember the show who'll come up
to me and ask, what was that sex show' you used to do on tv?i smile and
tell them i was the original doctor Ruth!

abc gave our show a good time slot, the half-hour following the highly
rated family feud.that meant we were on at noon on the east coast,
however, and many of the stations in the larger cities preempted us for
their local noontime news.in the other time izones we were carried by
virtually all the abc affiliates.

the ratings on the show started off high, the result of a barrage of
advance publicity and promotion.after the initial honeymoon period,
however, they tapered off a bit before starting to build slowly but
steadily back.we had been guaranteed only that we'd be on the air for
thirteen weeks at the outset, which i learned is standard fare at the
networks, but our first option was quickly picked up by abc and we
launched our second thirteen-week cycle.everybody felt good about the
future of the show, and i was ihaving a blast.at first i missed my
guitar, but i soon forgot it iwasn't hanging around my neck and
concentrated on trying to make the better Sex an entertaining television
show.

if you never saw the show, you're probably wondering just what this
whole thing was all about.basically, the better Sex was a trivia game,
and the premise was to see whether a team of five women captained by
Sarah purcell or a team of five men captained by yours truly could
answer the most trivia questions.the winning team could then boast, we
are the better sex'!

trivia of all kinds was hot in those days, and our subject matter knew
no bounds.we asked everything from which u.S.president once got stuck in
the white house bathtub?to who broke babe Ruth's home-run record?

a player was knocked out of the game and had to take a seat on the bench
if he or she gave an incorrect answer.the team with a player or players
still standing at the end of a round was declared the winnel the winning
team would then move downstage and match trivial wits with thirty
selected members of the opposite sex in the studio audience.if my men's
team had won the round, for instance, and they could then knock out or
stump in five questions all thirty women they were matched against in
the studio audience, the men would win five thousand dollars. if there
were audience members, however, who didn't miss a question of the five
they were asked, they would then divide five hundred dollars among
themselves.we gave away many thousands of dollars to both contestants
and the audience during the time we were on the air, and never once did
we lack for people coming to see the show. unlike most game shows, the
audience knew they had a chance to leave the studio richer than they
were when they came.they came in droves.

once we swung into production, i found that hosting a five-daya-week
game show, while perhaps not in the same league as laying concrete block
or performing brain surgery, can nonetheless be very taxing, both
mentally and physically.most of the time we taped five half-hour
programs in one day, although once or twice we got in a bind and had to
tape as many as seven.a taping session would usually last three or four
consecutive days.at the end of some of those sessions i didn't know what
planet i was on! the shows were taped, as most game shows are,
back-to-back in the order in which they would be played on the air with
only time enough in between shows for Sarah and me to change clothes. if
you've ever noticed that most game shows seem a little goofier on
fridays than on other days of the week, now you know why!

many times i was also having to face this grind on three or four hours
sleep a night.i was living in nashville trying to maintain a

career in country music, which meant nonstop touring in the isummer
(remember, when i thought i hadn't gotten the game show i'd asked my
agent for a heavy work load), and i had to hop many midnight flights to
and from california, i hadn't rented an apartment or a house on the west
coast either, because i never had more than a thirteen-week guarantee of
employment at any one time.i figured as soon as i signed a longterm
lease on living quarters somewhere my show would get cancelled.there
weren't any rental properties out there that i knew of that were
available in thirteen-week cycles, although that might not be a bad
idea.(watch some real estate sharpie pick up on that and make a
fortune!) i would fly out for each taping session, rent a car for my
transportation around town, and check into an all-suite hotel in the
little village of westwood.had the show stayed in production longer, i
had already decided to concentrate on finding isome type of permanent
living arrangement in southern california.

Several interesting, memorable, and funny things happened during the
grand and glorious twenty-six weeks we were on the air. just about the
time the show was set to go into production, there was a big strike at
abc and all the cameramen, technicians, and many of the support
personnel walked off the job.that left vicepresidents of the network to
run the cameras and anybody else they could pull in from management to
do all sorts of other odd jobs.one group of people who walked out were
the make-up artists.

due to the way television lights reflect off human skin, a person can't
go on tv without make-up.i've always said i need camouflage more than
make-up but, lucky for me, at that time becky was a licensed television
make-up artist.She had gone through extensive training in nashville and
worked on many of city's locally produced music shows, gospel music
shows in particular, but she had only once or twice ever done my
make-up.that is, until someone at abc learned of her background.from
that day until the day the strike was settled, becky flew to california
every time i did and served as my personal make-up artist.we often joked
that we made it to the big-time together!

the strike made it difficult as far as the show itself was con-cerned
because it took place when the show was still in its formative stages.
the producers had to call extra rehearsals, set aside extra days for us
to tape, and move at a much slower pace in general because the regular
crews weren't there.but aside from the inconvenience, and speaking
purely on a personal level, i was sort of glad it all happened like it
did.otherwise, becky would never have gotten to become as big a part of
it all as she became.

having her around sure kept the days (and nights) from being so long and
lonesome.often we couldn't fly out to california together because i'd be
coming in from a show date somewhere and she'd be leaving out of
nashville, but we'd meet at the hotel or at the studio.once we got there
she'd have to keep the same hours that i did because before we'd begin
to tape each new half-hour show, she'd have to put some powder on my
nose or touch up Sarah's eyeliner or something.that meant we could
usually have all our meals together and sleep on a somewhat similar
schedule. much of the time we couldn't even do that at home.

becky made a lot of friends in california, too.She and Sarah became big
buddies, and she struck up friendships with some of the production
assistants and some of the wives of the executives at coodson-todman as
well.they'd go shopping together after work, or we'd stay over on a
weekend sometimes and see a show or just visit.Sometimes i'd fly out
after a taping session and she'd stay in town.i'd work a couple of shows
someplace then fly back to los angeles.it was nice having her there
waiting for me.

once the shows got rolling on a regular schedule, i began really to
enjoy my work.i met a lot of interesting people, many of them
contestants, and some of them turned out to be very strange and unique
characters.we had one giant of an ole boy come in to play on the men's
team one day who must have stood about six-ten and weighed close to
three hundred.he told us to call him big jim. i mean he was huge, and
never once did i ever see him smile.he seemed to have a permanent scowl
chiseled onto his face, a decided contrast to the typical hollywood game
show contestant who always seems to be auditioning for a toothpaste
commercial.

the first game this big dude happened to play was on the fifth show of
the day, and the women's team skunked the men.the women then went
downstage and played against the men in the audience, after which our
taping day was finished.Since a team had to lose twice in order to be
eliminated, the men were all told to be back at the studio at ten
o'clock the following morning.

well, they all showed up that next day except big jim.he was nowhere to
be found.finally, with taping time rapidly approaching, one of the
contestant coordinators decided to try calling him on the phone.much to
her surprise, he answered.

jim, aren't you coming to the studio to tape the better Sex iagain
today?she asked.

hell, no!he answered emphatically.

why not?

cause ain't no damn woman ever beat me at nothin', he growled, and they
ain't about to start now!

and that was the last we ever saw of big jim.

ithere were many very nice and extremely talented people on iour
production staff i but from the beginning a very beautiful, vibrant
young lady who researched much of the question-andianswer material that
we used on the air caught my eye.Somehow she just seemed to sparkle
above the rest.i had been introduced to her during some of my very first
run-throughs at the goodsontodman offices, but the only chances i had
had really to talk with her had come during the commercial breaks on
raping days when she would come bounding up onto the stage from her seat
at the control center out in the audience to hand me my question cards
for the next round.She was extremely attractive, but there was something
else about her-some type of elusive quality i couldn't iquite put my
finger on-that impressed me as well.

one day when we weren't taping shows i went by the goodsontodman offices
to pick up some mail, and she happened to get on the elevator with me as
i was leaving.we exchanged a little small talk on our way down, and when
we reached the ground floor she reached out to shake my hand.i probably
won't be seeing you at the studio anymore, she said.

why not?i asked, very surprised and missing her already.

ii'm leaving coodson to go to work for chuck barris, she said.

idon't tell me you're going to work on the gong Show, i gasped, knowing
this was one of barris's many productions.

no, she smiled, what i really want to be is an actress.he's promised to
help me move in that i i

i thought, honey, every girl in california wants to be an actress. if i
were you i wouldn't give up my day job!but i kept my thoughts to myself
and wished her well.

i guess it's a good thing she didn't ask for my advice.She might still
be researching trivia questions for game shows.instead she's gone on to
star in a tv drama called the fall guy and more recently seems to have
really found her niche as an actress on one of my favorite comedy shows,
night court.i haven't run into her on any elevators recently, but i do
see pictures of her and read articles about her in virtually every
magazine i pick up my intuition about her being special turned out to be
right.her name was, and is, markie post.

my favorite story from the better Sex days, however, involved Sarah and
something that never got on camereigh maybe it should have.we were
taking a longer than usual break one afternoon taping shows, and Sarah
had not had a particularly good day.i wondered sometimes how she kept up
the pace anyhow.She'd get up before dawn, go on the air with her local
show for two hours, and then come to our studio at eleven-thirty and
tape game shows until long after sundown.She was young and energetic and
did very well most of the time, but anybody working those hours would be
entitled to a bad day i ccasionally.

this particular evening Sarah's husband, joe, had come by the studio
prior to the taping of our last half-hour show.Sarah was in her dressing
room changing clothes, and joe could sense that all was not well.he
tried to cheer her up.

would you like a little drink, honey?he asked, opening the small
refrigerator in her dressing room and taking out a bottle of chilled
white wine.it might make you feel better.

at that precise moment Sarah, in the midst of dressing for the next show
and putting her wireless microphone in place on her blouse, i
ccidentally hit the switch that turned her microphone on. tape wasn't
rolling, of course, but the sound engineer had not turned off the
monitor speakers in the audience.the crowd was sitting there patiently
waiting for our final show to begin when suddenly they heard Sarah's
voice come booming into the room. they had not heard joe ask her if she
wanted a drink.all they heard was Sarah saying in a somewhat loud and
agitated voice:

not now, honey, i've got one more show to do!

when she walked out onto the set moments later, they gave her a standing
ovation.and she never knew why.

i really enjoyed working in hollywood despite the inconveniences of
having to live out of a suitcase all of the time.and i'd enjoy having
the opportunity to work there again someday.but i can tell you for sure
that there are a lot of differences between taping a show in southern
california and taping a show in nashville.

for one thing, in l.a.they give you the star treatment all the way.
there is somebody at hand constantly to attend to your every need or
whim, and they act like you've insulted them if you don't let them take
care of you.at the studio it was constantly, mister anderson, may i get
you a pillow?or would you like some perrier in your fridge?or, my
favorite, there's a bit of lint on your trousers; may i remove it for
you?i wasn't used to that, especially from the wardrobe guys who kept
hanging around wanting to help me get dressed and undressed.i didn't
like the look in most of their eyes, and i told em real quick that where
i come from men learn early how to dress and undress themselves!

the star treatment didn't exist just at the studio, however. while we
were on the air-and i mean ours was just a daytime game show, for
goodness sake i i could walk into almost any restaurant i might choose
in los angeles or beverly hills and get the best table in the house and
usually a bottle of complimentary wine or champagne sent over from the
manager.and people would speak on the street and in the shops, and even
in l.a.where there's a big movie or tv star every half-block, i'd get
asked to sign autographs and impart my wisdom about show business.they
treat you nice in nashville but this ...it was wonderfully bizarre.

i got treated the same way when i went over to nbc in burbank a few
months after the better Sex was cancelled at abc.i had been called in by
mark goodson to work on a pilot for a new series, another game show
called Speilbinders.on this show i was to be the sole host, and
celebrities from television and the movies were booked to come in and
play on teams with the regular contestants.i thought it was a good show,
and i was excited about being chosen to host it.all of us who were hired
to work on the show, and that included ira Skutch and several staff
members from the better Sex, were under the impression for quite some
time that it would be going on the air, but for some reason it never
did.we did get three pilot episodes on tape, but that was as far as
things ever progressed.

everybody treated me super at nbc, but the whole time i was flying in
and out of l.a.working on the new show i could sense myself becoming
bill who?in the minds of the people in southern california real fast.
although i had a new series in development, i couldn't be seen on the
air everyday, and that seemed to make a big difference.i once went back
to a restaurant where only weeks before i had been the apple of the
maitre'd's eye and gotten free champagne sent to me and my party at the
best table in the house, and this time, honest to pete, the same guy led
me without so much as even a smile to a cramped little table in the
corner. the guy who had fallen all over himself trying to sell me some
shirts at an exclusive men's store was suddenly busy when i walked in.
it was frightening.from the penthouse to the outhouse with one fell
swoop of somebody's pen.it made me realize how easily some of the people
in hollywood who are duped into believing their own publicity and who
fall into the trap of thinking they are something special just because
they work in the mass media can have so much trouble adjusting to life
in the real world when the merry i go i round quits turning.i never took
hollywood all that seriously myself.i think if a performer can somehow
accept the town for what it is-a land of enchantment and fantasy and
makebelieve-it can be wonderful.as long as he or she realizes everything
there is an illusion, they'll be ok.trouble is, so many young aspiring
entertainers, actors, and actresses aren't able to separate the real
from the pretend.that's when they lose all perspective, and before they
know it the place turns on them, jumps up on their backs, and claws them
to death.

the better Sex stayed on the air until the early part of nineteen 78 and
was cancelled then not because of bad ratings but because abc had a lady
named jackie Smith in charge of daytime programming. her crystal ball
could see clearly into the future.jackie saw that game shows in general
were declining in favor with the public and that daytime dramas
(affectionately known as soap operas) were getting hotter and hotter
every day.there were two soaps on abc then, general hospital and one
life to live, which were only fortyfive minutes each in length, and
jackie felt the rising tide for the soaps compelled her to extend those
programs to one hour each.in order to do that, she had to recapture
thirty minutes of program time from somewhere.

She couldn't cancel family feud because its ratings were the highest of
any game show on any network.all the other abc daytime shows were
already soaps and she wasn't about to cancel any of them.She didn't want
to cancel our show, but it turned out to be the only place she could
find the half-hour of time she needed, so she took it.her decision
turned out to be the right one for the network because within only a few
months abc became number one in daytime television for the very first
time.it was all due to jackie Smith's soaps and her foresight.

but for me and Sarah and all the rest of the people who had worked so
very hard to try and make the better Sex come alive, it was a tough pill
to swallow.the network gave us a little party backstage after we taped
our last show, and there were a lot of us walking around the room
wearing long faces.jackie came to the party and moved graciously among
us trying to console our collectively woonded pride.Shows are born every
day and die all the time in california, but when a group of people works
as long and diligently as we'd all worked, faces the hardships of a
strike, creates a successful show, and then gets only a pink slip for
the effort, it hurts just the same.many of us had become close friends
both on and off the set, and nobody wanted to see it end.

bill, you've just been marvelous, jackie said to me, sensing, i'm sure,
the disappointment in my face.but you'll be back.in fact, if you don't
come up with another game show, which i feel sure you will eventually, i
want to use you in one of my soaps.how would you like that?

me?in a soap opera?i almost laughed.doing what?

i don't know right now.let me think about it.i promise you'll be hearing
from me, though.

Sure, and the Russians are going to dismantle their nuclear weapons and
take up tiddlywinks.Right?

but dad-blamed if the lady didn't keep her word!before i could say
american broadcasting company real fast three times in a row, i was in
new york on the set of one life to live, script in t 1 hand, ready to
launch a whole new career as an actor in a daytime i television drama.
Show business had totally amazed me one more ttme.

i don't know one thing about acting, l told the director the first
morning i showed up at the studio to tape one life to live.i mean, you
are going to have to show me everything.but i'll do my best to learn. i
you don't have to act, the kind and very patient man told me.2 you're
playing the part of yourself, bill anderson, the country 2 singer.why do
you have to act?just be natural and do what you'd naturally do under
these circumstances.the great actors don't act anyhow, they react.just
calm down and let's have some fun.and we did..t

(many times in these pages i've referred to my work as being fun.i've
carried a clipping in my wallet for years that reads:

find something you like doing so much you'd do it for nothing.

then learn to do it so well that they'll pay you.and you've got it made.

that's pretty much been my philosophy of life within the scope n of show
business.i love what i do so much that i'd probably do it ii for nothing
if i could afford to.getting paid for it is just the icing on the cake.i
feel sorry for people who have to get up every day and make a living at
something they don't enjoy.and all the time - n i encourage people to
make a career change if they are unhappy ti and can afford to take the
financial risks involved.life at best is c short, and unhappiness
shouldn't have to be a partner on the journey.) l more than one
professional actor has told me that the most difficult dramatic role of
all is playing oneself, but somehow i c didn't find it hard at all.after
all, i've been playing me for years.- ti the only change was that on one
life to live they gave me a whole set of new friends.

in the story line i was an old pal of a man who ran a small inightclub
in suburban philadelphia.this man had supposedly befriended me early in
my career, and anytime i was on tour in the philadelphia area i stopped
by to see him.when the one life viewers first saw me, i was presumably
en route to a nearby concert engagement and popped into the club for a
few minutes to chat with my old buddy.

my friend asked me to pull up a chair and started telling me about this
young girl who'd just moved up from north carolina and who was singing
part-time in his club.her name is becky lee abbott, and i think she's
got real potential, bill, he said.i'd appreciate it if you'd take a
listen to her and maybe give her some advice.

the director was right.this wasn't acting.this was doing something i'd
been doing every day of my life for nearly twenty years.do i have to
stick right to the script?i asked, noting that the language they'd
prepared for me seemed a bit contrived and stilted.

Shoot, no, he said.just put it into your own words.we want this thing to
be as realistic as possible.

So i sat backstage in the little club and told becky lee all about show
business.how she needed to try and develop her own style of singing, how
it would be helpful if she could write some of her own songs, the very
same things i tell aspiring performers every day of -my life.and i just
happened to have my guitar with me, and we just happened to sing a song
or two together.

iit must have come off all right because almost as soon as the first two
episodes i taped hit the air they called me back for a couple more.in a
few weeks they wanted me back again, and this time they said for me to
bring my entire band.we all went and played a concert in the little club
and had a ball.Suddenly i began to realize the writers were not only
weaving me in and out of becky lee's life but slowly turning her into a
major star as well.the next -thing i knew they were telling me that i
was going to bring her to nashville and invite her to appear with me on
the grand ole opry.except, not to worry, they were conveniently going to
move the grand ole opry to new york. and they did it!Right there in a
television studio on west 67th Street they built a replica of the grand
ole opry stage that gave me chill bumps the first time i saw it.it was
that realistic.and for days becky lee moved in and out of crisis after
crisis as the script built toward that magical night when the little
girl from north carolina would walk onto the most famous stage in all of
country music to perform for the first time.

not only did they construct a replica of the opry stage and backstage
area in new york city, but they also flew in minnie pearl and singer
jeanne pruett for even more realism.they hired square dancers to dance
and people to come and just sit on the stage and eat popcorn like they
do at the real grand ole opry. the atmosphere looked and felt so much
like back home that a newspaper writer who'd flown up to new york to
cover the tapings for nashville's morning paper swore she'd never left
nashville.i i-am in new york, she kept repeating to herself over and
over as if she needed constant reassurance as to just where she was.

there was really nothing to the acting.we all just did the things we'd
naturally do at the opry any friday or Saturday night. i'd introduce the
acts, including, of course, becky lee, pick and sing a few songs, and
cue the commercials.when the episodes went on the air, we were told that
they brought in the highest ratings in the show's history.i was on cloud
nine.everybody knew we were onto a good thing, and nobody wanted it to
stop.

following the opry scenes, the writers wrote me and the band into the
script again, this time as featured entertainers at a big party thrown
at a mansion out on long island.there was no make-believe involved here,
howevet we actually went to the mansion instead of their bringing the
mansion to us.even our bus and our bus driver, joe Rose, got into the
act this time, delivering us in style to the front door of this
multimillion-dollar estate. these episodes took a week to tape, ran on
the air for nearly three weeks, and once again the ratings went through
the roof.from there they called us back into the studio almost
immediately, and we started all over again.

the following spring, abc flew several key members of the cast and crew
into knoxville for several days shooting in and around the city's annual
dogwood festival.it's a wonder those episodes ever got taped, though,
because the night before the first day's work becky and i (my wife
becky, not becky lee) took the whole gang out to a little southern-style
restaurant we were familiar with on the outskirts of town and stuffed
them all full of fried chicken iand vegetables and cornbread and all
kinds of goodies.many of them had never eaten our down-home style of
food before, and they loved it.but nobody wanted to get out of bed and
go to work the following morning!

next came a real, honest-to-goodness trip to nashville for the cast and
crew where the real becky lee abbott, played by mary gordon murray and
her singing partner from the show, johnny drummond, played by wayne
massey, actually did appear on the opry and on hee-haw.it was
life-imitating-art-imitating-life at its ifinest.i wasn't sure half the
time if we were acting or really doing iall these things, but i didn't
care.just as long as we kept on doing it.

it did finally all cool down, however, and the writers married becky lee
off and sent her down to memphis to live and do whatever newlyweds do in
memphis.by the time she left and the country music storyline began to
subside, though, i had spent a large portion of nearly three years of my
life appearing on one life to live.the promise i hadn't put very much
faith in at the beginning had turned out to be a major reality.and it
surely had opened my eyes.

i had no idea until this experience how many people watch soap operas. i
was mistaken about soaps in the beginning very much like i'd been about
game shows.i didn't watch them, so i figured nobody else did either.
wrong!

one of the first concrete signs i had of people's knowing and
recognizing me from the soap was the large number of blacks who began
coming up to me in public and knowing who i was.for the most part,
blacks aren't really into country music, but thanks to my appearance on
the soaps, and even the game shows, i now meet quite a few blacks in my
travels who are fans of bill anderson.it pleases me tremendously.

ianother group of people who discovered me through one lije was the
kids, the teenagers who wouldn't be caught dead listening to a country
station on their radio.i was standing outside a hotel iin lake tahoe,
nevada, one morning with charlie pride and baribara mandrell (prior to
her television series) when my episodes on the soap were airing.three or
four teenaged girls spotted us standing there and came running over
squealing and giggling.i was astounded when they ran right past charlie
and barbara and shoved pieces of paper into my hand asking for
autographs.we see you on our favorite show!they exclaimed, grabbing
their souvenirs and disappearing without so much as a glance toward the
two superstars.charlie and barbara, not big daytime television watchers,
were floored.but not any more than i was!

people who watch the daytime dramas often refer to their favorite
program as my show.the characters are my friends, this is my story, and
they become very possessive about it.they want to know everything they
can possibly learn about the actors and actresses who play the
roles.what is so-and-so really like?i get asked all the time.what was it
really like being on that show?

i can truthfully say that the cast and crew of one life to live treated
me and all my people like royalty.i was apprehensive in -the beginning
because we were outsiders playing on foreign turf, that might appear to
them as posing a threat of some kind.but i never saw one indication of
any kind of jealousy, any pettiness, or anything but genuine affinity
from all the stars toward us.

judith light, who won several emmy awards for her work on --one life and
who has since gone on to prime-time stardom on the popular sitcom who's
the boss?, was one of the top stars in all of daytime television in the
days when i was first there, and she was marvelous.during my first
afternoon on the set when i had the dressing room scene with becky lee
and i had to deliver quite a bit of dialogue, judith stood off to the
side and watched intently as i struggled to do it the best i could. when
it was over and we had evidently pulled it off to everyone's
satisfaction, she jumped up and down and applauded like a high-school
cheerleader.i could have hugged her neck.from that moment on i felt at
home.

michael Storm, who plays doctor larry wolek on the show, turned out to
be as big a baseball nut as i am, which gave us plenty to talk about. he
loves the new york yankees, and they were in the playoffs one year while
we were taping.he had box-seat tickets. he'd be doing his scenes at the
studio and looking at his watch hoping we'd finish the show in time for
him to get to the stadium and see some of the action.i think he did get
to catch a couple of -igames.

mary murray and wayne massey, who played the singers, were and are both
excellent vocalists.people used to say to me, they're not really doing
their own singing, are they?assuming that actors can't be singers too.
but they both did their own vocals and did them well.wayne, in fact, is
now in the music business full time. he is married to and singing with
country star charly mclain.

philip carey, the great character actor who plays the evil asa buchanan
on one life; bobby woods, who plays his son bo; clint Ritchie, who plays
the other son, clint buchanan; erika Slezak (vicky); brynn thayer
(jenni); Robin Strasser (dorian)-all these people were so great to us.
one night the band and i were booked iinto a new country music nightclub
in manhattan, and i'll never forget the feeling i got when i walked out
onstage and saw the whole cast of the soap opera sitting out in the
audience whooping it up for us.these were people who had been in the
studio working since before sunrise, people who had scenes to study and
lines to learn for the next day's taping, which would again start at
daybreak, and here they were spending their valuable time coming out to
a nightclub to watch our show.it was like we'd found a whole new
beautiful fimily.

i have nothing but the utmost respect and admiration for the people who
ply their trade in daytime television drama.for some reason soap opera
stars in general never seem to get the credit that people in other areas
of show business receive.i know this much: the ones i worked around are
super-talented and superiprofessional.

they (and we) had to be at the studio between six and seven o clock
every morning.with a cup of coffee in one hand and a script in the
other, we'd read through our lines and learn our paces for the day under
the watchful eye of the episode's director in a small, completely
mirrored room in the basement of the studio. (because the soaps tape so
much drama every day, it requires that more than one director be on the
staff.at the time we were there, one life was rotating three people in
and out of the director's post, each person working on the set every
third day.on the two offdays, the director would be reading over his
next assigned script and planning his every move.) around nine o'clock
they'd move us upstairs, and we'd go through it all again, this time
actually on the set with the cameras and microphones in place and the
technicians learning their roles as well.after a short lunch break, we'd
go through a complete, on-camera dress rehearsal.around four o'clock on
a good day and five o'clock on a slow day, tape would actually start to
roll.when the director and the producer were satisfied that they had a
quality sixty-minute performance in the can, then and only then would
everybody get to go home.i've seen taping days end by five-thirty and
i've seen them last well into the night. it's not an easy way to make a
living.i appeared on the show only part-time, and i learned real fast
how draining it can be.these people do it every day, five days a week.i
can't tell you how greatly i admire them.

i did come to learn, however, that my newfound family, those wonderful,
nice, hard-working folks that i've been saying all these nice things
about, possessed a seamy side.they once stole an employee away from
me.and i couldn't do one single thing to stop them.

well, the actors and actresses didn't actually steal anybody, but the
network did.marty Slutsky had been the audio engineer on all my tours
for several years, and naturally i took him along to one life to mix
sound for us.marty was a super audio man, so good in fact that the
engineering staff at abc watched him work with me, recognized his
talents, and offered him a job.i knew i couldn't begin to match the
salary and the benefits they offered him, and although i hated to lose
him, i told him he'd be crazy to pass up the opportunity if it was
something he thought he'd like to do.he took the job.

he's still working there today, living in nashville and commuting every
week or so to new york.i occasionally see his name on the credits of
various abc-tv shows, including even the primetime news.last year he
gained some nationwide notoriety as the sound man who put the microphone
close by the bench of the u.S.hockey team at the winter olympics and
picked up a few well-chosen words from one of the coaches.i'm glad he
never tried hiding a microphone in the back of the bus while he was
working with me!

people ask me nearly everywhere i go even today, when will you be back
on my show?

1 did a small part on general hospital recently, ' i tell them.

yeah, but that's not my show, they complain.one life to live is my show.

well, i'll be back whenever they write me into the script again, i say,
and i guess that's true.it would be fun to do the soaps some more, to
see and work with my friends there again, and who knows, maybe someday i
will.but for right now i'm just enjoying the memories of the shows i did
work and not holding my breath.

at the same time i was flying back and forth to california trying to be
bob barker, and up to and back from new york in hopes of getting my
picture in Soap opera digest, some subtle winds of change were beginning
to blow across the music business in nashville.even though i had been
busy chasing new dreams, i hadn't detached myself from the old ones at
all, and i was very aware of what was going on.it forced me to make two
of the toughest decisions i've ever had to make in my life.

the hit records and hit songs had kept on coming.Songs like all the
lonely women in the world, if you can live with it (i can live without
it), world of make believe, and the corner of my life all went to the
top of the charts.jan and i had gone to number one with dis-satisfied,
and mary lou and i had two smashes in a row, Sometimes and that's what
made me love you.on the surface, my recording career appeared to be in
good shape.

yet underneath it alli was growing anxious.country music itself was
beginning ever so slowly to change.new artists were coming on the
scene.new songwriters.the competition was beginning to stiffen. nothing
was as certain as it had seemed to be for so long.

and some strange things started happening to me.my follow-up to corner
of my life had been a beautiful, modern country ballad called can i come
home to you?which i had recorded with high hopes.but mca somehow
mastered the tapes and pressed the records with too much base on them.
when the song was played on the radio, it sounded muddy and garbled.i
was extremely upset.we asked the label to notify the radio stations that
the pressings were faulty and assure them that a new pressing was on its
way, but instead of solving the problem, that only iseemed to intensify
it.Some stations who had started playing the record as soon as they
received it and probably had never noticed the muffled sound got nervous
and pulled the record from their playlists.other stations never got
around to adding it, saying they were waiting on the new pressing.by the
time the confusion settled down, we had lost three or four valuable
weeks and the record never regained its momentum.

my next release after that was the ill-fated everytime i turn the Radio
on, the record that was killed by the ace controversy. the next record,
i Still feel the Same about you, just simply was not a hit.we pulled
country dj, an autobiographical ode to small-town radio announcers, out
of my current album for the next single, and while it was a big hit with
the djs who could relate to all that it said, the general public didn't
exactly throw their babies up in the air when they heard it.l next tried
a song i'd found in england called thanks, and i quickly realized i
should have said no thanks'' and left it over on the other side of the
ocean.five releases in a row without a killer.i was nervous.

up to this point, owen bradley had produced every record i had ever
recorded, and i knew i owed him more credit than i'd ever be able to
give him in one lifetime.he had taken my simple recitation of mama Sang
a Song and created a musical masterpiece around it.i've already
recounted how his meticulous production on Still made it so different,
so unique, and so inimitable.and it was owen bradley who first helped me
rewrite the melody and then created the signature raindrops sound on i
love you drops. and he who made jimmy colvard tune the big a-string down
two frets on my old flat-top martin guitar and pick out the melody over
and over and over again until he got it just right on golden
guitar.you've got to make it sound golden!owen said relentlessly, until
in fact it did.

i thought there was no record producer in the world who was in the same
league with owen bradley, and time has certainly proven that to be the
case.but at the same time it had been five record releases in a row
since a bill anderson record had really clicked. that was more than a
year's worth of records without a hit.had we lost something?had i lost
something?owen was like a father

to me, but had time begun to pass us by?was the magic not there
anymore?could another producer bring it back?and if so, who?i

didn't know, and i began to agonize over it constantly.

i wasn't the only artist on the label asking these questions.

owen had been virtually the only producer on staff at mca for years and
at one time had something like forty artists under his

guidance.Some thought his time and his talents were spread too thin.he
had produced over twenty big country hits for conway

twitty, but one day conway decided he wanted a new producer and
left.Several other mca acts were talking about making a

-change, too, and that doubled the pressure on me.i didn't want to leave
owen when everybody else was running out, but at the same

time i feared my own career was on the verge of growing stagnant if i
stayed.in the music business, if you're standing still, you're

- i going backwards.

in addition, my trauma was compounded by the fact that owen and i had
not only our artist-producer relationship of nearly twenty

years, but we had developed a very close personal friendship away from
the music business as well.we lived in the same part of

town, we were often together at the vanderbilt football and bas ketball
games, and owen had been the person who first got becky

and me interested in boating.

he and his wife, katherine, owned a big houseboat, which they kept on
old hickory lake not far from his legendary bradley's

barn recording studio, and many's the time we'd break away from the
pressures of recording and slip away down to his boat to relax.

Sometimes we'd just sit in the lounge chairs out on the boat's spacious
front deck and talk, other times he'd crank the engines - - and we'd go
out for a ride on the watel owen and katherine spent all their weekends
and whatever other time they could manage

together on or around their houseboat.it seemed to be a relaxing way of
life for them, and becky and i couldn't help but notice.

one day we decided we had to have a houseboat, too, and we bought
one.ours wasn't nearly as big and fancy as owen's (his was

named Studio a and ours was called the poe boat), but that boat i-turned
out to be our refuge from the world many times and pro vided us with
some of our happiest moments together.i'd get home from a weekend road
trip on monday afternoon, and by monday

night becky and i would be out on the water.we'd carry a sack of
groceries, and she'd put a ham in the oven and a pot of beans on the
stove; we'd each carry a good book to read, maybe a game of Scrabble,
and we'd anchor down in a little cove and just sit there, isometimes for
days.owen helped us obtain membership in the same boating club he
belonged to, and spending time with him and other friends on and around
the water became a big part of our lives.no matter what professional
decision i might have felt myself being forced to make, above all i did
not want to jeopardize my friendship with this marvelous man.

ii also need to point out in fairness to owen that he was under a
tremendous amount of pressure from the parent mca company in california
about this time.there had been a lot of changes in the corporate
structure out there, and his bosses were suddenly a whole new group of
players.and as so often happens when changes are made, the new folks
came in with their own sets of rules.owen had not been in the best of
health, either, and i think his mind was often on things other than
producing phonograph records.i felt bad that i couldn't be part of the
solution.therefore, l guess i was part of the problem.

it finally reached the point where i knew i had to make up my mind one
way or the othe i who would produce my records if i left owen?would i
just be trading one set of problems for another?i was about to drive
myself crazy with worry when i remembered something george hamilton iv
had said to me nearly twenty years earlier.

at that time i had been debating whether or not to leave tree publishing
as a writer and sign with hubert long's moss-Rose publications.i had
been successful for over three years at tree, and moss-Rose was a new,
unproven company.at the same time i wanted hubert to manage my career
more than anything else i could think of, even though he had made it
plain that his signing me as an artist would be contingent upon my also
writing songs for his company.you need to put all your eggs in one
basket, he kept saying, even as he had tossed the postage stamps into my
lap. but still i was having a hard time making up my mind.one day i
iwould feel one way about it, and the next day i'd feel just the
opposite.in the midst of my dilemma, i asked george to go to dinner with
me between opry spots one Saturday night and help me figure out what i
should do.

over a hot hamburger steak and a plate full of crispy french fries at
the old flaming Steer restaurant on west end avenue, i explained to
george as best as i could the rock and the hard place i felt like i was
caught between.he listened carefully to alll had to say then said, well,
here's how i've always tried to make major decisions in my life: i take
a long time making up my mind about something.i try to look at all the
angles, weigh all the pros and cons of whatever decision it is that i'm
trying to make.and then when i've gathered all the evidence and examined
it as carefully as i can, i make up my mind.then-and this is the most
important part-i never look back!

1 never look hack!there's no telling how many ulcers and how many gray
hairs that one little piece of advice has spared me over the years.i
never look back has probably been one of the two or three most
significant things anybody has ever said to me in my life.because up to
that point in my life i'd no sooner make a -decision that i'd be right
back stressing myself out over whether it had been the right decision or
not.i guess i saw my dad do that to himself a lot during the years i was
growing up, and i copied him. but that was wrong. george's advice was
much better, and i continue to heed it today.it's the only way i've
found to make decisions and keep from driving myself insane.

i told owen the following week that i felt it was best for everyone
concerned if i made a change.it was one of the hardest things i've ever
done.i hurt me because i know it hurt him, but once i made up my mind i
didn't, i couldn't, look back.i had to go on to the next step.

buddy killen had wanted to produce records for as long as l had -known
him.although he was basically a music publisher, he got a kick out of
moonlighting as a record producer and had actually produced quite a few
hits.perhaps the best known of these had come in the early sixties when
he talked a bunch of studio musicians and background singers into
helping him record a song he had written called forever.he got the
record released on a small - i label, invented the name the little
dippers for the group, and set iout to have himself some fun.but
suddenly the record started taking off around the country, and before
buddy knew what hit him he found himself with a pop smash on his hands.

i was hanging out around tree a lot in those days and was there the day
dick clark's office called and said they wanted the little dippers to
fly to philadelphia and appear on american bandstand. lord, there's no
such thing as the little dippers, buddy moaned to me as he tried
frantically to come up with a solution.in those days you just didn't
turn down an appearance on american bandstand.he ended up hastily
putting a group of singers together, sending them to philadelphia, and
ultimately i think they even worked a few rock n' roll tours.and it
whetted buddy's appetite to produce more records.

he helped on nearly all the Roger miller hits, he produced several
million-sellers by soul singer joe tex, he cut country records by dottie
west, diana trask, jack Reno, and several others, and 11 when i decided
to make my change, buddy was the first person i knew to turn to.

you really need to do some new, exciting things, ' buddy said to -me
when i first brought up the subject of wanting to revitalize my
recording career.what you've been doing has been all right, but it's
gotten stale, he said and i agreed.

but would you help me?i asked.

if you'd like to reach out a bit and try something different, i would.
in fact, i think i'd really enjoy working with you.

hey, i'll try anything once, i answered, not knowing or really caring
just what buddy had meant by reach out ...and try something different.at
that point i was ready and willing to try anything.we shook hands, and
as simply as that, nearly twenty years after our first meeting and our
first successes together, bill anderson and buddy killen were back
working on the same team again.

i have never seen a record producer work as hard as buddy worked in
selecting the material for our first session together.we must have
listened to a thousand songs-no, this one's not quite right this one is
ok, but we don't need one that's ok.we need one that's great!-until we
settled on the four best pieces of material we could find.then and only
then did he book the musicians and head me into the studio.

i was nervous recording with buddy for the first time.i had been used to
owen's laidback approach, and buddy was much

more intense, maybe because we had something to prove.he spent hour
after lengthy hour getting the musical tracks just the way he

wanted them, then he made me sing the songs over and over and over again
until i had them exactly the way he felt like they ought

to sound.the more he'd push, the more uptight i'd become.once or twice i
began to wonder if i'd done the right thing by signing

with buddy, but i finally calmed down and gave him something he could
keep.looking back, there's no doubt that he knew exactly

what he was doing. - i the first release to come out of those sessions
was a bobby

braddock song called peanuts and diamonds.it was definitely different
from anything i had ever attempted before.it also went

to number ion the charts.our second release, liars one, believers i
zerfo, came off that same first session and it went to number 2.we

cut a country version of orleans' Still the one, and it clicked.

buddy produced the entire second duet album with mary lou, and in a
180-degree turnabout, it was his idea to ask Roy acuff to sing

with me on a song about an old-time musician seeking one lastmoment in
the spotlight, the touching i wonder if god likes

country music.no matter what direction we tried to go in, the - anderson
-killen chemistry-music from a pair of Scorpios seemed to be working.

but our biggest success and our ultimate statement to the world - i was
still ahead of us.it came about as the result of a very simple

question i asked buddy one day in conversation.disco music was -just
beginning to take the country by storm, and the disco beat felt

--very exciting to me.i couldn't really relate to very many of the songs
themselves, but those hard-driving, pulsating rhythms made

me want to get up and move.i thought it felt sexy.

tell me something, bud, i said innocently one afternoon in - i his
office.is there any reason you couldn't take a country song

and put a disco beat to it?frankly, i couldn't think of one.

i don't know, buddy answered.i never thought about it.i guess you
could.why?

well, i've just been thinking that it might make a pretty excit ing
sound.it might be something i'd like to try.

you got any particular song in mind?

no, i said, but i might just try to write one.and i left his office with
the thought firmly planted in my mind.

i don't honestly remember how many nights later it was that i was
sitting around in my den, strumming on my guitar, when i began trying to
write a country lyric and a country melody that i thought would lend
themselves to a disco beat.i knew the lyric had to be just right.i
couldn't sing about mama or trains or kids or gettin' drunk.it had to be
a song about love, and the lyric had to be as pounding and as sexy as
the beat behind it.i had never before set out deliberately to write a
sexy song.

i don't know where the idea came from or how i happened to start writing
it, but in a few minutes i was sitting at my typewriter, guitar strung
across my shoulder, singing, i can't wait any longer this feeling's
getting stronger ...Satisfy my hunger . you're the only one who can
...and the melody was as country as country could be.but in my mind's
ear i could hear a hot, rapid-fire disco beat electrifying the words i
was singing, and i knew the two would fit.i got excited.this was what i
wanted.i kept on writing:

iwhere do i have to go what do i have to do
iwho do i have to lie to So i can lie with you

i can't wait any longer.

i called buddy the next morning and told him i thought i had come up
with a country lyric that would match with a disco beat, iand he got as
excited as i had been.i said, i've gotta come down ithere and sing it
for you!and he said, come on!but when i got to his office i suddenly got
stage fright.or whatever kind of fright it is that a songwriter gets
when he's not sure his new song is really -worth showing to
anybody.buddy almost had to beat me over the head to get me to sing it
to him.

finally i got up the nerve.you'll have to use your imagination i said as
i sat there on a stool with just my guitar.imagine all the instruments,
that disco beat willy, i've been using my imagination on your songs for
twenty years, buddy smiled.now sing it!and i did.

he loved it.he walked over to his piano and began playing along with
me.then he started adding some chords i hadn't written.it's going to
need a little bridge of some kind, he said. See how you like this.what
he played sounded super to me. Suddenly i had a cowriter.

can we cut it?i asked.

how much nerve you got?

what do you mean?

i mean, have you got the guts to take the flak we're gonna get if it's a
bomb?heck, we'll probably get flak even if it's a hit, he said.

i'm game if you are, i answered, and buddy booked the session.

it's a rule of thumb in our business that if the musicians and
background singers on a record session like the records you're making,
then chances are you're cutting a flop.pickers and singers -who make
records for a living hear so many songs day in and day out that nothing
moves them.when something does, it's usually something that's way over
the head of the record-buying public. that's why i got doubly scared
when we cut i can't wait any longer.all the players on the session loved
it.

buddy outdid himself on the production.he hired some of nashville's most
capable and versatile studio musicians and then supplemented them with
players from joe tex's rhythm-and-blues band.janie fricke was still
singing background vocals in those - i days, and buddy used her, both to
sing along with me and to sing answer lines to some i was singing.nobody
knew if a country song - i set to a disco beat would sell two copies or
not, but we knew when it was finished that we'd done what we set out to
do.that was to give it our best shot.

what else does it need?i asked buddy after all the overdubs -had been
laid down and the mixing was in its final stages.

willy, ' he answered, resting his arm on my shoulder, this irecord don't
need nothin' cept out!

becky was well into her pregnancy with jamey when i recorded i can't
wait any longer, but she didn't let a little thing like a -ipuffed-up
belly and swollen ankles stop her from coming to my sessions the way she
had always done.She sat quietly in the control room and listened and
smiled and tapped her toes ...and let me know simply by looking at me in
her own special way that she thought what we were doing was some kind of
fantastic.

we laid down all the musical tracks and most of the overdubs. everybody
was getting anxious to hear what this strange combination of country
music and disco music was starting to sound like. pretty soon buddy
called us all into the control room and told the engineer to cue up the
tape.

for some reason all musicians, most singers, and many producers like to
listen to the playbacks of the music they create at full volume,
especially when the music is still new and fresh and exciting to them. i
am no exception.as soon as everybody had gathered around, the engineer
slid the faders on the control board up as high as he could get them to
go without blowing the speakers iand he turned on the tape. everybody
stood there listening, smiling, grooving out on the music we'd just
made.

ibecky was sitting on a small sofa in front of the recording console,
directly underneath the giant studio speakers when the music started to
play.within seconds the whole control room started to vibrate.

Suddenly, above the loud roar of the music, i heard becky start to
laugh.and she laughed louder...and louder.finally i walked around to
where she was seated to see what in the world was so ifunny. come here,
she said, and put your hand on my stomach. you won't believe what this
baby is doing.

what's he doing?i asked, already referring to my child as he and not
being able to imagine an unborn baby being able to do much of anything.

here ...right here, she said, guiding my hand to a spot on iher swollen
tummy.feel that?

i pressed my hand gently on becky's stomach, and i couldn't believe it.
thumpthumpthump.that little baby inside her body was kicking or flinging
his arms about or dancing or something, and he was doing it almost
exactly in time with the music!

good lord, i exclaimed.the kid's got perfect timing!what do you reckon
you've got in there, a drummer?

i swore after where have all our heroes gone that i'd never record
anything controversial again, but i can't wait any

longer made heroes look like mary had a little lamb.from the minute it
hit the market, everybody and his brother had an

opinion on it.

it's the greatest, most original thing i've ever heard, some of the djs
were screaming.

we'll never play that trash on our station!others said with - - equal
determination.that's the filthiest, most suggestive song

i've ever heard.our listeners would run us out of town if we played
it!and every time i answered the phone or opened the mail, somebody was
either praising me or lambasting me.

