by Justin Lloyd
Walden soon got Jim signed to the ICM Partners talent agency. He also introduced him to William “Hoot” Gibson, a friend and Nashville attorney who began representing Jim.
Even though Walden had mostly dealt with music groups and artists, he did have experience with actor/comedians from his days with Capricorn. Martin Mull, an actor Jim had previously worked with, recorded four comedy albums with Capricorn in the 1970s. It was Walden’s background in the music industry that may have contributed to Jim’s decision to sign with him. Jim was continuing to pursue recording opportunities.
But one of Jim’s first ventures into music was more about pushing then-wife Jacqui’s career than it was his own singing ambitions. With the help of Joe Liles, Jim had cut a demo tape in the summer of 1978 at the house of a musician and engineer who lived on Mulholland Drive in Southern California. Along with singing songs Jacqui wrote, he also recorded ones that his sister Jake had written during the time she had dated a musician. Jake had originally written “Born in a Boxcar” for Merle Haggard and hoped Jim would find a way to give it to him. Jake knew that when Haggard was born, his family had been living in an old boxcar they had converted into a home. Although inspired by Haggard, the lyrics about life on a railroad might be more fitting for a Johnny Cash tune:
One rainy night I met a man
A hobo just like me
He looked something like the picture of my dad
He died in my arms in a freight car out of Denver
I wrapped him in the only coat I had
When Jim sang country, his sound was deep and melodic but with a hint of roughness, reminiscent of Cash and Haggard. Later on, years of smoking would lend an even deeper, raspier edge. Yet on the song many of his fans are familiar with, “Gee I’m Glad It’s Raining,” from “Ernest Goes to Camp,” Jim’s voice is gentle and even lilting, on par with the childlike qualities of his character. In addition to the Appalachian dulcimer and harmonica, Jim also played a little guitar.
Shortly before Jim hired Walden, he told a number of reporters that he was working on a blues album with guitarist Grant Boatwright on Music Row in Nashville. Like so many of Jim’s previous attempts at producing an album, nothing was ever released. He had even hoped to record a duet with music legend Neil Young, an old friend of Boatright’s. But a collaboration on Young’s song “The Ways of Love” never materialized. The song was eventually recorded but not as a duet (although Linda Ronstadt did sing background vocals). It was released on Young’s 1989 album “Freedom.”
Unlike his movie success, Jim’s foray into music seemed to be one long string of disappointments. Only one album released during this time included Jim’s participation, and although Jim’s role was minimal he was ecstatic about the opportunity. He was asked to play his dulcimer on “Dixie Darlin” for the Carter Family album “Wildwood Flower.” The album featured an updated ensemble of the family, consisting of sisters Helen, Anita, June and June’s daughter Carlene.
In addition to managing Jim, Walden also briefly managed Billy Bob Thornton. Through Walden, Jim and Thornton began a lifelong friendship. Jim brought up Thornton’s name from time to time when visiting his family back in Lexington. He talked often about a “brilliant” screenplay called “Sling Blade” that Thornton had written. Jim’s family had a difficult time understanding what sounded so great about a story called “Sling Blade” written by some guy named Billy Bob. The family was pleasantly surprised years later when they saw what a compelling story it was. In the film, a simple-minded man is released from a mental hospital after murdering his mother and her lover as a child. He befriends a young boy and sacrifices everything to protect the boy and his mother from her violent boyfriend. Thornton would go on to win an Academy Award for Best Adapted Screenplay for the film. Jim had obviously known what he was talking about. (The film is an adaptation of a 1994 short film of Thornton’s: “Some Folks Call It a Sling Blade.”)
Even as Walden was enjoying the time he was spending as Jim’s manager, he still longed to return to the music industry. In a roundabout way, Jim helped him do it. Walden traveled to Los Angeles many times in the late ‘80s and early ‘90s to meet with movie executives on Jim’s behalf. On one trip, he met with music industry attorney Lee Phillips, who had represented Walden during the Capricorn days. These meetings eventually led to discussions with Warner Brothers about resurrecting Capricorn. An agreement was eventually reached, and in 1991, the Georgia rock band Widespread Panic released the first Capricorn album in more than 10 years. Years later, drummer Todd Nance of Widespread Panic gave credit to Jim when speaking of Capricorn. “Yeah, Jim Varney was the reason Capricorn was resurrected because he was so successful.”
