Pitching Products on Radio

Lee: "On 'The Breakfast Club,' out of Chicago, I think I was about 10 and they didn't forewarn me about anything back then. (Host) Don McNeil was pitching Grape-Nuts Flakes (cereal) — they were the sponsor of the show — and he said, 'Brenda, you love Grape-Nuts Flakes, don't you?' And I said, 'No, Mr. McNeil, I don't.' And he just wouldn't let it lay. He kept saying, 'But you really do.' And I said, 'No, sir, I really don't like them.' Needless to say, I didn't do that show again for a long time."

Scruggs: "Mr. Cohen Williams was the owner of Martha White Foods. He had a salesman that went up as far as Jamestown, Tenn. He heard Lester (Flatt) and me on the Knoxville station, WNOX, and he convinced Mr. Williams that Flatt & Scruggs could probably sell flour for him. That's how we got started at WSM (in Nashville). Ahead of us they put The Carter Family, Maybelle and the girls, on at about 7 or 8 o'clock in the morning. That wasn't doing much good; the sun was way up yonder. Mr. Williams tried to analyze what was going wrong and he said, 'I'm just buying time that's convenient for me.' So he bought him a tape recorder that would come on at 5:45 (in the morning with Flatt & Scruggs pre-recorded) because that was a good time to get the farmers."

Playing Overseas

Bare: "My first trip to Europe was in 1965. It was me, Chet (Atkins), Jim Reeves and The Anita Kerr Singers on a promotional tour for RCA Records. There had never been a Country Music show in Europe before, other than for the military. It made big stars out of us, even to this day. I just got back from Norway, and every place I played was sold out immediately. The fact is, at my age it's real handy because I can go over there, work 10 days and earn more money than I can spend in a year."

Lee: "I had a huge record in France in 1958. They had never seen me, and I was booked to go into the (Paris) Olympia Theater, which still is one of the great venues in the world. My manager, Dub Albritten, was cronies with Colonel Tom Parker (Elvis Presley's manager). As you know, the Colonel was really big at promoting and publicity. So they wrote and said, 'Send us a picture that we can use for our promotion.' We sent a picture of me in my little Mary Jane shoes and my little dress with crinolines, like I looked. We'd keep getting letters back that said, 'Send more recent pictures,' I guess because my voice was so big they thought I was older. It finally dawned on my manager what they meant, so he and the Colonel cooked up this story that I was actually a 32-year-old midget. Le Figaro, which is still one of the big papers there, ran this story. And we had tremendous crowds! I don't think they were coming to see if I could sing or not; they were coming to see if I was a midget."

Scruggs: "We were getting off the plane (in Japan). Two pilots, little bitty guys, were walking out there. (Bassist) Jake Tullock was with us. He said, 'Look at them little guys, gonna fly that big old airplane.' I said, 'They flew in the war.' And he said, 'By God, they lost too!'"

Dickens: "I worked the Tokyo 'Grand Ole Opry' where they impersonated Bill Monroe, Lester Flatt and Earl Scruggs, and they had Marty Robbins, Roy Acuff and Ernest Tubb. They had an interpreter telling these people my jokes! Can you imagine that? Sometimes they'd look at you like, 'What time does the entertainment start?'"

Road Stories

Lee: "I was 10 or 11 years old, and my first big tour was with George Jones, Mel Tillis, Faron Young, Patsy Cline and The Louvin Brothers. That was before the days when you got 'first count,' before the promoter could run off with your money. My mama and I rode a bus down to the show. We didn't get paid. Patsy Cline, God bless her, put us in her car, fed us, brought us back to Nashville and gave us money to get through the week. That's when I fell in love with Patsy Cline."