Surprisingly, a lot of people at my own record company were laughing at
me and putting me down, especially some of those in

--the promotion department who were on the receiving end of many of the
complaints.who does he think he is, coming out with all

that heavy i breathing stuff?they'd say.a forty i year-old sex sym
bol?don't make me laugh!but while they were putting me down

on the one hand, with the other hand they were writing orders from
dealers buying as many copies of the record as they could get

their hands on.

the fact that we'd taken a country song and set it to a disco beat,
however, seemed to be lost on most people.most of the
ruffled feathers were from people who didn't like the plain i spoken
lyric.our lyves have touched ..our minds have touched .

and i can't wait any longer for our bodies to touch ...and our souls to
touch seemed to turn off the people who had loved it

when i whispered my mama sang a song.but it sure seemed to turn a lot of
other folks on.

we get more requests for i can't wait any longer' than any - i other
record we play, more than one perplexed disc jockey told me

when the record was at its peak, but we also get more complaints on it
than any other song we play.one minute i say i'll never play

it again, and the next minute the phones are ringing off the wall from
people wanting to hear it.i don't know what to do!i wasn't

too sure what to do either.

i didn't want to offend people or upset people who had been fans of mine
for twenty years, but at the same time this was fresh, it was new, and
it was exciting.mca pressed up a twelve-inch version of the record that
lasted nearly seven minutes and shipped copies to every disco nightclub
in the country.bobby booked me on a nationally syndicated disco
television show from an old warehouse in new jersey called the Soap
factory, where i was singing and dancing and laughing with some of the
loveliest ladies imaginable.and the record went to number one in the
country charts.

the reaction to the single caused mca to call for an entire album of
similar material, which they titled ladies' choice.it was a solid
seller, but to this day people will tell me that it's either (a) their
very favorite album or (b) their most un-favorite bill anderson album.

in the fall of the year, billboard magazine presented me with their
Special breakthrough award for nineteen 78 recognizing my bringing
country music and disco together as the most outstanding creative
musical achievement of the year.buddy and i were on top of the world,
but we made one big mistake.we jumped down off our horse before the race
was over.

we listened to what some of the promotion people at mca who didn't like
the record were saying, what a small handful of oldline, hard-core bill
anderson fans were saying, and we allowed them to influence the songs we
chose and the type of records we cut the next time we went into the
studio.as soon as we finished ladies' choice, we began to back away from
the very thing that had -made us successful.the momentum we generated
with i can't wait any longer and the follow-up, double-S, began to slip
away.within two years we had removed ourselves so far from it that we
had allowed it to die out completely.

buddy became totally frustrated with mca.here he had breathe new life
into an artist who had been on their label for twenty years, given my
career a whole new shot in the arm, and instead of appreciating it and
building upon it they were standing on the sidelines laughing at both of
us and, in effect, telling us not to do it anymore.So buddy quit.he
didn't need the hassle.he quit producing my records; he quit producing
any records at all for mca.instead, he took what we had started together
and transferred it to the records he began producing for t.g. Shepard on
warner brothers.the same type songs, the same musicians, the same type
arrangements.warner brothers didn't laugh, they believed in the concept,
and t.g.became a star.i tried cutting a - - few more records for mca
under the direction of jim fogelsong, a wonderful man who became the
head of the company's nashville
operations following a big shake-up at mca and their subsequent purchase
of the abc-dot label, but nothing clicked.my contract
expired at the end of nineteen 82 and the label where i had hung my hat
-for twenty-three years put me out to pasture.

--i have always prided myself on having a good band.from the early days
of the poe boys to my current edition of the poe folks

band, there has rarely been a time since the mid-sixties when people
couldn't truthfully say that i carried one of the best back-up

groups in the country music business.

it hasn't been by accident.i've always chosen my people care frilly. i
figure as closely as we all have to live, travel, and work that it's
tough enough with good people.it would be impossible with
bad ones.but in the late seventies, with a band full of good people
working behind me, i fœ i und myself being ft i rced to make an alt i
ost -, impossible judgment: Should i or shouldn't i fire my entire band?

it was a scenario that nearly destroyed me, becoming the second half of
the hardest decision i've ever had to make. i i've been told by some
people that they think i'd be difficult to work fol over the years there
have probably been times when i

was.i once had a member of another opry star's band tell me, anderson, i
could never work for you.l answered, you're right, you never could.but
he meant his remark one way.i meant mine another.

what he meant was that he felt like i expected too much of my people,
that i was too demanding, that he could never fit into my
scheme of things.what i meant was that he was too sloppy in his
:1approach to music, that he didn't treat his job like it was a busi-i
ness, that his attitude and mine would clash before we were half way
through our opening song on opening night.i've hired one or
two losers in my time but not very many.most of the people i've hired
have ended up staying with me for long periods of time.

compared to most country bands, my band has, over the years, experienced
very little turnoven if i were too bad a guy t() work for, i don't think
most of the players would have bothered to hang
around.

i've always tried to treat the people i hire like i'd want to be treated
if i were in their shoes.i've never said that people work for me. i've
always said they work with me.we both know who signs the paycheck, but
i've never seen any point in rubbing it in.l am a bit of a perfectionist
but not nearly as bad as l once was. i like things done a certain way
within my organization, but i'm certainly not a tyrant.i tell my
employees what i expect of them when l first bring them on board, and i
try to hire people who are mature enough to understand and accept what
few rules and regulations i do have.i'm not on their backs harping about
things constantly.i don't have time for that.i've even been accused by
some onlookers of being too lenient and treating my people too good.i'd
like to think i fall somewhere in between.

there was a time in my early days, though, when i'll admit i had a
tendency to be too strict, especially about little things.i remember on
one of my first overseas tours l told the band i wanted them to wear
coats and ties on our airline flights.we are representing country music
to people all over the world, i reasoned, and we need to put our best
foot forward.my guys did as they were told, but when all the other
groups on the tour travelled in t-shirts and blue jeans we stuck out
like sore thumbs.i don't have that rule anymore.

i don't have very many rules, period.Show up on time, be -sober, and be
prepared to do a good job.that's about it.what you do on your own time
is your own business except for one thing: you need to remember always
that so much of the time, especially when we're on the road, you are not
joe jones.you are bill anderson's guitar player.everything you say,
everything you do, good and bad, reflects on me.you have, as a result of
your position with me, the capability of both helping my career flourish
and grow and the power to tear down in five minutes a reputation i've
spent nearly thirty years building up.

So be careful.

i remember exactly where i was when the thought that i might soon have
to fire my entire band first crossed my mind.the poe boys and i were
working for a week at the rodeo in camden ton, missouri, in the heart of
the ozarks.by day we swam and fished and went boating with our families
(once or twice a year i try to arrange trips where the musicians can
bring their spouses along), and at night we put on our nudie suits and
climbed up on the back of a flatbed truck, rode out into the middle of
the rodeo arena, ii and picked and sang for forty-five minutes or so.it
was a real tough tour of duty, but somebody had to do it.

-iit was the third or fourth night we had been in town, and i was
standing back by my bus listening to the band play their opening

songs.david byrd, mary lou turner's husband and an excellent musician
himself, was standing beside me.i thought the band

sounded particularly good that night, and i said so to david.

Something like, boy, that's some band, isn't it?i stood tall with pride.

but his response knocked me for a loop.yeah, they're good, he said, but
they sure are starting to sound dated.

dated?i said.what do you mean dated'?

well, it's just the same old country sound that's been around forever,
david replied.fiddle, steel guitar, lead guitar.music is
changing today, and it's going to be changing a lot more in the next few
years.if i were you, i'd start thinking about changing a
little myself.

what kind of changes?how?

4;well, for one thing synthesizers are the coming thing.every body is
gonna be using them before much longer.you can get all

kinds of string sounds and keyboard sounds with them.your band is great,
but they really didn't sound enough like your records.plus, you need
some real backup singers, not just guys in the band singing harmony.now
with some of this new technology
before david had a chance to finish, i could see mary lou coming off
stage, down the rear steps of the truck, and i could - - hear jimmy
gately across the arena starting to introduce me to the crowd.i had to
stop the conversation and head for the stage, but david's words burned a
hole in my mind the rest of the night.i wasn't sure exactly what he'd
meant, but the seed was planted.i
had to find out more.

when i got back to nashville, i broached the subject with buddy
killen.david's right, buddy said, this business is chang ing. and if
we're gonna be making these new records that stretch you out a bit, you
need to have a band that can go on the road and recreate the sound of
the records on stage.from what i've seen, the band you've got right now
can't do that.

but couldn't i just take the group i had and make a few changes?
couldn't we make some adjustments here and there and get the same
results?did i have to hire a whole new group?Surely not!i mean, this had
been one of the best bands in the business for years, hadn't it?what
would my fans say?i couldn't just run everybody off.but it soon became
apparent that i didn't have much choice.

i began by talking with some of the members of the band about changing a
few things.Surprisingly, i met a lot of resistance.the piano player
didn't have a synthesizer and didn't seem to be very excited about the
possibility of getting one.the people in the group who could sing
background harmonies, but who hadn't been asked to do so up to that
point, balked when i mentioned that perhaps, with a little work, we
could broaden our vocal sound. nobody seemed the least bit anxious to
change the status quo at all.

i know now that it was because of one reason and one reason only: the
band wasn't hungry.everybody was making a good salary, living in a nice
house, driving a new car, and quite frankly they had gotten lazy. they
didn't see any need whatsoever to exert themselves working on something
new.i wasn't aware of just how -complacent they had become until we
began having these conversations and until one weekend toward the end of
the year when we were booked into a nightclub in austin, texas.

i hadn't worked in texas very much for quite some time, and i knew why.
in texas, people who come to see and hear country bands and country
stars also come to dance.i said earlier that the greatest compliment an
audience can give you in texas is to get up and dance to your music.
texans aren't big on applause, and they're not big on sitting still and
listening to a concert.but they love to dance.over the years i just
hadn't given them enough of the right kind of music for them to dance
to.for stage show ipurposes in other parts of the country, i had grouped
many of my hits together in medley form, singing only a few lines of
each one and moving on to something else.have you ever tried to dance to
a medley?one minute we were playing up-tempo straight-eights rhythm on
wild weekend, and the next we were doing a slow shuffle on city
lights.you could break a leg in a dance hall trying to keep up with
foolishness like that!as a result, my trips to the lone Star state had
become fewer and farther between.

a week before the date in austin i called a meeting of the band.guys,
we've got to come up with a few new wrinkles when we go to texas next
weekend, i told them.i want us to forget the medleys this time and sing
all our songs all the way through. they wanta dance, and it's up to us
to give em something to dance to!you guys work up some nice long intros
and turnarounds.

gate, i said to jimmy gately, i know you haven't wanted to amplify your
fiddle all these years and i've never pushed you to do it, but i think
it's time.i want you to get a little pick-up of some kind and play
through an amp this trip.that's what they're used to in texas.and to
gregg galbraith, my guitar player and band leader, i said, i want you
guys to work up a cotton-eyed joe' too. you know they always ask for
that in texas.and i entrusted him with the responsibility of calling a
rehearsal and working on the things i had mentioned.he assured me that
he would.

i don't remember what i had to do the rest of that week, but i had to
take care of some kind of business and never checked in with gregg or
the band.i just assumed everything was on track.i didn't ride the bus to
austin, but i flew down and met the group onstage at the club in time
for sound check late on the Saturday afternoon of our gig.

well, did you work up some arrangements on the songs we've been doing in
the medley?i asked, anxious to hear what the band had accomplished while
i'd been away.

no, came the reply, we didn't.

how about the cotton-eyed joe'?i asked.

nope, didn't have time, i was told.

i looked toward jimmy's fiddle to see if the pick-up had been purchased
and put in place.it wasn't there either.

why haven't these things been done?i asked, more than a little bit
irritated.

we all had a lot of other things to do, somebody said in a totally
disinterested tone of voice.i stood there stupified by what i was
hearing.nobody had done one single thing i had asked them to do.i
clenched my teeth, turned, and walked out the stage door of the building
and up onto the bus.with a show coming up in just a few hours, i didn't
want to get in an argument and all bent out of shape, so i just locked
myself in my stateroom and glared at the wall.

but my mind was made up.i hadn't wanted to believe that it iwas true,
but my band - the great poe boys band, voted one of -the best bands in
all of country music for umpteen years in a row - didn't care anymore.
and if they didn't care, then why the heck should i?the decision i had
been destroying myself overthe day-after-day agony of Should i let this
group go and modernize the band?wwas made for me.and i never looked
back.

after the show in austin was over, i stood outside the bus and called
each band member to come out one at a time.i gave each of them a time to
meet me at my office on monday afternoon, each appointment an hour
apart.i was going to tell them individually that i was letting them go
and exactly why.i assumed they could tell by the events of the evening
and the tone of my voice and the look in my eye that i was highly upset.

but i actually found out later that at least two members of the band
thought they were being summoned to my office to be given a raise!i
could hardly believe that when i heard it, but it was the honest truth.
i guess i had been so good to them and so lenient with them that they
thought by then they could get away with anything.i'm afraid being fired
jolted a few of them back to reality.

letting gate go was the hardest thing of all.he had been with me for
thirteen years, and the good lord never put a kinder man on the face of
this earth.but the time had come.i had to plow iahead without him. out
of respect for his loyalty and all our years together, i structured a
generous financial settlement for him and took him and his wife on a
caribbean cruise with me and the new group the following year.i don't
think jimmy was ever bitter toward me, and i certainly was never bitter
toward him.it was a business decision that had to be made, and i like to
think each of us was man enough to look at it and accept it that way.

it was mid-november and the poe boys and i were still booked for two or
three more weekends on the road before we'd be knocking off for
christmas.there was no way i could get a new band itogether, rehearse
them, and get them on the road in time to cover these last few dates, so
i asked the guys i had fired if they'd stick it out and stay with me
through these few remaining concerts.i wasn't sure whether they would or
not.and i was definitely not sure how they'd act and what their attitude
would be if they did hang around.to their credit, they agreed to work
the rest of the --dates and did so in a good mood, possibly even the
best mood i had seen them in for a year or two.maybe they were relieved
to be out from under the pressure, i don't know.but i do know that on
our very last date together, a couple of them had the chance to zap me
real good, and they didn't do it.

the final concert booked for bill anderson and the poe boys was in a
little theater in cornwall, ontario, canada, quite a long bus ride from
nashville.on the way to the date we pulled into a truck stop near
Syracuse, new york, to fuel the bus and get a bite to eat.everybody got
off the bus, but two of the band members, my base player larry fullam
and the drummer Randy hauser, somehow didn't get back on.the driver
didn't know they weren't on board and accidentally drove away and left
them at the truck stop.

we were more than a hundred miles on up the road before we realized
larry and Randy weren't anywhere on the bus.there was no time to turn
around and go back after them.we'd have been late for the show.we were
already cutting it close.

the thought crossed my mind that maybe the guys had planned this little
surprise for me.as a going-away present perhaps.they wanted to see how
i'd do onstage without any base and drumiss i was beginning to wonder
how i'd do it myself, and i wasn't too excited about the prospect.

but i knew there was nothing i could do about it.we moved on -up through
upstate new york, crossed the border into canada minus two of the people
whose names were on the contract, and just as the sun was going down we
pulled into cornwall.and i got the surprise of my life.

when we walked into the lobby of the little theater to ask where to park
the bus and unload our eq i ipment, there lay larry and Randy asleep on
the carpet.they had hitched a ride with somebody at the truck stop and
beat us to the gig.

they didn't have to do that.i knew it, and they knew it.what could i
have done if they hadn't been there, fire them?i had already done
that.it made for an emotional night.when i introduced the band members
to the audience that night, knowing i was doing it for the final time,
in spite of everything that had taken place, i got all choked up. i
loved these guys, and i told them so.i just couldn't live with them
anymore.

i had no idea whatsoever about how to go about putting together a new
band.i hadn't had to start from scratch in nearly fifteen years.what
kind of band did i want anyhow?what kinds of changes did i need to
make?where did i even begin?

turnover in band personnel was something i had never had to face on a
grand scale.even today, after twenty-five years of employing musicians,
i have actually had very few different players working with me.i've had
only five steel guitar players, for example, and every one of those was
great: weldon myrick, who left me after only two years but who went on
to become the steel player in the grand ole opry staff band as well as
one of the top session players in all of country music; bob lucier, who
followed weldon for a brief time before returning to his native canada,
where he has worked behind such top canadian stars as anne murray and
tommy hunter; bruce Sonny garrish, who came with me when he was barely
out of his teens and stayed for almost ten years.he created a great deal
of the bill anderson sound with his masterful speed-picking on records
like wild weekend and get while the gettin's good and countless
others.Sonny left in nineteen 75 only because he was in such demand to
play on record sessions that it had started costing him money to be out
on the road with me.he is probably considered the top steel player in
nashville today.

jack Smith followed Sonny and was with me until mid-nineteen 79 when my
current steel man and band leader, mike johnson, came along.jack has
since been in the bands of johnny paycheck, gene watson, and connie
Smith.mike is in the same league with Sonny and weldon and the other
great ones.he's not only a super picker, though; he's a great band
leader, musical arranger and record producer.he has produced or
coproduced nearly all of the phonograph records i've cut in the
eighties.

but i haven't had only great steel players in my bands.guitarists like
Steve chapman, who worked for years as a part of ernest tubb's renowned
texas troubadours, and gregg galbraith, consid -ered by many today to be
one of music city's leading guitar

players, were both poe boys for a while.So was doug Renaud, the drummer
who took Snuffy miller's place and who, had he not been

-tragically killed in an automobile crash in nineteen 75 would have
undoubtedly gone on to become one of the top drummers in all of i
country music.when Randy hauser left the poe boys, he became chet
atkins's drummer; jimmy lance became eddy arnold's

guitarist, and the list goes on.i'd hired some great players over the
years.how was l ever going to top what i'd already done?and

where was the starting place?

buddy killen and david byrd had both emphasized to me that i needed to
begin sounding n i i e like my records on stage.but what

were my new records going to sound like?and would the same band be able
to duplicate my new records and then go back and

perform my earlier ones as well?help!

i finally decided to begin by sitting down and listening to a -stack of
my older records.l seldom listen to my own work after i've

finished recording.usually when the release date arrives, i've spent so
much time working on the songs i'm sick of them anyhow.

besides, after they've been out awhile, i tend to cringe every time i
hear them.i always focus on all the places l know i could have

done so much better.faron young told me once, i hate to listen to my old
records.i sound like a girl!

1-but i played the records anymw and analyzed what was on them.most were
heavy with background voices, and most of the

background groups were heavy with female voices.maybe i needed to hire
some females.

i listened frirther and noticed many of my biggest hits like Still and i
love you drops and 8 x 10 were lush with the

sound of strings.over the years i had used the sustaining steel guitar
sound to play the string lines that the violins, violas, and

cellos had played on the records.now, with these new synthesizers, maybe
i could come closer to the original sounds.there was cer tainly no way i
could hire a complete string section to travel with
me.maybe a synthesizer was the next best thing.

i started writing down the instruments i knew i had to have.i'd need a
steel guitar, of course, because weldon myrick and Sonny

garrish had played so many great steel licks on my records over the
years that their sound was a necessity.i'd need a lead guitar,
naturally, and a piano and base and drumiss that was five people
already.the fl i ' boys had been six.i figured at least two girls to
sing, that would make seven.what about the synthesizer?and a sound man?i
had decided i needed to buy some good new sound equipment and hire a
professional sound man to run it.after all, we were selling sound, and
it had to be the best we could possibly give.but, good lord, my band was
starting to look like the nashville Symphony orchestra!how was i going
to transport all these people?and, more importantly, how was i going to
pay them?

i worked it out in a strange but very frinctional way.david byrd knew of
a keyboard player working in a small club up in ohio who played the
piano with his right hand and keyboard base with his left.hire one man,
get two instruments, david encouraged, but i was skeptical.a quick trip
to ohio, however, showed me i had nothing to fear.i hired monty parkey.

next i decided if one of the girls i hired could play a synthesizer i
could kill another two birds with one stone.i found a set of twins, kay
Sutton and karen klinger, who could both play keyboards and could both
sing.i hired them, but not before i renamed them kay and karen Stacy.

i had heard about a versatile young guitar and banjo player named Randy
bethune working with doc williams at jamboree uSa in wheeling, west
virginia.i hired him to play, sing, and emcee the shows.fmm leRoy van
dyke's band came the drummer, mike Streeter, who is still with me
today.i asked jack Smith, imy steel player from the poe boys, if he'd
stay on, help me make the transition, and become the leader of the new
group.he iagreed, and the poe folks band was born.

we rehearsed, got to know each other, and began to feel comifortable
during most of the month of december.after the ichristmas break we came
back and rehearsed and rehearsed and rehearsed some more.our first
concert together was booked for a little high-school gym in Sterling,
illinois, toward the end of january.there was a lot to accomplish and so
little time.

i was as nervous as i ever remember being at a show that cold, snowy
Sunday afternoon when we pulled into Sterling.word had gotten out among
the fans that i was making some big changes, ijand a lot of people who
had followed my career for years were - i pretty upset about it. they
had gotten to know the poe boys over iithe years and considered many of
them to be friends.they were skeptical about these new people they
didn't know, this new sound they weren't familiar with, and they came in
droves to Sterling to see what i had done.

i told the audience right off the bat that this was a new group, we were
working our first show together, and to please be patient with us if we
messed it all up.but they didn't have to be patient. the show came off
like clockwork, and the crowd loved everything about it.they applauded,
they laughed, they tapped their toes, they sang along.then they honored
us with a prolonged standing ovation.i breathe easy for the first time
since november.it was going to work.i felt like a kid with a new toy.

in some ways i guess that's exactly what i was!

have you ever noticed that there's something inside nearly all of us
that drives us to want to succeed in an area of life where we have no
expertise, no experience, and, more often than not, no talent?

a rich oil magnate invests his profits in the career of a country
singer.a rich country singer invests in oil.a ball player buys a
restaurant.a wealthy restaurateur buys a sports franchise.and on it
goes, the common denominator usually being that each person would have
been well-advised to stay within the boundaries of his own knowledge.

my venturing out from country music into the worlds of game shows and
soap operas turned out well, but i probably should have quit right there
while i was still ahead.

you see, i'm basically an entertainer.a creator, perhaps, but my
creativity has for the most part revolved around the business of
entertainment.maybe i can entertain in more ways than one, but i'm still
an entertainer.or a singer.or a performer.nowhere in the book does it
say bill anderson is a businessman.nor should it.

but i've tried to become a businessman a couple of times when i should
have kept right on pickin' and grinnin'.and i've paid for it.

back in nineteen 75 i heard of a little radio station in provo, utah,
called kixx that was for sale.now, anybody who has ever worked at a
radio station thinks he knows how to run a station better than anybody
he's ever worked for.and every lowly disc jockey sits in the control
room where he works and dreams of the day when he will own his own radio
station.i was no exception.owning a station had been my dream ever since
the days back in commerce, and i was determined to someday make it come
true.besides, not only was this station for sale, it was for sale
cheap.that really caught my attention.

but not nearly as much as the sun caught my attention the first morning
i saw it rise above the wasatch mountains overlooking provo.i'd have
bought anything they were selling that day-filling station, radio
station, i didn't care.i'd never seen anything so beautiful in my
life.it was September and the mountains were, as the natives say, in
bloom.from off the stark brown, rocky mountainsides bounced brilliant
reds, bright greens, and dancing yellows, combining to give the
appearance of a ten-thousand-foothigh rainbow hovering over the utah
valley.Someone many years - i before crossed those same mountains a few
miles to the north and exclaimed, this is the place.i knew exactly how
he must have felt.

dean booth, my attorney friend from atlanta, had actually been the one
who heard about klxx's being for sale.he knew i wasn't going to be happy
until i tried my hand at owning a station and, being a bit of an
adventurer himself, he decided he might as well come along for the ride.
i purchased eighty-five percent of the stock in the station, saving the
remaining fifteen percent for him.

we found out quickly why the station had been on the market - i so
cheap.it had a terrible reputation in the community.kixx is for hicks
was the rhyming local expression i kept hearing over and over after my
name was on the dotted line.Robert Redford's father-in-law owned the
land on which the studios sat, but even his presence didn't help.from
day one, people popped up everywhere telling me how this person or that
person previously connected with the station had mistreated them or left
town owing them money.it didn't take me very long to realize our little
radio station needed a king-sized face-lift.

i started by changing the name.we were a full-time am station at 1400 on
the dial, and it was my idea to call us k-14.So i applied to the federal
communications commission for the call letters kftn.get it? ftn, short
for fourteen.i thought it was brilliant, never realizing that when you
say ftn real fast the listener wonders if you said xzm or 5dm or what.we
finally settled on just Radio-14 as our handle and used the official
call letters only when the fcc required us to.

the small concrete block building that housed the offices and studios a
couple of miles south of downtown provo was a disaster. the station had
been on the air since nineteen 47 and i honestly believe they were still
using some of the original equipment.in fact, there were actually some
78-rpm records in the control room.i started the remodeling procedure by
directing that all those old records be taken to a storage room in the
rear of the building.and left there.

next i went down to a local paint store and loaded up on paint, paint
brushes, rollers, and all the accessories.both the inside and outside of
the building were in dire need of a face-lift.becky put on some old
clothes and grabbed a paint brush.So did the off-duty announcers.So did
the salesmen.So did the husbands and the wives of the announcers and the
salesmen.the unspoken orders were that anybody who wanted to make their
living working at ikftn had to pitch in and help make keun a nicer place
to work.

the outside of the building was awful.there were potholes in the
driveway so large that i didn't know, as grandpa jones once said about
his driveway, whether to have them repaired or stock them with fish.
windows on all sides of the building were broken out, the result, no
doubt, of the studios being located just off the tenth tee of the
timpanogas golf course.we repaired those, covered up the dingy white
paint and faded red lettering on the outside of the building with an
attractive beige paint trimmed in dark brown, then put our slick new
logo across the top in bright orange.i went down to a local advertising
agency and bought twenty-five or thirty outdoor billboards around town
advertising our new radio station, then sat back and waited for the
listeners to beat a path to our frequency.

having come out of the programming side of radio myself as opposed to
being from sales, i was more concerned in the beginning with how my
little radio station sounded than i was with how many advertisers we
had.i thought if we sounded good the sponisors would stand in line to
advertise.Since the selling of ads pays all the bills around a radio
station, however, i would say i put the cart slightly before the horse.
if i had it all to do over again, i'd have hired a crackerjack sales
manager to bring some sponsors on board and then used the advertising
money to hire some good programming people.but what did i know?i was
just a hillbilly singer trying to rekindle the fire of an old love from
his youth.

the format of the station was, of course, country music, but a lot of
people in provo, utah, home of brigham young university and quite a bit
of rather high-toned culture for a town its size, didn't exactly jump up
and down over porter wagoner, conway twitty, and loretta lynn.at least
not at first.but by doing our job on the air in a professional manner
and by a lot of good station promotions, we slowly but surely began to
feel the tide changing in our direction.

we did anything we could to try and get attention.one of our disc
jockies once broadcast live from the window of a downtown appliance
store for nearly a week without ever sleeping.i came to town one time
and gave away free gasoline to every listener who i-would drive into our
sponsor's filling station and say they heard about it on kftn.that
particular promotion was a smashing success, even attracting the
attention of the local newspaper, which sent a photographer out to take
a picture of me actually pumping gasoline into the tanks of the
mile-long line of cars.they ran the picture in the paper the next day
with a headline writer's marvelous caption: bill anderson gives
listeners gas.who knows, maybe i did!

-\\becky and i really liked provo.we found a small apartment in a nearly
empty apartment complex not far from the station and, by trading out
some advertising with the owners, we got our rent for free.we got
involved with as many things as we could in the community, started going
to ball games at byu, shopping in the local stores, and taking long
relaxing drives and walks up into the mountains.we especially enjoyed
going up to the various ski resorts in the area, but despite becky's
pleadings and the offers of free skiing lessons from people all over the
community, i never once put on a pair of skis.not again.i had seen
downhill Racer once over at vail, colorado, and i told the good lord if
he'd just get me down off that mountain i had been fool enough to go up
that i'd never go back up there again.So far i've kept my word.

but provo, for all its warmth and all its natural beauty and all the
things we enjoyed about going there, was simply not a good radio town.
there were two other stations in town at the time, plus we were less
than fifty miles south of Salt lake city, where there were a dozen or so
more.that meant people throughout our listening area could also pick up
strong, clear signals from most of those stations too, particularly from
kSl, the morman churchowned station in Salt lake.Something like ninety
percent of the people who live in the greater provo area are of the
morman faith, and even those who didn't listen to kSl seemed to be
afraid to admit it when the rating services called.i once decided to
conduct my own private survey and i got some people on the phone who
actually had kftn playing loud enough in the background for me to tell
they were tuned to our station, but when i asked them which station they
were listening to they answered kSl.it was like they thought the devil
was going to jump up and bite them if they said anything else.we clawed
and scratched for every listener and every advertising dollar we could
get, but with my living in nashville and being out on the road in
timbuktu half the time, i often didn't take care of business at the
radio station like i should have.

for one thing, i never could seem to get the right manager in place.i
started out with a local manager who knew the community well and had an
in with many of the local advertisers, but he only lasted until his wife
became pregnant with their eleventh child.at that point he went to work
at brigham young university because that was the only place of
employment he could find with an insurance program that would cover a
family with as many as eleven children.

i then brought a friend of mine in from another city who i thought was
an excellent programmer and who, i felt, deserved a chance to try his
hand at managing.maybe he would have been good, but i never got a chance
to find out.he disappeared one night under a cover of darkness, hoping
his creditors would have a hard time picking up his trail.last i heard
of him he'd been in alaska, been driving a truck for a living, and been
in jail, not necessarily in that order.

my next attempt at finding a manager for the station ended when the man
i had chosen applied for a license to operate his own beer joint and
pool hall on the side.in staunchly conservative, highly religious provo,
the manager of the local radio station does not sell radio advertising
by day then pour budweiser and rack billiard balls by night. So it was
back to the drawing boards for the fourth and what proved to be the
final time.

manager number 4 was someone i had known (or thought i knew) from his
radio days in nashville.he had worked for one of the country stations
there and told me many times if the opportunity ever arose for him to
work for me in provo he'd love to go.after three managerial disasters, i
thought it couldn't possibly get any worse than it had already been.
guess again, whisper-breath!

the things that ended up happening to me because of this guy would fill
a volume much thicker than this one, but i'll give you an idea:

the apartment complex where becky and i had kept our small apartment
filled to capacity not long after we started advertising for them on
kftn.one day the apartment manager came to me and said they simply
didn't need the commercials anymore and, if we wanted to keep our living
quarters there, he'd have to start charging us rent.i thought about it a
while and decided since the station was struggling a bit anyway that
perhaps the apartment was a luxury we could do without.So i told our new
station manager to close out our lease and put my furniture in
storage.i'd pick it up the next time i was travelling through the area
and get it back to nashville.imagine my surprise several months later
when the owner of the apartments filed a lawsuit against me for payment
of back rent.

-ibut i gave that apartment up months ago, i protested on my next trip
into town.

oh yeah?he retorted.then who's been living there all this 4time?

try and picture the look on my face when i borrowed the key from him,
walked upstairs, let myself into the apartment, and suddenly came
face-to-face with all my furniture and many of my personal belongings.
not only that, but hanging on the wall right above my favorite reclining
chair was a color picture of my station manager emerging from a hot tub
clad only in a scanty towel and a devilish smile.turned out that he'd
kept the apartment for his girlfriend to live in, and when i confronted
him and threatened to tell his wife what i knew, i got my second
surprise.he didn't even have a wife.the lady i had thought he was
married to all those - i years was just another girlfriend from another
town somewhere that he'd been carrying along with him all those years.
he didn't care if i told her or not.i chose not to.

this guy did a few other strange and insidious things.once he told me
our station's signal would greatly improve and we'd bring in many more
listeners and advertising dollars if we constructed a new broadcast
tower, one much taller than the relatively short one we'd been operating
from.i knew what he said was true, but i told him i'd have to think it
over.the expense would be substantial, and i just wasn't sure we could
afford it at the time.in less than a week he took out a full-page ad in
the local newspaper announcing kftn's new tower of power.when the tower
i'd never said i'd build in the first place never went up, we were, of
course, the laughing stock of the whole community.

but the greatest stunt my good buddy pulled on me (next to his selling
twelve thousand dollars' worth of souvenir program books at one of the
station's free listener appreciation concerts when he'd been instructed
to sell advertising in them and give the books away free to the fans . .
.then stashing the money in dozens of paper sacks in the trunk of his
car where he thought i'd never find it) was the time he and the sales
manager came to me with the most tearful story i'd ever heard.

ole fred here (actually i forget the sales manager's name . i've tried
to!) is really in a lot of trouble, whisper, ' my faithful station
manager told me one morning not long before the apartment fiasco.he's
begged me not to tell you this, but i've just got to.you see, he's got
five kids, and he and his wife have just found out that four of them
have this strange, rare disease.the chances iare that none of them are
going to live more than just a few more years.

i was shocked.

you know, he's not making a lot of money right now, and it's really
getting tough on him to buy all the medicines the kids need just to keep
them alive.he really needs your understanding and your help.

what can i do?i asked innocently, quite taken aback and touched by the
story.

well, you know the such-and-such drugstore (i've tried to forget their
name, too) that we've been trying to get to advertise with us?well,
we've talked to them about this, and they said they'd be willing to give
fred $250 worth of medicine for his kids each month for $250 worth of
advertising on the station.it wouldn't cost us any cash money, and it
could help keep his kids alive ...maybe even for quite a while. he says
he'll make it up to you somewhere down the line if you'll let him do
it.and i know he will.what do you say?

what could i say?i certainly didn't want the illnesses or possibly even
the deaths of his children on my conscience.Sure, i guess it'll be all
right for a while, i answered.

on one of my next trips into town i happened to run into one of the
managers from the drugstore walking along a downtown street.in casual
conversation i happened to mention the advertising the station had been
trading out in return for medicine.

medicine?he said with a tone of surprise in his voice.what medicine? i
never traded advertising for medicine.

oh really?but haven't you been getting some commercials on our station?i
asked.

yeah, sure, he admitted, but i've never given anybody any medicine for
them.

well, what have you been giving us then?

--oh, a few wrist watches, some turquoise jewelry, maybe a clock radio
or two.but i've never given your guys any medicine!he seemed adamant.

but what about fred's kids?i asked, concerned that they might not be
getting the care they needed.

-ihealthy as little horses, far as i know, the man replied.i don't think
they've ever been sick a day in their i i i i i i i i

i wanted to throw up.

i finally gave up on trying to find somebody in the radio business that
i could trust, and i sold kftn after having struggled with it for six
years.the bad news is that the radio station business broke iimy heart.i
was totally disillusioned by something i loved.the good news is i've
gotten it out of my system.i don't love it anymore.

my second attempt at conquering a world outside my own came upon me more
subtly than did the radio business, and i was, as dean booth so aptly
put it, up to my butt in alligators before i remembered that my original
intention was to drain the swamp.

in march nineteen 81 a restaurant called poe folks opened on nolensville
Road in nashville.you will remember from several pages and twenty years
ago that i had written and recorded a song by that very same title, poe
folks.and since nineteen 64 when i began hiring musicians to work for
me, i had collectively called them either the poe boys or the poe folks,
each name a spinoff from the title of my signature song. when the poe
folks family Restaurant (that's how they spelled it) opened for business
in nashville, it was naturally assumed by many in the community that i
was only carrying my trademark name a step further and entering the food
service business.

it wouldn't have been that unusual.minnie pearl had loaned her name to a
fried chicken outfit one time and so had eddy arnold.nashville was used
to seeing tex Ritter's hamburgers, hank williams junior's barbeque, and
boots Randolph's nightclub and eatery.bill anderson's poe folks
Restaurants wouldn't have shocked anybody.

i was surprised, however, when when did you start running a restaurant?
was a question i began having to answer nearly every day.i just shrugged
my shoulders because for quite a while i was not even aware that there
was such a thing as a poe folks Restaurant.then i began seeing bumper
stickers around town that read i'm poe but i'm proud, and i thought,
hey, somebody's been reading my mail!one morning a couple of my band
members climbed on board the bus to leave for a tour and brought with
them some of the colorful bumper stickers, some brown craft-paper poe
folks menus, and a yellow clothing patch shaped like a mason jar with
the inscription poe folks have more fun embroidered in bright red
letters.it was obvious that my employees had been inside this restaurant
with the unmitigated gall to steal my copyright name.i was curious.

tell me about it, i prodded.what's it like?how's the food? Should i sue
them?

well, they don't have your picture on the wall if that's what you mean,
one of them answered.lt's country cooking, and i thought it was pretty
good.

me too, chimed in the other.i liked the inside of the restaurant.it has
sort of an old-timey feeling to it, and they play country music over the
sound system while you eat.my favorite part, though, was the mason
jars.they don't serve drinks in regular glasses.they serve them it mason
jars.i hadn't drunk out of a jar since the last time i was at my
grandma's house!

i hadn't drunk out of a mason jar in years myself, but that's not the
reason i called a friend of mine, Rita whitfield, at poe folks'
nashville i dvertising agency the next day.i had something entirely
different on my mind.

Rita, can you set up a meeting between me and the head honcho at that
restaurant?i asked.i have a copyright registered in washington, d. c.,
on the name poe folks, and i think i need to meet with the owner
face-to-face.i might just have a lawsuit on my hands.who knows, maybe
i'll end up owning the place, and you'll be working for me.

Rita calmly told me that poe folks was part of a chain of some fifteen
or twenty restaurants scattered throughout the Southeast and
headquartered in greenville, South carolina.She said she knew that the
owner and president of the company, a mister malcolm --hare, would be
glad to meet with me the next time he was in nashville.She'd be happy to
arrange it she said.it turned out to be only a matter of a few days.

-4mister hare told Rita he'd be glad to meet with me if our n i eting i
could be held at the restaurant itself around six o'clock in the
evening.i thought it was an unusual time to conduct business, but i said
sure.turned out mister hare had a method to his madness.i arrived
extremely hungry.

he further disarmed me when i walked in the door.i had my defenses up
and tried not to smile when i walked in.after all, i told myself, i
might be facing this man in a court of law someday in the not too
distant future.but the aroma of hot, crispy fried chicken coming out of
the kitchen and the sight of a cute little waitress in tight blue jeans,
smiling and carrying a steaming plate of fresh homemade biscuits to a
nearby table weakened me cons iderably.then ml hare, a short, dumpy
little man with a quick smile and a big, round, telltale belly that
revealed the fact he frequently sampled his own cooking, walked up,
stuck out his hand, and with a grin the size of texas spouted, howdy!

i had no alternative.i stuck out my hand and howdied right back.

So this was what the owner of a restaurant chain looked like. he was
dressed in blue jeans, an open-collar sport shirt, and a blue denim vest
with a bright yellow poe folks glowing from over his heart.he looked
like he should be cleaning off tables.instead he was the man in charge.

bill anderson, it sure is good to meet you!he grinned.people have been
coming in here ever since the day we opened wanting to know where you
were and what you had to do with this place.i finally got tired of
telling em you weren t connected with us at all and took to telling em
you were back in the kitchen makin' biscuits.i hope you don't mind!

i smiled in spite of myself.

boy, i hope you're hungry, he continued, pointing toward a large table
in the center of the room.i want you to sample some of our food.

and before i knew it i was staring right into the face of the biggest
helpings of chicken and dumplings and turnip greens and cornbread i had
ever seen.and i was telling the waitress, yes, ma'm, i believe i would
like a mason jar full of that good-lookin' iced tea.and every bite was
just as delicious as it appeared.

i St uffed myself, we made small talk, and just as i was wiping my lips
with the paper napkin and pushing my chair back from the table so as to
get down to the business at hand, another cute little waitress arrived
with the biggest platter of fried seafood i had ever seen in my life.
there were fish and oysters and shrimp and deviled crab and hush puppies
and cole slaw and i don't know what else.and right behind her marched
another young waitress carrying fried chicken, country fried steak, a
plate full of biscuits, a big bowl of gravy, and every vegetable
imaginable.

oh, is someone joining us?i innocently asked.like maybe the 101st
airborne?

no, this is for you, my gracious host answered.i want you to try some of
everything we've got!

where am i supposed to put it?i wondered, my stomach already pushing
violently against the top of my jeans.

you don't have to eat it all, he replied, but take a taste of
everything.we're really proud of our food.we think it's about the best
there is!

he wasn't far from wrong.i sampled everything i could, loosened my belt
another couple of notches, and pushed my chair away from the table for
the second time, attempting once more to shift gears and talk about what
i'd come there to discuss.

mister hare, where did you come up with the name poe folks for your
restaurants?i asked, trying to regain the businesslike composure i had
begun losing some thirty-odd pounds ago.

my name's malcolm, he said, not mister hare.and he shifted his weight
and slid forward in his seat.bill, i wish i could tell you i was riding
down the road and your record came on my car radio and it inspired me,
he grinned, but i can't.i'm not really sure i-just how i picked out the
name, but i'm glad i did.it sure fits.

well, it's been a pretty good name for me for about twenty years, too, i
said.are you aware that i have it copyrighted?

--no, he answered, i'm not.but i have it copyrighted too.do you spell
yours p-o apostrophe?

yes, i replied, looking at the menu resting on the side of the -.table
and realizing he did not.

maybe that's how i was able to copyright mine then, he interjected,
leaning even closer and lowering his voice.but, hey, let's don't get
into that.i'm interested in knowing if you'd like to become involved
with us in some way since everybody seems to think you are anyhow.is
that something you might be interested in talking about?

i paused and shuffled my feet beneath the table.i had to admit it, the
thought had crossed my mind.

well, i said slowly, trying to choose my words carefully, i've been
running all over the world promoting poe folks for the past twenty
years.maybe it's time for me to help us both get some good out of it. i
know one thing i there's a lot of magic in that name. people everywhere
identify with it, as long as they don't think you are putting them down
by using it., well, we don't do that, he assured me.here, have some po
pie ... hot apples, thick crust, real juicy ..i held up my hand and
shook my head for him to stop he signaled the waitress to put the pie on
the table anyway.well then, if you're not gonna eat anymore, why don't
we continue this little conversation over a cold one downtown at the
Stockyard?he suggested.i think we might be on to something very
interesting.

Suddenly suing poe folks Restaurants for stealing my copyrighted -name
didn't seem so important, or even so necessary.the edge had begun to
wear off the lawsuit somewhere between the hush puppies and the fried
okra.Sometime in the vicinity of one o'clock the following morning in a
corner booth in the Stockyard's downstairs bullpen lounge, malcolm hare,
Roy jones, vice president of operations at poe folks, incorporated, and
franchisee for the nashville market, and bill anderson, country singer,
shook hands and agreed that the latter should indeed become the national
spokesman for poe folks Restaurants.

none of us was exactly sure what a national spokesman did or how he went
about doing it, but at least the door was opened.the - i details could
be hammered out by the lawyers and the business managers later on.all we
knew was we liked each other, we all liked country music, we all liked
country cooking, and we felt my association with a restaurant called poe
folks would never be questioned by anyone.it was a natural. i was
excited over all the possibilities, and malcolm hare and Roy jones
seemed excited as well.

i phoned bobby brenner the next morning and told him of the -strange
turn of events.he decided that he and my accountant, harvey ginsberg,
should come down from new york as soon as possible to talk with malcolm
and company.but we admitted we'd be flying by the seat of our pants.
neither of us had the foggiest idea what would be expected of me in my
capacity as spokesman, nor did we know what to ask poe folks to
contribute in return.

but there didn't turn out to be a lot of playing cat and mouse at all.
bobby, harvey, and malcolm quickly negotiated an agreement that was very
simple and basic.poe folks, inc., would announce publicly that bill
anderson, he of poe folks music fame, had signed a three-year contract
to appear in radio and television commercials for poe folks Restaurants
and, in addition, had given the restaurants the right to use his
photograph, signature and likeness in the endorsement of their products
and services.i was also to allot poe folks Restaurants a certain number
of days each calendar year on which they could use my services as they
saw fit.i would make myself available on those days to travel to the
various restaurant locations around the country (of which there were
exactly seventeen in four states at the time) and make personal
appearances.for this poe folks assigned to me a small amount of stock in
the company, we agreed on an amount of compensation, and that's all
there was to it.the contract was to run from june nineteen 81 until june
nineteen 84.

