by Ricky Skaggs
Dad never said, “I told you so,” the way some dads might do in that situation. He said, “I love you, son.” Dad and Mom pledged their love to me more deeply than ever. As far as things with Brenda and I went, the divorce was more a truce than anything. We both wanted peace and civility. There was no call for finger-pointing. Getting married at eighteen years old, we probably jumped into something we weren’t ready for. We really didn’t know what marriage meant, or what it could mean. Marriage is a union ordained by God. We just got lost on our path together. It happens a lot, I guess, and it hurts a lot, too.
Chapter 15
MUSIC CITY
The late seventies and early eighties had seen country go pop. . . . But Skaggs re-introduced the backwoods sound, and with an impeccably tight band and clear, snappy bluegrass-influenced productions, his records and live shows came like a breath of fresh air through a stagnant Nashville smog.
—Who’s Who in New Country Music, by Andrew Vaughan
His hits testified not only to the new life which Skaggs’s singing, arrangements, and production infused into them but also to the fact that these relatively simple songs were as well crafted as those of the more sophisticated Nashville songwriters.
—Bluegrass: A History, by Neil V. Rosenberg
When I got back to Nashville, I hit the ground running. I took meetings with my manager, my music attorney, and Rick at CBS, the company that owned Epic. I needed to get in the studio and start recording my first major-label album, Waitin’ for the Sun to Shine. How appropriate the title was, given all I was dealing with. My heart was very heavy but hopeful, and I was looking for the best songs I could find. I was working hard in pre-production at my apartment, and thinking about my future.
After a few months,. Sharon and I started going out and doing things together. We weren’t calling it dating, we were just, as the young kids today call it, “hanging out.” We’d go to church together, go have dinner somewhere, and always end up back at Buck and Pat’s place. It was kinda like dating, but it was pretty supervised, to be honest. Almost like a courtship you hear about in an old parlor song. Obviously we were both grown-ups and had both been married before, but we wanted the blessing of Buck and Patty, same as with my mom and dad.
We were lucky that we’d had a long friendship with each other, and we were even luckier to have the families we did. ’Cause it was our families that helped take our new relationship to the next level; they gave us the emotional support you need when you’re ready to take that leap into the unknown.
Now, my mom and dad both loved Brenda, but they loved Sharon, too. They treated Brenda the same after the divorce. As far as they were concerned, she was still their daughter-in-law. Even after Brenda got remarried, they were always Mamaw and Papaw to Andrew and Mandy. Always.
I ain’t saying things were perfect, and in no ways would I defend divorce. It’s never a good thing. In every divorce, a family is broken and everybody suffers. Time can’t heal the wounds, but God can. I didn’t know it at the time but I know it now. My kids Mandy and Andrew have gone through a lot, but they’re great people and I love them so much.
After a while, I knew that Sharon and I were becoming more than just friends. We understood each other ’cause we were friends before we got serious romantically. There were no illusions, nothing to hide. We had the same goals, we were focused on music, and we felt safe around each other. Sharon had gone through a divorce, too. She was hurting, and so was was I.
When it started becoming romantic, it scared us. We decided that if dating each other was going to ruin our friendship, then we’d just stay good friends and hang out together. Well, we tried that route, and we ended up spending even more time together than before! The next thing we knew, we were crazy about each other.
Epic and Rick Blackburn were in a big hurry to get my debut major-label album out on the market. The only problem was that we had to record it first.
The demos I’d played for Capitol and Epic, the songs that had gotten me the deal, belonged to Sugar Hill. Now, I didn’t have an exclusive recording contract with Sugar Hill, so signing with Epic wasn’t a problem, but I still needed to finish the album I’d started for Barry Poss and Sugar Hill. I also had to get in the studio and start a brand-new project for Epic. Rick wanted it sooner rather than later. So I focused on the Epic project.
Barry was a friend and a good businessman, too. He was smarter than the average bear, and he was willing to wait for a while. I think he saw the possibility that the Sugar Hill project, even though it was uncompleted, could become a lot more valuable in a year or two if he was patient enough and if I became successful. Well, he was sitting on a gold mine, and a gold record.
