by Randy Owen
With Daddy gone, Mama’s attitude toward the music I was making became the dominant attitude in the family. She didn’t really approve of it and offered no support at all. It’s pretty understandable, looking back on it. I was writing and performing secular popular music, music about romantic love and having a rowdy good time, not music tied to the church or the Christian faith. I was gone for long stretches from my wife and children and spent most evenings in bars and honky-tonks where, in her mind, all manner of sinful activity was taking place. I was pursuing a life, or at least associating with people pursuing a life, that was a long way from her definition of “clean” and “upright.” Her faith was not the take-it-or-leave-it variety. There was bound to be some tension.
Because she was at home in Fort Payne much more than I was in those days, Kelly felt that tension and that quiet disregard for my music much more than I did. She had known my dad for five years and knew that his open-mindedness and enthusiasm was an important counterbalance to the feelings of others, but he was gone, and she felt she was without many allies in this regard. She recalls, “It wasn’t real pleasant having to deal day to day with the nonsupport of his family. It was hard, really hard, for me to know how hard he was working and what a good person he was, and not be able to persuade them that just because he sang a certain kind of music didn’t mean he was a different kind of person. They didn’t look at it that way, and on many occasions, I had to bite my tongue and let their criticisms go right by me.”
I love my mama dearly, then and now, and I love and respect the music and the gospel tradition she taught me as a child, but I had to forge my own path, along with Teddy and Jeff, and that path was secular country music. Despite the family’s objections, I never gave any serious consideration to stopping our playing in Myrtle Beach and beyond, coming home, getting a job locally, and living “right.” My definition of right was exactly what I was doing, and I had the support of my wife and closest friends in doing it. Our songs weren’t salacious or rebellious or disrespectful of Christian life. But they were secular, not religious, and they were played in nightclubs and dance halls, not churches. Mama and I just had a difference of opinion and outlook that couldn’t be easily resolved.
Kelly and I have often talked about how leaving Fort Payne and going to Myrtle Beach was one of the most important steps I ever took. It allowed me to see what I was really capable of as a singer-songwriter, both personally and in terms of the commercial music business. It was a clear choice all three of us in Alabama made early on. Our strong and abiding affection for the Carolinas grows out of the fact that it was one of the few places we could have gone to establish our craft and survive. Fort Payne and DeKalb County at the time were dry, meaning no alcohol could be sold or served. Even today, there are twenty-six counties in Alabama that are either totally dry or have “wet” cities. DeKalb now has a wet city, Fort Payne. Back then, though, there were not only no bars around there where we could perform; there were no bars, period.
A second reason why leaving Fort Payne was such a life changer for me is because in South Carolina I met and married Kelly, a girl young in years but one who had lived all over the country, not to mention Europe, and whose vision of what was possible was just as grand as my own. I had to leave my home behind, at least for a while, in order to attain the life I wanted and return as myself.
Mama and I get along fine, now—we always loved each other, despite our differences—and now I’m back home, more or less settled down, and even turning out a couple of very satisfying inspirational albums of late. I didn’t become the wayward prodigal son after all. I didn’t stray that far from the straight and narrow, at least in the way I define those terms. I just took a really long detour.
The death of my daddy certainly changed me and in some ways tempered all the success that was to follow. Dale Morris contends that the loneliness and sorrow I experienced in the wake of his passing altered the way I sang. He claims that it added a measure of soulfulness and longing to my voice that probably wasn’t there before. I’m not arrogant enough to make pronouncements about the level of my singing or how other people should feel about it, but I do know that every time I sing “Ole Baugh Road” or any other song that evokes my childhood, I’m thinking about my dad and I am feeling his absence in my life. If that comes through in my voice, then I am doubly blessed that I had him as a father and that he still lives on in those notes.