-fi was happy as could be.i liked the people i'd met, i loved the food
(just like eatin' off grandma's kitchen table, i'd come to tell folks,
not the dining room table but the kitchen table!), and i especially
liked the non-contrived feeling i got from being associated with
something called poe folks.

i had never been a corporate spokesman before, although i had endorsed
products, and i knew there was a certain added value to an entertainer's
being thought highly enough of that a big company (or even a small one
for that matter) would want to hitch its wagon to his star.i had done
radio and tv commercials back in the late sixties for Stanback headache
powders and tablets and in the early seventies for homelite chain saws,
but nothing tied me so closely to them or them so closely to me as this
new association would tie me to poe folks.

i had also represented j.c.penney through the line of clothing they had
me and the band wearing on stage, and i'd done a bit of work for both
howard johnson's motor lodges and braniff international airlines at one
time, but again it was nothing of this magnitude.i envisioned this new
association as having unlimited possibilities, and it truly did.

my first official duties at poe folks included the taking of
pictures-lots of pictures.pictures of me inside the restaurants and
outside the restaurants.pictures of me making biscuits and frying
chicken and pouring drinks into mason jars.pictures of me with the
owners and the managers, pictures of me with the guests. becky and jamey
accompanied me to one of the photo sessions, and i have a marvelous
picture of him hamming it up for the cameras by taking a big bite out of
a poe folks biscuit which becky was feeding him across the table.i
recorded some radio commercials introducing myself as the spokesman for
pofoiks.i filmed an introductory tv ad, and we were off and running.

i was literally running because poe folks was anxious for me to get out
into the field and visit the restaurants, meet the managers, and shake
n' howdy with the guests.(poe folks has never to this day referred to
the people who eat there as customers.they're always guests.i like
that!) i visited every poe folks location i could get to, and i learned
more about the restaurant business in a few weeks than i'd ever dreamed
i'd know in a lifetime.

mostly i learned my perception of what a restaurant is was wrong.every
musician who's ever travelled the road (and this probably goes for every
truck driver and salesperson too) thinks he can do two things: he thinks
he can run a motel and he thinks he can run a restaurant because he has
stayed in so many bad motels and he's eaten in so many bad restaurants!
my first mistake was in thinking a restaurant was a place to eat.i found
out quickly a restaurant is a business.

the association between me and poe folks was immediately good for
business, too, both theirs and mine.crowds flocked to the autograph
parties where i'd go into the restaurants and visit with the guests at
their tables and hand out free autographed pictures. Sometimes i'd put
on an apron and go back into the kitchen to help out.Sometimes i'd wait
on tables.other times i'd roam around the store with a portable tape
recorder soliciting comments from the guests which our advertising
agency would later take into a recording studio and mold into radio
commercials.

i would sometimes conduct media news conferences extolling the virtues
of a dining experience at poe folks.(it's more than good food, i would
say.it's a good feeling!) the work i was doing was fun and it was
accomplishing its objective.Sales were up, and poe folks began to carve
an image in the marketplace much more quickly than they'd ever have been
able to do without the publicity i was able to generate.

the chain began to expand.from seventeen units in four states the
company grew to forty-seven units in ten states by the fall of t982 and
the parent company couldn't keep up with the demand for new franchises.
Sales in the stores were averaging well over a million dollars a year
per unit, and some were grossing as high as two million.the stockholders
of poe folks, incorporated, of which i had become one when i signed my
contract, had a tiger by the tail, and we knew it.it forced us to make a
decision.

Several large companies were watching us closely with an eye toward
buying us out.the question was did we want to hang onto

this monster and try to ride it through, or did we want to sell our
interests to one of the available suitors and get out?we had to

admit that in some places our manpower had become stretched painfully
thin, and we couldn't bring good, qualified people on

board and train them fast enough to keep up with the demand.we all
feared that sooner or later operations within the restaurants

would start to suffer.more capital investment was needed than we had
available, and the very future of the concept seemed to be

-, hanging precariously in the balance.

-the krystal corporation of chattanooga, the hamburger peo ple, made a
generous offer to buy us out, and right behind them

stood the giant w.R.grace company expressing strong interest as well.at
some point we had to give somebody an answer.from a

personal standpoint, i faced the decision with very mixed feelings.

-ia few months earlier a tragic sequence of events had enabled me to
purchase a sizable amount of stock in pfi to add to that which

i'd been given.Some of the original investors in poe folks, a father and
his son, had been killed in the crash of a private plane out in it
texas, and the family's block of stock was offered to me.i pur chased
alli could afford and made the rest available to some of my

friends.i became a member of the board of directors of poe folks, inc.,
i was given a corner office in the corporate headquarters building when
operations were moved from South carolina to

nashville, and now i wasn't sure i wanted to give up all the
excitement.i was in pretty tall cotton for a hillbilly singer from

commerce, georgia.

common sense prevailed, however, and i finally agreed with the other
owners that everybody's best interests would be served by our

stepping aside.the newspapers reported that we sold poe folks to krystal
for twenty million dollars, but we never saw anywhere near

that amount of money.krystal took over the operation of poe folks -iin
november of nineteen 82 and early the following year they took the

ùstock public.

had i been involved with poe folks only as a stockholder and as their
national spokesman, everything up to this point would have been fine.but
a few months prior to the krystal sale, i tried to conquer yet another
world.it turned out to be the single biggest mistake i've ever made in
my life.i became a partner with Roy jones, the vice president of
operations for pfi, in some of the franchises themselves.

i had watched other franchisees making tremendous profits in poe folks
and when jones, who had an extensive restaurant background, asked me if
i'd like to join him in some franchising ventures, i couldn't turn him
down.

he and i formed a general partnership, sold shares to a group of limited
partners who provided us with investment capital, and we went into the
restaurant business.i personally helped select the site for our first
unit, a run-down rattletrap of an old building in -front of a very
successful regional mall in clarksville, indiana, just across the ohio
river from louisville, kentucky.everybody said we were crazy to put the
first poe folks that had ever been built north of the mason-dixon line
into a building that had been operated as every type restaurant under
the sun with no prior success.but the rent was low, and i just knew as
soon the word got out about how good our food was all those folks who
shopped at the mall would come beating on our doors.i was right.

the week we opened for business, i took my poe folks band out into the
parking lot on a sunny Sunday afternoon and, along with six or seven
thousand other folks, we ate fried chicken and biscuits and sipped iced
tea from mason jars.we picked and sang country music until the sun was
going down behind the trees, and all was well with the world.becky had
come up a couple of weeks earlier, and she and malcolm had decorated
both the inside and outside of the restaurant with all kinds of old
signs, pictures, and artifactseverything from antique sewing machines to
battery i operat i i radios to posters from nineteen 48 advertising Roy
acuff as a candidate for governor of tennessee i and many of the people
who came to our opening seemed as interested in her creations as they
did in our food.i think it was the combination of things that made it
work: good food and fast service added to becky's colorful and
innovative decor, plus me and the po, folks band drumming up all the
advance publicity and attention we could get.it became easy to see why
our little restaurant was a success from day one.looking back, that
early success may have been both a blessing and a curse.

within just a few months jones and i began searching for another
conversion site, this time across the river in louisville itself.we
found an old Roy Rogers Roast beef house that had closed its doors, and
before you could say gabby hayes, we bought it, enlarged it, and turned
it into a pofoiks.it became even -, more successful than our first.

we thought we could do no wrong.we were offered a chance to buy the huge
territorial franchise rights for the area in and around charlotte, north
carolina, and we did.next we decided to exercise the option we had
obtained earlier to build and open restaurants in east tennessee. we
built our first one in bristol, and then, with conway twitty on board as
an equal partner, we went west into his old stompin' grounds way out in
oklahoma.conway had discovered our food and our concept through eating
with us in nashville, and being a lover of good ole country cookin', he
just had to become involved.in the space of a little over a year, the
anderson-jones-twitty team was operating poe folks restaurants in an
area stretching all the way from charlotte to oklahoma city.

Roy jones, who was the only one among us who knew beans about the
restaurant business (or at least as that time we thought he did), said
the only way he could possibly oversee a territory as vast as the one we
found ourselves trying to take care of was if he had a helicopter.
things were going good, so what was one helicopter more or less?and one
full-time pilot?we got ourselves one of each.

jones played the role of big Shot to the hilt, no doubt the only
restaurateur in the country running his operations from a whirlybird.
Shoot, i got a big kick out of flying in it myself.jones and the pilot
would come swooping down out of an early morning sky and land a few
hundred feet from my door in lebanon, i'd climb aboard, and we'd take
off to a poe folks restaurant in north carolina or indiana or somewhere
acting like we were batman and Robin.we'd arrive at the restaurants for
my in-store autograph parties, circle the parking lot a few times to
attract a crowd, and then set the big black-and-gold machine down a few
feet from the door.i'd bounce out and strut right into the big crowd of
people, signing autographs and inviting everybody to come inside and
chow down.after walking through the restaurant for a couple of hours and
visiting with the folks who had come in for lunch, signing autographs
and handing out free pictures, i'd take off for as many local radio
stations, television stations, and newspaper offices as i could visit
between two and five p m.i'd do interviews and drum up publicity for my
dinnertime visit back at the restaurant. from five o'clock until eight
or eight-thirty, i'd be back in the stores doing my thing all over
again.

when the last of the guests had gone, i'd visit with the waiters and
waitresses for a while, sign autographs for them and their families, and
pose for a few pictures.then i'd take a quick walk back through the
kitchen and thank all the people who worked there for their help, after
which i'd head outside and climb back into the front seat of the
helicopter.the pilot would start up the engine, we'd wave good-bye to
the folks below, and head for my front yard.i'd be home and asleep in my
own bed before some of the employees we'd left behind had closed up the
restaurant and gone home to sleep in theirs.

(one morning after we'd brought the helicopter down into my front yard
around two eigh m., one of my good country neighbors stopped me downtown
and asked me if i had heard any weird noises around my place the night
before.he had been awakened, he said, by some strange sounds, looked out
his window and seen a big revolving light easing down from up in the
sky.he didn't want to frighten me, but it appeared to be right over my
house!he was wondering if maybe i believed in ufos. i told him no, i
really didn't, but thanks for warning me and rest assured i'd keep an
eye out for anybody that looked like they might be from another planet!)

unfortunately, the glory days with the restaurants and the helicopter
were short-lived.it soon became painfully obvious to me and to conway
that there was more to running a successful restaurant company than
serving good cornbread and flying around the country in black-and-gold
choppers.we had built a lot of restaurants, but we hadn't hired a lot of
good people to manage them. Some of the stores were starting to get into
some pretty deep financial trouble.jones would give us pep talks, trying
to keep us from becoming discouraged, and he'd tell us glowing tales
about how many dollars were coming in the front door, but i noticed he
never had much to say about all the dollars going out the back. pretty
soon our restaurants were in worse shape than the original pfi had been
in terms of both manpower and the financial strength necessary to
sustain the operations.and there was no krystal corporation standing by
to bail us out.

it had all seemed so easy in the beginning: obtain from the parent
company the franchise rights to a certain area.Sell some limited
partnerships to investors who believed in us and in the -ipoe folks
concept (and those were easy to find), and sign a few bank notes and
equipment leases guaranteeing if anything went wrong and the company
couldn't pay its bills that conway twitty and/or bill anderson and/or
Roy jones would step forward and pay them. that's all there was to it.

how could our company not afford to pay its bills?weren't we making
money every week in louisville?Sure we were.charlotte was lagging a
little behind, but with all jones's expertise he'd soon fix that.
besides, he explained to us, if we needed some cash in north carolina,
he'd just send some over from kentucky.Somehow it never dawned on us to
question a thing called commingling of funds.there was a different set
of limited partners in north carolina from the ones in kentucky, and
taking money from one partnership and funnelling it into another was as
illegal as sticking your hand in the cash register drawer, pulling the
bills out, and seeing how fast you could run.but somehow that never
crossed my mind.

business at the restaurant we'd opened in bristol was a bit slow, too,
but the answer there, according to jones, was just to open a few more
units in the tri-cities market so it would become economically feasible
to advertise on television.that would take care of that problem, nothing
to it.just keep signing bank guarantees and wait for the guests to come
knocking the doors down to get in.

it wasn't long before the only people knocking on the doors were loan
officers, finance companies, bank presidents, lawyers, and bill
collectors.the stores in the louisville market continued to do well, but
it was taking all the money we could siphon off from there just to keep
the doors open everywhere else.north carolina, east tennessee, and the
one unit we'd opened in norman, oklahoma, were in dire financial
straits.we had done a good job of expanding our little company but a
lousy job of running restaurants.

we didn't just throw in the towel.we tried new marketing techniques, we
tried making adjustments to the menu (lunch for $1.99 for example), but
business didn't improve.we especially had trouble in the smaller towns
around charlotte where we'd branched out, places like gastonia and
concord, north carolina, and Rock hill, South carolina, towns that just
weren't large enough to support an operation such as ours.we had tried
to grow too fast and had done so carelessly.our backs were against the
wall, and we knew it.our only hope was to begin closing some of the
stores in an effort to halt the drain of cash.

but it was too late.before conway and i realized what hit us, we were
personally signed to bank guarantees and restaurant equipment leases
reaching well into the multimillions of dollars with no relief in sight.
i didn't know whether to ride a bicycle or chop down a cherry tree
because while conway twitty might have had many millions of dollars
buried in the ground out at twitty city someplace, i knew ole whisperin'
bill didn't have anything of the sort.our friend mister jones was a big
help.he left town and declared bankruptcy.

enter the lawyers.lots and lots of lawyers, and bankers, and financial
advisors, and lots of hastily called meetings in all sorts of weird
places and at all sorts of weird hours of the day and night.i icouldn't
recall everything that took place during those weeks now -if i wanted
to, and i don't really want to.like a lot of other things in my life
during this time, i've tried to forget.neither conway -nor i had been
aware of the degree to which the companies had degenerated.this was
supposed to have been only a business investment on the side for each of
us, not the major focus of our lives.he had his career to concentrate
on, and l had not only my career but my extremely strenuous personal
situation as well.how many baked potatoes we d sold at poe folks the
preceding week and what had been done with the money was not high on
either of our lists of priority knowledge.perhaps it should have been.

i'm sure you're wondering about now just where my accountant and
financial advisor was all this time.how could he have been doing his job
looking after my finances and at the same time allow me to dangle so
precariously over such a bottomless pit?easy.at the same time i was up
to my neck in poe folks, so was he.he acquired the franchise rights to a
large territory in ohio and

pennsylvania and opened several restaurants himself.even his bril liant
mind had been psyched out by the aroma of catfish and the

glitter of distant gold.

the end result for me was that after much legal hassling and the payment
of some exorbitant legal fees, conway and i sold the parts i. of the
businesses that could be salvaged and bit the bullet on the rest.it was
a very large and very expensive bullet!

i found out throughout all these entanglements, though, that harold
jenkins, alkia conway twitty, is a helluva man.had he

not been willing to step forward with a lot of long green folding money
and been willing to accept large amounts of stock in the

companies that bought us out, l might well have had to follow jones into
bankruptcy.even as it stands, my little foray into the

restaurant business has wiped out a large chunk of my life's savings.

it'll probably take a while for me to finish paying off all the debts
this little venture caused me to run up, but i'm trying.that's all i

know to do, hang in there and keep trying.i'll make it, too, if the good
lord's willin' and the creeks-and the interest rates-don't

rise!

when you take the financial disaster of my restaurant franchise
adventure, add to it the frightful horror of becky's automobile

accident, and then figure in a couple of other minor calamities i've yet
to discuss, you might see why i have on more than one occa sion since
nineteen 84 taken down a map of the western hemisphere and searched to
find a little island someplace where nobody has ever

heard of bill anderson.i've given serious consideration to relocat ing
there and telling people my name is elmo farnsworth and i'm

a chicken farmer.but so far i've been unable to do that, for three
reasons:

first, i don't want to teach my son that the way to solve prob lems is
to run away from them.Second, i've never been a quitter, and even in the
face of the most unsurmountable odds, i believe that sometimes the lord
uses adversity to turn us into stronger

people.and third, with my luck elmo farnsworth would run into some
fast-talking somebody on this little island and end up buying

a radio station or going into the restaurant business there.

and i wouldn't dare wish that on the natives!

i am still the national spokesman for the poe folks restaurant chain,
which now includes over 140 restaurant units in more than twenty states,
ranging from pennsylvania to california.it's no secret that the
corporation has had some recent financial problems and that these
difficulties resulted in the company's filing for protection from their
creditors under chapter 11 of the federal bankruptcy law in december,
nineteen 87.the company stayed in chapter 11 for only a little more than
a year, however, and has emerged leaner, healthier, and with a clearer
sense of direction and purpose than i've ever known it to have before.

i think the future for poe folks is brighter than it's been in quite
some time.Sales are up, spirit is up, and one of the nation's leading
consumer magazines recently voted us the best full-service restaurant in
the country in terms of price-value.that's a mighty strong foundation to
rebuild on.personally, i still believe in the restaurants and the
concept now just as strongly as i did that first night inside the little
store on nolensville Road.our food is still great, our service is second
to none, and the folks who are running the company now-president john
Scott and director of marketing mike mcneil-seem to have a firm grip on
where things stand and where they want things to go.i have not let the
misfortunes of the company or my own miscalculations in the franchise
business color my attitude or dampen my enthusiasm one bit. the mistakes
i made were my own and not the fault of the parent company. fortunately,
they don't blame me for what happened, either.

i signed a new personal services contract with pfi when the original
contract expired in nineteen 84 and we renegotiated it again in nineteen
88.i still record most of their national radio and television
commercials and quite a few of the local ads for the individual
restaurants, and i continue to travel across the country making personal
appearances at the various restaurant locations.it was at the beginning
of one of these promotional jaunts early in nineteen 85 in fact, that i
first experienced the horrifying pain of a ruptured disc -iin my back.

it was to be a three-day trip on board the krystal corporation's private
jet.from nashville our travels were scheduled to take us east to
winston-Salem, north carolina; to Roanoke, virginia; to jacksonville,
north carolina; and finally into the tidewater area of eastern virginia.
before the trip was over i was to visit personally seven poe folks
restaurants, grant dozens of radio, tv, and newspaper interviews, and
autograph menus, color photographs, and chicken wings belonging to
hundreds of poe folks guests.actually i've never autographed a chicken
wing, but i fully expect someday someone will ask me to.

we would be flying from nashville into the eastern time zone, which
meant we needed to leave home at the crack of dawn if we were to get a
head start on our day.i got up at five eigh m.and by six-thirty i had
shaved, showered, dressed, and tossed my suitcase and garment bag into
the trunk of my car.i had driven the car out of the garage and into the
driveway when i decided for no real reason at all to walk back up to the
front door of the condo and give becky and jamey one more good-bye hug
and kiss.

i put the car into park, opened the door, and was turning to throw my
long, lanky legs out onto the ground when i felt something grab me like
a vise on the lower left side of my back.i reached for the door handle
to brace myself when an excruciating flash of pain shot like a lightning
bolt down my left leg and out the ends of my toes.i've never been shot
by a gun, but i can't imagine the pain feeling much different.or hurting
any worse.i tried to stand up straight and walk back toward the
apartment, but i couldn't.

i must have looked like the crooked man who walked the crooked mile in
the nursery rhyme as l half-crawled and half-duckwaddled my way ... inch
by inch rom the car back up the sidewalk toward the front door. when i
reached the stoop, i tried bending over to pick up the morning newspaper
and realized i couldn't do it.i was frightened.

becky was up and helping jamey get ready for school when i leaned
against the doorbell and got her attention.She came to the door, took my
arm and eased me back inside as i tried to explain to her what had
happened.i asked if she'd try massaging my back to see if perhaps it
were some type of muscle spasm that she could loosen.She tried, but it
didn't do any good.i propped myself against the wall and tried to relax.

becky handed me the phone, and i called the airport to talk with the
pilots who'd be taking us on our trip.i told them what had happened and
promised them i'd be there as soon as l could but that at this point i
was afraid to trust myself behind the wheel of the car.i wasn't really
sure i could even get behind the wheel of the car.

by all rights i probably should have cancelled the trip right then and
gone directly to see a doctor.but these promotional trips involve so
many people and so many carefully laid plans that i hated to rain on
everybody's parade.i stayed inside trying to relax for a half-hour or so
then gingerly made my way back outside, slid ever so carefully into the
car, and drove on to the airport.

the one-hour plus that it took us to fly to winston-Salem seemed like a
month.i shifted my weight back and forth in the -tiny airplane seat, i
tried leaning the seat back, i tried standing up, but nothing helped.i
was in an incredible amount of pain.

the midmorning interviews and my in-store visit at lunchtime in winston
went by in a miserable blur as did a very busy dinner hour spent inside
the bustling restaurant in Roanoke.we then flew for another agonizing
hour to wilmington, north carolina, and checked into a local motel.by
the time i woke up the next imorning from what little sleep i'd been
able to get, i knew someithing was bad wrong and that i had to find some
relief somehow.

i did a guest appearance on the leading early-morning tv show in
wilmington, and when the show went off the air the host, sensing my
plight, graciously offered to phone his doctor and ask if he might come
meet me at the local hospital.the doctor came, examined my back, had me
bending and twisting all over the place, and then asked me if i'd like
for him to give me a shot of cortisone.i had read over the years about
cortisone being used to treat athletes with muscular problems, and i
thought, sure, maybe it would ease my pain as well.unfortunately, it
didn't.

Somehow i was able to bite my lip, though, and make it on up to norfolk,
virginia beach, and newport news to finish out the remainder of my
three-day obligation, but i never once got comfortable.when my work was
finally done, i flew home lying on my stomach in the aisle of the plane.

i knew something was seriously wrong, and i needed to get some answers.
as soon as i got back to nashville, i began making the first of what
would turn out to be nearly two years' worth of visits to doctors,
hospitals, and clinics.

i had a ct scan and later an mRl (magnetic Resonance imaging) scan that
told the doctors i had a herniated disc between my fourth and fifth
vertebrae on the left side of my back.it was bulging out from its normal
position and pressing against the sciatic nerve, causing the pain to
radiate down my leg and into my foot.i was told to get completely off my
feet for two weeks, which i did.i was told to get a firmer mattress than
the one i'd been sleeping on, and i did.l was told to begin exercises to
strengthen my stomach muscles, and i tried, but the pain wouldn't allow
me to do very much.i was told to quit wearing the cowboy boots i had
worn for years and to begin wearing walking shoes or running shoes
instead.i tried this, too, but as with all the other efforts, nothing
really made any difference.besides, i couldn't even bend over to tie the
shoelaces!

i sought advice from orthopedists, neurological experts, chiropractors,
osteopaths, and once i even travelled all the way to missouri to visit a
pain clinic where they admitted they couldn't cure me but could teach me
how to live with the pain.while i was in missouri, however, still
another problem arose.i began bleeding from a large stone lodged in my
right kidney.the doctors there didn't want to treat me and suggested i
return to nashville.i flew home, went directly from the airport to
baptist hospital, and marvelled as a team of doctors smashed my kidney
stone into a jillion tiny little pieces on a fascinating new piece of
medical equipment called a lithotripter.in twenty-four hours the
bleeding had stopped and the kidney stone was gone, but my back hurt
just as much as ever.i was right back where i'd started.

finally, l was told that nothing short of surgery on my back would give
me any relief, and the doctors wouldn't even guarantee that to provide a
permanent solution.

back surgery frightened me, not only because of the operation itself,
but because i had talked to so many people who had told me that surgery
had not been the answer for them.nearly every person i spoke with who'd
had a back operation had also had a second back operation.or a
third.Singer doff williams told me he had been pleased with the results
of his initial surgery and i even went and talked with his doctor a
couple of times, but it was only a few months later that i picked up the
paper and read where don had been forced to stop working the road due to
the recurring problems he was having with his back. later i was told
even he had to have a second operation.

in the beginning my biggest problem with having back surgery was not
because of me at all.it was because of becky.there was just no way i
could leave her to fend for herself for such a long period of time.the
operation itself, the hospital stay, the lengthy, painful rehabilitation
process could take months.i just couldn't do it.She was improving
slowly, but she was still a long, long way from being able to handle
life on a day-to-day basis.there was no way she could take care of
jamey, take care of herself, and take care of me.i had but one
choice-simply to endure.

i began wearing a back brace for support and that helped, especially
during the long nights standing on stage or taping television shows
where i had to be on my feet and move around a lot.i traded my new firm
mattress in on a flotation waterbed and noticed more improvement. if
nothing else l slept better.

Something as simple as sitting on a sofa or in a soft, padded chair was
painful.i went to one of the local poe folks restaurants and borrowed a
ladder-back, cane-bottomed wooden chair to keep at the dinner table. i
sat in it when i ate my meals.when i wanted to watch tv, i'd push the
chair into the living room and sit at a stiff ninety-degree angle like a
mummy, afraid to move.

driving a car was impossible without the use of a support cushion, and i
went through several.when i had to go on the road, i'd ofren ride and
sleep on the floor of the bus.it was awkward and extremely uncomfortable
(the band members joked and said they loved it because they could walk
all over me!), but i 0 couldn't make it any other way. tt everybody
seemed to have a solution.i happened to mention on a a tv talk show one
night that my back was hurting, and i got ti hundreds of letters in the
mail the following week from people all at over the country offering me
suggestions that had worked for them or for somebody they knew.people
recommended medications of all a kinds, but other than one
anti-inflammatory prescription shared St with me by some friends at
church, nothing gave me any relieœ i

w deeply appreciated everyone's advice and concern, but none of it made
the pain go away.

i never realized how much i'd always taken my back for granted.c2 or how
the simplest daily task can turn into a monumental chore when your back
hurts.there's never a minute of any night or any h2 day when you're not
aware of the pain and of your own limitations.

fortunately, my back doesn't hurt as bad today as it once did.as for
that i am thankful.i wish i could brag about some kind of miracle cure,
but i can't because i never found one.i never had it i the surgery.i
came close to giving up and letting them cut on me one time after the
pain got worse and becky got better, but, thank fac goodness, she ended
up talking me out of it.mostly, i think, time just did its thing.time
and prayers.i can't say i'm well because i tol still hurt awfully bad
sometimes.i still have to watch the way i pe move and the things i lift
and the exercises i do very carefully, but for i can say that i am
better.for now i guess better will have to do.siz(

ren all the while i had been struggling with my own problems and out
with becky's, i had been only casually aware of some serious medi- no
cal problems which were beginning to affect my oldest daughter, we
terri.i had known for years that she, like both her father and her of
mother, had an unusually high amount of calcium in her body, and tort
even though she had twice submitted to parathyroid surgery to help
control the problem, i was not aware of some other complica- wh( tions
that had arisen.complications that her doctors in nashville tha admitted
exceeded their ability to control.our Simply put, the local doctors who
saw terri could not locate the - root source of some other problems that
had arisen in her endocrine of u system.they felt her case was so rare
and potentially so compli- ope cated that they applied for her admission
to the national institutes out of health in bethesda, maryland, a
tax-supported research and treatment facility, for further
evaluation.not everyone who seeks admittance to nih is accepted, so
terri was hopeful but fearfol that they might not take her case.She was
elated when the letter arrived telling her that she had qualified.

She took a leave of absence from her new job in the district attorney's
office in nashville and was admitted to nih for further study and
evaluation in the spring of t986.for two long, agonizing weeks she
submitted to test after test, study upon study, as some of the most
learned minds in the country tried to locate the cause or causes of her
problemiss

i flew to washington and drove to bethesda to be with her and her
mother.no sooner did i arrive at the hospital than the doctor had me
stretched out on a bed taking samples of my blood and asking all kinds
of questions about me and my family and our medical backgrounds.they
said they didn't want to rule out heredity as a possible contributor to
terri's condition.i said jokingly, well, i do have this back problem!
but the look on the doctor's face told me he didn't do windows, floors,
or backs.

we think we've located her primary problem, a doctor greenberg told us
after i'd been in bethesda a few days, and we need to perform surgery.
there is a rather large tumor (and he held up the forefingers and thumbs
of each hand, forming a circle about the size of a grapefruit) on her
left adrenal gland that needs to be removed.there is a chance the entire
gland may have to come out.we won't know until we get in there. at this
point we have no way of knowing whether or not the tumor is malignant,
but iwe've got to get it out.the tone and urgency of his voice told all
of us that we had no choice.we'd like to operate day after tomorrow, he
said.

the morning of the surgery was agonizingly slow.bette and i, who through
terri's problems had been drawn closer to each other ithan we'd been in
years, met at the hospital before dawn, hugged our groggy, blue-eyed
daughter as the nurses rolled her out of her room to take her to the
operating table, then sat down alone, each iof us with our own thoughts,
to wait.the doctors had told us the operation could take up to six
hours.in a little over four they came out to confront us.

terri came through the surgery just fine, the surgeon, a doctor norton,
assured us, but we did have to remove the entire gland. this means, of
course, that she now has only one adrenal gland to manufacture all the
adrenalin and cortisol her body needs.we'll have to keep her on some
pretty strong medication to help balance things out until the one good
gland kicks in and takes over the work of two.hopefully, that won't take
very long.

but what about the tumor?i asked, wondering why he hadn't brought that
subject up.was there something he didn't want us to know?

all we can do is wait on the pathologist's report, he answered. we
should know something in a couple of days.

in a couple of days?although i had feared the worst all along, it didn't
really hit me until the doctor said in a couple of days so
matter-of-factly.your daughter may have cancer, yes, but you just relax
and i'll let you know when i come back after the weekend. have a nice
day!

he didn't say it quite that casually, but i guess i expected a bit more
concern, a little more compassion.i mean, this was my daughter, my
first-born child, a tall, beautiful blonde who had been daddy's girl
almost from the day she was born.i had rocked her and fed her and
changed her diapers and taken her to piano lessons and sent her to
college, and now at the age where she should just be starting to live,
they were telling me she might have cancer.it was one of the most unfair
things i had ever heard!

but who said life was fair?Some forty-eight hours later, the doctors
verified our most dreaded suspicions.the tumor, they told bette and me,
had been malignant.

the two of us were stunned into silence.my first reaction was to reach
for the remote control and fast-forward the tape.i didn't want to watch
this movie anymore.but i could only stand there and stare at the floor.i
had a thousand questions, but they'd have to wait.i couldn't have spoken
a word even if i had tried.

finally, when the doctors left the room and we were alone with the
frightening truth, i asked bette if, after we'd both had a chance to see
and talk with terri, she'd drive me to the airport. there was nothing
else i could contribute by staying around.if i was going to fall apart,
i preferred to do it in the privacy of my own home.

my ex-wife and i rode all the way from the hospital to washington
national airport in silence, each of us quiet with our own iseparate
concerns and our fears.She pulled the car up to the curb in front of the
terminal and stepped out to give me a hand with my baggage.i walked
around the car to the driver's side and reached out and gently laid my
hand across her shoulder.neither of us spoke a word.

horns were honking and skycaps were hustling, planes were taking off and
landing all around us, but we didn't even notice.i looked deep into
bette's eyes and i saw the saddest, most frantic combination of fright
and hurt i think i've ever seen on another human's face.i squeezed my
fingers into her shoulder blades and began slowly to pull her close.
Surprisingly, she didn't resist; in fact, she leaned in toward me and
laid her head on my chest.and the two of us, who had divorced when terri
was only eight, stood right there in the middle of a noisy, bustling
airport in a strange city nearly a thousand miles away from home with
our arms wrapped around each other and cried together for the first time
in nearly twenty years. i drove by our condominium on the monday
afternoon following becky's accident and saw me out in the small
clearing between the side of our apartment and the edge of the road
playing baseball with jamey.they probably thought i had lost my mind.

the wreck had happened too late on Saturday night for the news to make
the Sunday paper, but by monday morning it was not only on the front
page of the newspapers but was the lead story on nearly all the local
newscasts as well.nobody expected me to be anywhere but at the hospital,
i'm sure.and i would have been there except for the promise i had made
to becky and to myself long before: no matter what happens, jamey's
welfare and his security must always come first.

Sunday night had been a long one.after talking with jamey about all that
had happened, i had driven out to lebanon and gathered up a few of my
belongings, come back and moved into a small third-floor bedroom at the
condo.it was a far cry from the spaciousness of the big house and master
bedroom suite with its glass sliding doors opening onto the patio by the
pool, which i had been accustomed to.but even though the room was small
and the conditions crowded, i wanted to be there.i didn't want to be
anywhere except with my son.

after jamey had gone to bed early Sunday night, i drove back to general
hospital to wait.i knew i still had nearly thirty-six anxious hours in
front of me before i would know for sure whether or not the medication
the doctors were giving becky had prevented any further swelling in her
brain.thirty-six hours to wait and wonder and think, and to hope and
pray that my wife was going to i.live.luckily, i didn't have to wait
alone.

jan howard was at the hospital when i arrived.So were mary lou turner
and her husband, david.jimmy gately and his wife, -esther, had come
by.it really touched me to walk in and see these former employees and
associates of mine, people who hadn't

worked with me professionally for years but who cared enough about me
and becky personally to rally around us when we needed

them most.

charlie douglas, the great radio personality and grand ole announcer,
was there with his wife, martha.kathy wood night and whom becky had let
out of the car only moments before the accident, was there with her
mother.our close friends donna
and allen whitcomb had been at the hospital since before dawn and
weren't about to leave.Reverend garry Speich, pastor of the
church where becky and i had gotten married and where we had t,
.tmaintained our membership, had been there since midnight, keep . 1ing
a vigil all day except for the hours he had to be in his pulpit.

-one of the members of our church had come upon the accident only
moments after it had happened, and when he found that

becky was the person in the car, he had immediately phoned the preachet
and what a great source of strength and comfort g-arry

-was, not only then but throughout the long weeks and months that 4-lay
ahead.

-one of my first thoughts upon arriving back in nashville had been that
i needed to get becky moved as quickly as possible away

from general hospital and into vanderbilt university hospital or baptist
hospital or wherever i could be assured she was receiving

the finest medical attention available.at that time i didn't realize she
was in the best possible place she could be.

in my mind (and, as i found out later, in the minds of most
nashvillians) general hospital was just an ancient, decrepit,
dingy-looking old red brick building in a rundown area near down town, a
place where people came when they either couldn't afford

anything better or when, as in becky's case, they had no choice.i was
not aware of the state-of-the-art trauma center that had only

recently been opened at general nor the level of expertise and care
available there.one of the paramedics who had helped pry becky loose
from her crumpled car had the good judgment to take her to general even
though donelson hospital was several miles closer. i'll always be
grateful to whoever it was that made that decision. he probably saved my
wife's life.

and the staff at general was so very patient and understanding. not only
were they giving becky the best medical attention pos sible, but they
took special care of me and the rest of our family as well.they gave
lynne and becky's mom a private waiting room with a telephone the minute
they arrived.later, after i had gotten there, they provided all of us
with special meals in a quiet room upstairs (i hadn't eaten since early
Saturday night) where we wouldn't be disturbed.word had spread rapidly
through the corridors of the hospital that bill anderson was in the
building, and the curious and the concerned had begun trying to move in
closer for a better look.Sunday night the staff improvised for us an
even larger family waiting area on an upstairs floor and provided us
with coffee and sandwiches and later with pillows and blankets for
several who chose to stay at the hospital through the night.they would
later obtain for us several private telephone lines for incoming and
outgoing calls, of which there were to be hundreds.

the hospital, referred to by many as city hospital because the operation
of the facility comes under the auspices of the metropolitan nashville
government, couldn't have treated the andersons any better nor with more
care and concern.words can never adequately thank john Stone, the
administrator, and maggie Saltkill, his able administrative assistant,
for all they meant to us during our stay.not to mention the dozens of
doctors, nurses, therapists, and S0pp0tt personnel who helped us through
some of our most anxious hours.

i stayed at the hospital Sunday night until nearly one eigh m.when i
finally felt comfortable that becky, who had by this time at last been
transferred from the trauma center on the gr6und level to the
intensive-care unit upstairs, was receiving the best care and most
detailed attention possible.her condition was still listed as extremely
critical, but our spirits were buoyed by the fact that so far as could
be determined her brain had not continued to swell. the doctors had
explained to me that the medicine with which they were treating her was
relatively new but that it was our only hope.additional swelling in the
left temporal lobe where the

brunt of the blow had been struck could prove fatal.over eighteen hours
down now, less than thirty to go.

i-i drove back to the condo and fell down across the bed, but i - i was
still tossing and turning trying to relax when the alarm clock i had set
for six eigh m.jangled loudly in my ear.i shook the cobwebs
from my brain, shaved, showered, and awakened jamey.it was my first
morning of many attempting to be both his mother and his
dad.

with help from becky's mom, i saw to it that he got dressed, his iihair
combed, teeth brushed, and a scrambled egg, a piece of toast, and a
glass of orange juice in his belly.then i drove him to school.

i parked the car and walked beside him from the parking lot to his
classroom.his first-grade teacher, nikki mcgowan, spotted

me when i stooped to kiss him good-bye at the classroom door and moved
quickly to my side.i just heard about it on the news this ti' morning,
she said, sounding out of breath and looking frightened.

how is she?'

the next few hours are the critical ones, ' i answered.if they can keep
the swelling down in her brain, then she's got a chance.

well, the boys and girls and i will sure say a special prayer for her
this morning, she assured me, and i smiled.i wondered later

what she would have said had this conversation taken place in a ttpublic
school where prayers were no longer allowed.i thanked her, and my
thoughts turned quickly to jamey.what was his day going to be like?did
his classmates know?and how would they treat

4--him when they learned?kids can be cruel at times without mean 4ing
to, and i knew it.

just be gentle with him, l said to missis mcgowan.there's a lot on his
mind that he doesn't understand right now.please .

be gentle with him.She nodded, and i felt she understood.

as i turned to leave, jamey's kindergarten teacher from the previous
year, mitzi floyd, spotted me.She dropped a stack of

papers she was carrying and literally ran to my side.before either of us
could say a word, i saw a tear begin to form in the corner of

her eye and then start to trickle slowly down her cheek.She had been at
the hospital Sunday afternoon and knew the seriousness of

the situation.

missis floyd had been the ideal first-year teacher for our son.She had
come and visited in our home before classes had started in the fall,
trying to get an idea of what jamey's home life was like so she could
better understand and relate to his needs.She'd gone up to jamey's room
and listened to him play his drums, talked with him about his love for
music and for airplanes, and once i had even taken her and her fiance'
backstage at the grand ole opry as my guests.She had gotten to know
becky, both as a friend and as a loving and caring mother.

for the longest time she just stood looking at me.neither of us spoke a
word.She seemed to be searching for something to say

and so was i ...but it wouldn't come.finally my emotions took over and,
without thinking, i did something i had never done before in my life and
something i will probably never do again: i reached out and hugged a
school teacher!

by the time i reached the hospital shortly after eight eigh m., i had
already spoken with the doctors and nurses three or four times on the
telephone.nothing significant had occurred nor had there been any major
change in becky's condition during the night, which was good news. She
was holding her own, and from all outward indications it seemed the
medication was continuing to do its job.there appeared to be no
additional swelling.

i parked my car just outside the emergency room door and walked swiftly
through the lobby, past the elevators, and up the stairs to the
intensive-care unit on the second floor.the head nurse cautioned me that
i could go in only for five minutes, then quietly led me to becky's bed,
which was the one farthest from the door, right beside an outside
window.it was colder by becky's bed than anywhere in the entire unit,
and her feet had come out from beneath the thin white blanket that
covered her body.knowing how much she hates to be cold when she sleeps,
i instinctively covered her feet and gently squeezed her hand. i got no
response.

She appeared to be connected to as many tubes and wires as she'd been
the previous afternoon in the emergency room.with the light from the
nearby window i could see the cuts, the bruises, the stitches even more
clearly than i had seen them the afternoon before.they looked
terrible.if i hadn't known this was my wife, i'm not sure i would even
have recognized her.all sorts of strange machines were monitoring her
breathing, her heartbeat, her brain iwaves.it looked eerie, but i knew
each wire, each tube, each

flashing green light on each tv monitor was relaying vital, life
sustaining information to the myriad medical personnel who were

i; trying so hard to keep her alive.

we have her by the window on purpose, the nurse softly told -me.with her
type injury, she needs to be as cool as possible.

this is the coolest spot in here.i didn't dare question her deci sion.

my five minutes passed in what seemed more like five seconds, -and i was
told i'd have to leave.when i reached the swinging double doors leading
out of the lcu, i could see through the glass several newspaper, radio,
and television reporters gathered outside in the hall waiting to talk
with me.i had never felt less like

talking with the media in my life, and when i reached them, i asked them
to please try and understand that i just didn't have

anything to say.any medical information i had could be easily obtained
through the proper channels at the hospital anyway.i

wanted to go and be with my family and friends who were waiting
downstairs.when we knew something more, i said, we'd let them

know.perhaps later in the day we'd even call a press conference.i was
pleased when they understood and respected my feelings.

by the time i reached the newest of the family waiting areas the
hospital staff had prepared for us, the phones were ringing off the

wall.we had two incoming lines, one outgoing line, and operators on the
main switchboard to screen the calls.as fast as lynne or

donna or kathy would hang up from one call, another would come in.

many were from relatives or friends of ours scattered around the
country.Some were from fans who'd begun hearing about the

accident through their local radio stations and newspapers.busi ness
associates called, other singers and performing artists, song writers,
booking agents, even total strangers called, just to let us know of
their love, their compassion, and their prayers.telegrams

began pouring in, and by noon there were so many flowers that we began
rearranging furniture in the little room to make space for

them all.Radio stations called in from all across the nation, and while
i wasn't up to granting any interviews, i asked the girls to

-iexpress my deepest appreciation to each caller for their concern. :1
my secretaries, kathy gaddy and jeanne chennault, said the phones never
stopped ringing back at my office either.each person

who answered the calls kept a list of the callers.we still have those
lists today.they serve as reminders of all the very special

people who cared.

the calls taught me a lesson.i have often been guilty of not expressing
my feelings to people at tough moments in their lyves

out of a fear of bothering them.often i'd figure people in stressful
situations, even close friends, would have enough problems without

my interrupting them to let them know i was there if they needed me.but
that was wrong.each telephone call, each vase of flowers, each person
who just came by and stuck their head in the door was one more pillar
propping me up, keeping me from falling.i don't

hesitate to offer my arms and my shoulders anymore.like the old song
says, no man is an island.

about two o'clock in the afternoon they let me pay another quick visit
to the icu.after being assured that nothing had

changed, i quickly left the hospital to go pick jamey up from school.i
wanted to be in the first car in line when he walked out

the door at 2:45 and i was.i asked him about his day, and before i got
an answer he asked, can we play some ball when we get

home, dad?

is that what you want to do?

Sure is!

well, then of course we can play.but i won't be able to play for very
long.i've got to be back at the hospital by fout-thirty.mom's

doctor and i are holding a press conference.that's where we'll be
telling the newspaper writers and the radio and television stations

about mom's condition.they'll put it on the news and into the papers so
everybody will know how she's doing.i can't be late for

that.he seemed to understand.

i've never played baseball with my mind and my heart so far away from
the game.i know i pitched and i hit and i ran and i

tried tagging jamey out when he'd come sliding in under my glove at
second base, but my body was the only part of me that was

there.the rest of me was back at general hospital in intensive care with
becky.around four o'clock we put away the bats, balls, and gloves, and i
drove back into town.

doctor william meacham, a nashville i based but world-renowned
neurosurgeon, had been called in to supervise becky's case, and i

had asked him to accompany me to the news conference.i knew i didn't
have a clue as to how to answer all the medical questions

the press would be asking.i needed some help.

i had met doctor meacham only briefly, had spoken with him on the phone
but once, and had not up until that point been aware of

his significance in the medical community.i quickly learned, how ever,
that following a highly distinguished career at vanderbilt he had
recently reached retirement age and didn't practice there any more. he
kept his hands and his mind active by helping out in emergency
situations at general, and our being fortunate enough

to have him called in on becky's case was, for us, a true godsend.

missis anderson had a concussion and contusions (bruises) in several
parts of the brain, doctor meacham told the assembled group

of reporters, using lots of big words i was hearing for the first time.

there is no evidence of intracranial (inside the skull) bleeding that
would necessitate surgery at this time.we don't know at this

point whether or not she will develop a hematoma (a collection of blood
outside of the blood vessels) which might or might not

require surgery.fortunately there is no paralysis.She is in inten sive
care, her condition is extremely critical, but i personally feel

she will eventually make a full recovery ...unless some complica tions
should occul

a full recovery.that was the first time anybody had spoken those words,
and they stunned me.i hadn't even thought about
recovery.i had been too busy thinking about survival.

i didn't know then that even partial recoveries from head inju ries were
sometimes long, slow, and painful years in coming.when

he said, She should be the same person she was before the acci dent with
no deficits, i assumed he meant in all aspects of her

life.i have since learned that while the obvious physical deficits in a
head-injured patient sometimes disappear over a period of time, many of
the not-so-apparent emotional deficits, hidden away from all those
except the few who know the victim best, may never go

away at all.

but at the time i took doctor meacham's word at face value, and j i'm
glad i did.because when the press conference was over, i went

home, ate supper, tucked jamey into bed, and for the first time since
friday night-when my world was so different from what it

had suddenly become-laid my body down across a bed and went to sleep. to
develop a pattern of sameness, floating by like so many cumulus clouds
in a summer sky ...nothing to distinguish one from the other except on
the rare occasions when i'd force myself to ascertain whether it was
wednesday or thursday, noon or midnight. every day seemed to be a carbon
copy of the day before until i learned to perform what were in the
beginning mostly strange and unfamiliar tasks by rote.

it wasn't easy for a confirmed night creature to program himself to rise
from his slumber at six eigh m.most of the six eigh m.s i had seen in my
lifetime i had seen from the flip side.i was usually crawling into bed,
not stumbling out.and i hate to admit it, but when i had been at the
condo with my little boy on school mornings during his year in
kindergarten and the first few weeks of the first grade, i had often
extended myself only to the point of rolling over in bed, giving him a
big hug, and telling him to have a good day at school, then rolling back
over and promptly falling asleep again.i rarely got up to check his
lunch money, his shoelaces, or the work he was taking to school that
day.often i had heard the front door close when he'd leave to ride to
school with his mother, but seldom had i actually walked out that door
with him, climbed into the car beside him, and driven him to school
myself.

after school i'd more than likely have seen him for the first time at
the dinner table.after dinner i might have helped him a little with his
homework and then gone up to his room and listened to him play his drums
for a while before he went to sleep, but that's about it.i loved him
dearly-from the moment he was born he was the light of my life-but l had
somehow let my duties as a father begin to slide.

now suddenly here i was waking him up in the mornings, seeing to it that
he had his shower, clean clothes on his back, his hair - i combed, and
some nourishing food in his belly.Since his school did not operate a bus
service, i drove him to class, picked him up after school let out in the
afternoon, and took him for a pick-meup snack at the local burger barn.i
had been used to seeing him idressed in clean clothes, but this was the
first time i'd actually had to be master of the washer and dryer
myself.at night i had always hugged and kissed him before he went to
bed, but that was a lot different from my now reminding him to brush his
teeth, helping him put on his pajamas, and kneeling with him to say his
prayers. and quite a bit different from suddenly becoming the only one
he had to turn to with fright in his eyes when strange things started
going bump in the night.

