Diane’s Country Music Newsletter — 8 January 2025
IN THE SPOTLIGHT – RONNIE MCDOWELL
When Ronnie McDowell called me last week for our phone interview (thanks to Debbie Grisham for setting it up), we began the conversation by talking about our Navy days. We both graduated from high school in 1968. I headed off to college and he enlisted in the Navy to avoid being sent to Vietnam. “When I got out of bootcamp in San Diego,” he told me, “I got a big ol’ manila envelope, and it said, ‘Vietnam,’ and I said, ‘Nooooo.'” He was flown to Saigon in October and then out to the aircraft carrier USS Hancock, which cruised back and forth in the Tonkin Gulf while launching aircraft strikes against North Vietnam. Ronnie was assigned to the deck division.
Seaman Ronnie was moving barrels of agent orange one day in the lower decks of the ship when a lieutenant came down in search of a sign painter. Ronnie said he had painted signs in high school to make money. The lieutenant wanted a sign on the door of the disbursing office, and Ronnie spent two weeks painting an old miner with a pot of gold at the end of a rainbow. The lieutenant said, “If you can do this, what the hell are you doing in the deck force? You don’t need to be there, around that stuff. What do you want to do?” Ronnie said he would like to cut hair. He’d never cut hair in his life but had heard it was the easiest job on the ship. Soon he had his own little barbershop, with the officers as his clients. He believes the lieutenant saved his life by getting him away from agent orange.
Ronnie had known since age three, when he was running around his house in Portland, Tennessee, singing “Your Cheatin’ Heart,” that he wanted to be a singer. In 1956, his sister brought home a 78-rpm record, and he listened to “Hound Dog” so many times his mother told her six-year-old to stop. “I took that 78 and turned it over,” he says, “and it was ‘Don’t Be Cruel,’ and I ain’t been the same since.”
The first time he ever sang in front of anyone was on the Hancock. During a break from fighting, the elevator that carried planes to the flight deck was lowered to the hangar deck, with a makeshift stage set up for a variety show. Ronnie and two friends who had learned with him how to play the guitar entered the show. Ronnie sang Elvis Presley’s “When My Blue Moon Turns to Gold Again” in front of 5,000 sailors. He was so shy he looked down at the floor and never looked at the audience.
I asked why it had taken thirteen years before he sang in public. “I was the shyest kid that ever lived on planet Earth,” he told me. “I was painfully shy.” After his shipboard performance, when USS Hancock made a port call to Subic Bay in the Philippines in 1969, Ronnie and a buddy visited the Playboy Club in Olongapo City. They were impressed by the incredible Filipino band that could play and sing anything–and sound just like the records. Elvis was hot again, following his 1968 comeback tour. “I had never drank alcohol in my life, ever,” Ronnie explains, “and I had one-half of a San Miguel beer, and all of my inhibitions flew out the window.” He asked if he could sing “Love Me Tender” with the band. Halfway through the song, he remembers, every girl in the place rushed the stage, reaching toward him and calling, “Joe, me take you home. Me take you home.” The nineteen-year-old sailor told himself, “This is what I want to do the rest of my life.” That ended his shyness.
His next set of orders took him to Adak, Alaska, for thirteen months. There he had a band, Ronnie D and the Reminiscents. They played the officers’ club on Friday and the enlisted club on Saturday. “Fifty bucks a night,” he says. “In 1970, that was a lot of money.” He finished his enlistment back in Vietnam, on the aircraft carrier Kitty Hawk, studying so diligently for the ship’s serviceman rating exams that he was advanced to petty officer second class (E-5) by the end of his enlistment in May 1972.
He returned home to Tennessee and started writing songs, building on the skill he had begun learning while in the Navy. Within a few months, he and his little brother went to the Young Building in Nashville with a song they had written for Faron Young. Billy Deaton sent them upstairs to Faron’s office. “We were in awe, you can imagine, cuz I was the world’s biggest Faron Young fan,” Ronnie says. “People don’t realize what an unbelievable singer he was.” Faron listened to the song and told them, “Well, boys, I love this song but, hell, it sounds like ‘Wine Me Up.’ You need to write something that doesn’t sound like my last record.”