In the meantime, I had to deliver a whole album of fresh material, but I couldn’t do it by myself. I needed to put together a band, and I hit the lottery. There was a British guitarist, Ray Flacke, who I’d met when I was on tour with Emmylou in England. He’d just moved to Nashville, he was a friend of Albert Lee, and man, could he play a Telecaster. There was a pedal steel guitarist, Bruce Bouton, who I’d heard about, and he was young but plenty road-tested. And there was Joe Osborn, a session legend who’d played bass on hits by Ricky Nelson and Simon & Garfunkel and so many others. He had a bass tone like no one else. On drums I hired Jerry Kroon, who came highly recommended.
That was a lot of talent on such short notice. Along with these new guys, I called up some old friends. Bobby Hicks was ready to help out again on fiddle. Bobby could play country as well as bluegrass. I had my buddy Jerry Douglas on Dobro, Mr. Buck White on piano, and Sharon and Cheryl on harmony vocals.
I had my blue-ribbon band, and now I had to make the music that was in my head. To tell the truth, I didn’t know the exact sound I wanted. I was just going on gut instinct and what inspired me. I knew I wanted to cut some real country music, not just the kind that was popular. One thing was for sure—I knew my music would sound different than what I was hearing on the radio. I didn’t know if it’d be different in a way that people would like or not. I just hoped it would be!
Country music had changed so much from what I’d grown up with. There were a few singers in the young guard who I loved, like Johnny Rodriguez and John Anderson. ’Course, I still had my boyhood heroes, Merle Haggard and Buck Owens and George Jones, but they were pretty much the older guard standing watch over country music. When I came to Nashville, it was the right time for something new to break through. The stage was set, though I didn’t know what role I was gonna have. I was just a young man who in his heart wanted to see old music become cool again.
The framework I used was old-fashioned country done simple and straight-up, but with modern recording techniques. That meant bluegrass instruments raised to the same volume level as country’s steel guitar, electric guitar, electric bass, piano, and drums. Let the harmonies be bluegrass-style and mix the mandolin, Dobro, banjo, and fiddle as loud as the electric stuff. Like one of my mom’s recipes, it was all about blending the right ingredients for the best flavor. My goal was to see the best of both worlds, country and bluegrass, coming together, and to create a new sound.
There was a song I’d been wanting to record called “Crying My Heart Out over You.” Lester Flatt and Earl Scruggs had cut it first, back in 1960, and made it into a top-twenty hit. I’d loved the record ever since I was a kid. It’s as good a bluegrass song as you’ll ever want to hear. But I wanted to juice it up and put some drums and piano and steel guitars and triple fiddles on it and make it a country song.
The ears I was aiming for didn’t know the Flatt & Scruggs version. I figured the country audience would appreciate the drums and piano and steel in a way that the hard-core bluegrass crowd never would. I wanted my new version to be danceable in Texas, just like “I’ll Take the Blame” had been.
Buck White is well known for his holy-ghost honky-tonk piano style and his fine mandolin playing, but he’s also a heckuva dancer. I wanted Buck to help us set the tempo for the song as if he were a
t a Wichita Falls dance hall on a Saturday night in the 1940s. We’d run through the song for him, and I’d stop the band and ask, “Mr. Buck, could you and Miss Patty dance to that tempo?”
“That’s a little fast!” he’d holler.
“All right, boys, let’s take it down a notch,” I’d say, and we’d nudge the tempo until it felt right to Buck.
Being my own producer gave me a lot of freedom. I didn’t have to worry about someone being bothered by Mr. Buck and Miss Patty dancing ’round in the studio. That’s how we got that nice two-step shuffle on a Flatt & Scruggs song.
Now we had our sound, we had our tempo, and all we needed to do was get a great take and put it out. We released “Crying My Heart Out over You” in December 1981, and it became my first number-one country hit.