(the time i spent with jamey while he played his drums was always
special to us both.i'd take my guitar up to his room, sit on the edge of
his bed, and strum right along with him.from the day he was born-no,
even before he was born-he has shown an uncanny ability to keep time
with music.when he was just a toddler, he would sit in the middle of the
kitchen floor and tap out rhythms on becky's pots and pans with a spoon
and a knife.for years every cake becky baked came out bumpy. for a long
time i didn't understand why until i finally figured out that it was
because jamey had put big dents in all her cake pans using them for
drumiss we bought him a set of toy drums when he couldn't have been much
more than two years old, and he banged on them until they were in
shambles.we had to buy him another set.then on his fifth birthday we got
him a scaled-down set of real, honest-togoodness drumiss for christmas
the year he was nine, he graduated from the scaled-down models to the
full-sized set he plays today. he played drums behind me on nationwide
television when he was only seven years old and on the stage of the opry
with me and my band two years later.i was born with a love for music,
but jamey was born with a genuine talent to ploy music. there's no doubt
in my mind that he can go as far in music as his interest will take
him.the natural ability is definitely there!)

but it wasn't until these first few days following becky's accident that
i learned how important it was going to be for me to become -more a part
of my son's everyday world than i had ever taken the time to be before.
he had nobody but me.i had to be there for him.i had to change a lot of
my habits and attitudes.i had to learn how to adapt my schedule to his
schedule, my lifestyle to his lifestyle.i wasn't quite sure in the
beginning just how well it was going to work out, but, surprise of all
surprises, it was incredible. jamey had said the afternoon i told him
about becky's accident that he and i would be spending a lot more time
together, and he was right.

for one thing, i never went to the grand ole opry without him.every
friday morning he'd beat me to the morning paper so he could check the
opry line-up for the weekend, see what time i'd be performing and who my
guests would be.he memorized all the sponsors names and knew exactly
which half-hour or quarterhour portions they sponsored.i can hear his
tiny voice now, yelling up the stairs while i was shaving, hey, dad,
tonight you're on at nine-thirty sponsored by the merchants on music
valley drive! and tomorrow night you're on at seven-thirty for goo-goo
and at ten-fifteen for little debbie Snack cakes!and he'd start into the
list of all the other stars who would be on with me.

one Saturday night i had a business meeting after the opry and i had to
bring him home after my first show and leave him with a sitter.i went
back to the opry, did my second spot, then went out to a restaurant for
a bite to eat and to conduct my business.when i got home shortly after
midnight, he was wide awake.

what are you doing still up at this hour?i asked him.

i couldn't go to sleep, he replied.

why not?

because you didn't tell me goodnight.

from that moment on i never ended a show at the opry without saying
goodnight, jaybird.as long as i told him goodnight, in person or over
the radio, i knew he'd go to sleep.i still do it today, whether it's on
the early show or the late show, sometimes even if he's with me
backstage.i don't want him to ever think his daddy forgot the importance
of telling his son goodnight.

taking care of jamey was a whole new sense of responsibility for me, but
it was also a whole new source of strength to know somebody so young and
helpless had no one else in the whole wide world to lean on but me.
imagine, a six-year-old boy looking to me for answers.the only question
was, where were my answers supposed to come from?

the mornings never varied.i'd get up, phone the hospital to check on
becky's progress, then wake jamey up and see to it that he got dressed
and ready for the day.after breakfast i'd help him gather together his
belongings, and i'd drive him to class.on wednesdays i'd travel the
route more slowly so that i could call out and review with him the
spelling words he'd be having on his test that day.before his bible test
on thursdays, i'd have him recite his weekly bible verse to me several
times as we drove along just to be sure he had it memorized.i never let
him out of the car until i said i love you, and i'd watch until he was
safely inside before i'd drive away.it became our own special little
ritual.i'm not sure who derived more comfort and security from it,
though, him or me.

as soon as i was up the steep hill and away from the school grounds, i'd
begin winding my way through the morning rush-hour traffic toward
general hospital.most mornings i was able to pull up in front of the
forbidding old structure just after eight o'clock. i'd rush inside and
quickly try to get an update on becky's progress from the doctors and
nurses on duty, then head directly for the icu, where i would hold her
hand and talk to her for as long as i was allowed.She couldn't hear
anything i was saying, of course, --nor could she respond to me in any
way.but i went and i touched --and i talked anyway.and i thought of all
the mornings i could have talked with her when she could have heard me
and all the senseless time we'd wasted, arguing over where we each
wanted to live.Standing beside her hospital bed, watching and listening
to her struggle with every breath to stay alive, it all seemed so
useless and so far away.i couldn't stay with her long, so as soon as the
nurses ran me off i'd kiss her hand and head for the family room and my
first of many cups of morning coffee.

i could set my watch by the arrival of don fowler, my close friend and
booking agent, who'd be there by eight-thirty every single day, usually
with a corny joke he'd picked up somewhere the day before, sometimes
with a box of doughnuts, but always with a smile on his face and the
offer of a helping hand.he'd be followed closely by john johnson, the
off-duty policeman who had witnessed becky's accident and who had held
her bleeding hand while she was still trapped inside the twisted
wreckage of her car.john had begged her, lady, please don't die.i've
never lost one yet . please don't you be the first!he didn't even know
who becky was at the time, but thanks to his presence of mind and his
speed in radioing for help, he was able to maintain his perfect record.

by nine o'clock every morning our little room would be packed. becky's
sister judy had flown to nashville from her home in florida.the oldest
of the four sisters, Sue, took her very first airplane ride and came
over from north carolina.our dear friend and jamey's godmother, nan
henderson, flew down from chicago. when nan's husband and my fraternity
brother, don, had died of cancer a few years before, becky had been the
first person at nan's side.nan wasn't about to let becky fight the
biggest battle of her life without doing whatever she could to help. one
or both of my daughters was in the room every morning.we became
familywithin-family during the long, anxious hours, each of us wrapping
iourselves in the security blanket of the others' presence and holding
on.

Sometime toward the end of the first week on one of my frequent visits
to becky's bedside in the intensive-care unit, i became -aware of a
machine i hadn't noticed there before.evidently it had been in the room
all along, but i hadn't paid much attention.it was a small, gray
rectangular apparatus about the size of a cigar box, mounted vertically
on a pole near the head of becky's bed.at -t the top of the box was a
small screen with a digital readout and various numbers were flashing on
and off the screen in bright green ...65 ...67 ...58 . ..60.i knew it
was telling the attending physicians and nurses something, but i
couldn't imagine what it might be.when a nurse walked by, i asked her
what the little box was doing.

we're monitoring her brain waves, she told me.She doesn't appear to
respond to anything around her, but this machine tells us that at least
her subconscious is aware.lean over close to her and tell her you love
her and then watch the numbers.

i did as i was told.i love you, honey, l whispered as i had done many
times before into ears that seemingly could not hear me.then i looked
toward the screen.67 ...74 ...81 ...the numbers were rising.

that's a good sign, the nurse said excitedly.her subconscious is aware
that you are here and that you love he i when the numbers go up, it
means we're getting a positive response.keep repeating little things
like that to her from time to time and watch the numbers.it's good for
her to respond.

Suddenly the little gray box became the closest link i had to my wife.
i'd speak, hold her hand, and watch the numbers rise.judy and Sue and
lynne would get a few precious minutes with their sister occasionally,
and they'd talk and watch the numbers go up too.then we'd meet out in
the hall and brag, i got it up to 89

i got a 91 ...like we were comparing our bowling scores or something.but
it became a tangible something that we could grasp and hold onto.at that
point, we needed all the hope we could muster.it didn't really matter
that it came from a gray box.

one morning as i was leaving the icu after playing the little numbers
game, a lady on the hospital staff walked up to me out in the hall and
asked me if i'd go with her to a room up on one of the patient floors.
what for?i asked, fearful that perhaps she was intending to sing me a
song she'd just written.

i want you to see becky's room, she replied.we've redecorated it just
for her.we've tried to make it as bright and as cheerful as we can.i
want you to tell me if everything's all right.

-whoa watt a minute!i exclaimed.what do you mean, --becky's room'? She's
still upstairs unconscious, for goodness sake. how can she have a room?i
didn't understand what was going on.

well, all i know is doctor meacham told us to get a room ready for her,
and that's what we've done, the lady said.i shook my head in
disbelief.how coulj becky possibly leave intensive care?She needed
somebody to attend to her every need twenty-four hours a day.She wasn't
even awake!how could they even be thinking of moving her to a private
room?

doctor meacham reassured me.it w6n't be long until she'll be starting to
wake up, bill, and when she does she'll need to be in a room of her
own.don't worry ...we'll have round-the-clock nurses with her, and
she'll get all the care and attention she needs. you just relax.

are you sure?i just can't picture her in a private room in her
condition.

trust me, she'll be just fine.but i do need to prepare you for a couple
of things.'

like what?

well, first, a lot of times when people come to after suffering a blow
to the head as severe as becky's, they don't have very many inhibitions.
i'm warning you, be prepared, she's liable to spout forth some words you
didn't even know were in her vocabulary.

i doubt that, i smiled.i imagine i've heard em all.

well, just be ready.you might hear some more.also, she'll probably say
and do some things that don't make much sense for a while, but that's to
be expected too.Remember, she's had a powerful blow to the head.we'll
have a therapist working with her several times each day, and the other
doctors will be monitoring her closely.She'll begin to come around, but
it might be slow. now, there's something else ... something very
important that i need for you to do.

what's that?i asked.

i'm sure becky has some favorite things in her life that are very
special to her.maybe a certain picture that hangs on the wall. maybe a
small item that sits on a shelf that has a special significance.maybe
there are certain songs that she likes to hear.i need for you to give it
some serious thought and then bring some of her favorite things here to
the hospital.place them around her bed where, when her eyes begin to
open, she can see them.familiarity is a very important thing to a
brain-injured person.we need to surround her with familiar things.
things that she loves.

hmmm-familiar things that becky loves.what were some of her very
favorite things?what would she want to be there beside her most of all
when she woke up?of course i knew she'd want jamey, but i couldn't
possibly bring him.not for a while anyway. but i could bring a picture
of him.but which one?:1

i spent most of the night ransacking the condo searching for just the
right picture of jamey to take to becky's bedside.photography had been
one of becky's hobbies over the past few years, and she had hundreds of
pictures she'd taken of jamey pasted into scrapbooks, mounted in frames,
and some still in packages from the photo stores.but i had to locate
exactly the perfect one.

finally, after several hours of digging, i found it.it was in a stack of
pictures she had taken around the condo just a few weeks before, with
jamey dressed in a tan suit, wearing a white dress shirt and striped
brown tie.he looked fantastic.the pictures had been taken outdoors, and
this one was full-length, showing him standing up straight and tall with
a marvelous twinkle in his eye and a big smile on his face.there was no
doubt.this was the picture. but i wasn't about to take her just a tiny
snapshot.

by the time i walked into the hospital room with the picture, it had
been blown up to sixteen-by-twenty and was almost big enough to paper
one of the walls.i decided to mount it on the mirror above her sink,
directly at the foot of her bed.there was no way she could lie there in
bed with her eyes open and not see jamey's face smiling at het

on the bedside table on her right i stood a small plaque that i had
found hanging on her dressing room wall at the condo.it was a picture of
a large hand holding a small, innocent-looking child. and the caption
read, i will not forget you ...i have held you in the palm of my hand.it
seemed appropriate since we all knew by the very fact that becky had
survived the severe injuries sustained in this horrible automobile crash
that god surely had held her in the palm of his hand. i wanted her to
see that plaque and read those comforting words as soon as she was able.

and then the doctor had said something about music.make a tape of some
of her favorite songs, he had told me.just let the same tape play over
and over again.you might get tired of hearing it, but it's familiarity
to het it's something she likes.it's important that she be surrounded
with it.

well, if you think i like country music, you should see becky. She likes
country music!Some of her fondest childhood memories are woven around
the Saturday nights she spent as a little girl curled up on her daddy's
lap listening to the grand ole opry on the radio.or the times when he'd
come home after a hard day's work and put some Roy acuff or bill monroe
records on the record player and turn it up loud and hold her in his
armiss her daddy loved the pure country sounds, and he'd passed that
love on to his youngest daughter.

becky's very favorite singer of all is mac wiseman, a kind, gentle man
from the Shenandoah valley of southwest virginia who can wrap his vocal
chords around a folk ballad or a high lonesome bluegrass song just about
as welt as anybody and better than most. his clear, penetrating voice
had echoed through our home on many occasions, and i knew becky would
want to hear mac wiseman sing more than anyone else.

mac was more than her favorite singer.both of us had also come to know
him as a friend.mac and i had toured together in england once when becky
was along, and a couple of years later he and his wife had gone with us
on a cruise to the caribbean.both times becky had hardly let the poor
man get any rest.Sing me just one more song ...please, mac!she'd beg him
every night after he'd already spent an hour or more entertaining on
stage. iand mac would sit patiently backstage with his guitar and strum
i and sing her the old classics like put my little Shoes away, the
knoxville girl, and the baggage coach ahead.i over the years we had
obtained a lot of mac's records for our collection.i gathered up every
one of his songs i could find and spent hours dubbing onto cassette tape
songs like jimmy brown the newsboy, footprints in the Snow, keep on the
Sunnyside, and i'll Still write your name in the Sand. i carefully
labeled each tape, put fresh batteries into the small cassette player i
-i kept tucked away under my desk, and took the entire package to the
hospital room where becky would soon be moving.

a sweet-looking gray-haired nurse was putting the finishing touches onto
the newly decorated room when i walked in with my goodies.She was busily
moving in dozens of the beautiful floral displays that had been
delivered to the family room downstairs, checking the bright new print
curtains, and fluffing the pillows. She hardly seemed to notice that i'd
come into the room.She went right on with all she was doing and never
even looked up as i taped the big photograph of jamey over the mirrored
glass.She iglanced my way but still didn't say anything as i placed the
plaque on the nightstand.but she sprang to life in a hurry when i turned
on the tape player to check it out and the volume knob had somehow been
turned up as high as it would go.mac wiseman came on singing at the top
of his lungs, catfish john ...was a river hobo

She backed up about three steps and looked up at me like she'd swallowed
hemlock.it was obvious from the look on her face that she did not share
becky's appreciation for mac wiseman.

i'm sorry, ma'm, i apologized, hurriedly turning down the volume.i
didn't mean for the music to come on so loud.but, you see, that's my
wife's favorite singer and ...the little lady was staring a hole right
through me.her eyes looked like blown glass.i idon't think she heard a
single word i was saying.it was like she was in a trance.

anyhow, and i tried to slow down a bit and to smile, you see, the doctor
said i need to surround my wife with things she loves. and she loves . .
.this kind ...of ...music ...and i could tell i wasn't getting through
at all.She hates it, i thought to myself.She hates this music so much
she won't even talk with me about it., , finally i decided there wasn't
much sense in beating around the bush. look, lady, i said much more
impatiently than i would have under normal circumstances, i'm sorry if
i've bothered you with this music.i'm sorry if you don't like it.but you
might just want to try learning to like some of it.especially if you're
gonna be hanging around this room very much in the next few weeks. cause
i'll tell you something-my wife loves it and whether you like this music
or whether you don't, you and everybody else who -comes in this room are
gonna be hearing an awful lot of it!

She looked at me like i'd lost my mind.i reached down and turned the
volume up again.

hillip todd brasher was the eighteen-year-old boy who had passed out
drunk at the wheel of his employer's pickup truck and crashed head-on
into my wife's car at midnight, october t3 t984. as so often seems to
happen with drunks who are involved in automobile accidents, he barely
received a scratch.

brasher confessed later that he had been drinking since early that
morning.he, his boss, and a friend had gone out to celebrate brasher's
birthday, he said, by riding around town, drinking some beer, and
attending a gun and knife show at the state fairgrounds. he had eaten
only a couple of small hamburgers all day while iconsuming twelve or
thirteen'' beers and one last nightcap of hard :1 -liquor before
staggering to the cab of the company truck and attempting to make his
way home.he claimed not even to remember the violent collision of the
truck and becky's automobile.

brasher spent less than an hour being checked for injuries at donelson
hospital, and while becky was fighting for her very life in the
emergency room at general, he was back at the scene of the accident
attempting to retrieve some of his personal effects that had been
scattered by the impact.Sunday morning while i was frantically trying to
locate an airplane to fly me from South carolina back to nashville, he
was sleeping off a bad hangover in the quiet comfort of his boss's
apartment.it would have been real easy for me to hate this man i'd never
seen.

but for some strange reason, l didn't.i guess down deep inside i knew
that hating him wouldn't unring the bell, wouldn't uncrash the cars.i
wanted to expend my energies trying to help becky get well, not being
angry at brasher.

-Several things did bother me, though.first, the legal drinking age in
tennessee is twenty-one.who sold this eighteen-year-old enough beer
and/or liquor to get him into his drunken stupor? Second, upon checking,
we found this was brasher's third brush with problems caused by alcohol.
once in georgia he'd been charged with driving under the influence,
another time for public drunkenness, and yet his employer, Ronco
irrigation, inc., of atlanta, had entrusted him with a company truck to
drive at his own pleasure.what kind of managers must they be?and why
hadn't his parents or family members or his friends or somebody seen
that this kid had a drinking problem and tried to get him some help? why
did it have to come to this?

not long after the accident, while becky was still in the early stages
of her recovery and it was far too early even to begin thinking about
punishment for brasher or restitution from any- i body, brasher
disappeared from nashville.nobody seemed to know where he had fled, but
it didn't take us long to pick up his trail.

the driver's license he had presented to the police at the scene of the
accident was from michigan and listed an address in gaines, a small town
not far from flint.we determined this must be his parents' home, and it
didn't take Sherlock holmes to figure an - i eighteen-year-old in this
much trouble would probably run back to mama and daddy.especially since
it was also getting close to christmas.

we located brasher at his parents' home in gaines, michigan, early in
january after he'd failed to appear at a scheduled general Sessions
court hearing in nashville.i learned quickly that it's not like we see
it on tv, that there's a lot of red tape to go through in order to have
a person extradited from one state to another to face legal charges.it
can be both time-consuming and expensive, very expensive, and a lot of
people who are in a position to prosecute often give up and never follow
through with all the details and drawn-out legal proceedings.but even
though i wasn't angry or bitter at brasher personally, i just could not
in good conscience let everything ride.becky had suffered too much. we
had all suffered too much.Somebody should be held accountable for all
that had -taken place and, even more importantly, we should be sure that
it didn't happen again.

having a good friend in the right place at the right time can sometimes
come in awfully handy.jim hough, a feature writer for the lansing
State-journal newspaper in michigan's capital city, had over the years
become a very close friend of mine and was one of the very first people
to phone when he heard of becky's close call. if i can ever do anything
to help, jim had pleaded, please let me know.late in january i took him
up on his offer.

i need you to come up with a name for me, jim, i said over the
long-distance wire to lansing.i need to know who to call in the area
around gaines, michigan, that can work with the tennessee authorities in
helping us bring todd brasher back to nashville to face up to what he
did.So far he's gotten off with something like forty-eight hours in jail
for dul, and now he hasn't shown up for his hearing.i don't think that's
right.can you help me?

it turned out that jim had had dinner the night before with the
commander of the state police post in lansing and had to make only one
quick telephone call to set the wheels in motion.in a matter of just a
few days officer john johnson, who had been such a big help from the
very beginning and had quickly become a close and valued friend, asked
his superiors to allow him to be the one to fly to michigan and bring
brasher back.twenty i four hours later he and his partner were back in
nashville with brasher in tow.

i saw this man who had wreaked so much havoc upon our lyves in person
for the first time in probate judge jim everett's courtroom in the metro
courthouse a few days later.nobody had to point him out to me.he looked
about like i'd pictured him.he was tall and skinny, almost to the point
of looking ?nalnourished. his chin was set defiantly beneath his scruffy
beard, his hair was long and unkempt, his clothes were ruffled, and he
gave off an air of aloofness that bordered on cockiness. i didn't like
what i saw, but then i hadn't expected to.instead of his appearing to
look repentant or sorry for what he had done, he stared with a glassy,
nondescript look in his eyes while traces of an i-don't-like i the world
smirk creased his face.i glared at him constantly through out the
courtroom proceedings, but not once did he even so much as glance in my
direction.maybe i could learn to hate him after all, i thought, but i
never did.

--by this time, the charges against brasher had been changed from simple
dul to aggravated assault, and judge everett had little patience with
the young defendant.noting that brasher had registered a .seventeen
percent on a blood-alcohol test immediately following the accident (in
tennessee .10 percent creates a legal presumption of intoxication) the
judge said, when you became eighteen, son, you became a man in many
ways.when you become a man, you face a lot of consequences.that's what
my daddy told me when i turned eighteen.this time you're going to have
to face up.

brasher's attorney, arnold peebles, argued however that this boy is a
child, virtually.Sentencing this young man won't deter a single other
person from drinking and driving.the pressure on young people to join in
and be part of a crowd is far more overwhelming than anything this court
can do.we live in a society a that totally condones and promotes the
type of behavior he was involved in.i listened and tried not to
agree.but i couldn't help but think the attorney was probably right.
what a sad commentary at on our times.

what lesson did you learn from your previous dul conviction in georgia?
assistant district attorney paul dewitt asked brasher on the witness
stand.

- i not to drive drunk, was brasher's curt reply.

you learned that lesson one month before this accident?de-.witt
persisted.

i messed up, brasher said quietly.

i had to take the witness stand next, and for someone who has spent most
of his life getting up and talking in front of people, you'd have
thought i'd have been reasonably composed.i was anything but.i was
nervous, my hands were actually shaking, and in reliving and retelling
the story of that agonizing october night i broke down and cried.when
mister dewitt asked me to sum it all up in my own words and just tell
the court exactly what i felt.i couldn't get the thoughts and the words
to connect in my brain. all l could do was look up at judge everett from
my seat there on the stand and whisper, it's been hell, judge.it's been
pure hell.

the hearing was over in less than an hour.judge everett sentenced
brasher to three years in jail.noting that nashville
cur__________________________________whiSpeRin' f i ii - i i
more dul arrests than many larger cities, includrenty generated ing even
los angeles and detroit, the judge added, we've got to - send a message
out that you can't drink and drive in davidson county, tennessee.he then
told brasher that when his sentence was completed he'd have to spend
three additional years on probation with a revoked driver's license.you
can't drive to the store, you can't drive to church, you can't drive
anywhere, the judge ii warned.if you're caught driving, if you're caught
on a speeding ticket, if you're caught sitting behind the wheel of a car
in a iparking lot, you'll serve the rest of that three years in jail.

brasher was led from the courtroom by police officers and taken back to
the metro jail to begin serving his sentence.i know he must have felt
the judge was awfully harsh on him, but he knew it and everybody in that
courtroom knew he'd be eligible for parole as soon as he'd served twenty
percent of his time.that would come to just a little over seven months.i
watched him walk out the door and wished my wife had gotten off with a
sentence that light.

i was all prepared for becky to snap out of her coma, look up at me with
a big grin on her face and say, well, hello there, you ole horse's ass!
after all, doctor meacham had told me that people who are knocked
unconscious by blows to the head often wake up using strong, profane
language, so i rather expected it.barbara mandrell had even told me how
embarrassed she was to find out after the concussion she suffered in her
automobile accident the month before becky's that when she'd come to,
she'd started ranting and raving at everyone around her.She couldn't
help it.but when becky, who never did want to be like everybody else,
finally did begin slowly to regain consciousness, she was so extremely
meek - i and mild that i almost wondered if it was really her.

She didn't snap out of it all at once.it was a gradual opening of the
eyes that i noticed first, then a little response when i'd squeeze her
hand that told me she could hear what i was saying.

one morning, several days after she'd left intensive care and had begun
gradually waking up in her own room, the doctor asked her, who is that
man sitting over there?pointing to me.

oh, that's my husband, she said shyly.

and what's his name?the doctor continued.

paul williams, she answered.that's my wonderful husband, paul williamiss
the doctor looked at me with a puzzled look on his face.i just
shrugged.She could at least have picked someone taller, i deadpanned.

i believe she was trying to say james william, my full name, but come to
think of it she's never called me that except when she's really been mad
at me.Someday i'll have to ask her about paul williamiss missis
anderson, do you know where you are?the doctor would ask.

i sure do, becky would answer.i'm at a health spa in florida.

no ma'm, you're in nashville, and this is a hospital.do you understand
that?

Really?she would say, but in five minutes or less she couldn't remember
what the doctor had told her.i was concerned, but the doctors told me
not to worry; she was making all the progress she needed to be making at
the time.

i'm told that people who suffer head injuries often become very blunt
and outspoken, which i assume is a first cousin to the profanity doctor
meacham had warned me about.Something evidently - i happens to the
little policeman we all have inside our brain who often blows the
whistle on us when we think something we shouldn't put into words but
start to say it anyhow.following - - i becky's accident, her little
policeman must have gone on an extended vacation because she began
saying everything that popped into her mind.

weight-watchers would really do you a lot of good, she -matter-of-factly
told a slightly overweight nurse who came to her room one morning.and to
her good friend and hair stylist, donna whitcomb, becky said as she
reached up and ran her fingers across the top of her shaved head, donna,
this is the worst haircut you've ever given me!i'm not mad, but you can
do a lot better work than this!they both laughed.

one of becky's nurses bore a slight resemblance to our housekeeper, pam,
and every time this particular nurse would come in her room becky would
call her pam.

no, missis anderson, i'm not pam, ' she would patiently say. my name is
gail.

that's right, becky would answer meekly but with determination.you're
pamela gail.the nurse finally quit trying to change becky's mind.

there had never been a time since i'd known becky when she had been as
genuinely sweet, kind, and loving as she was during --the first few days
when she began to regain consciousness.She loved everything and
everybody.but, for some reason, as she began waking up she seemed to be
preoccupied with weight.it was probably because she had been on a strict
diet at the time of the -accident, had been walking several miles each
day, and had been working out regularly at the health club.doctor
meacham even told us later that becky's being in such good physical
condition aided her considerably throughout the recovery process.

one morning a therapist came in carrying a pair of white socks. he
walked to her bedside, held up the socks for her to see and asked,
missis anderson, do you know what you do with these?

Sure i do, becky answered.you put them on.

that's right, said the therapist.why don't you show me just how you put
them on.and he handed her the socks, not knowing whether becky would put
them on her hands, her ears, or her feet.

he stepped back to watch as she carefully unfolded the socks, reached
down and pulled one onto her right foot and up her right leg as far as
it would go.then she took the other one, pulled it on over her left foot
and stretched it as far up her left leg as it would go.the left sock was
decidedly longer than the right, reaching almost up to her knee.the
right sock had stopped not far above her ankle.

that's right, missis anderson, the therapist said, pleased that becky
had known exactly what to do with the socks.now, what do you call those?

becky never hesitated.She looked down at the smaller of the two socks
and said, this one you call low-calorie, she said, and then, pointing to
the larger sock, she said, and this one you call high-calorie!

becky gradually began to communicate with those of us around her a
little more each day and seemed to be slightly more alert every morning
than she'd been the night before.She would show flashes of memory in
recalling something or someone from the past but she did not, as the
doctors called it, make memory.that is, even though something would
happen around her and she would seem to understand it at the time, she
would have no memory of it -afterwards.l would come to see her every
morning and then leave the room while the nurses gave her a bath and
changed the sheets on her bed.when i'd return she'd say, well, hi, when
did you get here?She couldn't remember that i had been with her only
minutes before, nor could she remember anything we might have talked
about.She says now that the first day she remembers even being in the
hospital is the day before she got to go home.

fortunately, becky has never remembered anything about the wreck itself.
the closest she comes to remembering even the time frame in which it
happened is recalling bits and pieces of the preceding monday night when
she and i went to the country - music association awards Show together.
almost a full month is totally erased from her memory.in some respects
that's probably good.She recalls nothing of the grinding crash, of her
efforts to get off the road and out of the way of the onrushing truck,
and for that reason she has not been afraid to get back behind the wheel
of a car and drive.it was many long weeks before she did drive again,
however, and in the beginning she was hesitant and unsteady.

She would drive only on the back roads for a long time, venturing out
only as far as jamey's school and back.for weeks i would follow along
behind her in my car every time she drove just to make sure she could
handle everything all right.even when i began to grow comfortable with
her driving the short trips, i'd have her telephone me when she'd get to
her destination just to be sure she had arrived safely.

i probably had a tougher time with becky's starting to drive again than
she did.the first time i watched her slide in under the wheel i became
quite emotional.i helped her pick out a new car and insisted that she
get a large, heavy one.we both knew that had she been in a smaller,
lightweight car the night of the accident she would have had very little
chance of surviving.

She put fewer than twenty-five thousand miles on her new car in the
first four-and-a-half years following the accident, but many people who
have been in accidents such as hers never want to drive anymore, period,
and often they don't.in that respect, we are lucky.

becky didn't just lie in the hospital bed the whole time she was
recovering.doctor meacham put her into a physical therapy program that
required her to leave her room several times each day in a --wheelchair
to go down to the first floor of the hospital's p.t.unit. there the
therapists would work with her on her basic motor skills, helping her
master such fundamental maneuvers as walking and standing alone.but
becky was so cute and in such a gentle, playful mood that she got out of
doing a lot more therapy than she ever got into.

the therapist would say, now, missis anderson, roll this ball across the
floor, and he'd demonstrate how he wanted her to do it.See how much fun
it is!he'd exclaim.and she'd reply, welt, it really does look like a lot
of fun.but you seem to be enjoying it so much you just go ahead and do
it and i'll watch.i couldn't keep from laughing.She had been conning me
just like that for years!

becky was still in the hospital on my birthday, more than two weeks
after the wreck, but quite frankly, i had forgotten what day it was.i
had lots of other things on my mind, not the least of which was her
impending discharge.the doctors had told me they wouldn't be keeping her
in the hospital much longer.

i was extremely anxious about taking her home to the small condominium
where we would have absolutely no room for roundthe-clock nursing help.
how could i possibly give her the attention and the care that the
twenty-four-hour-a-day nurses and doctors had been providing at the
hospital?and yet doctor meacham had told me emphatically, you must keep
her in familiar surroundings!which meant moving away from the condo was
totally out of the question.

i was deep in thought, trying to figure out a way around that whole
situation, when i walked into her hospital room the morning of november
1.i was totally taken back by the big happy birthday, bill banner that
was taped to the wall, stretching the entire width of the room.before i
could even express my amazement or my appreciation to the hospital staff
who had painted and hung the huge sign, all the nurses and doctors who
had been attending to our needs so beautifully throughout those long and
anxious days came parading into the room carrying ice cream and cake and
singing happy birthday to me.i was genuinely -touched.it was like for a
brief moment i was back in the real world again where little things and
not just life-threatening things mat tered, and it felt good. in fact, i
haven't had a birthday since that i've failed to remember those smiling
faces and their warm
expressions of compassion and understanding that came to me at a time
when i needed them very badly.

it was almost a month after the speeding ambulance had brought my
critically injured wife to the front door of the trauma

center at general hospital when dt meacham told me she was physically
well enough to go home.l wasn't sure she really was, but he had been
right about everything so far, and i didn't figure i should start
arguing with him now.

i have very vivid memories of the Saturday morning her mother and i went
to check becky out of the hospital and bring her home.

the first thing we did after i had gone by the office and signed all the
papers for her dismissal was to go back up to her floor and take

vase after vase of beautiful flowers that friends and fans had sent her
from all over the country and distribute them to patients up

and down the halls.i didn't think the people who'd sent them would
mind.i know they wouldn't have if they had been able to

see the expressions on the faces of the young kids and the old folks
alike when i walked in carrying some of those gorgeous arrange ments.i
felt like Santa claus!

i went back to becky's room and took down the big picture of -jamey that
had hung for all this time over her mirror.i placed it

carefully under my left arm.then i gathered up the plaque and all the
mac wiseman tapes and placed them in a box and tucked it

tightly under my right arm.we made our way down the hall and out a side
door to my car.becky rode in a wheelchair with a half dozen nurses and
aides following along carrying her personal belongings and special
mementos we didn't dare leave behind.

becky was thin and pale, and when she rose from the wheelchair to get
into the front seat of the car her steps were slow and unsure.

She wore a full-length light blue robe and a blue turban-style hat on
her head.there was a blank but slightly questioning look in

her eyes, a look i was to see hundreds of times over the following
months and years.

i was extremely concerned about jamey's reaction to his mother's coming
home.l had taken him to the hospital to see her once while she was
there, and his body had trembled and his tiny fingers had tightened
around mine as we nervously made our way in through the emergency room
entrance and down the hallway to a special room the hospital had
provided for us.when becky came into the room wearing the same
turban-type hat she wore upon discharge and not able to be the laughing,
fun-loving mother jamey had known all his life, he grew even more tense
and withdrawn.he and his mother had always been close, warm and
affectionate toward one another, but now things were different.all the
-iway home from the hospital i wondered which jamey, the loving one or
the reluctant one, we'd find waiting for us.

when i pulled the car into the driveway, i could see him peer- i ing
anxiously through the curtains.as soon as he saw me, however, he closed
the curtains and ran away from the window.i was afraid we were in for a
tough time.

but my fears subsided somewhat when we reached the front door.there
hanging in full view were a half-dozen brightly colored balloons with a
big red ribbon tied around them and a note crudely lettered in crayon,
that read, welcome home mom.i love you. and the letter 0 in the word
love was drawn in bright red and shaped like a heart.i smiled and
breathe a huge sigh of relief.i knew i'd have to help get him through
the next few months with a lot of tender love and care, but something
told me standing there on the doorstep that my anxious little
first-grader was going to make it through whatever he had to face just
fine.

i eased becky inside and up the stairs to the same bedroom where on that
nightmarish Sunday afternoon only a few weeks before i had sat with my
arm wrapped around my son's shoulders and told him of the fate that had
befallen his mother.as i pulled back the covers and helped becky into
bed, i suddenly felt the -urge to say, thank you, lord, for i knew i
hadn't been alone in that room the first time and i knew i wasn't alone
in there now. becky was a long way from being well.our living situation
was a long way from being settled.a lot of questions were a long way
from being answered.but in spite of that my wife was alive, she at was
at home now in her own bed, and i couldn't help but feel i -had been
witness to a miracle.

it had all happened so fast.just a few weeks ago everything had been so
different.i was living alone in a big, secluded house on thirty-five
acres of land out in the country, answering to no one.i slept as late as
i wanted to, lay by the pool whenever i wanted to, watched tv half the
night if l wanted to.in fact, i had bought a satellite dish, and during
baseball season i would park myself in front of the television set and
watch games i wasn't even interested in just because i could pick them
up.i especially liked the night games from the west coast that didn't
even come on until ten or ten-thirty nashville time.they'd last until
one or two o'clock in the morning, and i wouldn't miss a pitch.i became
probably the only person in the whole state of tennessee who cared
whether the Seattle mariners won or lost.

it hadn't been all fun and games in the beginning, though. when becky
first decided she couldn't live in the country anymore and packed her
things and left the house in lebanon, i hurt . bad!even though the
concern over our living arrangements had slowly been driving a wedge
between us for quite some time, as soon as she was physically out the
door i missed her something awful.and i missed jamey more than words
could ever tell.the first couple of months they were gone, l lay in my
big bed alone

any a night and cried myself to sleep.

and the house itself had so much of both of them in it.every{ i ere i
turned there was a reminder: a picture of jamey laughing in front of the
christmas tree, a picture of him and me flying a toy airplane in the
front yard, a picture of him riding through the fields on his tiny toy
tractor right along behind me on the big -i tractor, a picture of the
three of us hamming it up for the camera in happier days.every time i
walked past the open door to jamey's room and saw the toy train he used
to ride on and the tent he'd played inside and realized he wasn't there
any longer, i'd fall apart. lt was a pain like i had never known before.

finally, after several months, when it became evident that my wife and
my son weren t going to be coming back to stay anytime soon, i did the
only thing i knew to do.i went through the house and took down every
reminder of the life we had once had there together-every picture that
had becky in it and all but a few special ones of jamey-and i stashed
them all up in the attic where i wouldn't be tortured by them every time
i wandered up and down the halls.i closed the door to jamey's room where
i couldn't see inside it every time i passed, and i pretended that part
of the house didn't exist anymore.because for me it didn't.

i decided i needed to go about trying to make a new life for myself,
maybe make some new friends, and i did.i let them know that my house was
there anytime they wanted to come over, and i played host to quite a few
impromptu gatherings.i started keeping hours even more weird than the
weird hours i'd always kept, i began drinking more than i ever had
before, and i stopped going to church altogether.i grew increasingly
defensive about where i lived and how i lived.it's my life 11 throw it
away if i want to, i recited from my nineteen 69 record hit.i was
happy.or at least i thought i was.i stood in front of the mirror and
told myself how happy i was several times every day.

but in the space of a heartbeat, in the length of time it takes for a
speeding pickup truck to crash into a barely moving automobile, my life
had spun around another 180-degrees.now, here i was suddenly back with
my family again, but this time under a whole new set of rules and
circumstances.becky was at home, she had survived her life-threatening
ordeal, the three of us were living together under the same roof again,
but it wasn't like our problems had all magically disappeared by any
means.in some respects, they were just beginning.

---it's not easy to admit even now, but during the two-and-a-half years
we lived apart i became selfish-selfish with my time, selfish with my
attitudes, and very set in my new ways.at first, as much as i wanted to
take care of becky and be with jamey, i still resented having to leave
the big house and the wide-open spaces out in the country to move into
an apartment.

--and that's what a condominium is.by whatever name you want to call it,
it's still an apartment.on the one hand, i wanted what was best for
becky, and dt meacham had been explicit: She must be kept in
surroundings that are familiar to her, bill.i can't emphasize that
enough.i know you're crowded, i know you're uncomfortable, but i also
know you want your wife to return to normal.brain-injured people simply
cannot begin to readjust to life if they are thrown into unfamiliar
situations or strange settings. becky won't get well if you take her
into a new environment.i had no choice.

but, at the same time, i despised it.i didn't figure i had spent
twenty-five years of my life logging eight million miles in the back of
a Silver eagle bus, eating six million cheeseburgers, and signing four
million autographs, just so i could come home at night and listen to my
neighbor's stereo blaring rock n' roll music through the paper-thin
walls of some cracker-box apartment.and then to be awakened at eight
o'clock on Saturday mornings by the sounds of his washing his pickup
truck on the lawn underneath my bedroom window, the doors to the truck
wide open and the radio on a rock n' roll station screaming full-blast.i
was used to thirty-five acres and six thousand square feet,
remember?where my closest neighbor couldn't hear my loudest tv. and
vice-versa.

now here i was living in this place, surrounded by people i didn't even
know and didn't care to know, feeling like every time i so much as
walked out my front door i was on stage.neighbors peeking out of their
windows, people honking their horns and iwaving at the real-life tv and
recording star walking up the sidewalk.Suppertime halted by knocks on
the door.how's missis anderson?they'd always ask first.and then, while
i'm here, would you mind signing an autograph for my mother's aunt's
third cousins uncle?'

i've never minded signing autographs, but i'll have to admit i iresented
very much these intrusions on my privacy, partly because i wasn't used
to it and partly because so much of the time i was under such heavy
mental and emotional pressure.i had to smile at a television camera all
day, then come home and wash the makeup out of my shirt collars and iron
clothes for the next day's taping half the night.becky couldn't do it,
of course; for a long time she could only get out of bed for an hour or
so once or twice a week. the apartment was far too small for live-in
help, and by the time i'd get home pam would be so exhausted from having
tended to becky's and jamey's needs all day that my best bet was simply
to point her toward the front door as soon as i walked in and tackle
whatever domestic chores remained by myself.

for a while becky's mother was a big help, but she didn't stay in
nashville very long.She and lynne, becky's sister, had moved to music
city from their homes in north carolina for the sole purpose of helping
becky establish and operate a small interior decorating business.their
company had gotten the contract to purchase and install most of the
rustic decor inside poe folks restaurants, but now with poe folks
curtailing their expansion, the business had slowed to a crawl.her mom
and sister soon felt their best interests would be served by moving back
home.that left me feeling even more alone since neither of us had any
other relatives living within several hundred miles.

at some point, even amid all the other pressures and obligations i4 i
iof my daily existence, i had to face the fact that my life and my
business and my career had to go on.i still had to earn a living, - i
and i had employees looking to me for their livelihood.i've never - i
known how to make a living but one way, and that's by entertaining
people.to do that, of course, i had to go back out on the road.

at first that was one of the hardest things i had ever had to do in my
life, leaving becky and jamey.pam would stay overnight while i was gone,
sleeping on the couch, driving jamey to and from school, caring for
becky's needs, but it was hard for me to relax, knowing i was hundreds,
sometimes thousands, of miles --away.

yet, at the same time, i found a strange but comforting kind of -peace
back out on the road that had been missing in all the clamor 1-and
confrision of home.i loved becky and missed her terribly when i was
gone, but just as the condo was familiar territory to becky, the road
was familiar territory to me.with everything else around me having
changed so suddenly and so drastically, i needed some familiarity in my
life too.

i began especially to enjoy the hour or so every night when i was
actually up on stage singing and performing.it was a chance for me to
escape, to lose myself in my songs, to forget about the problems of my
life for a while.my band members have since told me that i put on some
of the best shows of my entire career during this time.i don't know. i
don't remember very many of them.

i do remember that there was one song in my repertoire, though, that was
almost impossible for me to sing.and i didn't realize just how
impossible until one night near the end of a concert when a lady sent a
note up from the audience requesting that i sing it.the song is five
little fingers.it's one of the staples of my career.

i didn't think anything at all about singing it when i first read the
lady's note, and since i've always tried to acknowledge requests at my
shows whenever i can, i told the band to kick it off.just as soon as the
first words began to roll out of my mouth, however, i knew i was going
to have trouble finishing it:

i came home last night to a dark and lonely cottage i took the wreath
off the door and somehow i stumbled inside

i just can't ...i just can't, i said, live without her give me one
reason to live now that my darling has died.

and then five little fingers touched my hand five little fingers too
young to understand.