Within the next five years, Ronnie had songs recorded by Roy Drusky, Billy Walker, Jean Shepard, and the Wilburn Brothers. “I was having so much fun writing songs for all these artists,” he says, “but I wanted to be a recording artist and sing. I had a gig every night–six shows a night, six nights a week.” Then, on August 16, 1977, came the news of Elvis Presley’s death. “It was 2:22 in the afternoon,” Ronnie remembers. “I’d just rehearsed with my band, and I turned the radio on, I can take you to the exact spot where I was.”
That night, on his way to a gig up in Bowling Green, Kentucky, he wrote a song. “It not just poured out of my heart but my soul,” he says. “I was barely six years old when I first heard him sing. And from that moment on, I knew it would be a lifetime thing.” Ronnie was 27 when he wrote and recorded “The King Is Gone.” It turned his life upside down. Within two weeks, he was singing it on American Bandstand.
That kicked off his recording career. During the early 1980s, while on Epic Records, he had a string of a dozen top ten hits, including two number ones: “Older Women” and “You’re Gonna Ruin My Bad Reputation.” Mike Curb, a fellow Elvis Presley fan, signed him to Curb Records in 1984, and he’s been there since. Mike re-signed him last year at age 73.
Ronnie’s painting career has been as successful as his music career. He’s done numerous Elvis portraits, with his best-selling one being “The King in the Turquoise Shirt.” Ronnie describes Elvis as “a 1956 Uber driver.” After finishing his most recent painting, in honor of Elvis’s 90th birthday, Ronnie says, “I’m not sure I’ll paint any more Elvis paintings. I’m kinda like fried out on them. I’ve done enough of them. It’s going to be hard for me to compete with an Uber driver.”
He has a new project, painting the Happy Cow for customers such as the truckstop Buc-ee’s. “I think cows are such gentle creatures,” he says, “so I’ve got this happy cow I invented, which I absolutely love. It’s the same happy cow every time. She’s smiling and got this sparkle in her eyes.” The cow in the paintings says things like “Welcome to Moooo-sic City,” or “I’m in the moooooood for Buc-ee’s.,” or “I’m in the mooood for Kroger” on a Kroger grocery bag. His favorite is the happy cow with a beautiful moon and a starlit night behind her, and she says, “Wait. I did what?” Another has an old man milking the cow, and she turns her head and says, “This is udderly ridiculous.”
Today, January 8, is Elvis’s 90th birthday, and Ronnie will be live streaming a commemoration from the Audubon House in a Memphis suburb. Located on 1034 Audubon Drive in a residential neighborhood, it is the house Elvis purchased with the royalties from “Heartbreak Hotel.” Although the young star and his parents were happy there, the neighbors objected to the never-ending invasion of fans, and the Presleys moved to Graceland. Mike Curb bought the little ranch house fifty years later to preserve it. He allows University of Memphis students to come there and study music. It is not a tourist attraction. Ronnie has been doing occasional TV shows there for four years, with 25 guests per show, which includes a tour of the house. During this birthday celebration, he will unveil his newest Elvis painting. “It’s my favorite one I’ll ever do,” he says. “It looks like something da Vinci or Michelangelo would have done.” Or Norman Rockwell. He combines his three heroes into one painting style. The show will be streamed on his Facebook page.
NEWS
When reading the MusicRow list of 2024 obituaries, I was surprised to learn Ozzy Osment had died March 5 at age 71. William Osment was a musician in Nashville for over fifty years. He started as a fiddler with Tom T. Hall and then Faron Young. He also worked with Ed Bruce, Kenny Chesney, Brenda Lee, and was active in R.O.P.E. (Reunion of Professional Entertainers). When I interviewed him in 2000, he told me he had degenerative arthritis and that he had broken his hip while on Faron’s payroll. Faron gave him $1000 and obtained money from the Opry Trust Fund to pay his hospital bill. “He is what made me survive,” Ozzie told me. “I would have lost everything.” Although his obituary called him Ozzy, he had neatly printed his nickname as Ozzie on the interview release form he sent me. He is in Faron’s biography as Ozzie.