With Daddy buried, we went back to work, and within a year of his passing, everything had changed—radically. If that day in May of 1980 was a date filled with sorrow and regret, many other memorable dates soon came to pass to help mitigate the sadness. One of the most important of those dates was June 12, 1981. Kelly was pregnant with Heath, and I had to be in Nashville for a whole week for a set of appointments with RCA. I told Kelly that whatever she did, she could not have that baby until after I got back on Friday night to witness the birth. Well, she didn’t listen to me, or maybe it was the baby who didn’t listen. Around 2:00 a.m. that Friday morning her water broke, and within two and a half hours, that boy was born. There was no way in hell I could have made it back. It was like my mama sitting in the car cooling her heels while we got married in front of Judge Gray—it all happened too fast.
Kelly called me with the exciting news, and a couple of hours later, Alabama walked onstage in Nashville to receive our very first gold album from RCA for the rerelease of My Home’s in Alabama. A few years earlier, Alison had been born on my exact date of birth, and now Heath came along on the same day Alabama got its first major recognition.
As days go, that was a pretty damn good one. The Alabama train had clearly left the station, and I was about to spend the next two decades trying to catch up with it.
CHAPTER 6
ALABAMA ON FIRE
I was July hot and 30
Some years down the line
When the boys touched the nation
unaware at the time
I got to go to Texas
California, New York too
A farm boy who is thankful
To be standing in his shoes
“TAR TOP” BY RANDY OWEN
Dale Morris was the right man at the right time to take over the management of Alabama and lead us to a level of success and accomplishment we had never dreamed of. Dale was born in Inman, South Carolina, and originally came to Nashville to be a songwriter. He got a few original songs out there, my favorite being “Don’t Monkey with Another Monkey’s Monkey,” recorded by Johnny Paycheck, the man who brought you “Take This Job and Shove It.” Dale eventually moved into artist management, and when Alabama came along, he had two main clients. One was Billy “Crash” Craddock, a popular country star at the time who was once given the title Mr. Country Rock because of his energetic, up-tempo music. His other big client was Terri Gibbs, blind from birth, who had a huge hit in 1981 with a tune called “Somebody’s Knockin’.” When we arrived in town for good, Dale was a seasoned Nashville veteran with a sterling reputation for honesty and fairness. He was the steady hand and creative visionary we needed.
As Dale will tell you, country shows of any size were pretty hard to book back in those days, especially outside of the South. Almost anyone who loved country music would buy a ticket to see Conway Twitty, Loretta Lynn, or other legends of the era like Merle Haggard, Buck Owens, or Johnny Cash. Johnny Cash, backed by June Carter and the legendary Carter Family, could play big halls like Cobo Hall in Detroit, but he was a rarity. Unfortunately, we had to learn this lesson the hard way.
One of the first dates we did under Dale and Barbara’s tutelage was somewhere in Ohio. Dale remembers this story well. It was a very bleak night, attendance-wise. Dale and Keith Fowler stood out in the lobby that night trying to sell a ticket to anyone who walked by. A person would stroll in, and Keith would whisper to Dale, “Hey, I think she might buy one. Maybe.” It was bad. As Dale would later put it, “we got our butts handed to us that night.”
By the time ticket sales
were added up, we had lost about $7,000 for the evening. Actually, the promoter had lost $7,000, and we had lost whatever part of the take that was contractually due us. Under the circumstances, that was zero. Dale was the one who had to come backstage and give us the bad news. When he said, “Boys, I hate to tell you this, but tonight we lost seven thousand dollars,” Teddy immediately replied, “How are we going to pay back seven thousand dollars? We don’t have seven thousand dollars just sitting around!” Dale had to explain that it didn’t work that way. The promoter ate the seven grand; it was his loss, not ours. We were very relieved. Dale claims we were just as happy to hear that we didn’t owe money for playing a show as we would have been if we’d just pocketed ten grand.
We were, in a word, naive. We needed all the help we could get.