-i had written and recorded those words more than twenty years earlier,
back in nineteen 64 and now they had almost come true. except in my song
the child was a little girl and a death had actually occurred.how may
times had i sung those words without ever fully feeling, until after
becky's accident, their impact?not really knowing what they meant? and
now i had lived it, i had actually felt the touch of my son's five
little fingers on mine.it chilled me to the bone, but somehow i got
through it that night.i didn't sing it again, however, for a long, long
time.

when the shows were over and the music had stopped and the -last round
of applause was no longer even an echo, when the last autographed
picture was tightly tucked away under the last arm to leave the
auditorium, and i was standing alone in the back of the bus changing
clothes to the monotonous drone of a diesel engine, i'd start feeling
guilty.guilty for being where i was, for smiling, laughing, singing,
while my wife lay helpless in a brain-damaged -fog hundreds of miles
away and my son tossed in an anxious sleep, wondering if he'd wake up
the next morning to the sound of some strange voice telling him his dad
was in a meeting.life began slowly to dissolve from the bright reds and
greens and yellows of becky's triumphant homecoming to the stark gray
and deep purple reality of conflict piled upon unresolved conflict.

i wonder now if maybe i hadn't become a lot like the old mule the farmer
couldn't get to plow.he began hitting the mule across the head with a
big two-by-four.

what are you doin' that for?an onlooker asked.

danged mule won't plow, answered the farmer.life is hittin' him across
the head like that gonna make him plow?give

i dunno, the farmer replied, but i figure i gotta get his gift i
attention first!aske

the great i attention-getter-in-the-Sky must have figured i me hadn't
been paying attention.and while i don't believe he causes bad things to
happen, i do believe he uses what happens to us wep sometimes to correct
our vision.it wasn't that i was blind, but ship prior to becky's
accident i was focusing my sights on a lot of the wrong targets. it's
amazing how i began to feel him slowly starting migb to turn me
around.notic
it began with my back.anyone who has ever had back trouble attirt (and
when my back was hurting i found that almost everybody i tions talked to
either had back trouble or used to have it) knows that an tb ailing back
is the stiffest and most painful early in the morning.gradu most
mornings i hurt so bad i couldn't climb out of bed as i'd me w -always
done, so i began rolling out instead.just rolling off the - had t right
side of the bed and onto the floor.then i'd reach out and turne grip the
edge of the wooden bedframe and begin to pull myself up to be
slowly, slowly, inch by inch.my first stopping place between gripin
lying face down on the floor and standing up would invariably be thank :
there at the side of my bed on my knees.my ba it had been a long time
since i'd started off the days of my life ically on my knees.i had grown
up knowing about god, attending every Sunday School, church, youth
fellowship, and the like, but my bit bet personal relationship with god
seemed to have become less and out th' less important to me over the
years.it wasn't that i believed any patless ; it just seemed that i'd
set aside smaller and smaller amounts of - in my my time for thinking
about him and his purpose for my life. and any l1 i hardly ever just
stopped and said, hey, thanks, god, for all patienc you've done for
me.but suddenly here i was every morning now - more rt down on my knees,
by the side of my bed, in the still and quiet of kris kr an unspoiled
day.i began talking to him.over, hc

i don't know what i said, but it wasn't anything very fancy.i've how cat
never been very good at using big, highfalutin' words anyhow, so i it wa
just talked to god like he was my best friend.like he was right backslid
there in that tiny apartment room with me.which i know he slowly was.

and l thanked him for allowing becky to live, for blessing my life with
a wonderful son and two beautiful daughters, for having given me talent,
fame, fortune, and the countless other bountiful gifts he had so
graciously and richly bestowed upon my life.and 1 asked that through all
my problems and turmoil he might grant me a whole new view of his
purpose, a new freedom in my spirit, and a new power in my service to
him.in other words, god, can't we push the reset button and go back to
square one in our relationship and start over?

no bolt of lightning came crashing through my window.no mighty voice
spoke to me and told me what to do.but i began to notice that ever so
slowly, a little bit here, a little bit there, my attitudes began to
change.my view of the world and the conditions surrounding my place in
it began to soften.

the apartment i was living in didn't grow any larger, but i gradually
began to realize that it was a roof over my head, it kept me warm and
dry, and i knew not everybody, even in nashville, had that.i got
acquainted with a few of my neighbors, and they turned out to be some
pretty nice folks.Some of them even proved to be very understanding and
extremely helpful.So instead of griping and complaining about things so
much, i decided to give thanks.i still had my financial situation to
deal with, of course, my back still hurt real bad, and my daughter's
health didn't magically improve overnight.but gradually i began to
notice that every day i'd wake up just a little bit more in control,
just a little bit better equipped to handle whatever crisis fate decided
to dish ou{ that particular day.and it was a good feeling.

patience has never been one of my virtues, l truthfully wrote in my
musical ode to romantic impatience called i can't wait any longer, and i
began asking god please to grant me more patience, to slow me down, and
maybe to help me set my watch more to his time.i'd hum the melody to
marijohn wilkin's and kris kristofferson's masterpiece one day at a
time, over and over, hoping the thought behind those beautiful lyrics
would somehow carve itself a place in my consciousness.

it wasn't easy.i won't lie and say there were no days spent
backsliding.i had a lot of those; i still have them.but ever so slowly
my attitudes began to change, my bitterness began to mellow.my problems
didn't go away, but for the first time in a

long time i was able to call on a whole new source of inner strength
from which to deal with them.

a former secretary of mine once taped to her telephone a sign which
read: god leads men into deep waters not to drown them

but to cleanse them.for years i've heard sayings like when god -closes a
door he opens a window and god breaks us in order to

bless us.' i began to think maybe that's what this was all about.

maybe god had decided he needed to get me flat on my back, literally and
figuratively, in order to get me to look up.if so, i guess it worked.

i went out one day and had a copy made of a sign just like the one Roy
acuff has hanging on his dressing-room door at the opry, and i came back
and hung it on the wall at my office where i could see it every day.i
look at it all the time.it's a reminder of the

essence of the faith i'm trying real hard to live by every day.it simply
says:

there ain't nothin' gonna come up today that me and the lord can't
handle.

Some days it was a good thing that sign was hanging there on the wall
where l could see it because in spite of my newfound strength, renewed
assurance, and fresh inner resolve, i managed to spend a lot of my time
during the first four years following becky's accident simply hangin' on
and gettin' by.i needed every reminder of my faith that l could muster.

two ominous clouds seemed to be always hanging over my head. first, of
course, was becky's condition and the obligation i felt to help her as
best as i could.maybe obligation is the wrong word, because i wanted to
help becky, but in order to continue to do so, i was forced to stand
toe-to-toe with the man in the mirror and answer some of the hardest,
toughest questions i had ever had to face.

in the first place, who was i?and why was i here?why wasn't i back out
in the country living the lifestyle i had become comfortable with in the
house that i loved?how many other men in my shoes would have sacrificed
so much of their own lives, their own freedoms, in an effort to connect
with their pasts?l didn't know.

and was that, in fact, what i was doing?was my renewed commitment to my
family born of rededication and love, or was i just trying to be a
martyr of some kind?l had no idea.

and who was this lady lying there in her bed, and why did my whole life
suddenly seem to revolve around her well-being anyhow? hadn't our
relationship been bent to the point of almost breaking for several
years?and at this time and place in our lyves, what were we to each
other?

were we living together under the same roof again because -together was
where we'd each rather be than anywhere else in the

n world?or were we simply together because a cruel quirk of fate i fi
had reunited us under a set of extremely extenuating circum- i stances?
was this the same lady i married many years ago, or was she now, through
no fault of her own, a stranger that i didn't know h -and might never
come to know?was the love i had felt for her 0 during her crisis drawn
from the depths of faith and passion and w

m commitment, and was it strong enough to sustain a truly happy of and
giving marriage for the rest of our lyves?or had i just been warmed by
the flicker of a dying flame that had burned out long ar ago?every day i
wrestled with the questions, but very seldom did i a go to bed at night
knowing any of the answers.

in i came to learn that my questions, while perhaps going a step be
beyond the ordinary questions a spouse might ask of himself or tal
herself when faced with a head-injured mate in a normal family So
--situation, were not in themselves really all that unusual.dt philip
--ac i barry, writing in a paper entitled family adjustment to head thr
injury for the national head injury foundation, says that the long
process of recovery for a head-injured victim is shared by the - viv
whole family and not just the injured member.he says that the per rea
most obvious feeling a family member has to deal with is grief. and that
grief, according to him, comes in four stages.- ask the first stage is
shock-how could something like this possibly have happened in my
life?the second stage is denial-it must be -ans' a mistake, which is
exactly what i said to the bus driver when i first went up to the front
of the bus to begin looking for a tele- i phone.i had asked him if
perhaps the call were not for someone sma else.next comes anxiety-what
do i do now?how can i possibly - i --cope with all this disruption in my
life?then finally anger-anger the at the victim for getting injured,
anger at the doctors, anger at others involved in the accident, and even
anger at god for letting ti this happen.perhaps the easiest person to be
angry at is our- whet -, selves, he says, and this can be translated
into guilt.if only i she c had done something differently ...if only i
could do something m1 more to help now.

i had felt every single one of these emotions, most of them a)a$j i
several times, at one time or another following what happened to
--becky.and l went through a lot of other feelings, too ... isola- achec
tion, abandonment, fright, frustration.i seemed to spend a lot of she li

even my time fighting with my emotions and they spent just as much
fighting back with me.one day, though, i came to realize that the final
and most important emotion for me to conquer was going to have to be
acceptance.i had to come to a realistic understanding of what had
happened, admit that it had happened, then plan what was going to happen
from that point on and figure out what my role in it needed to be.the
day i could finally reach the point of acceptance, i knew i could put
all the other petty things aside and get on with the process of helping
becky get well.

my friend Sonny Smith, the former head basketball coach at auburn
university, helped as much as anybody in putting it all into
perspective.i ran into him one day during the early period of becky's
recuperation and found that suddenly he and i had more to talk about
than my love for sports and his love for country music. Sonny's wife,
jan, had suffered a stroke not long after becky's accident, and Sonny,
who is about the same age as i am, had been ithrough much of the same
trial and turmoil that i had.jan survived her stroke, but it left her
with some severe changes in her personality.Sonny admitted to me that
one day he woke up and realized he was married to a virtual stranger.

how have you been able to deal with that emotionally?i asked him.i mean
you ...yourself?

i've handled it by doing what i tell my ball players to do, he answered.

and that is?

i tell them not to sweat the small stuff...and that all stuff is ismall
stuff.'

i thought about that for a while and realized that Sonny had hit the
nail squarely on the head.

there were many things becky wasn't able to do for herself when she
first returned home from the hospital.in fact, the things she could do
would comprise a much shorter list.

most of her time was spent simply lying in bed.She was constantly in a
tremendous amount of pain, particularly from headaches, and she didn't
want people or movement around her.She ached and hurt so bad from the
repercussions of the impact that she literally could not lie in a
position where one part of her body even so much as touched another
part.if one leg happened to

brush against the other one while she was shifting her weight in the
bed, she cried out from the pain.the same held true with her

armiss She never seemed to get comfortable.

her left leg was black and blue with bruises all the way from her hip to
the top of her foot.her left foot was totally numb, prompt ing an
orthopedist to tell her later that she'd never be able to wear
high-heeled shoes again.today, she has practiced and perfected

her balancing act to the point that she can and does wear heels, but she
still can't wear boots or any other shoe that comes across the top of
her foot.there's still an area about four inches wide
circling all the way around the foot in which she has no feeling
whatsoever.

for months after the accident becky also always seemed to have an upset
stomach.i took her to see an internist who checked her

thoroughly and told her that it was no wonder her stomach was
upset.every internal organ in her body was inflamed and swollen.

he could only surmise that it had come from her having been jolted with
such violent force at the time of the crash.at the same

time, every medical and law enforcement expert i talked with clearly
stated that beyond any shadow of a doubt the seat belt she

had been wearing had saved her life.

it was also many long months into becky's recovery before she could
sleep on a pillow again.her head hurt so bad that she simply

- i could not lay it down across anything as high or as hard as a
pillow.She couldn't sleep on her back at all because of the myriad

of cuts and bruises across the top of her head and down the back of her
neck, but she finally devised a way to take a beach towel and

roll it up with the soft side to the outside and then place it just so
against her cheek bone in one tiny area that didn't hurt.for the

longest time the only way she could sleep was by lying on her side and
using the rolled-up beach towel for a pillow.

Several times during her first few months at home becky would call for
me to come into her room and see the most recent slivers

of glass that had worked their way out from beneath the surface of her
skin.years after the wreck she was still pulling little reminders

of the crash from under the skin on her fingers, her legs, and her
-scalp.

iit was no wonder, then, that most of the time all becky wanted --to do
was to lie still, alone in the dark, and rest.her appetite dwindled to
zero, and she lost a considerable amount of weight. She grew thinner
than i had ever known her to be.when her appetite slowly began to return
several months later, she realized her sense of smell was gone, and the
only things she wanted to eat were sweet things. naturally, with that,
the weight returned, plus some.

the doctors explained to us that most of the things we think we taste
are actually things we smell, but that sweets are, in fact, one of the
few things we actually taste with our tongues.therefore, sweets were
about the only things she could taste and enjoy.

it was well into mid-nineteen 85 before becky felt like trying to resume
anything that resembled even a semi-normal existence.when she did, it
was a case of her having to ease her way ever so slowly, ever so
carefully back into the real world.

when, after months and months of isolation and inactivity, she finally
reached the point where she felt like getting out of bed and 1venturing
outside the condo for an hour or so each week, it seemed that even the
simplest of tasks was often extremely tiring and difficult for her to
master.She'd ask me to drive her to the grocery store, for example, but
once we'd arrive there she'd have trouble making even the most basic
decisions.did she want to buy the crisco or the wesson oil?the cherry
fruit punch or the grape? Redbook or ladies' home journal?the doctors
had warned me that decision-making is often very taxing for
brain-injured people, and i tried to be patient.after spending only a
short period of time at the store helping her wrestle with decisions,
i'd drive her home. She would often have to go back to bed for days.

on the rare occasions when becky would feel like getting out of the
condo at mealtime and going out to eat in a restaurant, i would try
ahead of time to suggest both a place to go and a meal she might enjoy
rather than watching her struggle through the ordeal of having to
choose.let's go up to the peddler tonight, i'd suggest.they've got that
great salad bar, remember?we can have a salad and maybe the six-ounce
filet, a baked potato, and some fresh fruit for dessert.that seemed to
make it easier for her to handle.if she absolutely could not decide some
particular issue for herself, i would make the decision for
her.Sometimes we simply made no decisions at all.

her energy level was never very high.She would wake up early in the
morning to see jamey before i took him to school, but then

it was back to bed for most of every day and on into the night.

becky has always been a night creature, though, and around nine o'clock
in the evening she'd often wake up and be in her most

alert state of the day.She'd watch tv (the 700 club became her favorite
program) until sleep would overtake her again somewhere

around midnight.i had begun living and functioning on a sched ule almost
totally opposite from hers, however, what with my new

duties as mister mom, which meant days went by when we barely even saw
each other.Seldom were we able to communicate on

anything that resembled a meaningful level.frankly, it wasn't a very
fulfilling life for either one of us.

but i'll say one thing for becky: in spite of all her injuries, her
difficulties, and the seemingly insurmountable odds everybody said

she faced, she never gave up.She never quit trying to improve, never
stopped reaching and digging for that extra little something that might
somehow bring her one step closer to being the person
she knew she had been before the accident.to her eternal credit, she
absolutely refused to accept the thought that she'd never be well again.

one psychiatrist in nashville told her she'd never function at more than
seventy-five percent of her former capacity.becky's

answer to that was i'll prove him wrong.written tests were administered
by various doctors and clinics to determine her t strengths and
weaknesses in all different kinds of physical and emotional areas.when
some of them would come back showing

certain deficiencies, she'd say, well, you give me that same test again
in a few months.i'll do better then.and she would.

i'll always give an awful lot of the credit for becky's determina tion
and her subsequent progress to a kind, insightful man that my

friend dean booth brought to us, doctor tom burns, a clinical psy
chologist who lived and practiced in Savannah, georgia.dean -i

-had known tom since their college days together and, as an attorney,
had seen the results of the work tom had done with other
-head-injured patients over the years.even though the distance between
Savannah and nashville would prevent daily contact between doctor and
patient, dean assured us early on that we'd never be able to find a more
qualified doctor or more compassionate human being to whom we could
entrust becky's emotional and psychological recovery than tom burns.he
was more than right.

tom (he's such a down-to-earth person that neither of us ever felt the
need to call him doctor burns) immediately gained both becky's and my
confidence and trust.for over two years he would rearrange his schedule
at least once a month so that he could leave Savannah at a moment's
notice and fly to nashville to counsel with becky.he is a soft-spoken,
prematurely graying man in his late forties who, from the beginning,
felt more like a friend than he did a doctor.

he'd fly out of Savannah on the last flight connecting to nashville in
midafternoon and would usually get to town around dinnertime.if becky
felt like it, the three of us would then go out to eat, talking about
nothing heavy, nothing serious, but giving tom a chance to size up
becky's progress since their last meeting. the next morning i'd drive to
his hotel and join him for breakfast, trying to bring him up to speed on
becky's condition and her progress as i saw it.he'd confide in me things
he might have sensed during his visit with her the night before and
suggest things that i might do to help with her rehabilitation. mostly
he would remind and encourage me to keep everything in a positive,
upbeat mood when i was around becky.She didn't need anything negative
bearing down on her, he'd say, and i'd promise to do my best. later in
the morning i'd drive him to the condo where he'd meet with becky, have
lunch, and stay until time for his late afternoon flight back to
georgia.and he'd always leave becky homework'' -assignments to work on
between visits.

his main objective was to institute something called repatterning, an
exercise he described to me as building new patterns for damaged
emotional muscles.

the mRl scan showed us early on that becky's most severe injuries lie in
the prefrontal lobes of her brain, he said, and that's the main circuit
that carries information about the emotions. Right now becky's not
feeling very much emotionally.nothing

seems funny to her, nothing seems sad, nothing warms her or excites her.
i agreed with his assessment.most of the time there was an empty, almost
lost expression on becky's face and in her eyes.

i want to work on that, ' tom would say.do you rememberpatricia neal,
the movie actress who had the stroke several years
ago?he asked, and i said that i did.well, nobody ever thought she'd walk
and talk and function normally again.but the doctors
went to work repatterning her motor-skill areas, teaching her exercises
and repeating them over and over again during the years
following her stroke.friends would come to her house and spend hour
after hour moving her legs, moving her arms, teaching her
-, how to function like a new person.i want to see if we can't do -,
something like that with becky's brain, see if we can't force it to
bring other brain tissue into play.in other words, if one area of the
brain is damaged, can we get new areas of the brain to take over
and perform the functions of the damaged area?can we connect - - some
new circuits to replace the ones that are gone?

i admitted he was way over my head.

it'll be sort of like physical therapy for the brain, he con tinued,
except instead of working on teaching muscles how to help a person walk,
we'll be trying to teach brain tissue how to make
becky feel emotions.nothing complicated, just simple things like - funny
, sad, angry.frankly, i don't know if it will work or not.

there hasn't been a lot of work done in this area.but i feel like it
might be our only hope.

who was i to argue?

-he began by giving becky, of all things, acting lessons.he told becky
to act ...to act like she felt things emotionally even

though she wasn't actually able to feel them at all.he set her up with
something he called feedback loops, encouraging her to

practice over and over again acting like she could feel certain emotions
until, in fact, she could.he told her to keep practicing

these patterns again and again while he was away, to go for what ever
emotion it was she wanted to revive, to pretend she was

bringing it back time after time.Slowly but surely, with tom's help and
a large dose of her own gutsy determination, she began the

long, tenuous process of retraining herself.

i said there were two clouds hanging over my head during the first
couple of years following becky's accident.Some days it seemed there
were more than that, but there were two major ones. the first, of
course, was becky's condition, her injuries, her deficits, and the long,
tedious process of her recovery.the second cloud was quite a bit
different from the first but equally as foreboding.i knew that looming
ahead of both of us somewhere out there on the not-so-distant horizon
was a lengthy, complicated, and expensive legal battle drawn from the
aftermath of the accident.i was in no shape to have to go through it,
but try as i might i didn't seem to be able to wish it away.

there was no amount of money in the world that could ever have paid
becky, jamey, and me for all that we had suffered and all t hat we had
been forced to endure as a result of everything that had happened, but
the judicial system in this country provides the opportunity for people
to seek financial restitution when they feel they have been wronged. and
with all the medical bills we'd already accumulated plus all the ongoing
treatment we knew becky was going to require for no telling how many
years, our feeling was that Ronco irrigation, inc., and/or phillip todd
brasher, or some combination of the above should be held financially
responsible. after all, they had been in the wrong.brasher had been
found guilty of operating a vehicle while intoxicated.and Ronco had
allowed an eighteen-year-old with a past history of drunkenness to drive
their company truck.why shouldn't one or both of them have to step
forward and help pay the doctors' bills, the nurses' bills, the hospital
bills, and the upcoming goodness-knows-what bills that resulted from the
havoc they caused?

but there was more to it than that.becky wanted a strong statement made
to the community on her behalf regarding drunk driving, and she felt, as
i did, that the publicity we'd get from a court case would help the
public focus on that issue.people need to see what someone's drinking
did to a perfectly healthy woman, she said.i know nothing can change
what happened to me, but it could keep all this from happening to
another family.and that's important.i couldn't have agreed more.

while becky was spending the better part of every day for nearly two
years trying to get well, our attorneys were equally busy trying

to settle our differences with Ronco and brasher without any of us
having to go to court.the opposing attorneys offered to pay us

seventy-five thousand dollars, which admittedly is a lot of money, but
at that time our medical bills had already totaled almost that much and
we knew we'd only scratched the surface.for all we
knew, becky might not be able to work toward earning a living ever
again.She was going to need constant physical and emotional
therapy to aid her reentry into society, and that wouldn't come - i cheap
.whatever money she eventually received from the settle --i';-ment
 on this case might have to last her a lifetime.based on that, - - i
their offer was a mere drop in the bucket.we simply could not in good
judgment settle for an amount that small.

So in an effort to get Ronco's and brasher's attention and let them know
we were serious, we filed a lawsuit against them for two

million dollars, one million dollars in compensatory damages and another
million dollars in punitive damages.that got no reaction.

So we raised it to three million compensatory and one million
punitive.they were still unwilling to negotiate a more equitable

settlement.

-i was relying on my atlanta friend and attorney dean booth to advise me
as to what i should do next, and he said i had no

choice-i had to proceed with the lawsuit.if there is one thing i have
learned during this most trying of times in my life, it's that

lawsuits are much easier said than done.it rolls off the tongue real
easyw'let's file a lawsuit-but what a can of worms it can actu ally turn
out to be!

the two sides in this suit spent no telling how many costly hours, day
after day, month upon month, researching facts, inter viewing potential
witnesses, taking depositions, filing and answer ing interrogatories,
building their cases, preparing for a trial.they
talked to each other periodically about settling the case without its -i
actually ever to go to court, each other out as to
-ihaving feeling how far the other side seemed willing to push or be
pushed, but
each time they eased off, playing cat and mouse with one another and
with the court.for a long time i don't think either side actually
thought the case would ever come down to an honest-togoodness,
full-blown courthouse trial, but once it turned into a big game of
chicken and the longer it went on, the harder it became for either side
to back down.whether i liked it or not, i was on a collision course with
a courtroom.

the case was set for trial in early october nineteen 86 in the
metropolitan nashville courthouse, circuit judge hamilton gayden
presiding.but even on the monday morning that my attorneys and i
actually walked up the courthouse steps and into the elevator bound for
the fifth-floor chambers, i thought we'd meet the -attorneys and
principals from the other side in a hallway before we got there, reach
an agreement on how to settle our differences, and get on with our
lyves.Regrettably, that's not what happened at all.

what i knew about courtrooms and courtroom procedure before that fateful
monday morning could have been written in large letters on one side of a
guitar pick.when it was all mercifully over eleven gut-wrenching days
and dozens of embarrassing front-page newspaper stories later, i knew
only that being a participant in a courtroom trial ranked right up there
alongside having kidney stones and root canal surgery at the top of my
list of things i never wanted to sample ever again.

my first thought upon entering the courtroom was, well, it looks about
like all the courtrooms i've ever seen on television.the walls were
cloaked in dark walnut paneling that rose to the ceiling above the thin,
brown indoor-outdoor carpet covering the cold marble floor.there was an
elevated judge's bench on the wall to my right at what a performer might
call center stage; a small, ienclosed witness stand raised slightly off
the floor to the judge's right, five or six feet in front of three
windows that lined the outer wall; and an enclosed jury box with two
rows of six padded swivel chairs pushed against the wall to the judge's
left.in the center of the floor rested two long tables and six chairs
arranged in an l-shaped configuration, whereby one table and three
chairs faced the judge's bench, three chairs and the other table faced
the jury box.to the right of the table facing the judge stood a small
movable podium, maybe four feet high.i could see three micro phones in
the room, one at this podium, one at the witness stand, i

-the other at the judge's bench.each was mounted on an adjustable
gooseneck stand.

toward the back of the room behind a mahogany railing and a -swinging
wooden gate were several rows of church-type hard

wooden pews, gallery seats for the press and other interested
-onlookers.the obligatory american flag and the bright red ten- i

nessee state flag with its blue circle of white stars in the center hung
on tall wooden poles with shiny brass eagles on the top to - i the rear
and either side of the judge's chair.my immediate reaction when i slowly
entered the austere chamber was to look around and

-see if i could spot perry mason.i knew he (or at least judge c wapner)
had to be in there somewhere.

the judge entered and began by introducing himself and mak- 0

ing a few generalized remarks to all of us gathered in the room, none of
which i can recall.he then called my attorneys and the d attorneys for
the defense to the bench and spoke with them in
quiet legalese.i can only assume that he was making one final plea bi
for them to step out in the hall and settle this whole mess like
gentlemen.they obviously refused.he then announced rhat the first order
of business would be the selection of a jury.i had never so so much as
even been called for jury duty in my life and had no hi

idea how the jury selection process took place.

Some thirty or forty people had been summoned for possible duty that
particular week, and they had been herded into the back tai

of the courtroom shortly after all the attorneys, plaintiffs and his
defendants had been seated at the tables down front.they sat inc

--quietly on the pews, seemingly as nervous and as fascinated as i pat
was.

judge gayden addressed them as a group from the bench and began telling
them a bit about the case his court was preparing to ask

hear.- ne this is a very serious case, he said, and it's going to be a
very cou

serious trial.do any of you have any qualms about sitting on this
jury?nobody raised a hand.one

the judge then looked directly at me where i was seated along- l side
dean booth, nashville attorney Richard Speight, a former hou

college classmate and fraternity brother of dean's at emory univer- repr
sity in atlanta whom dean had wisely suggested early in our twel

ipreparation that we bring on board, and an associate from Speight's law
firm, missis Rose cantrell.we had had to pull an

extra chair up to our table to accommodate the crowd.the judge
instructed me to rise from my chair and turn to face the room full

of prospective jurors.do any of you recognize this man?he $ asked. i'll
admit i wasn't sure i wanted to hear their answers.

what if nobody in the whole room knew who i was?besides that, iwhy was
he asking?i was relieved and somewhat flattered when all but two or
three hands in the room went up.

judge gayden then polled each individual person asking them iwhere they
knew me from.the answers were as varied as my

career itself.Some knew me from country music, some from pofoiks
commercials, some from game shows, others from soap

operas.i was surprised that most of the blacks in the room knew who i
was, but not surprised at all when a white lady with a

distinctly northern accent, who said she was a molecular biologist at
vanderbilt university, stared at me blankly.i figured she proba bly
thought a whisperin' bill was an invoice you get from a doctor who
treats you for laryngitis.

are there any of you who could not be fair toward mister ander son in a
legal matter based on who he is and what you know about

him?judge gayden continued.again no hands went up.

do any of you know mister anderson personally or do you know him in any
manner not connected with his profession as an enter tainer and public
figure?he asked.one man answered yes, that his son had once played on
the same soccer team with my son and

indicated that he might feel uncomfortable having to serve on this
particular jury.the judge allowed him to leave.

are there any of you who couldn't be impartial in this case based on the
fact that it's a case where alcohol is involved?he

asked.are there any of you who have read about this case in the
newspapers or heard about it on the radio or television who

couldn't be fair based on what you might have seen or read?the judge was
certainly being thorough.no one responded to either

one of his questions.

deliberately and painstakingly the selection process began.

hours later, after prospective jurors were questioned by attorneys
representing each side and dismissed for a variety of reasons, only

twelve were left-ten women and two men.eight of the women were blacks,
both men were whites.their ages ranged from the -young man in the cowboy
shirt and western boots on the back row who said he was in his early
twenties to a lady who was probably i -close to seventy.i wasn't quite
sure what to make of the final i selection and i found out later neither
were the attorneys.i just crossed my fingers and hoped for the best.

the court convened early monday morning, but it was midafternoon tuesday
before the first arguments in the trial itself actually began.it was
also an omen of the speed of things to come.

looking back on it now, much of the trial is a big blur in my mind, and
i'm not sure that it's not best that way.i took out the newspaper
clippings recently and thumbed through them just to refresh my memory,
and it hurt all over again.Real bad.

most of what i remember is hour upon hour of painful testimony.
psychiatrists, psychologists, neurologists, plastic surgeons, dentists,
attorneys, objections overruled and sustained, recesses, policemen, more
attorneys, more doctors, more objections, more speculation, more
memories, more hurt.our objective was to 1 prove that becky had suffered
severe, permanent, life-threatening c -damages for which we needed funds
to provide ongoing medical a treatment.their objective was to prove that
the damages were less ti than we claimed, the ongoing care less than we
anticipated, there-.fore the money we were to receive should be less.h1

todd brasher was in the courtroom from the outset, but becky sa was not,
even though she was the focal point of the entire trial.wt her doctors
had pleaded that she would be unable to stand the - he stress and strain
of being in court every day, so she was excused.before the trial was
over, however, we all knew she would have to - ret come in and testify.
but her not being there for the first several - dai days caused the
proceedings to take on a strange and eerie air of : an i mystery as to
just who this woman was that all this talk and list testimony was about.
i nothing to do with the trial was easy on me (my back hurt and
constantly and i had to ask the judge for permission to get up out scet
of my chair every fifteen minutes or so and walk around the room), and
but i think what hurt me even more was hearing doctor after testi doctor
testify that my wife was not the same person she was before the accident
and then telling everyone within earshot that she probably would never
be the same again.She suffers a twenty-five percent permanent impairment
of her ability to make decisions and know joy and the fullness of life,
one psychiatrist said. another added, if a person has not recovered
fully from a head injury within two years, ordinarily there is no
improvement beyond that point.i owned a calendar.i knew this was being
said almost two years to the day after her injuries had occurred.

missis anderson is a different person now than she was before the
accident, dean booth told the jury.She doesn't have any emotions, she
has no energy.everything she does she does out of sense of duty.She
doesn't feel any pleasure, she doesn't feel any joy.and i remembered how
becky herself had once described the way she felt to a doctor who had
asked.i feel she said, searching to find just the right words, . . .1
feel like there's nobody home.

dean talked about becky's having lost her sense of smell and with it
much of her sense of taste.he repeated a story i had told him about my
having come home off the road one time and finding our refrigerator full
of spoiled food.becky had not even noticed, and it was a miracle that
she had not attempted to prepare some of that food for herself and
jamey.

he told the jurors about becky's vision problems, vertigo, and her
sudden, debilitating, and devastating headaches.and he said, becky
anderson's life will be a continuous uphill battle.She will have to deal
with life with her emotional hands tied behind her back.She will always
sense that she is a visitor on this planet.

tom burns testified that becky would rehabilitate, but not recover from
her injuries.he explained to the jurors that damaged nerve cells do not
regenerate like other cells in the body and becky would continue to live
in a gray and colorless world.i listened but tried not to hear.

police officer john johnson recounted for the jury the explosive and
terrifying moments following the crash when he arrived on the scene and
reached his hand into becky's car, took hold of her arm, and felt no
pulse.there was blood and glass everywhere, he testified.i thought she
was dead.

i told her, i've got the ambulance coming, ' he continued.i said, lady,
don't you die on me.i've never had one to die yet!'

and on and on it went.more doctors painting more gloomy pictures, more
recollections of the accident, more memories of the

-night that won't go away.for me, more fear of the future i had so
little idea of how to face.

i had no role in the proceedings at all for the first several days, but
i was there every minute the court was in session.i'd get up early each
morning, dress, and drive jamey to school.i'd fight the
early morning rush-hour traffic into downtown and meet with the lawyers
at Richard Speight's office around eight-thirty.we'd dis cuss our plans
and strategies for the day then walk the five or six blocks to the
courthouse.

when the testimony began each day at nine, i sat, i listened, i thought,
and i reflected.Sometimes i'd try watching the jury, attempting to read
their faces to see how certain points of what was being said affected
them.most of the time what i got in
return was no expression at all.

i thought to myself how similar this was in many ways to work ing before
a live audience in a concert setting.you sing, you tell a - - story, and
you search the audience for their reaction.many times their faces will
tell you what you need to know long before they

actually applaud or laugh.but not this group.it's a tough room to work,
i said in typical show-biz jargon in an effort to loosen up
the attorneys when they'd question me as to howl thought a certain point
had been taken by the jurors.about the size of the
typical crowd l draw, too, i joked, and a darn tough room to --work!

one thing i'd never caught onto from watching courtroom scenes in movies
and on television is that a trial doesn't just fall

into place accidentally piece by piece.it's all carefully orchestrated
beforehand-again much like l would plan out a concert show with a
certain witness scheduled to appear at a certain point and another to
appear at another strategic point in the testimony.as i

watched the proceedings unfold, i became aware that, to a degree, they
were scripted.i quickly realized the wisdom behind it.

first, it allowed the attorneys to present to the jury a clear and
concise picture of the evidence in some semblance of order.the jury
could follow what happened from point a to point b without becoming
confused.Second, it allowed peaks and valleys in the overall testimony
which, in turn, allowed the strongest points in the testimony to stand
out above other points that might not have registered as strongly with
the jurors.much like i wouldn't sing mama Sang a Song, golden guitar,
and five little fingers all back-to-back on a show because they are all
slow, sad songs, neither would a good attorney present psychiatrist
after psychiatrist after psychiatrist in a case involving head injuries,
even though each doctor might bring in his own special expertise to the
courtroom.dean and Richard would call a doctor to take the stand, then
follow the doctor's medical testimony by showing a videotape of another
expert of some kind, then show the jury pictures taken at the scene of
the accident, then move back to another live witness.it had a flow, a
tempo, a purpose.nobody in the room was as aware of how the evidence was
being presented as i was, i'm sure, but then nobody else in that room
made his living the way i make mtne.

i was glad becky wasn't there to hear everything that was being said,
even though she could read it all the following day in the -newspapers.
there was no way i could isolate her from it completely, but there were
times when i wanted to.

i also was very surprised at my own reaction to the media coverage of
the trial.for someone who had spent most of his life working in a
concerted effort to generate publicity for his career, i found myself to
be painfully shy about my personal life being spread all over the front
pages of the nashville newspapers.

i'd see the morning paper, the tennessean, before i ever left home each
day, usually picking it up off my doorstep as soon as i woke up.i'd read
the stories about the trial in private and take time to form whatever
opinions i might have while i was shaving, taking a shower, and getting
dressed.that wasn't so bad.but the afternoon paper was a completely
different matter.

the first editions of the nashville banner usually roll off the presses
in late morning, and by noon or shortly thereafter they are being hawked
by vendors on every street corner in downtown - -.nashville.court would
recess for lunch about that time each day, and i'd walk with my
attorneys to a nearby restaurant to eat.there were several days when
we'd pass vendors holding up the front page

-of the paper for passersby to see, and they'd be yelling, anderson
trial continues ...Read all about it, or doctors Say becky

anderson not to Recover, or something to that effect.i'd keep walking
and try to pretend i was invisible.

in the evenings when i'd go to the market to pick up a loaf of bread or
a tube of toothpaste, i'd pass by the newspaper racks and

there it would all be again, the stories invariably shining from the top
half of page one.becky's picture, our picture, my name, her

name.why couldn't it all just go away?

for some reason, the whole time the trial was going on, i never felt
like it was really happening to me.l could see, hear, feel

everything around me, but it was almost like i was outside of my own
body hovering over the courtroom watching everything that

was going on.

and all the time the trial was unfolding i had this gnawing going on
down deep in the pit of my stomach.it was apprehen sion.it was
excitement.it was fear.and it wouldn't go away.it was a cross between
the butterflies i had felt the first night i ever

-sang at the grand ole opry and the stark terror i'd known one cold
december day in nineteen 76 when i had been a passenger in a small - private
 airplane flying from nashville to columbus, ohio, and the
plane's electrical system had gone out.

i had just purchased the shell of a new Silver eagle bus, and custom
coach corporation of columbus was doing the interior

-, conversion.they had been calling me for weeks to come up and select
the furnishings for the staterooms, fabrics for the curtains, carpets
for the floor, and the like.

Since there was no direct commercial flight, my road manager, woody
woodard, located an twin-engine plane (i don't trust any plane with less
than two engines!) that was available from the
gallatin flying Service near nashville, and woody, my bus driver, james
price, and becky and i, along with the hired pilot, took off early on a
cloudy, wintry morning.

about an hour into the trip, i began to feel cold.ask him to turn the
heat up a bit, woody, i leaned forward and said to my

friend in the copilot's seat.it's kinda chilly back here.

he can't, woody replied.the electrical system has just gone out.

i heard what he said, but the impact of his words didn't hit me. not for
a couple of more minutes.i knew we didn't have any heat, but i could
live without that.l had no idea, however, that we also had no radio
contact with the ground, no operating gauges to tell us how much fuel we
had on board, and no electronic way to lower the landing gear.we were
literally flying between cincinnati and columbus on a wing and a prayer!

in a minute the pilot turned around and asked james, who was sitting
alone in the rear of the plane, to hand him some thick books that were
stashed behind the back seat.james dug them out, passed them up to me,
and i handed them to the pilot.the full meaning of the predicament we
were in dawned on me when the pilot, cruising along at ten or twelve
thousand feet and approaching the outskirts of columbus, starting
looking up instructions on how to land the plane with no landing gear.
the books were the plane's operation manuals.

the pilot, a grizzled marine combat veteran, decided against trying to
land at our original destination, the busy, heavily commercial port of
columbus airport.instead, he opted for a smaller, less crowded field on
the outskirts of town.he fiddled with the radio and tried to establish
some kind of contact with the tower, but the radio was totally dead.he
chose his only other alternative.

he lowered our altitude, came down over the runway of the little field
no more than a few hundred feet above the ground and directly in front
of the control tower, and dipped the right wing of the plane a couple of
times.i noticed as he did so he was looking intently out the right
window toward the tower.

in a minute someone in the tower flashed a bright red light up at us . .
.on and off...on and off...and the pilot shook his head. he circled
around the field, came back over the runway another time, and repeated
the wing-dipping maneuver.again we were greeted with a flashing light of
red.

the pilot then pulled back the stick, and the little plane began to gain
altitude again.

what are we doing?i asked nervously.all this time i had been sitting
behind woody, quietly holding becky's hand and try ing not to let either
one of us think too much about what was going on.

-we've got to try to burn off some fuel, the pilot answered.

how much do we have?i asked.

i don't know, ' came the answer.the gauges are out.but we - - don't want
to have a drop more than we'll need when we

-we're going to land?

we can't stay up here forever, he said.the red light back --there meant
our landing gear definitely is not down.i had hoped

maybe it was, but if it had been down the tower would have flashed us in
green.we may have to come in on our belly.if so, we

don't want a lot of fuel sloshing around in the tanks.we could go up in
flames.

what do you mean we may be on our belly?is there any other alternative?

well, according to this manual there's a hand-crank right over there
somewhere, he said, pointing toward woody's seat.if our

copilot here can turn that crank exactly seventy-two times, the gear is
supposed to come down.think you can do it?he asked.

woody nodded, flipped back a small cover, located the crank, i-and began
to turn.

when woody reached the seventy-second turn, he nodded toward the pilot
and the veteran flier banked the plane and headed

for the airfield.again he buzzed the tower, hoping as we all were to see
the green light flashing.but to our horror it came back red.

he pulled back on the yoke, and we headed up again.i figure we've got
enough fuel for you to crank that thing one more time another
seventy-two turns-then we've got to go whether our wheels are down or
not, he said.woody started turning the

handle again.

by the time he reached the seventy-second turn, the pilot was already
lining up the plane with the end of the runway.ok, folks, he said to us
all, this is it.Seat belts good and tight.

everybody lean forward, heads down between your knees.cross your arms
over your chest and hold on tight.if there are any

pillows back there, put them between your body and the seat in front of
you.i'll put her down as easy as i can, but you may get

tossed around a bit.as soon as we hit the ground and you feel us coming
to a stop, get out and run as fast as you can.even if we make the
landing, there's always the chance of a fire.

becky and i found a couple of small pillows and braced them against the
seats in front of us.i could see the runway in the distance growing
larger and larger, closer and closet and then i saw the fire trucks. and
the ambulances.they were moving out from their stations and lining up
along the runway.and for the very first time i became awfully, awfully
scared.

i took becky's hand and said, well, at least we're together, and she
smiled back at me and nodded.i could feel the plane rapidly losing
altitude, could feel the pilot pulling back, pulling back, trying to
slow our speed to the bare minimum he needed to keep us flying.

Suddenly, of all things, i thought of my mother.they say your life
sometimes flashes before your eyes when you think you're looking death
in the face, but mine didn't.i just thought about mama. i could see her
standing in her kitcnen, leaning over the sink, washing dishes and
singing an old hymn.i had seen her just like that so many times.this is
going to kill her, i remember thinking to myself oh, god, this will be
so hard for her to take. please watch over mama ...and please let us
make it!and i closed my eyes and got ready to hit the ground.

a hundred or so feet above the runway, the pilot cut the engines
completely, and we glided the rest of the way in with no power at all. l
could feel the ground racing beneath us, i knew l was going to feel the
jar of heavy metal scraping across the top of hard concrete at any
minute.a plane skidding sideways out of control sparks flying everywhere
...notsy, ugly.how quickly could the fire trucks and ambulances get to
us?how were we going to get out if the doors jammed?i waited.

i guess it just wasn't our time.Somehow the landing gear had come down,
and we touched the runway riding the softest, most beautiful rubber
tires i had ever felt beneath me.it was like bouncing on an air
mattress.the last seventy- two cranks had evidently done the trick.

you have never seen five people get out of an airplane so fast in your
life.we hugged and squeezed each other like we were at our ten-year
high-school reunion.and i doubt there was one among us who didn't close
his eyes and say a soft, silent prayet

and now here i was sitting in the courtroom feeling the same
--uncertainty i had felt on that little airplane all over again, that

same twinge of anxiety.i knew that just as we had been close to running
out of fuel on the plane, just as we had been forced to

icome in for a landing whether the landing gear had been in place or
not, each passing day in that room meant we were much closer

to running out of doctors to testify, running out of policemen,
dentists, and pictures to present to the jury.i knew that any minute now
they were going to call becky's name, and no matter

what condition she might be in, she was going to have to come into that
courtroom, ready or not, and get up on that witness stand

*1in front of those twelve jurors, in front of the press, in front of a
battery of antagonistic lawyers representing the other side, in front

of god and everybody, and, landing gear up or landing gear down, she was
going to have to testify.