The third annual “Opry Goes Dolly” event will take place January 18, the day before the 79th birthday of Dolly Parton. Although Dolly will not be present, some of those taking the stage to perform their favorite Parton tunes will be Bill Anderson, Rhonda Vincent, Ashley Cooke, and Chapel Hart. Shaboozey will make his Opry debut. Five dollars from every ticket sold will be donated to Dolly’s Imagination Library. “Opry Goes Dolly” will also feature birthday treats baked with her Duncan Hines mixes, a large birthday card for fans to sign, and photo ops with a Parton impersonator on the Opry Plaza. Fans can purchase tickets to a “Dolly-oke” fundraiser in Studio A, headlined by Chapel Hart. All proceeds will support the Opry Trust Fund, which offers financial assistance to country music professionals in time of need.
Richard Perry, a hitmaking record producer with Number Ones on the pop, R&B, dance, and country charts, died December 24 at a Los Angeles hospital after suffering cardiac arrest. He was 82. His hits included Carly Simon’s “You’re So Vain,” The Pointer Sisters’ “I’m So Excited,” Tiny Tim’s “Tiptoe Through the Tulips,” and the Willie Nelson-Julio Iglesias “To All the Girls I’ve Loved Before.” He also produced Randy Travis on “It’s Just a Matter of Time” for the 1989 album, Rock, Rhythm & Blues, which featured contemporary artists performing classic rock songs by musicians of the 1950s and early 1960s.
Image consultant and jewelry designer Thomas “Lynn” Baker died peacefully at his home in Tijeras, New Mexico, on December 3, of Huntington’s Disease. He was 71. In his twenty years in the entertainment industry in Nashville, he provided wardrobe design, video production, event planning, image consulting, interior design, set design, and art direction. Lynn was an award-winning jewelry and costume designer with clients such as Rosanne Cash, Clint Black, Billy Ray Cyrus, Dixie Chicks, The Judds, Loretta Lynn, Lee Roy Parnell, Doug Stone, Shania Twain, Lee Ann Womack, Tammy Wynette, Trace Adkins, Alan Jackson, Brooks & Dunn, and Diamond Rio. He designed The Country Music Association’s post-award party, styled and made wardrobes for various country artists, and built custom artist booths for Fan Fair. Thanks to Martha Moore for sending the obituary.
The 39th President of the United States, Jimmy Carter, died December 29 at the age of 100, at his home in Plains, Georgia. He had been in homecare hospice since February. His wife of 77 years, Rosalyn Carter, died in November at age 96. Bill Anderson writes on Facebook, “I remember my dad telling me that a person from the Deep South would probably never be elected President of the United States. He and I both lived long enough to see him proven wrong when Jimmy Carter from Plains, Georgia, ascended to the White House back in the seventies. During his time in office, he and Mrs. Carter hosted the CMA Board of Directors at the White House. As a fellow Georgian, I was proud to have stood alongside our state’s most distinguished citizen. May he rest in peace.”
The five-hour broadcast of New Year’s Eve Live: Nashville’s Big Bash was hosted by Keith Urban and Entertainment Tonight‘s Rachel Smith, reports MusicRow. It took place in Bicentennial Park with an estimated crowd of 220,000 and featured more than 40 back-to-back performances from artists such as Luke Bryan, Eric Church, Luke Combs, Miranda Lambert, Stapleton, Zach Top, and Lainey Wilson. At midnight, Nashville celebrated with the Music Note Drop on the Bicentennial Mall stage.
Singing the “The Star-Spangled Banner” at the Lockheed Martin Armed Forces Bowl on December 27 was Krystal Keith, daughter of Toby Keith. The annual game honored men and women in the military, and the Oklahoma Sooners played in the game. The late Toby Keith proudly supported both. Taste of Country reports, “Prior to the game at Amon G. Carter Stadium in Fort Worth, Texas, the younger Keith took the field in front of a massive American flag that spanned nearly 100 yards. She delivered a powerful rendition of the National Anthem from midfield.” That was followed by a flyover of four Air Force F-35s from the 301st Fighter Wing.
And my news is that my book cover has been approved!! Randy Travis: Storms of Life is available for preorder.