CHAPTER FIFTEEN: PLUVIO
Jim said you should always name the place where you live. He named his home in White House, Tenn., “Pluvio” after the Latin word pluvia, which means rain. For him, it was “The Place of Rain.” The first few times Jim visited it when looking for a home to buy, rain was falling, so he thought the name fitting. He called it home for the rest of his life.
The house was not a movie star’s mansion by any means. It was a brick ranch with a full basement, 2,600 square feet. He later added an outdoor deck and swimming pool. It was surrounded by about 10 acres with a creek running through. Deer, pheasant and wild turkeys roamed the grounds. Jim kept a small pear tree near the kitchen just for the deer, and he hung hummingbird feeders on the front porch. He cut most of the grass himself. He loved pruning trees and had studied a Japanese technique that gave them a flowing look. He would actually take it upon himself to prune the trees of family members when visiting. Sister Jake’s neighbors were surprised one day to see Ernest in her front yard displaying his mastery with lopping shears.
Jim spent most of his waking hours in his living room. The shelves were filled with books, movies and various items he had purchased from specialty shops all over the country. The books ranged from watch guides to Shakespeare’s plays. During a conversation, he could grab any book and within seconds find the page related to what was being discussed.
Studying the pictures hanging on the walls of Jim’s home gave a glimpse into the many sides of his personality. In his study hung a large, framed picture of his father as a boxer in his prime, an imposing figure in his gloves and trunks. Many images of Charlie Chaplin hung around the home, including a full-length one of the beloved tramp in his living room.
One picture that looked ordinary at first glance displayed more of Jim’s twisted side. It was a photograph of the DeLorean Motor Company’s emblem and a car key resting on top of what looked like a folded-up white cloth. Upon closer inspection, the cloth was a small mound of fine white powder intended to resemble cocaine. It was an obvious reference to the 1982 cocaine-trafficking charge against the auto company’s founder, John DeLorean. But perhaps the most interesting, or at least thought-provoking, framed piece in Jim’s house was a square of white cloth with a phrase embroidered on it in green thread: “If you want the truth, follow the money.”
In the kitchen, Jim not only ate but wrote music and constantly examined his beloved watches. On the door of the refrigerator were pictures of Jim’s pets and family members, along with letters and artwork sent to him by young fans.
Scattered throughout the house were Jim’s assorted knives, many of them pocketknives. During his life, he amassed more than 4,000 in his collection, which came to include everything from a solid copper pocketknife to a World War II German dagger. As with his watches, he respected the craftsmanship.
Coke Sams was one of many of Jim’s friends who hung out at his house over the years. Jim loved to talk about history, especially if it concerned how guns and knives evolved. Sams remembers Jim talking at length about the development of civilization through the use of simple tools. Jim enjoyed tracing the history of knives, from skinning knives to hunting knives.
Jim’s land was a constant source of entertainment for him. When he wasn’t talking history, he was outside having fun wit
h his toys. Sams spent numerous days with Jim shooting guns, bows and arrows, even a potato cannon. Jim had been told that Civil War soldiers were buried in a plot under a grove of trees on the property. Sams recalls Jim trying to recreate the scene where the soldiers had died. Jim imagined a soldier taking a drink from a certain spot by the creek and how someone hiding on the other side may have surprised him.
Jim occasionally told stories of Pluvio being haunted. Sometimes he talked about seeing vague, dark figures among the Civil War gravestones. Jim said one of the most memorable episodes occurred one morning when he looked out into the front yard and saw an old man using a garden hoe. Jim put down his coffee cup in preparation to go out and ask the man how he had gotten through the locked gate. By the time Jim looked back up, the man had disappeared. Whatever these experiences were, Jim couldn’t explain them. He didn’t consider them sinister; they only seemed to add to the mystique of the home and refuge he loved.