So was i. -i it happened on the second tuesday of the trial, the seventh
day i'd spent in the courthouse.becky was called to the witness stand
first thing that morning, and l was called as soon as she stepped
down.it wasn't anything either of us said or did while we were
testifying, but rather something that took place toward the back of the
courtroom, off the stand, out of sight and out of earshot of the jury,
that ultimately came close to turning the whole trial upside down.it was
stupid on my part, and it could have easily caused us to lose everything
we had been working so hard to gain.

i knew from slightly before the time court recessed monday afternoon
that tuesday would be the day.there was nothing left for anybody else to
add to all that had been said.becky and i had to put it in our own words
now.i didn't sleep a lot monday night.

no matter how tough it was going to be on me, i knew it would be twice
as tough for becky, and i tried from the moment we got up tuesday
morning to let her know she could lean on me and count on me for all the
support and help i might possibly be able to give het i got up early,
got dressed, saw to it that jamey was dressed and had some breakfast,
drove him to school, then drove back by the condo to pick up becky.as we
locked the front door and walked down the sidewalk to our car, i could
tell she was nervous and apprehensive, yet i noticed a certain childlike
quality about her that made me want to stand up next to her, wrap my
arms around her, and dare the world to mistreat her in any way. my god,
i thought, after all she's been through and now she has to go through
this.but i never said that to her.instead my message was, hey, when this
is over, it will all be ovet it'll all be behind us. this, baby, is the
final chapter we've made it this far, what's one more day?' i squeezed
her tight, and we drove all the way into town holding hands.

i parked the car by a meter in front of the courthouse so becky wouldn't
have very far to walk.i helped her ease up the long walkway and the
three tiers of wide marble steps leading to the front door of the
imposing structure, then in through the lobby - i an over to the brass
doors of the elevators.a few people looked our way as we walked by, but
there was no barrage of -reporters or photographers waiting to greet us,
and i was glad.my joy, however, was short-lived.as soon as the elevator
doors opened on the fifth floor, the cameras started clicking. the press
was there waiting for us en masse.

word had gotten out that both of us were scheduled to testify that
morning, and reporters who hadn't been all that interested in what the
doctors and the lawyers and the policemen and the psychologists had had
to say earlier in the trial wanted to hear everything becky and i were
going to tell the jury now.

i had deliberately stalled until it was almost nine o'clock on the dot
before we entered the courthouse and rode up to the fifth floot iithe
judge had sent word that we could stay out in the courthouse corridor
and wait until becky, who would be testifying first, was called to take
the stand.i later wondered if we might not have been better off waiting
inside the courtroom because people were everywhere and most of them
were staring directly at us.photograi:phers were lined up at the
courtroom door, cameras poised, ready to strike.i guided becky to a spot
against the wall and told her to --stand there.then l positioned myself
strategically between her and the battery of cameramen hoping that if
they snapped their shutters all they'd get would be a big picture of my
backside. that'd serve em right, i joked, trying to ease becky's
tenston.i knew they were only doing their job, but as i told one who had
been a longtime friend of mine, i'd appreciate it if you'd please just
allow her a little bit of dignity.he understood, put his camera away,
and walked downstairs.

when the bailiff came to the door and called becky to take the witness
stand, she clasped my arm tightly and the two of us began a slow,
deliberate walk into the room where she had never been before but where
her name had been spoken so many times over the past seven days.it
couldn't have been more than a hundred feet from where we'd been
standing together out in the hallway up to the small enclosed cubicle
facing the jury box, but it seemed like a mile.every pair of eyes in
nashville seemed to be focused on us-the hillbilly singer and his
brain-injured wife.

becky was wearing a plain gray dress and gray low-heeled shoes (she had
not yet learned to balance herself in the high heels).She walked slowly
and uncertainly.i guided her up the two or three steps leading into the
witness stand, then stepped back as she put her left hand on the bible,
raised her right hand and repeated, i swear that the testimony i give in
this case will be the truth, so help me god.i took my seat some thirty
feet off to her right at the counsel table with our attorneys.She looks
so pale, i thought as i anxiously stared at this woman who had for so
many years been such a big part of my life.pale and disoriented.almost
like -a child who has been left alone in a strange room with nobody she
knows.She looks frightened, confused. god, this has got to be so tough
on het please stay close to her and grant her your peace!

becky never once lost her composure.our attorneys asked her to tell the
jury in her own words about the accident.She, of course, had nothing to
tell because the entire terrifying episode had been erased from her
memory.then they questioned her about her current condition.

do you suffer frequent headaches?

yes, sometimes very severe headaches.

do you have much energy?can you tell us what a typical day in your life
is like?how would you describe the way you feel most of the time? and on
and on and on.

becky answered each question softly, thoughtfully.i can't do the things
i used to do, she said.i can't be the person i used to be.So much
feeling is gone.i thank god i've still got some mental ability. i can
talk, i can think ...but physically ...it's so hard to get through each
day.l feel like i'm just getting by.

Several times when she tried to give the attorneys as much information
as she could, she began to ramble.at that point she'd catch herself and
ask haltingly, did i answer the question you asked?they assured her that
she had.

our attorneys were very patient with becky, asking their questions
patiently, quietly.they guided her gently from one topic to

the next without abrupt changes in her thought processes, and she
:1handled herself well.but when the defense attorneys took over and

began their cross-examination, it became a different story.

Ronco irrigation, whose headquarters was in atlanta, had hired 1

a short, dark-haired, nattily dressed, tenacious little nashville
ùattorney named gary blackburn to serve as chief counsel for the

ùdefense.his job was to do one thing ...save Ronco as much money as
possible.he was not hired to tread gently around me or

becky nor to assuage our feelings in any way.Ronco knew they'd have to
pay us some money; they just didn't want to pay any more

-than they had to.

in his opening remarks to the jury the first morning of the trial,
blackburn sketched a big red dollar sign on a sheet of paper in full
view of everyone in the room.this is what this trial is all about,
iladies and gentlemen, he said, and don't you forget it.it's not about
emotions, it's not about injuries, it's not about feelings.it's

-about money!throughout the entire trial he badgered, he prod ded, he
antagonized, he provoked, he taunted, he never let up.

i-even though i thought he might go a bit easier on becky when she -took
the stand than he had gone on some of the other witnesses, i

was mistaken.he lowered his voice a bit, but tactically he went after
her with both barrels blazing.

he tried to confuse her, tried to play to her weaknesses, in hopes of
catching her with inconsistencies in her testimony.he

questioned her about her claim that her eyesight had suffered as a
result of the accident.She told him she definitely did not see as

well as she had prior to the collision.he moved swiftly to another
subject, her interior decorating business, and he questioned her

rapidly in an effort to disprove our claim that her illness had affected
her business.becky answered that she knew little about

the company's finances even before the accident and said, you can ask my
accountant about that.undaunted, blackburn reached

into his stack of papers and handed her a copy of some receipts.

do you agree with what's written here, missis anderson?he asked.

i don't know, becky answered calmly and honestly.i can't see to read i i
i've been told by others in the legal profession that blackburn is a
good lawyer and i don't doubt that he is, but his cocky, almost
condescending attitude toward becky and me and our case in general
rubbed me the wrong way at the time.my emotions weren t very far beneath
the surface of my skin to begin with, and when in the course of the
proceedings blackburn sarcastically accused becky of faking and
exaggerating her injuries and then accused me of putting on a show when
i took the stand, it was almost more than i could beat
one minute he was saying becky wasn't badly hurt because a couple of
weeks prior to the trial someone connected with his office had seen us
taking jamey to an air show, in nearby Smyrna, and then the next minute
he was suggesting things like, missis anderson, maybe if you'd quit
sitting around all the time and get out and try to enjoy life again
you'd feel betteti never did quite figure out his logic on that one. and
he repeatedly made a point of saying that he bet becky would start to
feel a whole lot better just as soon as the trial was over.

he made fun of the fact that during the thanksgiving season following
the accident i had sent turkeys to the homes of all the rescue and
hospital personnel who'd saved my wife's life, simply as a small gesture
of thanking them for all they had done.he tried to imply to the jury
that my hiring of old college classmates mister booth and mister Speight
as my attorneys and the later hiring of another classmate and fraternity
brother of theirs, dt tom burns, as becky's psychologist, was some kind
of immoral conspiracy on all our parts.dean's answer to that was, who
are you supposed to call on in times of trouble, strangers?no, you call
on your friends.

blackburn tried repeatedly to put becky on the defensive while she was
testifying.he sometimes spoke to her in a harsher tone of voice than i
thought was necessary, and he appeared almost to be attacking her at
times.when he did, i'd cut my eyes toward the jury to see if they showed
any reaction to his tactics.their faces were stone.their eyes never
wavered.i had no idea what was going on in their minds.

blackburn almost pushed becky a little too far at one point in her
testimony.dean had just asked becky if she had been to see an eye doctor
since the accident.before she could answer, blackburn stood and objected
to the question, saying he didn't want becky telling the court what the
doctor might or might not have said. before judge gayden could rule on
the objection, however, becky turned to blackburn from her seat on the
witness stand and snapped, i had no intention of saying what the eye
doctor said to me!

it was like her little policeman had stepped out of the room for a
minute and before he could get back, becky had pounced on blackburn in a
way that no one without a head injury would have ever dared attempt.i
had to suppress a giggle because i had been on the receiving end of that
same type of outburst myself several times over the past two years.i was
glad to see blackburn have to sir there and take it.besides, if he had
doubted the severity or the depth of becky's injury before, he had to
know based on becky's reaction to his simple objection that she wasn't
faking a thing.

i don't know how long she had been on the witness stand when it
happened, but i assume it had been every bit of an hour, maybe longet
She had said about all there was ro say, answered all the questions that
could have possibly been asked of her, and there was only one thing left
to do.missis anderson, one of the attorneys said softly, would you
please step down from where you are and walk over to the jury box and
show the members of this jury your scars?

becky never hesitated.not once did she even question this demeaning
request made at the expense of her dignity and her -pride.much like a
sheep being led to slaughter, she did as she was -told.a court officer
came and helped her down from the witness stand and guided her across
the floor to a spot only a few inches away from the six jurors seared in
the front row.

i knew she had to do it.i knew the jurors had to see what they'd heard
so much about.but i couldn't stand it.my heart kicked into overdrive,
and every drop of blood in my body seemed to be racing to my brain.it
took every ounce of restraint i could muster just to stay in my chait i
wanted to scream.

- i but i could only sit helplessly and watch as the jurors on the end
of the front row and the six jurors on the back row all stood and leaned
forward and peered into the face of the lady i love.following
instructions, becky reached her hand up to her forehead, pulled back her
hair, and twelve strangers gazed down into her eyes, across her face,
and into her scalp, seeing for themselves the results of the grinding
automobile crash that nearly cost her her life and left her with
permanent reminders of an eighteen-year-old kid who had been out having
fun celebrating his birthday.

i have never in my life had anger and hurt and bitterness sweep over me
as fast as it did at that moment.and i hope i never do again.i totally
lost control and started to shake and then to cry. they've turned this
into a sideshow, i said to nobody in particular, but loud enough for all
those seated nearby to hear me.this is like a circus . ..hey, everybody,
come look at the lady with the scars all over her head!it's a dad-blamed
circus!i was livid.

then i spotted todd brasher out of the corner of my eye.there wasn't one
ounce of emotion showing on his face.he was looking straight ahead, his
steely eyes fixed on the back of my wife's head while twelve strangers
gawked at the results of his irresponsible behaviot he was the one, the
only one, responsible for what was taking place.he was responsible for
every tear i'd cried for the past two years, for every painful moment my
wife had spent fighting for her life, for every piercing headache that
had interrupted her sleep in the middle of the night, for every question
my six-year-old son had asked, for every anxious moment he'd spent
wondering where his mother was and when, if ever, she was coming
home.this one man had caused it all.now he was just sitting there
staring.not hurting, not crying, not remorseful, just staring.i looked
at him until my eyes couldn't take it anymore. and in a voice as cold
and as penetrating as i could summon, i said the first words i had ever
spoken to him: i hope you're happy, you son-of-a-bitch!

he never blinked an eye.i knew he'd heard me, but he never moved a
muscle.he just kept on staring straight ahead.

i knew my lawyers had heard me.i knew his lawyers had heard me.for the
first few seconds i didn't even care.the jury hadn't heard me. they'd
been too busy gawking and doing their job.but they would hear about
it.before it was over, everybody in the whole city of nashville would
hear about it.

i had to forget my outburst and calm down, and i had to do it quickly
because as soon as becky was through showing the jury her scars, her
part of the testimony was over.She and her friend donna whitcomb left
the courthouse immediately, and donna drove her home.i wished i could
have left with them, but it was my turn to testify.

by the time i reached the witness box, i had succeeded in putting my
anger at brasher aside.l took a deep breath of air, sipped a drink of
cool water, stepped up onto the stand, and swore that i, too, would tell
nothing but the truth, so help me god.

Richard Speight began the questioning and moved slowly and
deliberately.he asked me to recount for the jury what l had done

and where i had been the day of the accident.he asked me how i was
notified, how i got back i nashville, how i broke the news to

my son.and he asked me to tell in my own words how my life had been so
completely rearranged during the two ensuing years.i

didn't really say anything new, nothing different from what i'd told
many people during the time that had elapsed, but somehow tell ing it
there in that courtroom, under oath, before god and every body, it took
on a whole new meaning.emotional person that i

am, there were several times during my testimony when i lost my
composure.

i have always been a person who feels things very deeply.when i feel
good, i always say that i feel better than anybody.likewise, when i feel
bad, i'm sure i feel worse than anybody.or that's what i've told myself
over the years.like many other things in my life, my emotions have swung
back and forth between being a blessing and a curse.

i don't doubt at all that my being a sensitive, demonstrative -person
has contributed to my ability to write songs.it's probably

-aided me in communicating my feelings to an audience as a per former as
well.but breaking down and shedding tears in public

embarrasses me.before i took the stand, i prayed silently for it not to
happen.but it happened anyway.the last thing i wanted to do

was get up in that courtroom and cry.but i simply could not control it.

i told the jury everything that had happened from my view point, the
changes this accident had wrought in my life and in my

and becky's married life.becky has always been my best friend, i said,
but, to be honest, she's not the same lady i married.god, it hurt to say
that, but it was the truth.

i felt like i was on the witness stand for a week, but in reality it
wasn't much longer than an hour.i was afraid the whole time that

as soon as i finished answering mister Speight's questions the defense
attorneys were going to come at me tooth and nail, but when -i iRichard
stepped aside, gary blackburn simply stood and said, no further
questions, your honor.judge gayden told me i could go back to my seat. i
couldn't believe they were going to let me off that easy, that they
weren't going to try and trick me, trap me, or make me out a liar for
everything i'd just said, but i wasn't about to give blackburn a chance
to change his mind.i got down and walked back to my chair in a hurry.

blackburn then rose and turned his attention to the jury.he paused for
emphasis then softly said, ladies and gentlemen, what you have just seen
is a professional entertainer at work.make no mistake about it, bill
anderson is a professional entertainet he's tried to put on a show for
you throughout this whole trial.he came in here with a script.i urge you
not to be swept away in a wave of emotion.there's not a country music
singer in this city worth his salt who can't bring a tear to your
eye.that's their business.

i listened to everything he was saying, and i thought, mt blackburn, i
wish it had been that easy.you don't know how badly i wish it had been a
script.i wish it had only been a show.i wish i'd made the whole thing
up.the unfortunate part is that it's all real.this whole thing is too,
too real.

they called todd brasher to the stand on wednesday morning following my
testimony and my outburst in the rear of the courtroom the previous day.
i knew i was in for it.

his attorney was a flashy, constantly smiling yet almost sneering man
with wavy hair and a shiny suit that made him look like he would have
been more at home selling used cars down on broadway than he was
practicing in a court of law.his name was jere lee. every time i heard
it, i kept wanting to add lewis.he wasted no time in going for my
jugular.

mister brasher, did bill anderson say anything to you yesterday while
his wife, becky, was before the jury?he asked.

yes sir, he did, brasher answered.

would you tell the jury what mister anderson said?lee continued.

he said, i hope you're happy, you son-of-a-bitch, ' brasher replied.

i could hear the jury gasp from nearly forty feet across the courtroom.
i could hear feet shuffle in the gallery, people beginning to whisper. i
could see the shocked expression on the face of the elderly lady in the
front row of the jury box.i could almost
hear the pencils racing across the reporters' notepads as they hur
riedly made copy of my profane expletive.i could see our whole
case slowly sinking down the drain.

i'd have given anything if i could have reached out into the air and
pulled back what i had said.but i couldn't.my dirty laundry

was hanging out for everyone to see.

it made the front pages of both nashville newspapers; people i.came up
to me everywhere i went and commented on it.i'd have

said a whole lot worse than that if it'd been my wife was a comment i
heard more than once, and, i don't blame you, bill.it

just proves you're human was anothe but i wasn't proud.i was
embarrassed, i was ashamed, and i was sorry i had said it.unfor
tunately, vocal chords don't come equipped with erasers.

the attorneys for both sides presented their closing arguments and made
their final pleas to the jurors the first thing thursday

morning, the same day the papers carried their stories about my - explosion
.it had been eleven calendar days since the trial began.

everybody was ready for it to be over.

but i was nervous.it had all come down to this: the judge explaining to
the jurors their options, their duties, and their

responsibilities, and then twelve people going off together into a
-little room to try and sort out all they had seen and all they had

been told.what was truth and what was fiction?what was as it had been
represented and what had been exaggerated?who were

the good guys and who were the bad guys?what would i be able to tell my
son when he was old enough to understand?Son, the - i

system in this country works.when people do something wrong, they are
punished for it.or would it be, Son, if you're smart --enough to hire a
clever lawyer, he can get you out of anything?i
was wound tighter than a rusty e-string on a warped-neck Stella guitar!

as the jurors filed out of the courtroom to talk it over and try to come
to some kind of a decision, i remembered all the stories i'd

heard over the years about juries not being able to decide on a
-verdict , about them staying sequestered in hotel rooms for days at a
time, about lengthy cases ending in mistrials and everybody having
to come back and go through it all again.and even the old gag about
there being no way a jury made up of twelve men and women could stay in
a hotel room overnight and come back the next day and say innocent!

our case wasn't a matter of life and death or even a matter of whether
i'd go to jail or be set free, but to me and my family what those jurors
would come back into that room and say was doggone important.their
decision would be the last soliloquy in the final act of this entire
two-year drama, and i wanted it to be right.and i darn sure didn't want
to have to return and go through it all again.

i stayed close to my attorneys in the courthouse corridors for the first
hour or so that the jury was in deliberation.nobody talked much, nobody
dared speculate on the outcome.everybody seemed drained, lost in
personal thoughts, not wanting to rewind the tape and study the replay
until the man was out in the bottom of the ninth.there would be plenty
of time for that, like the rest of our lives.

as the clock began to close in on noon, it became obvious that there
would be no quick verdict.dean, Richard, and i decided perhaps we should
leave, get some fresh air away from the courth3use and perhaps find
ourselves a bite to eat.i didn't have much of an appetite, but i figured
sitting in a restaurant staring into a coffee cup might at least help
pass the time.

we went to a small restaurant nearby and sat picking at our food until
nearly two o'clock when we decided it might be a good idea to walk back
over to the courthouse.dean looked at his watch when we got there and
said he thought it might be best for him to start driving back to
atlanta.he wasn't sure that the jury wouldn't be out several more hours,
or even possibly overnight, and he felt he needed to head for home.i
shook his hand, thanked him for all he'd meant to me personally and
professionally during this most trying time, and promised him i'd call
him at home that night.in less than an hour i was on the phone trying to
intercept him somewhere along the highway.

at almost the instant dean left and Richard and i turned to walk back
inside the building, someone ran up to us and said they had heard that
the jury was ready.it was too late for us to try and catch dean, but at
least after nearly five hours of deliberation the jury had reached a
decision.

when i stepped off the elevator on the fifth floor and walked back into
the courtroom, i was convinced i had no emotions left.i thought for sure
that eleven days of living suspended in midair had taken all my feelings
away.but i was wrong.when the ten ladies and two gentlemen of the jury
filed back into the room, my heart started pounding louder than any base
drum i've ever heard.

who is the foreperson of this jury?judge gayden asked when everyone had
been seated.

i am, your honor, a lady on the front row stood and announced.my name is
jessica mickles.

up to that point none of us had known whom the jury had elected as their
foreperson, but we knew their choice could be significant.when miss
mickles stood, my first reaction was that her selection might just
possibly be in our favot i had learned during the jury selection process
that she was a nurse, and i figured if anybody on that jury could
understand becky's plight it might well be het

yet i knew there was only so much the jury could have seen with -itheir
eyes.becky had walked into the courtroom under her own -power, she had
answered all the lawyers' questions, and to most people she probably
looked about as normal as the next person. her bruises didn't show
anymore, her stitches were out, she could walk and talk, feed and dress
herself, and to the casual observer nothing appeared to be wrong.but had
the jury been able to see beneath the surface?had they been able to tell
from what they saw and what they heard that all was not normal? that
becky's brain had been dealt a permanent, life-altering blow?that no
matter how much better she appeared to be or how much better -she might
someday become, following a closed head injury a person is never the
same again?had they been able to see becky with their hearts as well as
their eyes?miss mickles stood in the jury box with the answer on a piece
of paper in her hand.

have you reached a verdict?the judge asked.

we have, your honor, she replied.i held my breath as she unfolded the
paper and began to read.

we, the jury, award to missis anderson the sum of one million dollars,
she announced, and to mister anderson we give $235000.it was less than
we had asked for, but it was an award much larger than any of us had
dared to hope fot the room came alive with a gigantic buzz, and judge
gayden had to rap his gavel several times against the wooden desk in
front of him in order to quieten the crowd.as soon as things calmed down
to a point where he could be heard, he thanked everyone for their help
and their cooperation, and he spoke a few final words to the jury,
thanking them again and telling them in essence that they could now feel
free to discuss the case with anyone who might ask them about it but
that they most definitely had a right not to talk about it at all if
they so chose.the judge then gathered up his papers, turned and exited
the room through a rear door to his left. court was dismissed.

i couldn't believe it was ovet as simply as that, it was all ovet yet it
wasn't ovet it wasn't over at all.in a lot of ways, it won't ever be
ovet the minute l knew for sure that all the official business had been
completed, i stood and grabbed Richard Speight and gave him a big bear
hug.his closing arguments to the jury that morning had been brilliant,
and i told him so.in my excitement, i squeezed him so hard he had to beg
me to stop.i was about to squash his glasses.

i hugged his assistant, Rose cantrell, and then my daughter, terri, who
came rushing up from her seat in the gallery.She grabbed me just as a
photographer from the tennessean aimed his camera through the door in my
direction.a picture of the two of us locked in a happy but tearful
embrace was on the front page of friday morning's papet i wanted to get
out of the courthouse as soon as possible, but there were a couple of
other things i felt i needed to do before assembling my belongings and
leaving.first, i wanted to talk to todd brashet

i asked Richard to ask jere lee if i might speak with his client. lee
said it would be all right and returned with brasher at his side.

i stood no more than a foot away and looked brasher directly in the eye.
i want to apologize to you for what i said yesterday, i offered, and l
stuck out my hand.brasher looked at me for a moment without knowing
quite what to say.i don't know what he was expecting me to say, but i
don't think he expected me to apologize.he stood there awkwardly, then
extended his arm and we shook hands.

i hope you were telling the truth on the stand yesterday when you told
the jury you hadn't had a drink since the night of the accident, i said.

i was, he answered.i haven't had a drink, and i don't intend ever to
take another one.i haven't driven a car eithe he paused again, as if he
wanted to say something more but wasn't quite sure how.he looked at the
floor, and he shuffled his feet.then he looked back up at me.i'm very
sorry for what i did, he said softly.

i.i stood silently and looked into his eyes.his face was more
clean-shaven now than it had been the first time i'd seen him nearly two
years ago at the initial hearing.he was dressed in a sport coat and tie
and wore a gold wedding band on the third finger of his left hand. he
didn't look like a criminal at all.he could have been a guitar picker in
somebody's country hand.he could have been a disc jockey playing my
records at a small radio -station somewhere.he could have been my son.

i didn't hate him.i never had hated him.i had just been frustrated and
hurt beyond belief by what he had done.i really hope you're telling me
the truth, i told him again.he didn't have to say a word. the look in
his eyes told me that he was.

i stepped to the rear of the courtroom and asked the bailiff if i use
the phone.he led me into a small office, closed the

i dialed our number at the condo.becky answered on the first ring,
anxious to know what had taken place.i told her quietly and calmly what
the verdict had been and that i was on my way home. we both confessed
later to having had strangely mixed emotions over the outcome. we were
happy, we were pleased, but to think of celebrating the verdict like it
was some kind of football victory seemed totally out of the quesrion.we
stayed home that night and had a quiet dinner alone.

i hung up the phone and walked back into the courtroom. except for
terri, the room was empty.i asked her if she'd mind standing in front of
the door and blocking the view of anyone out in the hall who might be
trying to see inside.

as she made her way to the door, i stood alone in the middle of the
quiet, imposing room ...just me and my thoughts.it seemed like the
nightmare had been going on forever, like there had never been a time in
my life when l hadn't been consumed by some type of problem, some kind
of crisis.yet it had been only two years. almost two years ago to that
very day, in fact, when i had been standing in the emergency room at
general hospital praying that becky might live.earlier that afternoon,
as the members of the jury had filed back into the courtroom, prepared
to announce their decision, i had prayed again.not for victory, not for
money, but for the strength to be man enough to accept the jury's
decision whatever it might turn out to be.all of my prayers had been
answered.i dropped to my knees there on the floor of that deserted
courtroom and thanked god.

the judge would, in a few days, cut the amount of the award the jury had
given us by one-third, saying it was outside the limits of
reasonableness.it had been the largest award ever given in a case of
this type in the history of davidson county.

the money was important, of course, given becky's need for ongoing
medical treatment and my own stressful financial situa-tion, but far
more important than the money was the fact that becky and i felt
vindicated.a jury of our peers had said, hey, what happened to you folks
was wrong.we know money can't ever make up to you what you've lost and
what you've suffered, but we hurt for you and we hurt with you and this
is the best that we can do.at the same time i felt their verdict was
also going to send a profound statement out into the community, a
strong, angry statement as to how they felt about drunk driving.we
couldn't have asked for anything more.

i finished my brief prayer, stood up and tucked my shirttail in,
straightened my tie, and tried to take on the appearance of a human
being again.i picked up my briefcase and walked as straight and as tall
as i could out through the big double doors and into the hallway. terri
joined me, and we made it as far as the elevators before we came upon a
group of the jurors standing and talking with gary blackburn.

throughout the trial these jurors had been instructed not to speak to me
or any of the other principal players in the case, and we had been
instructed not to speak with them.were we to meet in the hallway during
a recess or on a street downtown during a lunch break, we were each told
to look the other way and to have no communication at all.as far as i
knew, everyone had carried out these orders to the lettet

now the case was over, and the judge had told them the rules didn't
apply anymore.i had been in the same room with these twelve strangers
for nearly two weeks, and somehow they didn't seem like strangers
anymore at all.they seemed almost like friends.they looked at me as i
approached, but nobody said a word.i figured it was up to me to break
the ice.

thank you, l said to nobody in particular but to each of them as
sincerely as i could.thank you for seeing with your hearts the things
you probably weren't able to see with your eyes, and i reached out to
the lady standing the closest to me and hugged het She probably thought
i had lost my mind.

then i began to feel those dad-blamed uncontrollable tears start to well
up in my eyes, but instead of wiping them away this time i turned to
gary blackburn, See, i said, pointing to the little drop of water slowly
beginning to make its way down my cheek, it's not a show, it's for real.
he didn't say a word but reached out his arm -tand shook my hand.

god bless you, he said softly.

that took me as much by surprise as my apology had taken brasher.for a
brief moment i wasn't sure exactly what to say. thank you, i replied.
thank you very much.Somehow i sensed he meant what he said.

i turned and pushed the button for the elevatot it stopped and i got on.
i rode in silence down to the first floor, got off, and turned right.i
walked slowly through the vast marble corridors of the profound
structure, out the front door, down the wide marble steps, and out onto
the sidewalks of the city i love.there were no reporters this time, no
photographers, no newspaper vendors shouting my name.it was almost a
shock to discover that the sun was still shining, the stores still open,
the city buses still running, life still going on.mine had been on hold
for such a long time.

i had about five blocks to walk to the garage where i'd parked my cat
terri walked quietly along with me, allowing me the lux-, ury of talking
when i felt like it and of being quiet when i didn't.i took a deep
breath and thought to myself as i shuffled along, well, it's ovet it's
finally over.you've come through it, and you're still alive.a bit worse
for the wear, perhaps, but still in one piece and alive.you've got your
wife, you've got your family, and they love you.god loves you, too.what
more could you possibly need or want?besides that, tomorrow is less than
twenty-four hours away.

i smiled at the thought.and then easing down the hilly sidewalk of third
avenue, i stopped for just a moment and shut my eyes.

i tried hard to imagine the closing of a door.

the questions i get asked most often today go like this:

(1) what do you think of today's country music?

(2) are you still making records?

(3) where is bill anderson going from here?

i can give you my opinion on the first question.i'll answer the second
one, and i'll tell you right now i don't have the foggiest idea about
the third one.but that's ok.where i'm going isn't nearly as important as
how much fun i'm going to have getting there.

i think a lot of today's country music is pretty doggone good.at least
it's a lot better than some of what was being passed off as country
music a few years ago.

much of what i hear when i listen to country music today is -fresh,
vibrant, and exciting.there has been a return to the more traditional
sound, which i like, and there seems to be a new lessis-better
philosophy within the record-making community.by that i mean the
attitude in the recording studio today seems to be, hey, let's don't
clutter up the records with a lot of unnecessary instruments and voices.
let's just go with the basics.to a large degree, for the first time in a
long time, our industry doesn't seem to be ashamed to call itself
country.

the feeling i get when i look across the broad spectrum of country music
today is that i'm looking at a rainbow-it's got a lot of different
colors.it's everything from the carefully cultivated popcountry sounds
of five former studio musicians calling themselves Restless heart to the
pure mountain soul that was born inside Ricky Skaggs.it's everything
from k.t.oslin looking and sound ing like she's never been in the
country to Reba mcentire and patty loveless looking and sounding like
they never left.in many

respects it's better musicians making better music then any of us ever
made before.

but it's also a whole new breed of young musicians creating and playing
the country music of today.it's a new generation of song writers, record
producers, and, for the most part, record execu tives. what i find
interesting is that so many of these people who are playing the music
and making the decisions in our business
now didn't grow up with country music at all.they weren't listen ing to
buck owens and Ray price and george jones back in the
sixties.their generation grew up on elvis and the beatles, the Rolling
Stones and the beach boys.the melodies they first learned
to pick out on their guitars had more than just three or four chords
that were in most of our songs, and they learned to play them and
play them well.when, in the course of time, they could no longer relate
to the changes in rock n' roll, the heavy metal sounds and
the outlandish lifestyles of the performers, many of these young people
began tuning in to country music.they brought their natu ral influences
with them, though, and before long they were help ing to create and
shape a country music of their very own.

the first time i ever met emmylou harris, i asked her how she described
her music.i couldn't quite figure it out.it sounded as

-country as anything i'd ever heard, but i noticed people outside of the
traditional country music fans seemed to be embracing her

style.it's country music played with a rock attitude, she told me.

i had to think about that awhile before i understood.i know now what she
meant.there is a decided rock attitude in a lot of

country music today.

Some of that, i think, has been good for our industry-the improved
musicianship for one thing, the increased emphasis on

higher quality recording techniques for anothe Some of it, i'm not so
sure.for example, lyrics have never been overly important

in rock n' roll songs, and the lyrics to the many of the country songs
in recent years haven't seemed to ring with the depth of

emotion that they once did.i miss that.i don't mean that we should go
back to singing, i've got tears in my ears from lyin'

on my back in my bed while i cry over you, but country music, unlike
rock n' roll, has always dealt with the honest expression of human
feelings.Sometimes in recent years, however, in an effort to create a
more i i image for country music, i think our songs have tended to shy
away from reality.on the one hand, one of the reasons country music's
popularity has grown so over the past two decades has been the shift in
emphasis from the negative song (you broke my heart, little darlin') to
the -positive songs (forever and ever, amen and you were always on my
mind), but i wonder if maybe somewhere along the way we didn't start
making music designed not to offend the listener rather than music
created to attract the listenet Sort of like a ball team playing a game
and trying not to lose instead of trying to win.our industry was putting
out a lot of records (and radio stations were playing them) that weren t
really saying anything, songs that weren't cutting to the core of the
everyday emotions people feel.a person twisting his radio dial and
coming across a country station, - i perhaps for the first time,
certainly wasn't offended by anything that he was hearing, but was he
touched by it either?many times i don't think he was.the end result was
music i call plastic-easily forgettable pieces, devoid of emotion
capable of reaching beyond -tthe ear and embracing the soul.i like a
pretty, positive love song as much as the next guy, but when a song says
i love you, i want 1it to stir something down inside me.i don't want
just to hear the music, i want to feel it.there for a while it was hard
for me to feel much from the country music a lot of folks were writing
and singing.

i think musical historians may one day say the tide started to turn back
toward country-music-with-feeling the day a talented, young,
good-looking former dishwasher and short-order cook from --becky's
hometown, marshville, north carolina, hung up his apron and picked up
his guitar for good.his real name was Randy traywick, and somewhere back
in time some of his kinfolks were related to some of becky's kinfolks
because becky's mama was a traywick and in a town as small as marshville
everybody is related to everybody else who lives there anyhow.but the
world came to know him as Randy travis.he sang country music-about
wedding bands and forever, about lost love and resurrecting memories-and
he didn't apologize to anybody for doing so. country musics new
generation loved him, the girls thought he was cute and sexy, and so did
the women.the older generation of fans felt that at last somebody was
singing something they could understand.and country music began
developing a new generation called the new traditionalists.

Randy travis's albums started selling in the millions, enough copies to
put him on the best-seller lists right alongside michael jackson, bruce
Springsteen, and the others.but it never turned his head.in fact, the
first time somebody told Randy one of his albums was on the pop charts,
he is supposed to have said in all seriousness, well, get it off of
there!how could you not like somebody who said that?

i'm not sure about all these labels anyhow-modern, traditional, new
traditional.frankly, i have never liked putting labels on music or on
artists.back when i was recording Still and 8 x 10 and 1 love you drops
and they were number one country hits and crossing over onto the pop
charts, people labeled me modern country.yet today if you mention my
name somebody will invariably say, oh, he's traditional country. huh?
Run that by me one more time.i didn't change.who did?

many of the fences and labels that have defined what country music is or
what country music isn't over the years seem to have been torn down now,
and i see that as a direct result of the rock influence.i also think
it's healthy.if tina turner wants to record with Roy acuff, nobody
blinks.if a country record has a musical turnaround with a french horn
playing twin harmony parts with a kazoo, who cares?at the same time,
Randy travis and george Strait and Ricky van Shelton and patty loveless
and highway lot and keith whitley have brought strong country roots and
traditional convictions into the music, and by doing so they have helped
create an homogenization of all the influences that make up today's
country music-rock n' roll, country, bluegrass, and even rhythm and
blues.

i just gave a long answer to a short question, didn't i?the question
was, what do i think of today's country music?the answer is that i think
there are only two kinds of music: good and bad.i like that which is
good, and a lot of country music today, i think, is pretty darn good.i
don't necessarily agree with all the practices within the country music
industry today, but that's another story.as to the music itself, i'm
excited about its present, and i'm encouraged about its future.

pass the cornbread.

yes, i am still making records.as long as i stay active in my show
business career, i hope to be making records.i'm still a long

way, believe it or not, from having written and sung everything i have
down inside me.and what was it Rick nelson sang in gar den party?
Something about if memories were alll sang, i'd rather drive a truck.me
too!

for over twenty-three years i recorded for the same record com pany.it
was called decca Records when i first signed with them, but the name was
changed to mca Records in the early seventies.

my first contract was for five years, from nineteen 58 to nineteen 63.
it expired just about the time Still was the number one record in the
country, and

that helped me negotiate another five-year deal that ran until nineteen
68.i signed a third five-year contract then, only to have bobby brenner
go in in nineteen 72 and renegotiate it into a ten-year agree i
ment.that contract, my last with mca, was one of the first
million-dollar recording contracts in country music history.

i don't know for sure how many records i have made, but over the years
decca and mca combined have released somewhere in t the neighborhood of
eighty singles and close to fifty albums, -.including both the original
releases and the later repackaging.

Remember, back when i first started recording, an artist didn't go into
the studio and record a complete album project then release

singles from that album like they do today.back then you recorded
strictly for singles.then if several singles became hits, the record

company would package the hits together with some filler material they
figured wasn't strong enough to be released as singles, add a

few recognizable titles that had been hits for other artists, and call
it an album.an album was not the staple of an artist's career then

-that it is now.it was more like a reward for a job well done.

-when my contract was up with mca at the end of nineteen 82 i decided to
go back home to atlanta and team up with a man i had

idolized as a boy, the legendary bill lowery.Since then i have recorded
one album and several singles for his young but successful

Southern tracks label.

bill lowery has been renowned in music business circles for over thirty
years as a music publisher, recording executive, artists' manager, and
former president of the national academy of Recording arts and Sciences,
but he was a country disc jockey during my growing up years, and i
thought he hung the moon.

he didn't live very far from me when i was a teenager, and many's the
Saturday morning when i'd go over to a little store called hodges
appliance company in east atlanta and watch him and his countrified
alter-ego, uncle ebb brown, play country records on the radio, read
commercials, and sell washing machines.then when he'd get off the air
around noon, i'd follow him over to the basement of his house and help
him in any way i could with a small record label called Stats, inc.,
which he was trying to get off the ground.i'd pack up records to mail to
other disc jockeys around the country, i'd stack boxes up in the corner,
i'd run errands.i didn't care.i just wanted to be around the music
business and around bill lowery.

in the mid-fifties, bill scored his first big hit with a song called
young love, which he published and released originally on his Stars,
inc., label with a young atlanta singer-writer named Ric cartey. Sonny
james covered the record, sold several million copies, and the
successful lowery publishing empire was underway. a short time later
bill would publish gene vincent's classic be bop a lula, and he came
within a whisker, or should i say a whisper, of publishing my city
lights.

after i'd written the song on the roof of the little hotel in commerce,
the first place i thought to take it, naturally, was to my friend bill
lowery.he liked the song, but he had the same reservations about it that
we all had back in the late fifties: it was too country.he tried
producing a session with me on the song anyhow, but for some reason it
just didn't come off.before we could get back into the studio and try it
again, bob tanner at tnt picked up both the song and a later recording
i'd made of it in an unborn tv studio in athens and the rest, as they
say, is history.

we laughed about all that had happened over the years when bill and i
finally did get together in nineteen 82 about how i was virtually the
only artist from georgia who had ever been successful in -nashville
without having first served my apprenticeship with him in atlanta, like
jerry Reed, Ray Stevens and countless others had -done, and he welcomed
me back home with open armiss

i cut my initial album, Southern fried, on Southern tracks in a
recording studio built inside an old school house, not far from the
first apartment my family had lived in when we moved from South carolina
to georgia.the title cut from the album was almost a nationwide smash,
rising into the thirties on the national charts.it was number tin many
areas across the South, and a lot of people -north of the mason-dixon
line even told me how much they loved -the sound of the record and the
beat of the song.but, unfortu-nately, they had a little trouble relating
to lyrics that exclaimed, how bout them dawgs!and Roll tide! in most
areas outside -of dixie.

i still record for Southern tracks although i've never actually signed a
recording contract.i would have signed one, but bill never asked me to.i
find a certain warmth in knowing there are still special people in the
world like bill lowery and bobby brenner with whom i can do business
and, in fact, to whom i can trust my entire career on just a handshake.

-bill even let me step outside his company and record an album for a new
label called Swanee Records after i had joined Southern tracks.it was
intended to be an album strictly for tv sales and marketing in the
beginning, but when Swanee later wanted to --release a few of the cuts
as singles for radio airplay, there was no problem at all.you've always
got a home here with me, bill lowery has said to me on many occasions.i
treasure that highly.

i can't get off the subject of bill lowery without mentioning the night
i was named to the georgia music hall of fame because that was the only
time in all the years i've known this kind and gentle man that he looked
me in the eye and told me a deliberate, boldfaced lie.

it was in September of nineteen 85 and for the second year in a row i
had been asked to come to atlanta and host the annual georgia music hall
of fame and awards Show on statewide television.it was to be held for
the first time at the prestigious world congress center in atlanta and
would be a black-tie affair with the govetnor and many local and state
dignitaries in attendance.bill himself issued the invitation on behalf
of the georgia Senate music industry committee, and l never thought
twice.l accepted immediately.

as we were rehearsing in midafternoon on the day of the live telecast, l
casually asked bill if anyone would be inducted into the hall of fame
that night.he said, sure, that every year the committee named one
outstanding georgian in the world of music to the hall of fame. previous
winners had included Ray charles, ibrenda lee, little Richard, james
brown, otis Redding, and oth-ers, and bill said this year's winner was a
jazz artist.

what's his name?i casually asked.

iuh, joe williams, bill said.yeah, that's it, joe williamiss great jazz
trumpet player.

i had never heard of joe williams, but i figured the world was probably
full of jazz trumpet players i'd never heard of, so i never gave it a
second thought.i was too busy trying to learn my lines and define my
role in the show.for all i knew joe williams was the greatest trumpet
player who ever lived.i didn't know until nearly midnight that the only
place joe williams ever lived was in bill lowery's fertile imagination
and quick-thinking mind.

the show that night came off without a hitch.i managed to get through
most of my part without too much difficulty.then with -about ten minutes
left before we had to be off the air, i introduced state senator nathan
dean, who, in turn, introduced joe frank harris, the governor of
georgia, to present the biggest award of the night.as governor harris
strode onto stage-left, i slipped off stage-right to watch joe williams
get inducted into the hall of fame.

when i reached the wings, bill lowery was standing there.he smiled and
patted me on the back and told me what a great job i'd done.then he
started making all kinds of small talk.in the background i could hear
the governor speaking, but i couldn't make out any of the words he was
saying.bill was going on and on about nothing in particular, but i was
listening.it never crossed my mind that he was only talking because he
didn't want me to hear what governor harris had to say.

Suddenly, from out on the stage and over the drone of bill's ivoice, i
heard the words commerce, georgia.that caught my ear and i turned toward
the stage.and he had a duck named josh, the governor was saying.and i
thought, that's funny, so did i.'

Suddenly i realized the governor was talking about me.city lights, he
said, and poe folks' and .

but it was still another split-second before it hit me.i thought he was
just thanking me for hosting the show.a bit in detail, perhaps, but why
else would the governor of georgia be talking about me?then suddenly i
realized what was happening.

and so, ladies and gentlemen, won't you please join me now in welcoming
the newest member of the georgia music hall of fame ...grand ole opry
star ...and our emcee here this evening ...whisperin' bill anderson!i
could scarcely believe my ears.

the next thing i remember was bill lowery walking up behind me and
shoving me out onto the stage.get out there, boy, that's you!he said as
the first notes of my record of bright lights & country music began to
fill the hall.by this time the audience was on its feet, and i was in
total shock.

i know i walked to the center of the stage and smiled and bowed and
waved to my mama and my daddy who were sitting at a table just behind
the governor's.did you know?i mouthe to mama, and she shook her head.we
didn't know a thing, they both told me latet they had come only because
i was hosting the show and ithey wanted to be there.

the reason i know now how i acted after the governor called my name is
because i have the show on videotape and i've watched it once or twice.
had it not been for the tape, i don't think i'd have remembered a thing
that took place.

i walked toward the podium to receive my beautiful engraved tiffany's
crystal trophy from governor harris, but just before teaching the spot
where he was standing i looked back over my shoulder at bill lowery, who
was standing on stage behind me - i applauding like a proud papa.bill
lowery, you lied to me!i shouted in his direction.you lied to me! he
just stood there smiling and clapping his hands, his snow-white hair
glistening in the spotlight.

i reached the podium and started to speak and here they camethose
dad-gummed tears of mine that i never seem to be able to control.i
struggled to keep my composure and somehow, through the tears, i managed
to say thank you to all the special people from georgia who had believed
in me over the years and had touched my life in so many special ways.i
thanked mom and dad, i thanked bill lowery, and then l thought of becky.

She wasn't there.She was back in nashville trying to put the pieces of
her life back togethe trying to recover, trying to recapture that which
had been so cruelly taken away from her, trying to learn how to live
again.i thought of all the nights i had left her and my children at home
and climbed on a bus to tide out into the night somewhere chasing my
dreamiss of the nights when l would be home and we'd have a chance to
spend some time together but i'd get an idea for a song i wanted to
write, and i'd get up and leave her and close the door to my study and
maybe not come out until morning.Standing there at that podium with the
hall of fame trophy in my hand, my mother and father in the audience,
the packed house still on its feet cheering, i appreciated my family and
all they had sacrificed for me more than i had ever appreciated them in
my life.i hurt because becky couldn't be there.i hurt because i knew
that even though i'd phone her as soon as the show was over and tell her
the good news, she wouldn't be able to share my joy.She'd say she was
happy and she'd say congratulations, but she couldn't feel the
excitement.i knew that.and it hurt.

i ended by thanking my grandaddy who first taught me that all good
things are a gift from god, and i hugged bill lowery's neck. i forgive
you, l said, and i love you.but don't you ever lie to me again!i don't
think i could take it!

where does bill anderson go from here?i get asked that question so often
you'd think by now i'd have copyrighted an answer. but i really
haven't.Remember, i didn't start out to be in this business in the first
place.it all just kinda happened.one door would open and i'd walk
through it, only to be staring another door in the face.the doors kept
opening and i kept tiptoeing through them, trying to find out what was
on the other side.much of the time i'm still trying to find out what's
on the other side.

anytime somebody starts talking about where something goes from here,
though, my mind wanders back to the mid-seventies
and the afternoon i taped a half-hour television tribute to the great
tex Ritter.

it was in the last days of my syndicated series, the bill anderson Show,
and i had devoted an entire thirty minutes to the music, the
career, and the life of america's most beloved cowboy, one of my
favorite people of all time.

the show had gone great.tex had sung and spun yarns about his early days
on the broadway stage, his years in hollywood, his

marriage to his former leading lady, dorothy faye, and the legend ary
recording career that had culminated with his election to the

country music hall of fame.we had shown some movie clips of him and
dorothy on screen together before they were man and

wife, talked about the movie theme high noon, which he sang and which
won an academy award, and we'd even touched on his

short-lived political career when he'd once run for the united States
Senate from tennessee.

tex, you've done it all, i said, in an effort to begin wrapping up the
show.you've been on broadway, you've starred in the

movies, you've recorded hit records, you've run for the Senate. - where
do you go from here?

tex paused only slightly, just long enough for his eyes to take on their
patented twinkle and his nostrils to issue another of his

trademark half-snoring, half-snorting jolts, and he said slowly, well
...bill ...Saturday, i'm going to Sometimes when people ask me where
country music is going
from here or where bill anderson is going from here, i'll steal tex's
answer.Saturday i'm going to pennsylvania somehow says
that none of us really has any idea where anything is going from here,
and even if we did, there wouldn't be much, if anything, we
could do about it.

