SEPTEMBER BIRTHDAYS On 17 September we remembered the 29 short years of Hank Williams, who was born 85 years ago. On 18 September I celebrated another great year. This Friday, 26 September, we’ll remember Marty Robbins, born in the Arizona desert 83 years ago. Marty’s fans in his hometown of Glendale AZ are having a […]
RAY PRICE AND MEL TILLIS Last week I heard on XM-13 radio that Mel Tillis and Ray Price would be at a fair in Frederick, Maryland, on Sunday. So I emailed Ernie Reed to ask if he would be there with the Statesiders. I met him backstage after their soundcheck and he introduced me to […]
INTERVIEWS In the past two weeks I’ve found four more Marty Robbins band members. All were with the band when Marty died. Larry Hunt, bass player, had a stroke a year ago. I interviewed pianist Jim Hannaford of Nashville and the rhythm-guitar-playing-harmony-singing pair of friends from Ohio, Gary Adams and Mike Cutright. Thanks to Lynn […]
While home in South Dakota a few weeks ago, I attended the Sherwin Linton show at the county fair in Montevideo, Minnesota. I’d seen him and the Cotton Kings several times years ago, when I was an unknown in the audience. Now Faron’s biography has made me important enough to be introduced! Sherwin’s wife, Pam, […]
This is a periodic newsletter on Live Fast, Love Hard: The Faron Young Story, published last year by the University of Illinois Press, as well as progress on writing Twentieth Century Drifter: The Life of Marty Robbins. INTERVIEWS Thanks to Jody Nix for putting me in touch with Johnny Bush and to Tom Lipscombe for […]
Marty Robbins didn’t like being called “Mr. Teardrop.” He told an interviewer in 1982, “It always embarrassed me when somebody’d say Mr. Teardrop. Ah, shoo, man, I wanted to fall down and cry, y’know. Because I didn’t like it. Because it embarrassed me. . . . I never had a name for my band. They […]
Here’s a quote from a European interview Marty Robbins did in October 1982, shortly after his induction into the Country Music Hall of Fame: “I don’t believe that I deserve it yet, because there’s three other people I think who deserve it before I get it. One is Little Jimmy Dickens. The other is Webb […]
This is a periodic newsletter about “Live Fast, Love Hard: The Faron Young Story,” published last year by the University of Illinois Press, as well as progress on writing “Twentieth Century Drifter: The Life of Marty Robbins.” Here’s the link to my online interview with Norm Goldman, publisher and editor of Bookpleasures.com: http://tinyurl.com/3zteyj JODY NIX […]
Here’s my periodic newsletter about “Live Fast, Love Hard: The Faron Young Story,” published last year by the University of Illinois Press, as well as progress on writing “Twentieth Century Drifter: The Life of Marty Robbins.” GRAND OLE OPRY AND MIDNITE JAMBOREE While in Nashville I attended the Saturday night Opry. (Thanks to Opry museum […]
The 25th annual International Country Music Conference at Belmont University in Nashville provided an enjoyable three days of information and socializing. I learned how Irene Williams spent her whole live preserving the name of her brother, Hank, and then suffered the shame of getting herself busted for running drugs. And the history of Crowley, Louisiana, […]