LETTERS
Dominique ‘Imperial’ Anglares writes from France, “Thank you very much for that welcome newsletter, a nice way to close that year. Wishing you and all the readers a happy new year and all the best for those 365 days to come. Keep the good work going on for one more round.”
Doug Lippert writes from Carmel, Indiana, “Thanks so much for keeping the country music tradition alive. I know I speak for all your readers when I say we are grateful for the work you do. 2025 will be a big year for you, with your new book. I wish you great success and good health for the new year. Merry Christmas and Happy New Year. I forgot to add the National Automotive and Truck Museum with Marty’s car is in Auburn, Indiana.”
Sam Wellington of The Four Guys says, “I would like to wish you and your readership a very Merry Christmas and the Happiest of New Years. This from The Hillbilly Capital of the Universe, Nashville, Tennessee. Thanks for all you do.”
Joseph Allen writes, “That interview with Martha Sharp was quite touching. Lots of women had crushes on Kris Kristofferson. And I can see why. Brilliant musician and songwriter, fair singer but that was his appeal to me, and the great songs he wrote.”
Bobby Fischer in Nashville says, “Merry new year, Diane. Looking forward to the dandy country updates in 2025.”
Dave Barton says, “Merry Christmas, Captain, hope you have a great holiday.”
Mike Johnson of Roughshod Records says, “Another good issue, as usual. While I don’t like to rain on anyone’s parade, and you, as well as I and countless others, enjoy Mason Ramsey as a truly genuine country artist in the making, a yodeler he is not. While his rendition of ‘Lovesick Blues’ was excellent, the song was never considered a yodeling song, nor Hank, a yodeler, by practicing yodelers. This along with the fact that his label has yet to release, and most likely won’t, any future songs demonstrating that he can actually yodel. I think he can, but mainstream Nashville tried to ditch the yodel when I was getting professionally started during the 1980s. This also flies in the face of decades of consistently performing yodelers and up and coming yodelers like Phoebe White, the Yodeling Cowgirl, who knows and performs a number of yodeling songs. As you can tell, I’m very passionate and protective about the subject of yodeling and those who have shown themselves to be dedicated to the art. It’s also unfortunate that Mason’s label has turned him into basically a pop artist. I do understand that they’re trying to capitalize on his youthful looks and appeal to female listeners in his age bracket. I do wish him the best in whatever he does but am so sad that a truly genuine country artist has been sidetracked by his label. And life goes on.”
Eric Calhoun, wishing all a Happy New Year, says, “Welcome to Dave Magram, I hope you enjoy this newsletter, as I do. I’ve been a subscriber for over four years. When I was introduced to country music in the late 1970s to 1980, I was amazed at how people like Ronnie Milsap, Ray Charles, Willie Nelson, and others could put a song together, and make it enjoyable. I’ve had problems with some of today’s country, the kind of ‘I lost my lover, and I’m crying about it.’ But if the song has a positive message, I’m all for it. I had a short conversation with Billy Dean, and he has been a huge encouragement. I was not happy with how Holly Dunn’s or Mindy McCready’s lives came to an end. But I appreciated, and still appreciate, their music. On Diamond Rio: now that’s a band that has a lot of great music! I’m glad you enjoyed the show. And thank you for the up-to-date information on Stephanie Bentley. Her song, ‘Once I Was the Light of Your Life,’ took me back to several people who really have made a good impression on me. Country music remains, in my heart, in my soul, and in all of what I do. Here’s to a very big 2025, for which, in this next newsletter, we’ll be in the second week in January. To leave you, with a question: Have any country music artists been inspired by Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.?”
Michael Green writes, “Thanks for another great newsletter, and happy holidays. Our sympathies to Jeannie Seely. Gene Ward clearly enjoyed being married to her and vice versa. I hope the good memories help. Nice to see Dana Williams mentioned. He also played bass for Jimmy C. Newman in Cajun Country and often mentions that fact.”
Elliot Mclanahan says, “Sending prayers, and condolences to Miss Seely.”
Mike McCloud requests, “Give my condolences to Jeannie Seely. I met her in person at the Country Music Hall of Fame. As always, she seemed very nice. I know she is devastated. Give her my condolences please.”