- i i do think i know, though, why most people wait until later in life
than i have before they undertake the writing of an autobiogra phy.
there is no way for a person to write a book of this type while he's
still as active in as many facets of his career as i am and have

everything come out current and up-to-date when the book is released.mel
tillis may have handled the problem best when he ended his book,
Stuttering boy, by simply writing, to be continued.

a lot of times these days when i fill out a registration card checking
into a hotel or when i have to list my occupation somewhere for some
reason, i write jugglet the dictionary says that to juggle is to keep
several objects in the air at one time by alternately tossing and
catching them.one who juggles performs tricks of dexterity.yep, that's
me all right, keeping about three careers in the air at one time,
tossing them up and catching them before they hit the ground.at least
three careers, sometimes more. maybe i should have been like the folks
at kentucky fried chicken who say they do only one thing and do it
right, but that's never made me happy.my fingers seem to do best when
they're stuck into lots of different pies.

even though i often try to climb several mountains at one time, i do try
to keep my expeditions fairly well organized.in fact, as i look at my
career today, i see it divided rather neatly into thirds.

i still spend about one-third of my time actively working in the music
business.that includes recording, songwriting, and live performances. a
few years ago i cut my concert schedule down from over two hundred dates
a year to more like fifty or sixty, and i try to schedule most of those
in the good weather months.i've decided i'll live longer this way.in
fact, i find now that i actually look forward to climbing on board the
bus instead of sometimes dreading it.i've always loved the shows
themselves, but they're ieven more enjoyable now that they come at a
much more manageable pace.i still work the opry as often as i can, and i
plan on hanging my hat there forevet i continue to spend another third
of my time today serving as national spokesman for poe folks
restaurants.although the chain has had to face some tough times lately
and has stopped expanding at the rapid rate it once did, i believe the
concept is still as viable as ever and i'm going to do all i can over
these next few years to keep spreading the story. our food is still
better than most you can find in a home-style restaurant anywhere, and
our price-value is almost legendary in the food service business.i'm as
proud to be po as l ever was.

the other one-third of my career for the past six years has revolved
around television and my involvement at the nashville network.l just
wrapped up my sixth and final year of hosting a monday through friday,
half-hour music trivia game show called fandango.i've been the
coproducer of another daily half-hour talent search program called you
can be a Star, which is also ending after six years, and l recently
served as executive producer on my first tnn special titled an evening
with lewis grizzard, a one-hour comedy show featuring the nationally
known columnist, author, and humorist.for the past four years i have
also produced the highly successful lewis grizzard comedy albums and
tapes for Southern tracks records.

the nashville network, the cable tv service owned by the same folks who
own the opry and the giant opryland uSa complex, has probably done as
much or more than anything over the past few years to alter and expand
the scope of country music, and i am particularly proud of my
association with them.when tnn hit the marketplace amid much skepticism
in march nineteen 83 i was among the fortunate few who were invited to
be on board.

elmer alley, who for years had served as program director of wSm-tv in
nashville, was given the task of assembling the programming ideas for
this totally new broadcast concept, and one of the things he felt would
be successful with the viewers was a game show built around country
music fans and their knowledge of country trivia.because of my
experience at abc-tv five years earlier hosting the better Sex, i was
the first person who came to his mind as a possible host for the program
he later named fandango.

it was the best thing that could have possibly happened for me. Since
the better Sex had gone off the air, i had been hosting a weekly
syndicated series called backstage at the grand ole opry on a hundred or
so stations scattered around the country, but i wanted to do more.the
nashville network provided me with that opportunity.

in the beginning, there were a lot of people in the nashville show
business community who didn't think an all-country music tv channel was
going to make it.i didn't doubt its success for a minute and said so. in
fact, the night the network signed on with a star-studded gala, a
reporter for the tennessean called me aside in the lobby of the opryland
hotel and asked me what i thought about all that was taking place.
Someday, l said, perhaps exaggerating a bit but trying hard to make my
point by comparing the isigning on of the nashville network to the first
broadcast of the grand ole opry, someday people will look back on march
7 nineteen 83 the way we've always looked back on november 25 nineteen
25. ithe quote was in the next day's paper with the reporter's snide
comment, we'll see, bill, we'll see.

nashville was filled with dozens of people qualified to produce and
direct musical programming when tnn first began broadcasting, but there
was really no one within the local television community who had ever had
any experience in the production of a game show.Realizing that game
shows are a highly specialized field, tnn reached out and brought to
town a producer from new york named allen Reid, whose father had created
and produced one of television's pioneer quiz shows, the g.e.college
bowl and who had himself over the years produced several game shows,
most of them in canada.allen was hired by tnn specifically to produce
fandango, and he and i more or less inherited each othe bill, meet your
producer allen, meet your host ...was the way it went.normally, the
producer selects his own host, but ours turned out to be a somewhat
forced, although ultimately fortunate pairing.

in the beginning, though, allen and l appeared to be another odd couple.
he was an inventive but very demanding producer who loved the new york
mets and sushi bars.i was a laid-back hillbilly singer who followed the
misfortunes of the atlanta braves, ate fried okra, and did game shows in
his spare time.but over the six years we worked together, i think we
were able to combine our strengths and become a very effective
team.allen taught me a itremendous amount about television and even more
about how to host a game show.i taught him that y'all was just the
tennessee way of saying youse guys and that poe folks fried chicken
really -wasn't going to corrode his innards.i'm still working with him,
though, on the fried okra.

not only am i a better game show host for having worked six years with
allen Reid, but it was also thanks to him that i got my first
opportunity to learn a little bit about the other side of a television
camera as well.Some six months after fandango went on the air, he very
generously invited me to join him and his wife, mady land, in the
creation and development of his second tnn production, a competition
show for up-and-coming young talent, called you can be a Star.

that turned out to be quite a learning experience for me.i never knew
much about what goes on in a tv control room or in the day-to-day
production of a television series.i always thought we guys who looked
into the lenses of the camera did all the hard work.not so.the front
side of the camera is the easy side.the producer and his staff behind
the camera on a well-organized television show earn every penny they
make.it's extremely demanding, time-consuming work.i'm not sure i'd want
to do it all the time.

i helped devise the format for Star, worked in the development of the
scoring system which was used to rate the talent, and suggested to allen
that my hand, the poe folks, would be the perfect group to play the
music behind the young artists performing on the show.he hired them and
even made my band leader, mike johnson, musical director of the
show.they worked in that capacity for the entire six years.

because of my hectic schedule and because of the fact that fandango and
you can be a Star often had to tape on the same day, i wasn't able to be
quite as involved with Star on a show-by-show basis as i first started
out to be.toward the end of its run, about alli did was work with the
grand champion winners in coordinating the recording sessions they won
with capitol Records.i'll always be grateful to allen, though, for
giving me the chance to learn about something i might otherwise never
have known.

fandango, for me, was truly a labor of love.driving to opryland for the
tapings was much easier than flying to california for the better Sex,
and getting paid for hosting a game show based on country music trivia
felt almost like stealing sometimes.

just like on better Sex, though, i never got to do the entire show by
myself.they gave me a sidekick on fandango, but not a pretty lady like
Sarah purcell.this time it was an antagonistic talking juke box named
edgar, and while he wasn't nearly as cute as Sarah, he kept things
loose.his job was to do all the straight announcing on the show,
describe the prizes, and, in between the iserious elements, to zing me
whenever he could and provide a bit iof comic relieœ he'd call me
whisper-nose or whisper-breath, iand he'd make fun of my clothes and my
singing and anything else ihe could key in on.occasionally i'd break
down and laugh at something he said, but his humor walked some pretty
crooked lines:

hey, bill, did you hear about the frog that got caught in the -illegal
parking zone?

no, i didn't, edgar.what happened?

he got toad away!

well, it beat talking to a toy duck who could only squeak. Sometimes.

edgar was never seen on camera as a person.he was the juke box.the
source of his voice, however, became a hot topic.everywhere i went
people would ask, who's edgar?but i never would tell.at the end of each
show edgar, in his role as the show's announcer, would say, the voice of
edgar is not ...and he'd name everybody from Ronald Reagan to Ronald
mcdonald, from Roger miller to Roger Rabbit.people would write in all
kinds of suggestions as to who they thought edgar actually was, but most
of them were way off base.they guessed Ralph emery, harold Reid of the
Statler brothers, hank thompson, and dozens of others, but we still
wouldn't tell.the only people who ever guessed edgar's true identity
were those from the area around indianapolis, indiana, who remembered a
crazy disc jockey from days gone by named bill Robinson.bill provided
the marvelous voice for edgat
what very few people knew, however, was that bill Robinson and i had
been doing a routine very similar to what edgar and i did on fandango
for years.only it was in real life, and it was serious.

i first met bill when he was a disc jockey on wmni in columbus, ohio,
back in the late sixties, and we immediately became good friends.he left
country music radio for a while, moved to lansing, michigan, where he
worked on an easylistening music station, then got back into country at
wiRe in indianapolis not long afterward.we had stayed in touch over the
years, found that we each possessed a bit of an offbeat sense of ihumor,
and had pulled a few small long-distance gags on one another from time
to time.but nothing like the one i pulled on him when he first called to
tell me he had moved to indianapolis.

it's a great job, whisper, he said to me excitedly the day he phoned.
great station, great market, and i've found a super apartment here.i'm
moving in tomorrow.can't have any pets, but that's no problem.

bells went off and sirens roared in my mind.can't have pets, huh?i
thought, and i asked him what his new address would be. then i hung up
and reached for my phone index.

i knew of a place that sold baby chickens by mail and would ship them
anywhere in the world, guaranteeing they would arrive live and healthy.
i couldn't wait to give them a call.

about four o'clock the next afternoon while mister Robinson was relaxing
by the pool after having put in a hard day's work in his new town, at
his new job, a delivery man walked into the apartment office with 150 of
the cutest little chirping baby chicks you ever saw.they were addressed
to the new tenant, mister william Robinson.bill was paged and told to
come to the office right away. Seems it had something to do with the
rule regarding pets.

he went to the office, saw the baby chicks in cartons all over the
floor, and knew instantly he had been had.he didn't wait around to meet
with the managet he paid the fifteen dollars or so in shipping charges
(surely he didn't expect me to pay that!), grabbed the baby chicks, and
took off like a herd of turtles back to his apartment.he watered his new
pets, called a friend to ask what and how to feed them, then the next
morning he signed on the radio station bright and early with a special
offer to his listeners: the first person who comes down here and
reimburses me --the fifteen dollars i paid in shipping charges can have
150 baby chicks absolutely free, he said.one of his listeners was there
almost before the words were out of his mouth.

it didn't take him long to find out where the darling yellow
chick-chicks had come from, however, and he was bent on revenge.i was
scheduled for an outdoor concert at a park not far from indianapolis in
a few weeks and he knew it.he decided to get even right away.

where he came up with this idea, i'll never know, but he went out into
the community around indianapolis somewhere and located about a dozen
members of a motorcycle gang like hell's angels.he told them i would be
coming to town on such-andsuch a Sunday afternoon and asked if he might
hire them that afternoon to ride their motorcycles down to the park
where i was performing.a couple of them turned out to be frustrated
musicians, and they said sure, they'd love to come.

the day of the show, i was out onstage performing in front of a huge
crowd.no one other than bill had any idea that a motorcycle gang was
within a hundred miles of the place.he made sure they were all hidden
out of sight until just the right moment.that moment came when bill
heard me starting to get deep into one of my slow, sad, moving
recitations.that's when he gave them the sign to crank up their engines.

i heard this big rumble and roar going on back behind the stage, but i
pretended not to notice and kept right on going with my song.Suddenly i
looked up and here they came, twelve of the raunchiest,
scroungiest-looking human beings i think i have ever seen, dressed in
black t-shirts, black jeans, red scarves around their necks, goggles
over their eyes, their motorcycles thundering down the hill off to the
right of the stage, throttles wide open. they got to where i was and
rumbled right on past me as fast as they could go, only about two feet
in front of the stage and not more than another two feet from the people
seated on the front row.

it was like a big blur when they went by, racing from my right to my
left.then they stopped real quick, spun their bikes around, and roared
back from left to right.they kicked up so much dust that even when they
were out of sight i could barely see the crowd. and speaking of the
crowd, they were like me-they had absolutely no idea what was going on.
we all thought we were being invaded by somebody from a foreign country.

but my tormentor wasn't through.just as the bikers passed in front of me
the second time, he had someone up on the roof of the stage lower what
appeared to be an old window shade down over the front of the little
outdoor stage, completely shutting off my view of the audience. i don't
know if anything was written on the outside of the shade for the
audience to see or not, but on the inside of the shade where no one
could see but me was a big picture of the back side of a human hand. all
the fingers were tightly clenched into a fist with the exception of the
middle finger, which was pointed straight out, fully extended.i got the
message.

it was my turn next.when i got back to nashville, i phoned and enrolled
my friend b.R., as i've always called him, in some correspondence
courses at a nearby college.in a few days i sent a collection agency out
to see him because he hadn't paid his tuition. next i ordered him a set
of encyclopedias to use in his school work.i sent them cod, of
course.then he retaliated and did a few more things to me.one day in a
charity softball game between my team and the disc jockeys from his
radio station, he substituted a grapefruit he had painted white for the
softball we had been using.it was my turn at bat, he was pitching, and
when i swung and hit the ball, it splattered grapefruit all over me, all
over the catcher, and into the eyes of the umpire.i didn't laugh a lot,
but he thought it was real cute.

another time i was performing at the fairgrounds coliseum in
indianapolis, about the time i had out the record don't She look good
(in the new dress i bought her), and bill was emceeing the show.when i
broke into that song, a big, heavy-set friend of outs named jon potter
came waltzing out onto the stage-all 275 or so pounds of him i ciressed
in the ugliest looking dress you've ever seen and made up from head to
toe to look like a woman.in his black leather spiked-heel shoes, he
sashayed right up to the microphone where i was singing and proceeded to
plant a wet, sloppy kiss right on my mouth.i knew immediately that bill
had put him up to it.the audience roared.i stopped singing and started
trying to wipe off the lipstick and the awful smell of jon's
perfume.while i was trying and the crowd was laughing and snapping
pictures as fast as they could, here came bill out on stage followed by
two St. bernard dogs about the size of the clydesdale horses.he camped
right there between the two dogs, in the middle of that stage, in the
middle of my show, and wouldn't leave until he had sold those dogs to
somebody in the audience.

you can see that long before b.R.became edgar and got paid for being a
thorn in my side, he was playing the role to the hilt for free.when
fandango started, we didn't have to write any scripts. we had nearly
fifteen years worth of real-life material to pick from.

iedgar and l did fandango alone for the first four years we were on the
air, and the trivia material on the show was drawn strictly from the
country music field.at that point, allen Reid and the network decided
the show had gone about as far as it could go in its present form, and
they felt some major changes were needed if the program was to continue.
their first decision was to redesign the set completely, then to upgrade
the prizes from the can openers and tire tools we had been giving away
to automobiles, boats, fur coats, and luxury vacations.they took me out
of the flashy sport coats and sweaters i had been wearing on the show
and dressed me in a subdued bustnessman's wardrobe from botany 500.
finally, ithey decided to add a model, a pretty mississippi lady named
blake pickett, to the cast.they further decided to expand the trivia
base by adding questions based on types of music other than country.i
was skeptical of all the wholesale changes in the beginning.

why did our successful little show (we had consistently been second to
only nashville now as the highest rated show on tnn's monday through
friday schedule) need another vanna white? and why did we need questions
about the beatles and frank Sinatra?our viewers were more the barbara
mandrell and Ricky Skaggs type, weren't they?i loved the new set and the
improved prizes, but i didn't understand the thinking behind the other
changes at all.but when the new shows hit the air, the ratings went up
even higher than they'd already been.i relaxed and read the questions
about barbra Streisand.

blake turned out to be a joy to work with.She had none of the ego
problems l had always associated with gorgeous models, and there was no
doubt that her tong blonde hair, trim figure, and pretty blue eyes
attracted male viewers to the show in bunches.

we taped fandango only twice a year, five shows a day for thirteen days
during one month in the fall and sixty-five more episodes the same way
for a month in the spring, but it was on the air every day, five days a
week, fifty-two weeks a year, and the exposure was tremendous.the actual
time i had to spend in the production of the shows was kept to a
minimum, allowing me to continue all the other facets of my strange and
varied careet i was sad when after six seasons the network decided the
show had run its course.

people often ask me if i enjoy hosting game shows more than i enjoy
singing, and my answer is no.i don't think anything ever surpasses the
feeling an entertainer gets when he walks out on a concert stage and
performs before a live audience.of all the things i do in my career,
performing lyve is the one thing i'd miss most if i couldn't do it.but
hosting fandango on television was probably the next closest thing to
performing in concert, and i enjoyed it tremendously.

for one thing, we taped the show in front of a live studio audience, and
even though it was a relatively small one compared to what we might find
in a concert hall, there was a lot of that same you've i onl i got i one
i chance-to-get-it-right pressure.though a game show is videotaped, the
tape is never stopped unless a technical mistake occurs, and, of course,
the tape can never be edited in any place that might affect the outcome
of the game itself.therefore, we were wrapped in that working without a
net atmosphere much like live tv, and i found it exhilarating.

too, in hosting a game show, i got to call on just about every - i
single part of my background.for example, i was constantly having to use
the sense of timing i learned in radio.when the stage manager told me i
had exactly ten seconds to talk leading into a commercial, i knew how to
talk exactly ten seconds.i learned how to do that back at wgau in athens
when i had to punch up the cbS news at the top of the hour. when i
needed to get the studio audience to participate in the flow of the
game, i could lean on my twenty-five years of experience working before
live audiences to help me do that.and when i had to read a question with
a few big words in it or when i had to call on a little old-fashioned
intelligence in order to handle some particular situation, i could
always pause and say a silent thanks, mom and dad, for making sure i got
an education.i once had a school teacher who was fond of saying, we are
the sum of all our experiences, and that's defi-.nitely what you got
when you saw bill anderson hosting a television game show.

the exposure i have received from being on national television every
day, even on cable, has aided every other phase of my career as well.
when tnn first signed on, i'd ask audiences at our concerts to raise
their hands if they watched fandango.in the beginning i'd get perhaps a
twenty percent response.today, with the network being available in
almost half the tv households in the country, when i ask how many watch
tnn it's more like ieighty or ninety percent.needless to say, the size
of our concert icrowds has increased accordingly.i haven't had a number1
record for quite some time, but you'd never know it from the size of the
crowds at most of our concerts or the recognition factor i find in
airports, shopping malls, and restaurants.i'm asked to sign far more
autographs today because of my visibility on television than i ever was
when my records were all going to number one or when i was on abc.don't
ask me to explain it, just let me enjoy it.

tnn has recently added a satellite radio network, tnnR, to its arsenal,
and they have hired me to host a four-hour radio show every Sunday
afternoon.i tell people that after almost thirty years in this business
i'm right back where i started-playing records on the radio.

iactually, it's a little more than that, and it's a slightly bigger
project than was the dinnerbell jamboree on wjjc in commerce. the show
is called yesteryear and the concept involves my going back across the
last thirty or thirty-five years of country music history and playing
again the top ten records from a corresponding week in the past.for
example, if it's currently the week of july 4th, i go back to four
july-4th weeks in the past (one year per hour) and play the top ten
records from that particular week in our chosen yesteryear.ln addition,
i try and recall anecdotes about the singers, writers, musicians, and
songs involved in each of the hits.after all, i've been here since dirt,
and i was there when a lot of the hits were born.

the show is loosely scripted, very thoroughly researched by a iwalking
country music encyclopedia named otto kitsinger, and i'm free to read
what otto writes or ad lib just about anything i want to say.i have a
telephone nearby and often call my friends in the business-artists,
songwriters, producers-and talk with them on the air about whatever
might be going on in their lyves.in this day of jukebox radio, where so
many stations play twelve or fifteen hits in a row back-to-back without
giving any information about the singers and the music, we hope our show
will be a refreshing change.

the shows are taped ahead of time and worked into my existing schedule,
so i'm able to do them without having to alter my other careers very
much.it's a frtn project.i hope it lasts a long time.

even though i always seem to be involved in some new phase of my career,
i never stop working on the older ones at all.i have
recently recorded a duet record and filmed a music video with a lovely
lady from england named toni bellin.i know i'm preju diced, but i think
both the record and the video turned out great.

toni's husband came up with an exciting new arrangement on an old song
and asked me if i'd drop by the studio the afternoon toni

was to record it and whisper a couple of lines on her record.i said
sure, but when i got there and we went to work, he felt our

voices blended so well together that he rewrote the entire arrange ment
into a full-fledged duet.

i've had a lot of success with duet partners in the past-jan howard,
mary lou turner, Roy acuff, david allen coe-who
knows, maybe the world is ready for a british accent to blend with a
georgia drawl.it's sure worth a try.

you see, that's what's so great about this business.there's always
something exciting going on.every morning you wake up with a

chance to hit a home run.you might have gone to bed the night before
batting zero-for-life, but that magic word or that magic

phrase or that magic idea might just roll out of your brain and off of
your tongue tomorrow.i don't know of any other profession

where the opportunity for success is so great.i'm not saying the odds
against it aren't high because they are, but they are never

impossible. - - maybe that's what has kept me going all these years.
maybe that's why i'm still at it.maybe that's why the word retire has
never

been a part of my vocabulary.

minnie pearl told me one time that she still gets butterflies every time
just before she goes on stage.if it ever gets to the point

where you don't get butterflies, she said, then it doesn't mean as much
to you as it should.

i still get butterflies, too.not just before i go on stage, but every
day when i wake up with an idea for a song, or a concept for a

television show, or a better way to market fried chicken rolling around
in my head.i'm still enthused, i'm still excited, i'm still in

love with this lady-in-red called show business.maybe that's why i've
pursued her for as long as i have.maybe that's why i'll stay in i the
chase for as long as the good lord will let me, even though i much of
the time i don't have the foggiest idea where it is that i'm i headed or
what in the world i'm going to do if and when i get there. never been
touched by a head injury exactly what such an injury is and how it
affects not only the person who receives it but everyone who lives
around that person as well?it's not easy.

the national head injury foundation estimates that in this country each
year there are over 750000 head injuries that require hospitalization.
that's three-quarters of a million people killed or injured every twelve
months just because they rode a bike with no helmet, didn't fasten their
seat belt, ran through a traffic light, didn't stop at a stop sign, or
maybe played football or hockey or some other sport with too much
reckless abandon.they climbed that rickety old ladder just one more time
before fixing it.or they got behind the wheel of a car and drove just a
little bit drunk.

becky's accident, her transformation from a warm, caring, loving person
to someone who for so long could feel no emotions at all, to someone who
lived each day of her life out of a sense of - i duty, to someone who
was disoriented and confused for a period of years, taught me one thing
above everything else: there is nothing human beings should value more
than their minds.

becky told me not long ago that she feels it's hard for the average
person to understand what a head injury is all about because on the
outside a head-injured person often doesn't appear to be injured at all.
in my case, she said, my bruises were about gone, the cuts looked
better, the stitches were out, i could get up and move around, i could
talk, i could dress myself, i could feed myself, i recognized everybody,
and people would say, oh, you're fine now!but that's not the way it was
at all.

anybody can understand what it's like to be blind.you simply close your
eyes and you are blind for a moment.but for people to understand a head
injury, they really have to use their imaginations.

how do you mean?i asked.

well, just imagine for a minute that you are sitting in there in your
study.look around the room, notice how everything is complete and neat
and orderly, just the way you arranged it.every little item there helps
in its own way to make your study the special, unique place that it
is-your furniture, your books, plants, records, pictures, mirrors, tv
set, all these things combine to imake that your room.then, imagine your
room as your brain and all the furnishings in your room as brain cells.

ok.

now, imagine you've gone out for a while, maybe to a movie, and when you
come home a thief has broken into your room and stolen away from your
room as much as he could carry.what he couldn't carry, he rummaged
through and tore up and destroyed. only a few things escaped his touch.

that's what a damaged brain feels like.like somebody came in and stole
away everything they could, and what they couldn't steal, they
rearranged.that's probably an amateurish way to describe it, but do you
understand at all what i mean?

i looked around my study.everything was in its place.i looked at becky.i
understood the analogy.

yet during her recovery i'm not sure i ever fully understood all that
she was experiencing, in particular her single-mindedness about getting
well.as she saw it, her one mission in life was to get well, period, and
she was totally committed to doing whatever it might take.getting well
was all she thought about, all she focused on.She was so absorbed by
this one thought that she didn't need to interrupt the process to
explain to me what she was doing or justify herself to me or give me a
daily report on her progress-nor -did i ask for one-but i know now there
was a lot going on that i was not aware of.i knew all the big things, of
course-the visits to the doctors, the tests, the evaluations and
prognostications-and when i could see little flashes of improvement in
the way she felt and the way she acted from time to time, i just assumed
the doctors and time were doing their thing.i didn't realize how much
becky had been helping both the doctors and time on her own. had it not
been for my writing this book and her willingness to share the various
thoughts and feelings she'd had in her life since october nineteen 841
still might not know it all.

becky knew for quite a while that i wanted to write a book, an
autobiography about my life in show business but woven around the
backdrop of her accident, the tumultuous years that followed, and the
positive changes the whole episode brought about in both our lyves.at
first she was all for it.then later, when she realized i would be
telling some of the more intimate details of our lyves and of her
recovery, she turned against it.i tried to change her mind, but i didn't
have a lot of luck.

i decided to go ahead and write the book anyhow, even if i never had it
published.writing it could serve as therapy for me if nothing else.
becky knew i was continuing to work on the project, but i never said
anything to her about how it was or wasn't progressing.She never asked
any questions.we both pretended the book didn't exist.

i can truthfully say, though, that i would never have published the book
against her wishes.at some point in time i'd have pulled the plug and
walked away.but i'm glad i didn't have to.

i first began to understand her feelings the day she came to me and
said, you don't have any idea of all the little mind-games i've played
with myself to try and get better, do you?

no, i don't guess i do.

i can't possibly tell you everything because there is so much to tell,
she said, but if you'd like for me to tell you a few things, i will.i
was thrilled.

She began slowly but deliberately opening up and talking to me about
many of the personal things she had felt and the secret things she had
done to try and get well following the accident.it became apparent to me
right away why she had felt the way she'd felt about the book: deep down
inside, she was embarrassed. embarrassed about all the things that had
happened to her.embarrassed because she knew all this time she had been
acting, pretending to be normal.and she knew she wasn't normal. She was
afraid if i wrote the book she might be exposed.

i don't want people to read your book and think you're married to a
brain-damaged woman!she repeated emphatically.but as her -recovery
progressed and she began to grow more and more confident that she was
going to get well, she realized she didn't have to act anymore, that she
truly was getting back to normal.that excited her, so much so that one
day out of a clear blue sky she came to me, put her arms around me, and
told me she was ready for the book to be written.She thought our story
should be told. She hoped others might benefit from it.

i can say without a doubt that i am most definitely not married to a
brain-damaged woman.at least not to one who is helpless or mentally
impaired because of it.i am married to the strongest, most remarkable
lady i've ever known, and by far the most determined.She has risen above
all the odds, fooled all the experts, and built a totally new life out
of the ashes of the old one.that's darn well worth writing a book
about!once she accepted that fact, she asked me if i'd like to interview
het

that's exactly what i did, just like back in my days as a newspaper
reportet i took a yellow legal pad, three or four sharpened pencils,
made myself a pot of coffee, and sat down across from her at our
breakfast room table.i asked her questions, lots and lots of questions,
just like a reporter might do.She answered and i wrote. a few days later
i interviewed her again.then she sat down at the typewriter in jamey's
study and put a lot of her thoughts on paper --herself and gave them to
me.i realize now i could never have finished this project without her
help.from the point of that first interview on, this became more than
just my book.it became our book.

i have come to understand now, for the first time, that becky's recovery
has been divided into two very distinct and separate segments.the first
two-and-a-half years following the accident were devoted to her resting
and mending and getting well physically.the next two years were devoted
to the emotional recon-struction of her body, her mind, and her
spirit.it had to be done that way.She could never have worked on the
emotional part until the physical part was intact.She would not have
been strong enough to withstand the pressure and the strain.

the things she did to make herself get well and the way she forced
herself to go about doing them totally astound me.and they astound her
doctors as well.not a person from the medical community who has seen her
can believe the recovery she has made.this includes doctors ranging from
neurosurgeons to internists, from orthopedists to psychologists.She has
astonished and amazed them all.

first, here was a woman so badly injured both physically and emotionally
that she admits all she wanted to do for days, weeks, months, and even
years following her accident was to lie in bed and sleep.She knew
intellectually that she had a husband and a little boy who loved and
needed her, and she knew intellectually that she had once had a life
outside the confines of her own bedroom, but emotionally she wasn't even
able to care.all she wanted was to be left alone.but at some point one
day, she told me as we began our first conversation across the table,
and i don't even remember when it was, either tom burns convinced me or
i convinced myself that i was never going to get any better if i didn't
make up my mind to get up out of the bed and try.it was the first time i
remember feeling any motivation at all.i wasn't ready to try it right
then, but i told myself that one day soon i was going to make the
effort.

how did you manage?i asked.

well, i didn't just bound out of bed the next morning and decide to
conquer the world, ' she said.the doctors had told me that the energy
cell in my brain had been severely damaged, and i wasn't suddenly going
to have a big burst of energy all at once.but every day i could feel
myself gradually becoming stronger and stronget at first, i didn't have
enough energy to stay out of bed for more than a few minutes at a
time.i'd get up in the mornings and help you get jamey ready for school,
but as soon as the two of you left i'd go back to bed.many days i'd stay
there until he got home.

tom told me to work on that, to try each day to stay up as long as i
could, but i really had to force myself.i'd take my alarm clock and set
it for a one-hour nap.then i'd reduce that to thirty minutes, then
twenty minutes.he said that by forcing myself to stay awake i would be
training another part of my brain to take over the work of my damaged
energy cell.eventually, i didn't hit the snooze button on my alarm clock
quite so often, and my brain did compensate.of course, now i can keep a
pretty normal pace.

but go back to the beginning, i said.tell me what happened after you
first made yourself the promise not to sleep so much.

it was one night not too long after that, i don't remember exactly when,
just before i turned out my light to go to sleep, i told myself, i am
not going to sleep all day tomorrow!i'm going to get up and do
something!and i went to sleep with nothing but that one thought on my
mind.

the next morning when i woke up i remembered the promise l'd made to
myself the night before, and i dragged myself out of bed.i didn't feel
like it, but i made myself get up.i felt like i was sleepwalking.i
stumbled toward the bathroom, and on the way i walked by a full-length
mirror on my closet doot when i looked in that mirror and saw my
reflection, i threw my hands up over my face.i couldn't stand to look.
my expression was so blank, so empty.there was no life at all in my
eyes.the muscles in my face were numb.l tried to smile and i couldn't.i
honestly could not smile.i was horrified.

i walked on into the bathroom, cleaned my face, brushed my teeth and
combed my hait i came back out and sat down in front of the mirror above
my dresser and said, ok, now try and remember how you used to do it. you
used to smile ...now how did you do it?i sat there for hours trying to
bring back the feeling.

for a long time nothing would come, but i kept on looking at myself and
i kept on trying.it wasn't just the emotion of being happy that i
couldn't feel.i couldn't physically remember how to smile.i couldn't get
the muscles in my face to make that expression.finally, i started
talking to myselœ

now, becky, i said, you are not here in front of this mirror. you are at
one of jamey's little league baseball games and he just hit the ball to
center field.he's running toward first base.now, what's your
reaction?and i made myself smile.i took my fingers and pushed up the
corners of my mouth, making it look like a smile.then i made myself do
it again, over and over, again and -again, forcing my facial muscles to
move, forcing myself to be excited, trying so hard to remember how it
used to feel back when it all used to come so natural.

- i did it work?asked her, excited that she was opening up such a big
part of herself to me, sharing these immensely personal

feelings.

Something did, she said.you see, tom told me that most people who have
the type injury i had don't want to do anything

but sit and stare at wails all day i or watch tv-but i made up my mind
that if i had to sit there and practice making expressions

every day for the rest of my life that my son was going to see his
mother smile again.my husband was going to see his wife smile

again.if i had to imagine excitement and pretend i felt joy when i
really didn't, then i'd just use my imagination and make believe.i

was determined not to settle for anything less.

So what happened next?what else did you do?

i practiced working on my smile for days.every day i'd get up, go to my
mirror, and practice.one day you told me a joke and i thought, that was
really funny.in my mind i thought i was
laughing at what you had said, but when i turned toward the mirror, i
was shocked.i wasn't laughing at all.i looked all glum
and serious.i wasn't able to let you know how funny i thought your joke
was.i told you it was funny, but there was no look on my
iface to show you i thought it was funny.after you left that day, i
became even more determined.

for hours i sat in front of the mirror and tried to smile.but i couldn't
physically do it.my mouth had been busted and stitched, and my jawbone
had been damaged.my teeth had been knocked - - out of line and broken or
chipped.my eyelids had been cut, my

forehead cut and bruised.none of my facial muscles were working.

what did you do?

i took my fingers, and i pushed the corners of my mouth up.i - i tickled
my mouth and lips the way i used to tickle jamey when he

was a baby and i would try to get him to smile.i thought pleasant
thoughts.i thought of when i was a child playing.i thought of

when i met you and of the night when we got married, and how we laughed
when we came out of the church and that bus load of

fans was standing out in the yard throwing rice at us.

you know bill Robinson put them up to that, don't you?i asked.they were
fans in town on a tour from indianapolis.

yes, and it was funny.of course, knowing crazy ole b.R.did it made it
even funniet then i thought of when you took me to new york for the
first time, when we went overseas together, and i ithought of the
afternoon jamey was born and the warm, loving took in your eyes.and i
asked god, as i always do, to help me ifind a way.

for months every time i was alone i would sit there in front of that
mirror and work with my facial muscles.i remembered what tom had told me
about acting, and i'd imagine and pretend. Slowly but surety i seemed to
make a little progress each day.i began to notice the feeling slowly
returning to my face.when i iheard or saw something funny, i was
gradually able to react.when i was out and around people, i would
constantty keep on my mind, Smile when you should.it worked, too,
because for months now i haven't had to think about smiling or laughing
anymore.it all comes natural to me now.

that's incredible, i said, totally captivated.what other ikinds of games
did you play with yourself?

well, on days when jamey was at school and you were at the office or at
the studio, i'd sit at home on the sofa by myself and imagine it was
getting late and it was about time for you to be coming home.i'd pretend
i could hear your key in the door, then i'd wait until you'd had time to
step inside and i'd yell, hi, honey! ihave you had a good day? Supper
will be ready in a few minutes. and i'd pretend to be smiling, pretend
to be in a good mood, practice telling myself, now, when he comes in,
remember you want to hug him, you want to smile, you want to be
happy.that's the only way i could remember to do it.

were these things tom told you to do?i asked.

he gave me the game plan, she answered, but i had to work out the
step-by-step part for myself.tom told me that i had been reduced to an
infant in many ways, and that i'd have to go back in my mind and recall
memories of the person i used to be.i could remember being an adult, but
i needed to pretend i was one until it became a natural part of me.

and i didn't just do any of these things one day.i did them every day,
over and over again, day after day after day.i was trying to get to the
point where they'd feel natural and come easy like ithey used to.

how did you make it natural?

mostly i'd just try to keep on my mind all the time, this is how i used
to do it, whatever it was; this is how it used to be. and i'd try to
work on only one thing at a time.in fact, i couldn't work on but one
thing at a time.it was like i had a one-track mind.i'd get confused and
distracted if i tried to do too much at once.i couldn't change trains of
thought like a normal person can. i'd take a piece of paper and a pen
and i'd write down the one thing i felt i could handle at that
particular moment.

like what?

well, let's say i needed to go to the grocery store, for example. i
couldn't go by myself, you remember, for a real long time.you always
went with me, but when i did start to get out and do a few --things on
my own, i would actually write down my whole routine - i ahead of time:
(1) leave house (2) get in car (3) drive to store (4) park car at stores
Remember to look for other cars, and so on.and then when i'd finally get
inside the store, i'd start all over again.

Remember, too, i didn't start off at first going back to the
supermarket.for a long time i would only go to the 7-11 or one of the
small drive-in markets.i couldn't go back to kroger or h.g. hill's or
any of the big stores in the beginning.

why not?

because there was too much in the big stores to confuse me. too many
choices.too much activity that wasn't related to what i was there fot
delivery men would be bringing in drinks or bread or canned goods.
employees would be stocking shelves.people would be weighing fruits and
vegetables.other customers would be busy buying what they needed. and i
was always afraid i might run into someone i knew.

would that have been a problem?

yes, because my mind would have had to switch tracks-i couldn't just go
from putting things in my cart to, hello, how are you?it's good to see
you.i'd have had to remember to smile, to hold on to my grocery cart so
i wouldn't lose my balance, to be c careful not to lose my shopping
list.plus there were all the otherthings: where is my pen to mark off
the items i've already gotten? what time is it?when do i have to be
finished so i can pick jamey up at school?where did i park the car? do
they carry the groceries out or do i?then, do i have my purse or my
checkbook? will the ice cream melt before i get home?will the milk
spoil?do i put the groceries in the trunk of the car or in the
backseat?do i have to go to the drugstore too, or should i buy the
shampoo here? it's not on my list, but would bill and jamey like a
watermelon tonight?i had to think of so many things other than the
groceries i needed to buy.it confused me.it made me dizzy.and it made me
tired.

even in the smaller stores where i didn't have to make so many
decisions, it was confusing.i had to pretend i knew what i was doing.
many times i would pull into a parking space in front of a minute market
or a 7-11 and before going inside i would mentally go through the
process: ok, you walk in the door and down the aisle to where you find
the can of peas you need.then you take it to the cashier, get the money
from your purse, pay for it, wait for her to put it in a bag, pick it
up, and go back to your cat' i'd go through this in my mind two or three
times before i'd actually go inside the store and do it.in the beginning
i could only buy one item.after a while i could handle getting two or
three.

later on, i got to where i could go into a larger store, but i still
stayed away from the supermarkets.i would go into this little grocery
near the condo and get a cart and walk up and down the aisles very slow,
maybe even two times, just to get the feel of buying groceries.then i
would buy only what i'd need for dinner that night.this store was larger
than the drive-in markets, but it had only one cashier and one or two
employees stocking the shelves.even at that it was very confusing. but i
kept pushing.i kept telling myself that grocery shopping was just an
ordinary thing that anyone could do.it embarrassed me that i couldn't.

i listened and i marvelled, wondering how many people finding themselves
in the same situation would have put up such a fight.

tell me something, i said.buying things one item at a time or one meal
at a time like you did, how long would it take you to buy a week's worth
of groceries?

becky laughed.Sometimes longer than it took us to eat them! she said.
but i was determined.

it wasn't only the funny things and the happy things that i had -to
practice reacting to, she continued.for a long time i couldn't cry or
feel sad eithe and i knew that wasn't right.

how did you handle that?

i'd try to watch something sad on tv.if that didn't make me -cry or make
me feel sad, then i'd think about a sad book.i couldn't actually read
anything for over two years because my eyesight was so blurred, but i'd
try to recall a book or a story i'd read earlier that had made me
cry.Sometimes i'd even think back --to the morning my daddy was killed
and remember how much i loved him and missed him, but still i couldn't
feel sad, i couldn't cry.

what finally made you cry?i asked.

i'll tell you in a minute, she said, but do you remember the day you
came in the condo and the whole place smelled like onions?you nearly
passed out before you could get back outside!

did i remember?i had threatened to go buy a gas mask!

well, i had been standing over the sink that whole afternoon peeling
onions trying to make myself cry.

did you cry?

no, but i do remember the first time i did cry.it was about three years
after the wreck.you had come home late one night, you'd flown in from
california, i think, and it was around twelve or one o'clock in the
morning.i was real tired, but i had forced myself to stay awake until i
heard your key in the door.but then i -didn't have the strength to get
up and let you know how glad i was that you were home, so i just lay
there.it made me sad to know that you had come all this way and i
couldn't even get up to let you know i was glad you were home.i knew i
had disappointed you.and i started crying.in fact, i cried myself to
sleep.

the next morning when i woke up, it still hurt and i started crying all
over again.then suddenly i realized, hey, i'm crying!i -- hadn't cried
in over three years.and i got so happy about crying that i started
laughing.i lay there laughing and crying all at the same time. i must
have looked like a fool.when i quit crying, i tried to make myself start
crying again, but i couldn't do it.in fact, it was six or seven weeks
later before i was able to cry anymore.

i'll tell you something i remember, i said to becky as we continued to
talk, allowing our thoughts to ramble across the jagged edges of the
past four-and-a-half years, i remember the first time you found you
could smell things again.

the time at the airport?she asked.oh, i remember that too!

i had been out of town on tour and was flying back home early one
morning.becky was well enough by this time to drive her car out to the
airport to meet my flight.She had parked close to the terminal and
walked to my gate.as soon as i got off the plane and hugged her neck
real good, we started moving back through the terminal toward the
baggage claim area.about halfway there i smelled something burning.

oooh, what's that?i asked, never once saying i had smelled anything.

Something's burning in here!she said.

how do you know?i asked.

because it smells like she started.we both stopped dead in our tracks
and looked at one anothe She hadn't been able to smell anything for
years.the doctors had said she would never be able to smell again.
central nervous system tissue does not regenerate, was the way they had
put it.but, as with everything else, becky wouldn't take no for an
answer.

i did everything i knew to try and get my sense of smell back, she said.
i rook hot baths with bath scents and i burned candles with incense.i
put perfume on my nose and once i even put some of that awful-smelling
oven cleaner in the oven and then stuck my head inside the oven to try
and see if i could smell the fumes.but nothing worked.

and yet she had most definitely smelled whatever it was that was burning
in the airport.with no prompting from me, she had said she smelled it. i
don't know how it happened, neither does she, and neither do the
doctors.but it happened.i put my arm around her and pulled her
close.well, i guess god is still in the miracle business, i said.She put
her head on my shoulder and began to cry softly.

i pushed my chair back from the table, opened the kitchen door, and took
in long, deep breaths of fresh ait i needed a minute to

stretch my legs and settle my brain.i walked across the room to pour
myself a fresh cup of hot coffee.when i returned to the table

and sat down, becky started talking again without any prodding from
me.in doing so, she cleared up one of the biggest mysteries

of all.

did you ever wonder why i ordered all those things i'd see advertised on
tv while i was lying up there in the bed?she

asked.i looked at her, stifled a laugh, nodded my head, and said, yes,
and if she didn't mind, while she was at it, why didn't she just tell me
the whole story.

actually, it had nearly driven me crazy.for years our little condo had
been running over with things like ginzu knives, bam boo steamers,
vitamins, bibles, wrinkle creams, more vitamins, fats domino record
albums, jane fonda workout tapes, more vitamins, videotapes showing the
most famous broken bones in the
history of american rodeoing, and more vitamins.what i wanted was a
vitamin that would make my wife stop ordering things from
off television!

i know you thought i was crazy ordering all that junk, she laughed, but,
trust me, it was part of my rehabilitation program.

Sure it was, i said, and we both laughed.

See, here's what i'd do: the ads would come on and i would see the phone
number to call flash up on the screen or the address to

write, but i deliberately wouldn't write them down.i'd keep repeating
over and over to myself such and such a phone number, such and such an
address, trying to teach my brain to remember what it was.i would
memorize the amount each item cost and

then, just to see if i'd gotten it right, i'd address an envelope or
call the 800-number and place an order.most of the time i'd get it

right.

me and the postman will vouch for that!i laughed.you mean you nearly
bankrupted us just to see if you could remember

some phone numbers?

well, she smiled, i was working on my short-term memory.

Sometimes i couldn't even remember the last words that had been spoken
in a conversation or the ingredients i needed for a recipe.

that was a way of strengthening that.but, actually there was one more
reason i ordered all of those things, too., and, pray tell, what might
that have been?it was fun to be laughing and playing true confessions
after all these years, especially since doing so was allowing me to see
up close just how far becky had come.

mostly i was trying to activate excitement, she said.every time a
mail-order package would come i'd get excited, or at least i'd pretend
to get excited and show some emotion.do you remember the year i ordered
all my christmas presents by mail?

