Faron Young and Marty Robbins newsletter — 26 November 2008
MARTY ROBBINS BEFORE AND AFTER THE NAVY
Here’s a paragraph in my biography draft that I originally placed in the section on Martin as a teenager before he enlisted in the Navy:
***He and his half dozen friends “were trying to have fun,” he said. “We’d choose up sides and have fights with the oranges. Or olives. . . . You can hurt a person by shooting a green olive at him [with a slingshot].” Marty described in an interview the day they carried their fight all the way through town and out into the cemetery. One friend peeked up over a gravestone just as another threw a green orange as hard as a baseball; it hit him between the eyes and knocked him out. “We thought it’d killed him, cuz he just made a few quivering motions with his legs, y’know,” Marty recalled, laughing. “We run over to him, slapped him around, wake up, wake up, are you dead? Finally he came to, but he had closed eyes.”***
Then I interviewed friend Bill Hickman after my visit to Phoenix. Here’s his version: “Everett Furry got knocked out one night; I was the one that hit him. . . .He come charging into the deal, and I threw it. Jumped behind a tree, and someone said, ‘Bill, there’s something wrong with Everett.’ I went around the tree and looked and he was laying face down and just kicking his toes in the ground. The next day we went to see how he was, and I had hit him right between the eyes. He had two black eyes, swelled up. I don’t remember where Martin was at the time.”
Bill told me this story without knowing I already had Marty’s version. What surprised me is that it happened after Marty returned from the Navy and was already married. This is what they did for entertainment after getting off work at night (Marty from the clubs and Bill from the gas station). So I will have to move the story to later in the book.
LETTERS
Kelly Henkins writes from Peoria, Illinois, “While at Barnes & Noble today doing some research for my non-fiction project, I found your book on Faron Young. Thank You. I’d never given thought to there not being a book on him out there. I’m glad there is and you’ve done Faron’s memory justice. I met Faron about twenty years ago in Princeville IL. He and the boys were playing a local celebration. I wanted to meet the great Faron Young. I had been doing celebrity interviews for a couple years and he was at the top of my list. . . . For the next forty-five minutes I sat and chatted informally with Faron Young. . . . I saw a side of Faron most of his fans never knew…the sadness in a man who saw the music business as he knew it slipping away from him, leaving him behind. When it was time for him to go on, I thanked him for his time. He hugged me and thanked me for the company. . . . All the contacts you’ve made will help you with future projects but more importantly you’ve kept the memory alive of a talented, wonderful and proud man.”
Dominique “Imperial” Anglares says, “Thanks for that very entertaining periodic newsletter and for that story about how you found out Harry Tolmachoff. That kind of story happened to me very recently working on Bobby Lollar’s biography. . . . That Internet wonder and my love for music [put two band members] back in touch again. Your work and mine go far than just musical ramblings. They are important for some people and help to connect unknown or long lost friends. That’s worth more than fame and fortune.”
Arie den Dulk in the Netherlands writes, “Yes, the internet is a great tool for researchers. . . .Just returned from a trip to Ireland, we had heavy snowfall one day only, it had not happened in October in 25 years. Marty is very popular there too. . . I found these interesting pictures of Marty on the web: http://www.flickr.com/photos/7388762@N03/1510166467/in/pool-martyrobbins/”
Don Powell announces, “My shows are up and running at www.twangtownusa.com. Just click on hour # 3 for Sunday down south and hour # 11 for the Don Powell show, and you can listen 24 /7. I’m sure you’ll hear some music you will enjoy. Thank you for tuning in.”
Carolyn Babin writes, “I finally got your book on Faron and I am half way through it. . . . Enjoying your book very much, but got a bit sad not reading about the months during years about ’51 – 52 when Faron left for Nashville. The time I was in his life. In a way I am happy it is not there and again it saddens me. O well, my fault I did not know of your writing. . . .Mrs. Young and I took a bus trip to Nashville to visit Faron. This was some time before he was drafted. He put us up at Eddy Arnold’s home. I believe he was still staying at that boarding house and also I think he borrowed Ray Price’s car to take his Mom and me around town, to Roy Acuff’s home and caverns, then to Grand Ole Opry.”
Mike O’Neill suggests, “If you plan on writing one more book take a look at doing a book on Chet Atkins he was the manager and producer of RCA Nashville he and others make the Nashville sound he also was a recording artist known as Mister Guitar.”
Thanks to Joseph Iannaco in New York for sending me a Faron Young belt buckle. He says, “I met and spoke with Faron at concerts on Long Island and Upstate New York and one that really stood out to this present day was a concert you mentioned in your book at Madison Square Garden in NYC June 1971 in which many acts appeared and closed by Loretta Lynn and Conway Twitty with Ed Sullivan in the crowd. Faron was in great voice that night. I am sending you a small item in trying to say in a small way thank you for taking a great deal of time in writing a great book.”