Bare: "One night we were doing a show in Saginaw, Mich. It was me, Hank Snow, Lefty Frizzell and some girl singer — I don't remember who it was. That's when Lefty had a big hit with 'Saginaw, Michigan.' Everybody said that the mayor was going to come down and give Lefty the key to the city. Well, the mayor decided to send his assistant, who didn't know his way around at all backstage. He stood off in the corner with a suit on and waited until Lefty started singing 'Saginaw, Michigan.' But he didn't wait until it was over. He came out in the middle of the song, and instead of the key to the city, it was a gavel with a seal on it, and it looked just like a ball-peen hammer. Lefty saw him coming, and all he knew was, 'Here comes this guy with a ball-peen hammer!' So he turned around, grabbed him by the seat of his pants and threw him off the stage. I bet that guy's still wondering what the hell happened."

Scruggs: "We used to do 'The Grand Ole Opry' and then West Grove, Pa. It was hard to play three or four shows in West Grove and make it to Chattanooga on Monday. And we had a Sunday gospel show, which made seven days a week."

Bare: "I couldn't do that, even back then."

Scruggs: "I thought I couldn't, but I wanted to stay in the business and I was too old to plow on Maude anymore!"

Recording Debuts

Bare: "I did my first real record at United Studios, when we used those Hollywood Strings. I was recording a song called 'Lorena.' I talked it through with the producer. I said, 'We'll play this scant acoustic rhythm up to this point and then the strings will build and ease in and go way out like that.' That's exactly what happened. When those strings came in, it affected me so much that I had to quit singing. It was just too beautiful. I'd never heard anything like that before."

Lee: "The first session I did, I was only 10 at the time. We were doing a take and I knew I was supposed to sing it through but I stopped. Owen (Bradley) said, 'What's the matter?' And I said, 'The bass player hit a bad note.' Bobby Moore said, 'No, I didn't.' And I said, 'Yeah, you did.' Owen said, 'Well, let's just listen back.' And he did hit a bad note! Bobby and I laugh about that today."

Scruggs: "The first recording session I ever did was with Bill Monroe. We had to go to Chicago. I remember that was the first time I ever saw a TV set. We were walking down the street, and where the parking lot was at the radio station there was a TV set sitting in the window. It didn't have a thing on — just snow. I was told that it only came on during lunch hour and before bedtime at night, so I never did see the picture. But it was exciting to me. If a picture had come on, I like to have jumped sky high!"

Songwriters

Bare: "I love to hang out with songwriters because they're all very special — they're the brightest people I know. They're aware of everything that goes on around them. They're funny. They don't take themselves too serious. And they're more fun than hanging out with stars because you don't have to deal with huge egos."

Dickens: "One time I was riding to Wichita, Kan., with Hank Williams and Minnie Pearl in Minnie Pearl's airplane. Hank and I were in the back seat. He said, 'Tater, you need a hit.' I said, 'Who doesn't?' And he said, 'Well, I'm gonna write you one.' Minnie Pearl got a little old pad out of the glove compartment and gave him a pencil. And he started writing 'Hey Good Lookin'.' In 20 minutes he had that song written. He said, 'Now, you record that and it'll make you a hit.' I said, 'As soon as I get to the studio, I'll get it done.' A week later, I was walking down the hall, and he come down the hall and he said, 'Tater, I recorded your song today.' I said, 'Thanks a lot, man.' I've hated that song ever since."

Advice

Dickens: "Don't ever walk away from any man or woman that approaches you to take a picture or sign an autograph. It only takes a minute of your time to do that, but if you're rude to one person, he will tell a hundred. That hundred will tell a thousand. And that thousand will tell 2,000 and 3,000, and the first thing you know you wake up one morning and go, 'What happened?'"

Bare: "If you look at all the stars that I know, they have that talent that makes people pull for you. They want you to do well. You surround yourself with as many people as you can that want you to do well. You've got to have a lot of people helping you along the way. You've got to cultivate that."

Lee: "You're not always going to be everybody's darling. You're not always going to be number one; that's why there are numbers below it. When you accept that and you can be happy with the niche you have in life and the industry, then it's magic."

© 2009 CMA Close Up® News Service / Country Music Association®, Inc.

Seed Newsvine