I had another Flatt & Scruggs favorite, “Don’t Get Above Your Raisin’.” The girl in this song had gotten a little too big for her britches. I loved the record, but I thought it could use a little different groove. I made some chord changes, goosed it with a rockabilly beat, and swapped the banjo part for a Dobro so Jerry could take a solo and, boy, did he ever! Nobody in Nashville had heard that kind of Dobro playing before. Our version still had a bluegrass tinge, but with a heavy beat.
Now, Lester Flatt passed on the year before I was working on this record, and I don’t how he’d have felt about the changes I made to songs he wrote. But I know Earl loved it, ’cause he told me so. After he broke from Lester and started a band with his sons, Earl was a big advocate for experimentation. He encouraged me to take risks and find a new audience. That way the music we all loved wouldn’t die. “If a song’s got a chance to reach another market,” he told me, “don’t hold it back. Let ’er go!”
Earl’s blessing meant the world to me, just as Ralph Stanley’s had all those years ago. Ralph never once lectured me or told me to quit playing country and come back to bluegrass. Around this time, I saw Ralph at a festival, and I got a chance to play him those demos of Stanley Brothers songs I’d made. I was so excited for Ralph to hear his music rendered in a country style. I had my Walkman cassette player, and I cued up “She’s More to Be Pitied” and put the headphones on his ears and held my breath.
Ralph sat there stone-faced. And then . . . buddy, let me tell you, big tears came running down his cheeks. In all the years I’d worked for him, I had never seen Ralph get emotional. You know, he’s a deep well, and he keeps his feelings under the surface. It shocked me to see him like that, and I tapped him on the shoulder and said, “Ralph, are you okay?” He took off the headphones, and he said, “I’m all right, Rick. You done a fine job. That’s as good as I’ve ever heard that song done. I’m proud of you, and I know Carter woulda been proud of you, too.”
There was nothing he could’ve said to me that would have ever made me feel better. That was all I needed to hear. I knew I was on the right path. I had the blessings of those fathers like Ralph Stanley and Earl Scruggs. I had all the confidence I needed to keep going.
My goal was to bring traditional bluegrass and commercial country together, the way things were when one hand fed the other in the late ’40s and the ’50s. Back then, there wasn’t any segregation in country music. Whether it was hillbilly or honk-tonk or Appalachian or bluegrass or western swing, we just called it country. Every star had his own signature sound that you knew from the first note. You’d hear Ray Price, George Jones, Webb Pierce, Buck Owens, and Kitty Wells on the same radio station as the Stanley Brothers, Flatt & Scruggs, and Bill Monroe. By the ’60s, country went uptown with the polished, pop-oriented Nashville Sound, and by the late ’70s, the Urban Cowboy dance craze took country music as far from its roots as it had ever been. Meanwhile, bluegrass was pushed off the radio and the record charts, surviving on the festival circuit, where Ralph and Bill and the others still kept the faith. There was a huge chasm between bluegrass and country, and I wanted to bridge the gap.
When I was a kid listening to bluegrass in the late ’50s and early ’60s, I didn’t know much about how the music was supposed to sound. I heard a lot of banjo and fiddle and mandolin, but to my ears, there were some missing elements, especially the bass fiddle and the acoustic guitar. I didn’t hear enough of the drive. The records didn’t have the full, driving sound that a live bluegrass band did.
When I’d hear rock and roll on the radio, though, I could tell the mix was different. The kick drum was helping the bass to sound louder. The acoustic guitars of the Everly Brothers were so distinct on their records, as was their vocal style. The Beatles sure picked up on that, and lots of early rock records had a punch and drive to ’em that I really loved.
Now, I wanted all those cool sounds to be used. The bass and acoustic guitar were so important to the drive of the song, and they provided the groove for the singer. Of course, the secret ingredient to any great bluegrass or country record is the singing, and I was so lucky to have the Whites to help me. Family harmonies are the bedrock of country singing, all the way back to the Carter Family. That type of close harmony singing was as rare as hen’s teeth in Nashville, so I was beyond grateful to have Sharon and Cheryl in the studio with me.