Jim had numerous pets that kept him company during the many years he lived at Pluvio (where much of the time he was single). One of his dogs was a Jack Russell named Bill (aka William, Will and “Honey Boy” Bill). Bill constantly wandered the property and often brought snakes to the door that he had killed. Jim talked about Bill and all his pets as if they were people, some with actual careers. He said Bill was popular with the ladies, but Jim eventually made an honest man out of him when he bought him a “little wife” named Sam (also a Jack Russell). Together they had a litter. Jim kept one and named him Boone. Jim talked about Boone being a movie star in his own right.
Another “movie star” pet Jim owned was a cat he named John Barrymore. The cat had interesting markings above his mouth that resembled the well-trimmed moustache of the famous stage actor. Other cats he owned included a black one named Night Life and two white ones named Tallulah and Maytag.
Two of the last dogs Jim owned were Karina, a rescued champion racing greyhound, and Maggie, a pit bull. He often bragged with parental pride about Karina’s speed and her ability to do “zero to 60 in seven seconds.” For Jim, his pets were his children.
CHAPTER SIXTEEN: HOBO STEW
Being a bachelor much of his life, Jim learned by necessity to cook for himself. Chili was one of his best dishes, as he seemed to prefer “one-pot” meals, which were often the easiest to prepare. One of his specialties was what he called “hobo soup” or “hobo stew.” The steps were simple, he said. Just throw the contents of your refrigerator into one pot. He admitted that the only problem with the dish was the fact that you could never accurately recreate it.
Jim sometimes mentioned how his father had been a hobo of sorts for a bit. A family story went that in the summer of 1934, Big Jim and his brother-in-law Everett caught a train from Lexington and eventually made it down to Texas in a boxcar. What kind of work they were looking for is not known. A letter Jim wrote to his parents 50 years after the episode makes reference to the trip.
“Yesterday I did the United Way kickoff in Amarillo, Texas, and Pappy, it was held in the old Santa Fe train yard. Just think, it was the first time since the 1930s that a ‘Jim Varney’ was in the Amarillo yard, and I didn’t have to whip even one railroad bull!”
Jim welcomed the chance to display his cooking skills when he made an appearance in 1987 on Florence Henderson’s “Country Kitchen” cooking show on the Nashville Network. The dish he demonstrated was curry pepper steak. Part of the dish consisted of a mixture of water, onions and cornstarch for a gravy. Henderson and Jim shared a laugh with the studio audience when the ingredients failed to thicken and looked more like onion slices floating in milky water. Things did not go much better during the commercial break. Evidently, extra cornstarch was added, but it ended up being too much. When mentioning the dish after returning from commercial, Jim explained, “It’s always best to use a little less than a half-pound of cornstarch for four people.” He continued, “You have to slice the gravy when you do that.”
When Jim and Henderson discussed their upbringings, Jim revealed that he had researched her biography and found that they had a Kentucky connection. Henderson had lived for a short time in Owensboro. Jim joked that he was a “Hill William” from Lexington. Again, this was the term he loved to use in describing a certain upper class of Southern hillbilly. A Hill William, for example, enjoyed the luxury of indoor plumbing.
Although the finished steak dish was never shown to the TV audience, Henderson did think enough of it to include it in her cookbook from the show: “A Little Cooking, a Little Talking and a Whole Lot of Fun.”
Meanwhile, as thin as Jim stayed, you could never tell by looking at him how much he loved to eat. Nothing pleased him more than a plateful of Southern food and breakfasts of biscuits and gravy. Perhaps Jim’s biggest weakness was candy, especially the homemade kind. Growing up, his mother always had a dessert prepared following supper. From her, he learned to make such favorites as chocolate fudge and cream candy. His sister Sandy remembers visiting the set of “Ernest Scared Stupid” and noticing a sign in Jim’s dressing room warning people to stay away from Mr. Varney’s candy bowl. Fortunately, he could gorge himself on all the sweets he wanted without gaining a pound.