We went back down South where we knew we could find a more receptive atmosphere. Because of our long stint at Myrtle Beach, we had enough people who knew us and would plop down some money to see us at a small club venue. As Barbara remembers—and she booked every last gig—we set out to play wherever possible in 1981 and ended up doing 280 dates. We started out working small clubs with capacities of maybe a few hundred if you squeezed everyone in, and we figured we were doing pretty well. We were making a good living, and that was saying a lot back then. Barbara already had the summer schedule pretty well booked up, because you tended to book summer, the busiest season for traveling musicians, a few months in advance.
It was time now to leave behind the familiar South-only strategy, and when we came out to the rest of America, to quote Dale, “it was like a flight lifting off going straight to the moon.”
The album My Home’s in Alabama was certified gold by June, and well before that we’d had three No. 1 country singles—“Tennessee River” in May of 1980, as mentioned, plus “Why, Lady, Why” in September of 1980, and “Old Flame” in January of 1981. At the time all of this was unfolding, we were making maybe $4,000 or $5,000 a concert. Then the calls started coming in to Barbara that someone wanted us on one of our off days and would pay $25,000. No way were we going to pass that up, no matter how many performances we had to do in a row. All of a sudden we were staying out for thirty or more days at a time. And we rarely missed a show. It was inconceivable to us to miss a show, no matter what the fee. We might have been naive, but we understood hard work and weren’t a bit afraid of it. This was our time. We would have plenty of time to sleep later on.
Our mode of transportation in those days was a used, twenty-year-old Marshall Tucker Band touring bus with a bobtailed trailer behind. We called it the Old Blue Goose. One time we were driving down the road and people were looking at us and honking and we couldn’t exactly figure out why. When we stopped, we realized that some side covering had come off the bus to reveal the name Marshall Tucker. Hell, we were famous, or at least our bus was.
We crammed everything into that trashy old vehicle, including ourselves and eight to ten crew guys. Barbara often came with us too, and she remembers the smell. It was horrible.
Riding across the country in the Old Blue Goose, there was no room for a costume department. We’d pull into a place like Des Moines for a concert, and if I needed a clean shirt to wear onstage, I’d grab something that would invariably have the word “Iowa” on the front and throw it on. The hometown crowd loved it, I loved it, and not one person said, “Why aren’t you wearing a purple velour leisure suit?”
It got to the point that someone would give me a local shirt at every single stop, and sometimes dozens of them. I’d start with one given to me backstage, then grab one tossed to me by a fan during the show, take the sweaty one off, throw it out to the crowd, put on the new one, and keep playing. I wouldn’t even look to see what the next shirt said. I learned to stop that after I looked down one night and saw a shirt with a mouse on the front, purring, “Here, kitty, kitty, kitty.” If you have a picture of me in that shirt, do me a favor and burn it.
I think the best description of an Alabama show from those early days comes from Marc Oswald, a concert promoter who later came to Nashville, became a top manager, and ended up managing or co-managing some major names like Gretchen Wilson, Big and Rich, and…me. Marc remembers the first time he saw Alabama in concert. It was April 1981, and Marc and his brother, Greg, now a top William Morris agent, were promoting concerts in San Diego part-time while working day jobs as paramedics. The first national act they booked was Alabama. The show, in San Diego, happened the same week that “Feels So Right,” the same song I sang to Kelly when I was first courting her at her home in Columbia, South Carolina, became Alabama’s fourth No. 1 single.
In 1981, as I said, country acts by and large had a static stage presence. Whether the Statler Brothers or Charlie Pride, they came onstage, backed by their road band, stood in front of microphones, and sang. People came to hear the songs and see their musical idols in person and weren’t expecting a spectacular stage show with a lot of lights and noise. Everybody, onstage and off, tapped their toes and had a good time. It was leisurely and sedate, and the music always satisfied.
We came onstage like a house afire. In the same frame of mind as in our dues-paying days at the Bowery, we were there to show the audience a good time and to have a good time ourselves. We didn’t take our cues from the smooth, laid-back country-show tradition. We learned our stage chops in a rock-’n’-roll bar. We were there to raise the roof.
