BILL JOHNSON
Bill Johnson played steel guitar for Marty Robbins from 1960-1974, with a two-year break in the early Sixties when he was drafted into the U.S. Army. He was one of the first people to provide me with research material and his memories when I started working on Marty’s biography. Bill talked about Marty’s heart attacks and the fuzztone origins and the poker games on the bus. When he told me he wrote “A Wound Time Can’t Erase,” I said I recognized the Stonewall Jackson song. I looked forward to meeting him someday when we were both in Nashville. So I was shocked to read Bobbe Seymour’s post to the Steel Guitar Forum that Bill died March 17. He was 70 years old. (more…)

Today I attended a Mary Kay training session conducted by a multimillionaire national sales director (NSD). She spoke on mental attitude and how we become what we think about. Although I’d never heard of her, I could see why the others had excitedly waited for her visit. She was knowledgeable and motivating and responded well to the rock star treatment.

My goal for two years as a Mary Kay independent beauty consultant has been to qualify as a sales director, and most of the “red jackets” in the room shared the same goal. The NSD’s talk focused on how we could make it happen. (more…)

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 I’m currently writing Twentieth Century Drifter: The Life of Marty Robbins for publication in 2012.

REMEMBERING MARCH 5, 1963

Billy Grammar and Faron Young were in Canada, driving to Calgary, Alberta, and the radio kept playing Cowboy Copas and Hawkshaw Hawkins and Patsy Cline records. Faron later recalled, “I said, ‘Boy, they’re really hot up here.’ This went on for about 45 minutes. Then the disk jockey broke in and said, ‘We want to play those songs to those we lost today.’ I looked at Billy Grammar and he said, oh Lord, no. Me, too, and we started crying. They were all three great friends of mine.” (more…)