Sometimes I’d change the structure of the songs to fit the style of singing I’d learned from my folks at home and during my earliest churchgoing experiences. I’d even stack the harmonies the way we’d sing in the congregation back on Brushy. It was so much fun to try new things in the studio. This was my first major-label record, and I really wanted it to be the best it could be, and something different, too! I was having a ball!
Right before my first album for Epic was released, there was an important event in Nashville called the Country Radio Seminar. This is the industry’s largest annual trade show, where all the deejays and media types meet in Music City to schmooze. The CRS gives the record labels a chance to promote their most popular artists. That year, Epic and a few of the other major labels had a performers’ showcase, and George Jones was the headliner.
George was hotter than ever. His first million-seller, “He Stopped Loving Her Today,” was riding the charts and fueling an incredible comeback. But behind the scenes, the great singer they called “the Possum” had hit a rough patch in his life. He’d gone through a painful divorce with Tammy Wynette, and he was missing his show dates. Folks were starting to call him “No Show” Jones.
If he was No Show, I was “No Name.” I was too new on the Epic roster to get an invitation to perform, but I went to the event anyway to show my support for my label. I also wanted to introduce myself around and do some howdy-and-shake with the press and the deejays. Plus, I wanted to hear George sing. I was a huge fan, and I could hardly wait to tell Mama I’d seen the Possum in person.
Well, it turned out that when the time came, the star attraction was nowhere to be found. Bonnie Garner, who was working for Epic at the time, came running over with her clipboard in her hands, and she was desperate. No Show Jones had struck again!
“It looks like George ain’t gonna make it tonight. Can you fill in and sing a few songs?”
“Oh, Lord,” I said. “Are you serious?”
“Yes, I’m very serious.”
Well, I knew the house band didn’t know any of my songs any better than the audience did. The album hadn’t been released yet. If I got up on that stage, I’d have to do it solo, just me and my guitar. In those days, I wasn’t too keen on performing without a band. I’m glad I listened to my dad’s advice: “Son, don’t leave home without your guitar. You might just need it sometime.” Well, sometime had just come.
I stood there almost frozen, with Bonnie waiting for my answer. I was nervous and a little bit fearful, but everything in me was saying yes. So I took a deep breath, put on a brave smile, and told Bonnie I’d give it my best shot. I ran outside to the car, grabbed my guitar, and headed for the stage. Rick Blackburn introduced me and told the audience I was brand-new to the label. There was some polite applause, and I went out there and did my thing. I sang my tried and true Flatt &
Scruggs covers and a pretty ballad from the new album called “Waitin’ for the Sun to Shine.” I ended the set with “So Round, So Firm, So Fully Packed,” the old Merle Travis hit. Lo and behold, the audience loved it and gave me a standing ovation. I think their reaction was sheer surprise, plain and simple. Rick was thrilled! This level of exposure was going to be really helpful, and was coming about a year ahead of what he’d planned. It was fuel for the fire that Rick was starting to build for me at Epic. His bosses in New York saw what happened same as he did, and so did every country disc jockey worth his salt from Maine to California. I couldn’t have had a better audience to generate buzz for my first album release. After that night, Rick was ready to go for broke.
Two days later, I got this note from Rick that I’ll always treasure:
In the meantime, my singles on Sugar Hill were still getting some heavy airplay and positive word-of-mouth. Chuck Morgan, the nighttime disc jockey at WSM, was playing the snot out of “I’ll Take the Blame,” and he phoned to say he was in my corner. WSM was the flagship station of the Grand Ole Opry, and its 50,000-watt broadcast signal reached all over the country. Chuck’s word carried weight, and it wasn’t long after that Hal Durham, who was in charge of the Opry, invited me to be a guest on the Saturday night broadcast. Oh, man, was I ever excited. You couldn’t have kept me away with a team of horses.
I’ll never forget that night. Emmylou was in town and came by the Opry House to help as only she could. I sang “I’ll Take the Blame” first, with Sharon and Cheryl singing backup. Then Emmy strolled on stage and we sang a duet on “Could You Love Me One More Time.”’Course, it was Emmy who first introduced me to the country music world, and here she was making it official.