-i remembered well.

i thought i was so clever until jamey saw the postmarks and wanted to
know why Santa claus sent things from miami!

we laughed some more.and then showing another flash of the marvelous
sense of humor that had been missing in her for years, she added, and,
hey, all that mail-order stuff wasn't bad.you've got to admit i feel a
lot better than i used to.it must have been all those vitamins!

becky has always genuinely liked people, always enjoyed meeting new
people and being around old friends, but she told me during the second
of our interview sessions that for at least the first two years
following the accident she went through pure agony every time people
other than me or jamey were around.i asked her why.

ibecause i knew i couldn't react or respond to them like i used ito, she
said, and i was embarrassed.when i became well enough to go to the opry
with you, for example, it would wear me out.nothing physical made me
tired, but the thinking did.i was always thinking, trying to change
directions and keep up with the conversation, afraid that what i might
say to people would be dumb.i'd go home afterwards and lie in bed and
think some more-'i should have said this' or i shouldn't have said that.

well, you're not like that now, i responded, recalling a night ionly a
few weeks earlier when we'd been at a large party and she had seemed so
at ease.what brought about the change?

i'm not sure, but i think it may have started with the telephone.i could
talk to people one at a time on the phone and not have to face them in a
group.plus, i'd have more time to think about the things i was going to
say before i said them.once i got comfortable talking with people on the
phone, it was a lot easier for me to talk with them in person.of course,
you know who
played the biggest role in all that, don't you?

i had no idea.

your sister.

mary?in what way?

well, i didn't tell you this at the time, becky confessed, because i was
afraid you'd get upset if you knew the size of the phone bills i was
running up between here and atlanta.but some times i'd talk to mary in
the morning, again at noon, and again for hours that same night.

why?

because mary was the one person i felt i could talk to.i could tell her
anything and not feel embarrassed.i'd tell her something

like, i did the stupidest thing yesterday.put a roast in the oven and
forgot there burned it instead of

- i laughing at me or scolding me she'd say, why, i did the same -thing
last week myself.i could identify with her.She made me

feel like i wasn't the only strange person in the world.

it made me feel good to hear becky talking about my sister that way.i
knew mary had more than a little bit of background experi ence to draw
from.

in nineteen 81 a casual friend of mary's in atlanta-a lady named
darlene-had suffered life-threatening head injuries in an auto mobile
wreck en route to mary's house.the only identification darlene had in
her purse at the time of the accident was mary's

phone number.obviously, mary was the first person the authorities
contacted following the crash.

mary was working in those days as a registered nurse.her spe cialty was
psychiatry.through a long and drawn-out procedure - - that covered
several months, mary ended up being appointed darlene's legal
guardian.that experience sparked in my sister a

tremendous desire to learn more about head-injured persons.

i found out quickly that even as recently as nineteen 81 there was a
very limited understanding of people with head injuries, she told

me recently.doctors had just begun to learn how to keep brain damaged
people alive.they knew hardly anything about

rehabilitation for them once they had survived.

i began calling rehab centers all over the country trying to learn
something, anything, about head injuries that would help me in dealing
with darlene.i actually visited three different centers, one in San
francisco, one in boston, and one down in texas, all of them new. and l
tried to learn everything i could.in doing so, i became totally absorbed
by the field.it was a new frontier, i was convinced of that, and there
were times when i thought, nobody's doing anything!but i kept on
digging.

i was still in the process of trying to find additional help for darlene
when becky had her accident.i had learned a lot already, but i wasn't
sure just what to do with all i'd learned.then, suddenly, becky's need
for help seemed to bring it all into focus.i prayed about it.i said,
lord, please let becky live and show me what to do with what i've
learned.

her prayers were certainly answered.for over four years now mary has
been like super-glue, holding becky's thoughts, feelings, and gradually
returning emotions in place.She's been the one person becky has always
known she could turn to the whole time she has been struggling to get
well.from the very beginning, becky says, mary made me feel like she had
complete confidence iin my ability to beat this thing and get well. even
when i wasn't so sure myself, mary never once acted like she had lost
faith in me. in between my visits with tom burns, mary has been like my
own private psychologist.'

mary has always been a take-charge kind of person.without even asking
me, she recently volunteered my services to the georgia chapter of the
national head injury foundation.oh, he'll be more than happy to serve on
your board of directors, she told them, knowing that if i wasn't
thrilled about it she'd be able to talk me into it anyhow.turned out she
didn't have to twist my arm at all.

for several years mary served as the administrative head nurse and
assistant program director of the head injury Rehabilitation unit at
georgia baptist hospital in atlanta.She left there recently but
continues to work with their program as a consultant. She has recently
become involved with a new rehab center called meadowbrook and works in
case management as a certified Rehabilitation Registered nurse.

when i was young, i used to wish i had at least a dozen brothers and
sisters, but i had only the one sistet but god knew what he was doing.
what i might have missed out on in quantity, i know now i more than made
up for in quality!

if you write too much in your book about how god has helped me through
all this, people will think we are preachers instead of disciples, becky
said to me one morning during one of our talk sessions.but i do hope
you'll let people know that i'd never have made it without his help and
without the prayers that i know were prayed for me by people all over
the world.god has been with me this whole time.i'm sure of it.

when did you first start thinking about it-i mean about god and the fact
that he was with you?i asked.

the first day i remember being in the hospital, she answered. of course,
i don't remember much about even being there, but i do remember waking
up one day and seeing this doctor sitting at the foot of my you over
across room.i now doctor was dt meacham, but i didn't have any idea who
he was at the time or even why he was there.

i asked him, am i in a hospital?

he said yes, and he started telling me everything that had happened.

what are you going to do to help me get well?i asked, and i will never
forget what he said.he said, honey, you don't need surgery, your vital
signs are all ok, there's not much more i can do.it's really out of my
hands.god is your doctor now.

did you accept that?i asked.

i accepted it without any question, she readily admitted. god was with
me even before the wreck happened.he's always been with me.kathy has
told me that just before i let her out of the car that night i had
stopped for gas.when i got back in the car after paying the cashier, she
says i told her, kathy, fasten your seat belt.there are a lot of crazy
drivers out on Saturday nights. not only did kathy fasten her seat belt,
but for the first time all night i fastened mine.i think god was looking
after me even then.

what about now?

well, you know i'm so much more full of life now than i've ever been
before.god and his grace have made me feel all my emotions deeper and
more fully than i've ever known.i've learned that problems can become
opportunities through him.i've always been a christian, but my desperate
need of god's love and strength has brought me even closer to my faith.

then she began to talk about the three ministers that she felt had
played a large role in her recovery:

brother felix Snell, the preacher who married us and who came to be with
me that frightful Sunday afternoon at general hospital and who has
stayed in close touch with becky throughout this whole ordeal.
throughout her recovery he has dropped her little handwritten notes from
time to time, just to let her know he was thinking of her and to remind
her of god's unending love and grace.he continues to remain in contact
with both of us even today.brother Snell's love and concern and his
prayers have helped sustain our entire family.

Reverend jim beasley, the preacher who baptized jamey when he was only a
few weeks old, called and came to see becky several times both in the
hospital and after she returned home, and she always seemed to feel
better after his visits.he, too, continues to keep in touch.

and Reverend garry Speich, our current pastor, has been one of becky's
greatest pillars of strength and hope.

when her eyesight was so bad she could hardly read anything, it was
garry who brought her copies of the upper Room daily devotional guide
printed in extra-large type.he would come to the condo and sit for hours
talking with becky about god's will and god's plan for her life. he
assured her that god's time was sometimes slow but it was constant.
garry even went so far as to do some personal research on head injuries
so that he might communicate with het

i know god gave us jamey, too, becky continued, and all i had to do was
took at my son and feel his love for me to become more determined than
ever to push harder to become the mother i always was before.and you i
on't ever underestimate how much your love meant to me through all of
this.

ln what way?

you were always my rock to lean on.just that special look in your eyes
gave me the incentive to try and become the woman i was when you fell in
love with me.and she reached across the table and squeezed my hand.

becky says she also received a tremendous amount of spiritual strength
and motivation from watching the 700 club on television.i asked her what
she derived from this particular program.

mostly i saw miracles that had happened in other people's lives, she
said, and it made me realize if god could work a miracle in them he
could work one in me.he had worked one in me.i was a continuing
miracle.that show also taught me i was -ifree to ask for anything from
god.that i didn't have to accept lying up in bed for the rest of my
life.that if i was willing to ask for something and then willing to work
for it, it was possible, through faith, to receive it.

i have never been much of a fan of tv evangelists myself, but i'm
willing to rethink my prejudices a bit.there's no doubt that

i i-i'11this one program was of tremendous value to my wife.

what made you change your mind about being a part of my book?i asked
becky the third or fourth time we sat down togethe why are you willing
to talk about yourself now and open up this way?once you said you
wouldn't do it.

-it's just one more thing coming back to life in me, she answered
without hesitation, one more step in bringing me back - i to who i used
to be.but it didn't just happen overnight.i've been -iwrestling with it
and praying about it for a long time.

what do you think will be accomplished by it?anything?

i don't know, but i do know that i want to share what has happened to me
with other people who need encouragement, with someone out there who
thinks he as reached the end of the line.i want that person to know that
he can get bettet it might take a lot of hard work, but things can get
better.

and, you know, it's not just the patients who need hope.their families
need it too.Sometimes the families suffer more than the actual person.
She paused for a few seconds and looked up at me. oh, honey, she said,
this must have been so hard on you.

i wasn't prepared for that.why do you say that?i asked, a bit uneasily.i
hadn't planned on talking about me.

because you had to feel everything that happened-the whole thing.
Remember, for a long time i didn't have any feelings-i couldn't feel
anything-but you could.i have lots of blank spaces, but you don't. you
remember it all.

i paused to think.i wanted what i said next to come out right. iwell,
everything i did for you, you'd have done it for me, wouldn't you?i
finally asked.

of course, i would, she said.you know that.

well, why should you be surprised that i did it for you, i happen to
love you.i happen to have wanted to take care of you.

i know.

Seems, too, like i remember something in our wedding vows about in
sickness and in health.wasn't that in there somewhere?

i didn't expect her to answer.we both knew what i meant.but she was
right about my not having any blank spaces.there have been times when
i've wished i had a few, but i don't have any.i remember it all-the good
and the bad, everything that happened, it's all there.i remember every
bit of it.

becky said, you know, my whole life i've always wanted to be the best at
anything i've ever tried to do.it never mattered what it was-playing
basketball in high school, giving a party for my friends-whatever it
was, i wanted to be the best there was.i don't remember a lot of things
about my daddy, but i do remember he always told me that anything worth
doing is worth doing right. otherwise, don't waste your time. when i
realized what had happened to me in this accident, i wanted to be the
best recovery patient that there's ever been.

ii sat there and looked at her across the table.the light from the
window was bouncing off her soft, blonde hair, grown back to the full
length it had been four years ago before anything had happened.her eyes
were alert, alive and dancing when she said something funny, narrowed
and reflective when she thought back to where she had been and how far
she had come.to me she looked like an angel.

and i remembered a story she had told me once about lying upstairs in
her bed in the condo not long after the accident and seeing a piece of
lint hanging from the bottom of a chair that sat only a few feet from
the side of the bed.you know what a neat and orderly person i've always
been, she said.i never wanted anything out of order.but i lay there for
months looking at that little piece of lint.i knew all i had to do was
reach over about three feet or so to remove it, but i couldn't do it.i'd
think every day, now today i've got to remove that piece of lint, but i
absolutely did not have the energy or the will power to reach out and do
it.finally one day, after months and months of seeing it hang -ithere, i
was able to reach over and pull it off the chair.i held it until the
next time i had to get up.then i walked over to the trash can and
dropped it in.it was a senseless little task, but it -made me feel
good.it was the first time since i'd been hurt that i felt like i had
accomplished something.

i thought of all the things she had accomplished since then. how many
light years had it been since the morning tom burns had told the court,
She will rehabilitate, but she won't recover? is that what he would say
now if he were sitting here beside me, listening to becky talk about
being the best recovery patient there would had ever been?or he echo the
words of the clinical psychologist who sees her now, dt david mcmillan,
who had told me just --a few days before, becky believed in the
impossible and it happened.who would have thought it?i sure wouldn't.

i've never heard of anybody giving an award for best Recovery patient,
but if they ever do and if they send me a ballot, i can -guarantee you
becky anderson will get my vote.

epilogue.

i am writing these last lines of my book sitting in my study looking out
the big picture window of the dream house becky and i finally built and
moved into just a few months ago.

Remember the nine acres of property we had purchased just prior to her
accident?there's the most gorgeous yellow brick house -rambling across
that hillside now, nestled in among hundreds of tall, beautiful
trees-maple, walnut, hickory.just a few weeks ago the hillside was on
fire with brilliant reds, bright oranges, vivid yellows.does that sound
familiar?do i sound like i'm describing -the house i used to live in in
lebanon?i thought i could never -love another home as much as i loved
that one, but i was wrong. we sold that place nearly three years ago,
and it's long been out of my heart and off my mind.this is home now.

it was fifteen months from the day we broke ground to the day we moved
into out new home, not because our contractor, bill frasch, was slow but
because i wanted the building of this house to be a part of becky's
recovery.a final step in leaving the past behind and moving into the
future.and it was.

every time there was a decision to be made regarding the house, i
encouraged her to make it.or to at least have a voice in it.do we want
dark paint on the outside trim or light paint?a plain wallpaper in the
guest bath or an attractive print?light switches on this wall or that
wall?i didn't care much about those kinds of things anyhow.i left it up
to her, but for a reason: decisionmaking is one of the most difficult
things a head-injured person has to deal with.the more becky was forced
into making decisions, the better at it she ultimately became.toward the
end of the construction she was designing the flow of the driveway, the
place ment of the shrubbery, and probably telling the workmen what to
eat for lunch.our neighbors must have thought our builders were
awfully slow, but there was a very definite method to the madness.

today, the making of decisions gives becky very little trouble at all.

i've learned a lot over the past four-and-a-half years, not the least of
which is that loving a house-this house or any other

house-is not what life's about.that's not what's important.

life is about people, not about houses or any other material things.

iit doesn't matter to me anymore if i live in a shack or a tiny
apartment or in a cardboard box.it's who i live with, not where we

live that really matters.

it brings to mind the opening line from an old song jean Shepard used to
sing: there's nothing so precious as something

you've lost ...and found it somehow in the end.becky and i never lost
our love for each other, but we had allowed some mean -ingless to stand
in the way of it.things that in comparison things
to what we had with each other were really of no value at all. i.

and, then, how close we came to losing everything.another quarter of an
inch, the doctors said, and becky would have been

-killed.i learned my lessons in a pretty painful way as it was.any more
pain would have been unbearable.

two small gray squirrels just romped across the lawn below my window
sill.the newest member of our family, Squirmy, the cat, is

on the driveway toying with some kind of tiny insect who dared to try
and invade her private domain and, sadly, is about to pay the

ultimate price.jamey in fifth-grade at becky is -iin the kitchen reading
up on how to prepare low-cholesterol meals

for herself and her family, and allis well with the world.

for as long as i've been working on this book, i've wanted more than
anything else for it to have a happy ending.i haven't always

been sure just what kind of an ending it was going to have.i guess when
you write fiction, even fictional songs, you can create your

own characters, decide what it is that you want them to do, and then you
make them carry out your wishes as you write about

them.you want a happy ending, you make up a happy ending.it's as simple
as that.but that's not the case here.in an autobiograiphy, the action
takes place first and the writer simply reports on it.

i'm happy to report several things.first, becky is doing just super, and
becky and bill together are doing super, too.in fact, she told me just
the other day that she's happier now than she's ever been in her entire
life.i feel the same way.

this may sound stupid, she said one morning when we were having a quiet
breakfast together after i had taken jamey to school and come back home,
but if it weren't so painful for you and jamey, i'd go through it all
again ...if i knew in the end i'd be as happy as i am now.

we've both learned an awful lot in four-and-a-half years' time,
including the fact that the lord moves in mysterious ways.i had heard
that saying all my life, but i'm a total believer now.he hasn't moved in
mysterious ways with just me and becky eithe itake my daughter, jenni,
for example.

earlier, i referred to her as a student at western kentucky university,
majoring in goodness i knows-what, at the time of becky's accident in
the fall of nineteen 84.at that time jenni had no idea what she wanted
to do with the rest of her life.

but, dad, when i walked into the emergency room at general hospital that
afternoon and i saw becky, and i saw all the things -those people were
doing to try and keep her alive, and all the sophisticated medical
equipment they were using, and how the doctors and the nurses were
working so hard, racing against time to keep her from dying, it was like
a bright light came on and i knew.i mean beyond any shadow of a doubt i
absolutely knew at that very moment that i wanted to dedicate my life to
doing just what those nurses in that room were doing.i wanted to be a
nurse, to help someone like they were helping becky.

today, jenni is missis charles Robeson, Rn, and she works in the
emergency room of a major hospital near nashville.who knows, maybe
someday another mother of another six-year-old child will be rushed in.
She'll need someone to help keep her alive, someone to care, and because
of what happened to becky, jenni will know how.

Remember h.Randolph holder, the man who wouldn't let me play any country
records on his radio station?a few years ago he increased the power on
his fm station to 100000 watts and changed the format to, you guessed
it, all country music.the call letters are now wngc which stand for
we're north georgia country, a far cry from the night he wouldn't let me
punch up even an hour of the louisiana hayride.the station has been
successful, too.in fact, mister holder told me last year a potential
buyer had offered him as much as five million dollars if he ever wanted
to sell.

and remember george thompson, my fraternity brother who resented the
years he spent in military school so badly he sent me back to the campus
to steal the sign in front of the commandant's house?i ran into him
recently.he has just retired from a lifetime of service in, you guessed
it again, the army!

i think what i've learned above everything else these past few years is
that life is to be lived ...it is to be celebrated ...tt ts to be held
and cherished and appreciated and lived ...every single moment of it,
every single day.and it needs to be lived according to what really
matters, what really counts, according to priorities.

big houses and marble shower stalls and gold-plated razors aren t
priority itemiss but holding my little boy's hand while he says the
blessing at mealtime is.taking him to school and helping him with
homework and listening to him play his drums, those are priorities.
houses in the country on thirty-five acres of land are nice, but they
aren't important.what's important is having a wife who loves me enough
to stand at the airport waiting to meet my plane at midnight, dressed
nicely, her hair combed, makeup on, and just a touch of her special
perfume drifting through the night. becky did that just last week, and
it was important to me because it meant we were celebrating life.

i'm not going to lie and say these past few years have been easy because
they haven't.once or twice i came dangerously close to giving up and
walking away, but i found the strength somehow to tie a knot in the end
of my rope and hang on.i wondered at the time where the strength was
coming from, but now i know.like i say, the lord moves in mysterious
ways.

back in the midst of all the agony and confusion in my life, my
daughter, terri, who was going through her severe health problems at the
same rime, gave me a beautiful and inspiring plaque to hang on my wall.
it said:

Sometimes the lord calms the storm.

Sometimes he lets the storm rage and calms his child.

terri and i could both understand and appreciate what the anonymous
writer of that bit of wisdom was saying.her storms have quieted down
somewhat since that time, and even though the doctors continue to
monitor her health closely, she appears to be doing much better.Some of
my storms may still be raging.but i'm not raging and that's what counts.

i found another plaque for my wall not long ago while on tour out west.
(you can hardly see my wall these days for all the plaques and signs
hanging on it!) we were to be working this particular inight near an
indian reservation, and i was whiling away some time that afternoon in a
nearby curio shop.down on the bottom of a tall wicker basket full of all
sorts of handcrafted trinkets and toys, i found a little wooden sign no
more than four inches tall and maybe about three inches wide.it was
turned upside down when i first spotted it and i almost didn't reach
down to turn it ovet i'm awfully glad i did, though, because what
somebody had crudely handpainted on that tiny piece of wood is probably
the one thing that best sums up what this book is all about.and what i
plan on the rest of my life being all about.it was almost as though it
had been written just for me.it simply read:

1t doesn't matter where you go or what you have.

what matters is who you have beside you.

there is no way i could possibly thank all the people whose lives have
touched mine in a meaningful way over the nearly thirty -years that i've
been in show business.but, on the other hand, there are a few very
special people who deserve more than the passing mention i have given
them so fat not the least of those is kathy gaddy, the young lady who
iiserves as my administrative assistant in all the various aspects of my
careet kathy has worked with me since she was fifteen, start-ing out by
coming to my television tapings every night, welcoming the studio
audience, and introducing me to the crowd.from there she graduated (?)
to coming into my office as i might need her to help pack and mail out
my new record releases to the radio stations.one day i discovered she
was a pretty fair typist, and next thing she knew i had her coming to
the office on a regular schedule to help me answer my mail.i don't
remember ever officially hiring her.She just kept coming back and doing
such a great job that one day i started referring to her as my personal
secretary.a couple of years ago i came to realize that she was much more
than a secretary, she was really my right hand and, to be honest, the
brains of the whole outfit.i don't know how i'd manage to walk out my
front door every day without her telling me in which direction to head.

-kathy's mom, jeanne chennault, worked with me for nearly twenty years
herself, leaving in nineteen 87 only because she felt the need to return
to her home state of texas in order to be closer to her family.jeanne
was my personal secretary for a long time, my bookkeeper, and the
president of my fan club.

i didn't mention much about my fan club in these pages, but i want to
say a few words about it now.a lot of people don't iunderstand just what
a fan club is or what function it performs in an artist's i i i i i i 0
i i can't speak for anybody else's fan club, but mine is group people
who are devoted enough me my career that they spend their own time,
their own money, to help support and promote me, my music, my television
appearances, my association with poe folks restaurants, and anything
else that i might be involved with.the love and devotion i feel from
these very special people is more meaningful to me than i could ever - i
express.jean brown, from coloma, michigan, is the current presiitdent of
my fan club, and i can't thank her and the state representatives and all
the members enough for all they do.

i also want to mention my current group of poe folks band members
because they are the greatest: mike johnson, mike Streeter, mark
johnson, les Singer, jim brown, lisa harper Ramsey, and laurie harper
evans, plus our audio engineer keith durham.now, gang, you can all say
you've seen your name in a book!i love each one of you, and i thank you
for putting up with the last two years of listening to me rattle on
...sometimes endlessly, mile after mile on the road ...about this book
i've been working on.

to everybody who's ever been a part of my office staff or my band or
worked with me in any other capacity, a special thanks as well.to every
musician who's ever played on one of my records, every background
singer, every engineer in the control room, every tv cameraperson, each
of you has played a part in all that has been, and so much of it
wouldn't have been without what you contributed.

-to tony privett, thanks for believing in the idea of a bill anderson
autobiography enough to introduce me to chuck perry of longstreet press.
and to chuck, thanks for editing my words and correcting my spelling and
straightening out my punctuation, but most of all thanks for believing.
even more than that, thanks for -understanding.

i can't close this book out without remembering the late john e. drewry,
former dean of the henry w.grady School of journalism at the university
of georgia, whose encouragement will never be forgotten, although he
wasn't quite sure at times just how proud he should be of a grady
graduate who took the wisdom he imparted and used it to compose
hillbilly songs; a lady named miss cofer who taught me how to type in
the tenth grade at avondale high School; and the person who designed a
word processor simple enough for me to semi-understand.my eternal
gratitude to you all.

and last, but far from least, to my friend and compadre, jimmy gately,
my great red-headed drummer, doug Renaud, and my bus driver and dear
friend, james price, all of whom brightened my life and then were taken
from me long before i was ready to let them go, you are still loved, you
are still missed, and you will never be forgotten. the end. she'd say,
why, i did the same -thing last week myself.i could identify with
her.She made me

feel like i wasn't the only strange person in the world.

it made me feel good to hear becky talking about my sister that way.i
knew mary had more than a little bit of background experi ence to draw
from.

in nineteen 81 a casual friend of mary's in atlanta-a lady named
darlene-had suffered life-threatening head injuries in an auto mobile
wreck en route to mary's house.the only identification darlene had in
her purse at the time of the accident was mary's

phone number.obviously, mary was the first person the authorities
contacted following the crash.

mary was working in those days as a registered nurse.her spe cialty was
psychiatry.through a long and drawn-out procedure - - that covered
several months, mary ended up being appointed darlene's legal
guardian.that experience sparked in my sister a

tremendous desire to learn more about head-injured persons.

i found out quickly that even as recently as nineteen 81 there was a
very limited understanding of people with head injuries, she told

me recently.doctors had just begun to learn how to keep brain damaged
people alive.they knew hardly anything about

rehabilitation for them once they had survived.

i began calling rehab centers all over the country trying to learn
something, anything, about head injuries that would help me in dealing
with darlene.i actually visited three different centers, one in San
francisco, one in boston, and one down in texas, all of them new. and l
tried to learn everything i could.in doing so, i became totally absorbed
by the field.it was a new frontier, i was convinced of that, and there
were times when i thought, nobody's doing anything!but i kept on
digging.

i was still in the process of trying to find additional help for darlene
when becky had her accident.i had learned a lot already, but i wasn't
sure just what to do with all i'd learned.then, suddenly, becky's need
for help seemed to bring it all into focus.i prayed about it.i said,
lord, please let becky live and show me what to do with what i've
learned.

her prayers were certainly answered.for over four years now mary has
been like super-glue, holding becky's thoughts, feelings, and gradually
returning emotions in place.She's been the one person becky has always
known she could turn to the whole time she has been struggling to get
well.from the very beginning, becky says, mary made me feel like she had
complete confidence iin my ability to beat this thing and get well. even
when i wasn't so sure myself, mary never once acted like she had lost
faith in me. in between my visits with tom burns, mary has been like my
own private psychologist.'

mary has always been a take-charge kind of person.without even asking
me, she recently volunteered my services to the georgia chapter of the
national head injury foundation.oh, he'll be more than happy to serve on
your board of directors, she told them, knowing that if i wasn't
thrilled about it she'd be able to talk me into it anyhow.turned out she
didn't have to twist my arm at all.

for several years mary served as the administrative head nurse and
assistant program director of the head injury Rehabilitation unit at
georgia baptist hospital in atlanta.She left there recently but
continues to work with their program as a consultant. She has recently
become involved with a new rehab center called meadowbrook and works in
case management as a certified Rehabilitation Registered nurse.

when i was young, i used to wish i had at least a dozen brothers and
sisters, but i had only the one sistet but god knew what he was doing.
what i might have missed out on in quantity, i know now i more than made
up for in quality!

if you write too much in your book about how god has helped me through
all this, people will think we are preachers instead of disciples, becky
said to me one morning during one of our talk sessions.but i do hope
you'll let people know that i'd never have made it without his help and
without the prayers that i know were prayed for me by people all over
the world.god has been with me this whole time.i'm sure of it.

when did you first start thinking about it-i mean about god and the fact
that he was with you?i asked.

the first day i remember being in the hospital, she answered. of course,
i don't remember much about even being there, but i do remember waking
up one day and seeing this doctor sitting at the foot of my you over
across room.i now doctor was dt meacham, but i didn't have any idea who
he was at the time or even why he was there.

i asked him, am i in a hospital?

he said yes, and he started telling me everything that had happened.

what are you going to do to help me get well?i asked, and i will never
forget what he said.he said, honey, you don't need surgery, your vital
signs are all ok, there's not much more i can do.it's really out of my
hands.god is your doctor now.

did you accept that?i asked.

i accepted it without any question, she readily admitted. god was with
me even before the wreck happened.he's always been with me.kathy has
told me that just before i let her out of the car that night i had
stopped for gas.when i got back in the car after paying the cashier, she
says i told her, kathy, fasten your seat belt.there are a lot of crazy
drivers out on Saturday nights. not only did kathy fasten her seat belt,
but for the first time all night i fastened mine.i think god was looking
after me even then.

what about now?

well, you know i'm so much more full of life now than i've ever been
before.god and his grace have made me feel all my emotions deeper and
more fully than i've ever known.i've learned that problems can become
opportunities through him.i've always been a christian, but my desperate
need of god's love and strength has brought me even closer to my faith.

then she began to talk about the three ministers that she felt had
played a large role in her recovery:

brother felix Snell, the preacher who married us and who came to be with
me that frightful Sunday afternoon at general hospital and who has
stayed in close touch with becky throughout this whole ordeal.
throughout her recovery he has dropped her little handwritten notes from
time to time, just to let her know he was thinking of her and to remind
her of god's unending love and grace.he continues to remain in contact
with both of us even today.brother Snell's love and concern and his
prayers have helped sustain our entire family.

Reverend jim beasley, the preacher who baptized jamey when he was only a
few weeks old, called and came to see becky several times both in the
hospital and after she returned home, and she always seemed to feel
better after his visits.he, too, continues to keep in touch.

and Reverend garry Speich, our current pastor, has been one of becky's
greatest pillars of strength and hope.

when her eyesight was so bad she could hardly read anything, it was
garry who brought her copies of the upper Room daily devotional guide
printed in extra-large type.he would come to the condo and sit for hours
talking with becky about god's will and god's plan for her life. he
assured her that god's time was sometimes slow but it was constant.
garry even went so far as to do some personal research on head injuries
so that he might communicate with het

i know god gave us jamey, too, becky continued, and all i had to do was
took at my son and feel his love for me to become more determined than
ever to push harder to become the mother i always was before.and you i
on't ever underestimate how much your love meant to me through all of
this.

ln what way?

you were always my rock to lean on.just that special look in your eyes
gave me the incentive to try and become the woman i was when you fell in
love with me.and she reached across the table and squeezed my hand.

becky says she also received a tremendous amount of spiritual strength
and motivation from watching the 700 club on television.i asked her what
she derived from this particular program.

mostly i saw miracles that had happened in other people's lives, she
said, and it made me realize if god could work a miracle in them he
could work one in me.he had worked one in me.i was a continuing
miracle.that show also taught me i was -ifree to ask for anything from
god.that i didn't have to accept lying up in bed for the rest of my
life.that if i was willing to ask for something and then willing to work
for it, it was possible, through faith, to receive it.

i have never been much of a fan of tv evangelists myself, but i'm
willing to rethink my prejudices a bit.there's no doubt that

i i-i'11this one program was of tremendous value to my wife.

what made you change your mind about being a part of my book?i asked
becky the third or fourth time we sat down togethe why are you willing
to talk about yourself now and open up this way?once you said you
wouldn't do it.

-it's just one more thing coming back to life in me, she answered
without hesitation, one more step in bringing me back - i to who i used
to be.but it didn't just happen overnight.i've been -iwrestling with it
and praying about it for a long time.

what do you think will be accomplished by it?anything?

i don't know, but i do know that i want to share what has happened to me
with other people who need encouragement, with someone out there who
thinks he as reached the end of the line.i want that person to know that
he can get bettet it might take a lot of hard work, but things can get
better.

and, you know, it's not just the patients who need hope.their families
need it too.Sometimes the families suffer more than the actual person.
She paused for a few seconds and looked up at me. oh, honey, she said,
this must have been so hard on you.

i wasn't prepared for that.why do you say that?i asked, a bit uneasily.i
hadn't planned on talking about me.

because you had to feel everything that happened-the whole thing.
Remember, for a long time i didn't have any feelings-i couldn't feel
anything-but you could.i have lots of blank spaces, but you don't. you
remember it all.

i paused to think.i wanted what i said next to come out right. iwell,
everything i did for you, you'd have done it for me, wouldn't you?i
finally asked.

of course, i would, she said.you know that.

well, why should you be surprised that i did it for you, i happen to
love you.i happen to have wanted to take care of you.

i know.

Seems, too, like i remember something in our wedding vows about in
sickness and in health.wasn't that in there somewhere?

i didn't expect her to answer.we both knew what i meant.but she was
right about my not having any blank spaces.there have been times when
i've wished i had a few, but i don't have any.i remember it all-the good
and the bad, everything that happened, it's all there.i remember every
bit of it.

becky said, you know, my whole life i've always wanted to be the best at
anything i've ever tried to do.it never mattered what it was-playing
basketball in high school, giving a party for my friends-whatever it
was, i wanted to be the best there was.i don't remember a lot of things
about my daddy, but i do remember he always told me that anything worth
doing is worth doing right. otherwise, don't waste your time. when i
realized what had happened to me in this accident, i wanted to be the
best recovery patient that there's ever been.

ii sat there and looked at her across the table.the light from the
window was bouncing off her soft, blonde hair, grown back to the full
length it had been four years ago before anything had happened.her eyes
were alert, alive and dancing when she said something funny, narrowed
and reflective when she thought back to where she had been and how far
she had come.to me she looked like an angel.

and i remembered a story she had told me once about lying upstairs in
her bed in the condo not long after the accident and seeing a piece of
lint hanging from the bottom of a chair that sat only a few feet from
the side of the bed.you know what a neat and orderly person i've always
been, she said.i never wanted anything out of order.but i lay there for
months looking at that little piece of lint.i knew all i had to do was
reach over about three feet or so to remove it, but i couldn't do it.i'd
think every day, now today i've got to remove that piece of lint, but i
absolutely did not have the energy or the will power to reach out and do
it.finally one day, after months and months of seeing it hang -ithere, i
was able to reach over and pull it off the chair.i held it until the
next time i had to get up.then i walked over to the trash can and
dropped it in.it was a senseless little task, but it -made me feel
good.it was the first time since i'd been hurt that i felt like i had
accomplished something.

i thought of all the things she had accomplished since then. how many
light years had it been since the morning tom burns had told the court,
She will rehabilitate, but she won't recover? is that what he would say
now if he were sitting here beside me, listening to becky talk about
being the best recovery patient there would had ever been?or he echo the
words of the clinical psychologist who sees her now, dt david mcmillan,
who had told me just --a few days before, becky believed in the
impossible and it happened.who would have thought it?i sure wouldn't.

i've never heard of anybody giving an award for best Recovery patient,
but if they ever do and if they send me a ballot, i can -guarantee you
becky anderson will get my vote.

epilogue.

i am writing these last lines of my book sitting in my study looking out
the big picture window of the dream house becky and i finally built and
moved into just a few months ago.

Remember the nine acres of property we had purchased just prior to her
accident?there's the most gorgeous yellow brick house -rambling across
that hillside now, nestled in among hundreds of tall, beautiful
trees-maple, walnut, hickory.just a few weeks ago the hillside was on
fire with brilliant reds, bright oranges, vivid yellows.does that sound
familiar?do i sound like i'm describing -the house i used to live in in
lebanon?i thought i could never -love another home as much as i loved
that one, but i was wrong. we sold that place nearly three years ago,
and it's long been out of my heart and off my mind.this is home now.

it was fifteen months from the day we broke ground to the day we moved
into out new home, not because our contractor, bill frasch, was slow but
because i wanted the building of this house to be a part of becky's
recovery.a final step in leaving the past behind and moving into the
future.and it was.

every time there was a decision to be made regarding the house, i
encouraged her to make it.or to at least have a voice in it.do we want
dark paint on the outside trim or light paint?a plain wallpaper in the
guest bath or an attractive print?light switches on this wall or that
wall?i didn't care much about those kinds of things anyhow.i left it up
to her, but for a reason: decisionmaking is one of the most difficult
things a head-injured person has to deal with.the more becky was forced
into making decisions, the better at it she ultimately became.toward the
end of the construction she was designing the flow of the driveway, the
place ment of the shrubbery, and probably telling the workmen what to
eat for lunch.our neighbors must have thought our builders were
awfully slow, but there was a very definite method to the madness.

today, the making of decisions gives becky very little trouble at all.

i've learned a lot over the past four-and-a-half years, not the least of
which is that loving a house-this house or any other

house-is not what life's about.that's not what's important.

life is about people, not about houses or any other material things.

iit doesn't matter to me anymore if i live in a shack or a tiny
apartment or in a cardboard box.it's who i live with, not where we

live that really matters.

it brings to mind the opening line from an old song jean Shepard used to
sing: there's nothing so precious as something

you've lost ...and found it somehow in the end.becky and i never lost
our love for each other, but we had allowed some mean -ingless to stand
in the way of it.things that in comparison things
to what we had with each other were really of no value at all. i.

and, then, how close we came to losing everything.another quarter of an
inch, the doctors said, and becky would have been

-killed.i learned my lessons in a pretty painful way as it was.any more
pain would have been unbearable.

two small gray squirrels just romped across the lawn below my window
sill.the newest member of our family, Squirmy, the cat, is

on the driveway toying with some kind of tiny insect who dared to try
and invade her private domain and, sadly, is about to pay the

ultimate price.jamey in fifth-grade at becky is -iin the kitchen reading
up on how to prepare low-cholesterol meals

for herself and her family, and allis well with the world.

for as long as i've been working on this book, i've wanted more than
anything else for it to have a happy ending.i haven't always

been sure just what kind of an ending it was going to have.i guess when
you write fiction, even fictional songs, you can create your

own characters, decide what it is that you want them to do, and then you
make them carry out your wishes as you write about

them.you want a happy ending, you make up a happy ending.it's as simple
as that.but that's not the case here.in an autobiograiphy, the action
takes place first and the writer simply reports on it.

i'm happy to report several things.first, becky is doing just super, and
becky and bill together are doing super, too.in fact, she told me just
the other day that she's happier now than she's ever been in her entire
life.i feel the same way.

this may sound stupid, she said one morning when we were having a quiet
breakfast together after i had taken jamey to school and come back home,
but if it weren't so painful for you and jamey, i'd go through it all
again ...if i knew in the end i'd be as happy as i am now.

we've both learned an awful lot in four-and-a-half years' time,
including the fact that the lord moves in mysterious ways.i had heard
that saying all my life, but i'm a total believer now.he hasn't moved in
mysterious ways with just me and becky eithe itake my daughter, jenni,
for example.

earlier, i referred to her as a student at western kentucky university,
majoring in goodness i knows-what, at the time of becky's accident in
the fall of nineteen 84.at that time jenni had no idea what she wanted
to do with the rest of her life.

but, dad, when i walked into the emergency room at general hospital that
afternoon and i saw becky, and i saw all the things -those people were
doing to try and keep her alive, and all the sophisticated medical
equipment they were using, and how the doctors and the nurses were
working so hard, racing against time to keep her from dying, it was like
a bright light came on and i knew.i mean beyond any shadow of a doubt i
absolutely knew at that very moment that i wanted to dedicate my life to
doing just what those nurses in that room were doing.i wanted to be a
nurse, to help someone like they were helping becky.

today, jenni is missis charles Robeson, Rn, and she works in the
emergency room of a major hospital near nashville.who knows, maybe
someday another mother of another six-year-old child will be rushed in.
She'll need someone to help keep her alive, someone to care, and because
of what happened to becky, jenni will know how.

Remember h.Randolph holder, the man who wouldn't let me play any country
records on his radio station?a few years ago he increased the power on
his fm station to 100000 watts and changed the format to, you guessed
it, all country music.the call letters are now wngc which stand for
we're north georgia country, a far cry from the night he wouldn't let me
punch up even an hour of the louisiana hayride.the station has been
successful, too.in fact, mister holder told me last year a potential
buyer had offered him as much as five million dollars if he ever wanted
to sell.

and remember george thompson, my fraternity brother who resented the
years he spent in military school so badly he sent me back to the campus
to steal the sign in front of the commandant's house?i ran into him
recently.he has just retired from a lifetime of service in, you guessed
it again, the army!

i think what i've learned above everything else these past few years is
that life is to be lived ...it is to be celebrated ...tt ts to be held
and cherished and appreciated and lived ...every single moment of it,
every single day.and it needs to be lived according to what really
matters, what really counts, according to priorities.

big houses and marble shower stalls and gold-plated razors aren t
priority itemiss but holding my little boy's hand while he says the
blessing at mealtime is.taking him to school and helping him with
homework and listening to him play his drums, those are priorities.
houses in the country on thirty-five acres of land are nice, but they
aren't important.what's important is having a wife who loves me enough
to stand at the airport waiting to meet my plane at midnight, dressed
nicely, her hair combed, makeup on, and just a touch of her special
perfume drifting through the night. becky did that just last week, and
it was important to me because it meant we were celebrating life.

i'm not going to lie and say these past few years have been easy because
they haven't.once or twice i came dangerously close to giving up and
walking away, but i found the strength somehow to tie a knot in the end
of my rope and hang on.i wondered at the time where the strength was
coming from, but now i know.like i say, the lord moves in mysterious
ways.

back in the midst of all the agony and confusion in my life, my
daughter, terri, who was going through her severe health problems at the
same rime, gave me a beautiful and inspiring plaque to hang on my wall.
it said:

Sometimes the lord calms the storm.

Sometimes he lets the storm rage and calms his child.

terri and i could both understand and appreciate what the anonymous
writer of that bit of wisdom was saying.her storms have quieted down
somewhat since that time, and even though the doctors continue to
monitor her health closely, she appears to be doing much better.Some of
my storms may still be raging.but i'm not raging and that's what counts.

i found another plaque for my wall not long ago while on tour out west.
(you can hardly see my wall these days for all the plaques and signs
hanging on it!) we were to be working this particular inight near an
indian reservation, and i was whiling away some time that afternoon in a
nearby curio shop.down on the bottom of a tall wicker basket full of all
sorts of handcrafted trinkets and toys, i found a little wooden sign no
more than four inches tall and maybe about three inches wide.it was
turned upside down when i first spotted it and i almost didn't reach
down to turn it ovet i'm awfully glad i did, though, because what
somebody had crudely handpainted on that tiny piece of wood is probably
the one thing that best sums up what this book is all about.and what i
plan on the rest of my life being all about.it was almost as though it
had been written just for me.it simply read:

1t doesn't matter where you go or what you have.

what matters is who you have beside you.

there is no way i could possibly thank all the people whose lives have
touched mine in a meaningful way over the nearly thirty -years that i've
been in show business.but, on the other hand, there are a few very
special people who deserve more than the passing mention i have given
them so fat not the least of those is kathy gaddy, the young lady who
iiserves as my administrative assistant in all the various aspects of my
careet kathy has worked with me since she was fifteen, start-ing out by
coming to my television tapings every night, welcoming the studio
audience, and introducing me to the crowd.from there she graduated (?)
to coming into my office as i might need her to help pack and mail out
my new record releases to the radio stations.one day i discovered she
was a pretty fair typist, and next thing she knew i had her coming to
the office on a regular schedule to help me answer my mail.i don't
remember ever officially hiring her.She just kept coming back and doing
such a great job that one day i started referring to her as my personal
secretary.a couple of years ago i came to realize that she was much more
than a secretary, she was really my right hand and, to be honest, the
brains of the whole outfit.i don't know how i'd manage to walk out my
front door every day without her telling me in which direction to head.

-kathy's mom, jeanne chennault, worked with me for nearly twenty years
herself, leaving in nineteen 87 only because she felt the need to return
to her home state of texas in order to be closer to her family.jeanne
was my personal secretary for a long time, my bookkeeper, and the
president of my fan club.

i didn't mention much about my fan club in these pages, but i want to
say a few words about it now.a lot of people don't iunderstand just what
a fan club is or what function it performs in an artist's i i i i i i 0
i i can't speak for anybody else's fan club, but mine is group people
who are devoted enough me my career that they spend their own time,
their own money, to help support and promote me, my music, my television
appearances, my association with poe folks restaurants, and anything
else that i might be involved with.the love and devotion i feel from
these very special people is more meaningful to me than i could ever - i
express.jean brown, from coloma, michigan, is the current presiitdent of
my fan club, and i can't thank her and the state representatives and all
the members enough for all they do.

i also want to mention my current group of poe folks band members
because they are the greatest: mike johnson, mike Streeter, mark
johnson, les Singer, jim brown, lisa harper Ramsey, and laurie harper
evans, plus our audio engineer keith durham.now, gang, you can all say
you've seen your name in a book!i love each one of you, and i thank you
for putting up with the last two years of listening to me rattle on
...sometimes endlessly, mile after mile on the road ...about this book
i've been working on.

to everybody who's ever been a part of my office staff or my band or
worked with me in any other capacity, a special thanks as well.to every
musician who's ever played on one of my records, every background
singer, every engineer in the control room, every tv cameraperson, each
of you has played a part in all that has been, and so much of it
wouldn't have been without what you contributed.

-to tony privett, thanks for believing in the idea of a bill anderson
autobiography enough to introduce me to chuck perry of longstreet press.
and to chuck, thanks for editing my words and correcting my spelling and
straightening out my punctuation, but most of all thanks for believing.
even more than that, thanks for -understanding.

i can't close this book out without remembering the late john e. drewry,
former dean of the henry w.grady School of journalism at the university
of georgia, whose encouragement will never be forgotten, although he
wasn't quite sure at times just how proud he should be of a grady
graduate who took the wisdom he imparted and used it to compose
hillbilly songs; a lady named miss cofer who taught me how to type in
the tenth grade at avondale high School; and the person who designed a
word processor simple enough for me to semi-understand.my eternal
gratitude to you all.

and last, but far from least, to my friend and compadre, jimmy gately,
my great red-headed drummer, doug Renaud, and my bus driver and dear
friend, james price, all of whom brightened my life and then were taken
from me long before i was ready to let them go, you are still loved, you
are still missed, and you will never be forgotten.

the end.