MARTY ROBBINS 65 YEARS AGO
Seaman First Class Martin David Robinson arrived in San Francisco on August 20, 1945, six days after World War II ended, Completing two years in the South Pacific, he had been transferred in late July from a U.S. Navy boat pool in the Admiralty Islands of New Guinea. A ship was taking him home for a thirty-day leave before preparing for the invasion of Japan. The end of the war meant he wouldn’t have to go back. Instead, after a month spent visiting his mother in Glendale, Arizona, he went to San Diego until his February 1946 discharge. Read the rest of this entry »

THE YOUNG SHERIFF & HIS COUNTRY DEPUTIES 50 YEARS AGO
In 1960, Faron Young’s Country Deputies band consisted of lead guitarist Odell Martin, steel player Ben Keith, drummer Roger Miller, and new frontman Darrell McCall on electric bass. When Faron had decided to add drums a year earlier, Roger Miller needed a job and agreed to become a drummer if Faron bought him a drum set. Then, according to Ben Keith, “When Darrell started, we had a knock-out band. We were hot. We were really good.” This is the band that backed Faron during the Carnegie Hall performance in late 1961. Read the rest of this entry »

“DON’T WORRY” BY MARTY ROBBINS
Fifty years ago this week, Marty Robbins recorded “Don’t Worry” and inadvertently created a new sound–the fuzz tone. The song idea popped into Marty’s head when he was sitting at a stoplight on Thompson Lane one night, and he wrote the song by the time he reached his house in Brentwood. “I went home and played it on the piano for, probably for an hour,” he once said, “not just to remember the song, but because I liked the song.” He recorded it July 12, 1960, and everyone in the studio was surprised to hear a distorted sound on the playback. Perfectionist Marty wanted to rerecord it, but producer Don Law convinced him to keep the unique sound, which had resulted when the amplifier for Grady Martin’s lead bass guitar malfunctioned. (More on that story when the book is published.) The single was released in December and spent ten weeks at number one. Read the rest of this entry »

THE COWBOY IN THE CONTINENTAL SUIT

“The Cowboy in the Continental Suit” hit the charts in June 1964 and climbed to number three. Marty Robbins had worn a European-cut continental suit during a movie premier, and a newspaper called him “the cowboy in the continental suit.” Marty thought that was a neat title for a song. “I have to be inspired to write,” he said, “and that inspired me to write a song. It didn’t take me very long.” Marty described the song: “He’s dressed in a continental suit, and he comes to ride this big buckskin called the Brute. No one has ever ridden this horse, and anyone that can ride him gets a thousand bucks. And he opens the gate, and this buckskin comes running out, and he grabs him around the neck, and pulls himself up on the back of this buckskin, and rides him.” The horse was ashamed to have been ridden by a cowboy in a continental suit. Read the rest of this entry »

“LIVE FAST, LOVE HARD, DIE YOUNG” — 55 YEARS OLD
Faron Young achieved his first number one Billboard hit this week in 1955. It was a busy year. He had become the Young Sheriff with his Country Deputies in May, he was getting ready to go to Hollywood to make his first movie, Hidden Guns, and he and Hilda would have their first child in August. About writing “Live Fast, Love Hard, Die Young,” Joe Allison told me he’d watched a bad “B” gangster movie in which John Derek kept saying, “I want to die young and leave a good-looking corpse.”  Joe told me, “It struck me as being a good idea for a song, so I wrote it. I didn’t write it for anybody, but when Ken Nelson heard it, he said, ‘We’ll do that with Faron Young.’” Faron told Ralph Emery, “This was a tune I detested. Ken Nelson made me record this song. I put it out and it was a big, big hit. Then I got to likin’ it.” Read the rest of this entry »

MANUSCRIPT UPDATE
I emailed the completed manuscript of Twentieth Century Drifter: The Life of Marty Robbins last week and received this response from the editor: “I’ve read your Marty Robbins manuscript with pleasure and am sending it out to two readers for formal assessment. I anticipate having their comments back by midsummer. Thanks for your fine work on the manuscript, and I’ll be in touch as the reports come in.” If all goes well, I might have a book contract by Marty’s 85^th birthday, followed by publication in late 2011 or early 2012. Today I started working on the index. I’m looking for photos to put in the book. If anyone has a good-quality photo and owns the copyright (no professional publicity shots or photos with fans), I’d be happy to consider it. Read the rest of this entry »

OFFICE OF MARTY ROBBINS
In 1968 Marty Robbins considered tearing down the two-and-a-half-story house that served as his office at 713 18th Avenue South in Nashville. He hired an architect to prepare preliminary sketches for a three-story office building but eventually chose to build a one-story addition at the rear of the old house. Lucy Coldsnow, Marty’s office assistant, hired the contractor and oversaw the building project, to include designing Marty’s new executive office. “I decorated it into a very rustic western décor,” she says. Read the rest of this entry »

NASHVILLE
There are no words to express what is happening in Nashville right now. Here’s a photo from the Internet showing the flooding inside the Opry House. The stage is under water. The Grand Ole Opry museum next door must also be under water–the one place we could go to visualize Marty Robbins sitting at his desk in his office. Read the rest of this entry »

MAN OF THE DECADE – Forty Years Ago
Three months after his triple-bypass heart surgery, Marty Robbins attended the fifth annual Academy of Country and Western Music awards banquet, held at the Hollywood Palladium in Los Angeles on April 13, 1970. There he received the ACM’s first “Man of the Decade” trophy, for the decade of the 1960s. His speech included his usual sentiment, “I thank God for allowing me to be here tonight.” He then went on to Las Vegas for a month-long gig at the Fremont Hotel. The award was renamed “Artist of the Decade” when it went to Loretta Lynn for the 1970s. Alabama won in the ’80s, Garth Brooks for the ’90s, and George Strait for the ’00s. Except for the 1980s, I heartily agree with all choices. Read the rest of this entry »

This periodic newsletter commemorates the lives of Faron Young and Marty Robbins. Live Fast, Love Hard: The Faron Young Story was published in 2007 by the University of Illinois Press, and the publication goal for Twentieth Century Drifter: The Life of Marty Robbins is 2012. Thanks to Gary Presley for reviewing the manuscript; I’m now cutting words to get it ready to send to a publisher.

FIRED FROM THE GRAND OLE OPRY
Both Marty and Faron experienced being “let go” by the Opry. Marty hosted the Prince Albert portion of the Opry on March 1, 1958, and was told by W. D. Kilpatrick after the show that the Opry no longer needed him. Read the rest of this entry »