Jim’s father always said his son ate like a dog, meaning that he ate a lot when he was hungry but little else other times. Even journalists would note in their articles the way Jim attacked a plate of food during interviews. When visiting his family back home, Jim could easily put away a couple of plates of food and two or three desserts. When he had the time, he ate healthy, but the stretches on the road took a toll on his diet as he resorted to starches and sweets.
Unfortunately, candy wasn’t Jim’s only unhealthy habit. Reporters often wrote about how he chain-smoked. He laughed off one interviewer’s comment by joking, “Naw, I’m not a chain smoker. They’re real hard to light, and you have to carry that big torch.” The truth was, very little time would pass between him putting out one cigarette and lighting up the next.
CHAPTER SEVENTEEN: HANDGUN WEDDING
Jane Hale, who went by Janie, was an attractive young brunette Jim met through a mutual friend at a pool party at his home around 1986. Janie was a travel agent in Nashville at the time and from Huntington, Ind. She actually had no idea who Ernest was when they met. As their conversation progressed, Jim told her he worked for a dairy company. In a sense it was true, since a good portion of the money from the dairy clients made its way into his pockets. She was thinking that maybe he drove a dairy truck. She found out the truth, and the jig was up. The two began dating and soon, she was handling many of his day-to-day business affairs as well as taking on the role of his biggest fan.
On June 11, 1988, Jim married Janie at his home in White House, Tenn. I was 15 at the time and videotaped the ceremony and much of the reception and other happenings that followed. It was a beautiful sunny Saturday afternoon, providing a picturesque setting as friends and family gathered in a ceremony on the back of the property. Among the many friends of Jim’s in attendance were Jim and Jon Hager. Known as The Hager Twins, the identical twin brothers were a country-music-and-comedy duo who gained fame on “Hee Haw.”
A federal judge officiated. Jim’s good friend Buck Finley served as best man. Janie’s sister Sharon was matron of honor, Jim’s niece Andrea maid of honor.
During the ceremony, the judge mentioned how unusual it was that he was performing a wedding ceremony because federal judges, unlike lower-court judges, didn’t have that authority by law. (For this occasion, the General Assembly of Tennessee had to grant the authority.) The judge said, “The Founding Fathers, in their infinite wisdom, did not wish to make marriage a federal offense.” He then added, to laughter, “Jim Varney getting married does rise to such a level.”
As friends and family posed for pictures after the ceremony, the young daughter of one of the guests began to cry after being placed beside Jim. Jim looked at the photographer and said, “We’re abusing this child.” It was his kickoff line as he quickly turned into the MC o
f his own wedding.
At the reception, Jim couldn’t resist making faces as guests took pictures of him and Janie holding the knife beside the cake. As Janie proceeded to slice into it, he yelled as if she was cutting into his flesh. Jim’s mother couldn’t help but laugh while futilely attempting to convey to Jim the seriousness of the occasion.
A small group remained at the house after the reception. Finley brought out two guitars and announced that he and Jim were going to play a couple of songs they had been working on. Both can best be classified as Southern rock. In the love song “Tonight We Own the Moon,” Jim overpowered Finley’s voice. And in the upbeat anthem “Time Waits for No One,” Jim smacked his thigh and nearly sprang up from the couch as he reached for the notes.
Just when things were finally winding down, Jim decided to give everyone a demonstration on the “effectiveness” of his bulletproof vest. Everyone followed him outside. He placed the vest on the ground near the house, went back up to the deck, drew a handgun and fired into the vest. He then retrieved the vest and showed everyone where the bullet had hit, going into detail about the properties of Kevlar fiber. For guests hoping that the wedding would reflect Jim’s personality, the event did not disappoint.
CHAPTER EIGHTEEN: SAVING CHRISTMAS
Jim and Janie had little time to relax as newlyweds. The morning after the wedding, the couple left for Los Angeles to attend the CBS Affiliates Dinner for Jim’s upcoming children’s show, “Hey Vern, It’s Ernest,” set to premiere in September. Carden & Cherry had declined previous offers to put Ernest in a TV show, but now that they had a successful movie under their belt, they had more confidence on how to make the character work beyond a 30-second commercial.