Here’s Marc’s description of that show in San Diego: “They were all over the stage like a rock act. They were flying everywhere. And they incited a sort of positive riot in the audience. They were playing country music, for sure, but they were playing it with all the intensity and energy you’d get if you’d paid to see Tom Petty or Bon Jovi. It was wild and it was loud. They were up there jumping around, and they were playing their own instruments, like any other rock band. They weren’t up there to sing their hits. They were there to engage the audience, interact with them, wake them up. It was so novel in country music, it felt like a revolution. It was insane, insane energy.”
The stage production in those days wasn’t big. It was just the four of us out there. Because we were so versatile, we could play every instrument we needed, from guitar to fiddle. We were self-contained and tight. That all added to the energy level. And we looked like the guys next door. We looked like we’d just walked out of a locker room, wearing our team football jerseys. We always wore everyday pants, and our footgear varied from python boots to tennis shoes to occasionally flip-flops. Our hair was unruly, and we rarely wore hats, cowboy or otherwise. It all said, “Relax, let loose, have a good time. God knows, we plan to.”
Barbara remembers one time in 1980 when we had been booked into a state fair for about our going rate of five grand. The promoter was one of our favorites, named George Moffitt, who was constantly smoking a cigar and had been around the country scene for a long time. He knew the flowery dresses and glittery suits and pompadour hairstyles that country fans were used to. Just before the show, he went up to Dale and said, “You know, Dale, we got about five minutes before they go on—I think the boys ought to get dressed now.” Dale said, “Well, George, they are dressed.” George said, “You’re s**tin’ me! No one dresses like that!” No one, I guess, but us.
A booking sheet is a standard music-business form that bookers like Barbara use to keep track of a performer’s schedule. If you looked at the booking sheet for Alabama from 1981, around the same time as that concert in San Diego, you’d see how crazy things were. We were out West at the time, but we could have been in any part of the country. Here’s a brief example of what I’m talking about:
Fri, March 6: Modesto, CA
Sat, March 7: Imperial, CA
Sun, March 8: Santa Barbara, CA
Mon, March 9: Bakersfield, CA
Tues, March 10: Imperial Beach, CA
Wed, March 11: Phoenix, AZ
Thurs, March 12: Opryland TV show, CBS, LA
Sat, March 14: CLUB TO COME, LA
Sun
, March 15: San Carlos, CA
Tues, March 17: Solid Gold TV show, LA
Wed, March 18: Las Vegas, two nights
Fri, March 20: Salt Lake City, UT
We didn’t have a real solid overview of what we were doing. We were just doing it. It was not like we all sat down one Sunday afternoon and said, “Okay, we’ll play like a rock band, with fiddles and other country instruments, of course, and we’ll dress like we always dress, and we’ll jump around onstage and make people forget what they thought a country act should be and just have a good time.” None of these things were preplanned. It just evolved out of the music we liked and the way we liked to play it. We weren’t smart enough to prepackage ourselves. We were too busy trying to get to the next gig.
We had no idea what the audience was getting out of all this except for the ton of fan mail we were starting to receive and the brief nightly interchange with fans when we were signing autographs. One person I knew who could give me a pretty good idea of a fan’s point of view was Sue Leonard, a wonderful woman who has worked with Dale and Barbara since before Alabama entered their lives. Sue was, and is, a trusted business associate, but she was also a fan. She, like many others, didn’t really care for country music until she started listening to Alabama.
“These guys came along, and all of a sudden I’m going, ‘I love country music!’ They were like the boys next door. They seemed humble and easy to get to know. And even though it was country, the music made you feel so good you thought you were listening to rock-’n’-roll. I really and truly feel that Alabama did for country what the Beatles did for rock-’n’-roll. They were fresh and exciting. They didn’t seem like the type to drink or do drugs. You weren’t afraid of letting your kids go see them. You wanted to be around them. You could identify with both them and what they sang about. They were just everyday, average, incredible stars.”