Dottie West was on hand for the Grand Ole Opry’s farewell show at the Ryman Auditorium on March 15, 1974. And she was at the new Opry House the following night, when the venerable show premiered there.
In 1976, she signed a new recording contract with United Artists and subsequently enjoyed the biggest hits of her career. In 1978–1984, Dottie topped the charts as the duet partner of Kenny Rogers. Their hits “Every Time Two Fools Collide,” “Anyone Who Isn’t Me Tonight,” “All I Ever Need Is You,” “Til I Can Make it on My Own,” “What Are We Doin’ in Love,” and “Together Again” led to Country Music Association awards as Duo of the Year in 1978 and 1979. Daughter Shelly teamed up with singer David Frizzell to earn those same prizes in 1981 and 1982.
“I see a lot of me in her now,” Dottie said proudly of Shelly. “She’s so gung-ho, so professional.”
Dottie made history in 1978 when she and Kenny Rogers cohosted what was billed as “The World’s Largest Indoor Country Music Show” at the Silverdome in Pontiac, Michigan. The four-hour event, which became an NBC television special, drew more than sixty thousand fans.
“This looks to me like we’ve got a country Woodstock,” she quipped onstage. “I’ve never seen this many people in one place in my life.”
In 1980–1981, Dottie West got her first number-one hits as a solo artist with “A Lesson in Leavin’” and “Are You Happy Baby.” She caught the eye as well as the ears. Dottie had a facelift and other cosmetic surgeries. She bought ever more elaborate and expensive costumes, including a memorable white satin cowgirl ensemble featuring skintight pants and an unbuttoned blouse. She wore it on the cover of her 1981 album titled, naturally, Wild West. In 1983 she appeared in a peek-a-boo photo spread in the naughty men’s magazine Oui.
“I have a healthy attitude about sex,” she commented. “I do. You know what? I have had not one bad letter [about the Oui spread]. Not one. In fact, now I get all these love letters.
“I’ve grown so much, and I’m still growing. The business is more challenging than it’s ever been, and I look forward to it all. It’s twenty years later, and I’m still doing three hundred dates a year. I want to do movies and lots more. I just don’t feel my age, so don’t expect me to act it.”
Later in 1983, she married sound technician Alan Winters. He was twenty-eight; she was fifty. She installed a mirror over her brass bed and zipped around Music City in snazzy cars. Also in 1982–1983, Dottie toured as the lead, the bordello madam, in the saucy musical The Best Little Whorehouse in Texas. She took acting roles on television’s Love Boat and The Dukes of Hazzard, and she hosted Solid Gold.
By this time Dottie West had one of the flashiest and splashiest stage shows on the road. As she had vowed, she was a Las Vegas and Atlantic City showroom star. She spent a reported $100,000 a year on clothes, favoring the custom couture of Cher’s over-the-top designer Bob Mackie. She bought a white Rolls Royce. She and Alan were filmed in her mansion for an episode of TV’s Lifestyles of the Rich and Famous. Dottie pointedly told the camera how drastically her surroundings contrasted with those of her impoverished upbringing.
“Poor wasn’t the word,” she said. “I picked cotton, stripped cane, shelled beans. . . . My father was an alcoholic.”
On April 13, 1985, Dottie West was among the cast members chosen to star at the Grand Ole Opry the night of its debut as a live weekly television show on The Nashville Network (TNN). Fabulously attired, as always, she laughed and gossiped with her fellow Opry stars, her cascading auburn tresses radiant even in the dim light backstage.
“I’ve been spending more time here lately,” Dottie said softly. “I’ve realized how much I’ve missed it.”
When bluegrass patriarch Bill Monroe approached her, she stood and embraced him warmly. Onstage, Ed Bruce began singing “Everything’s a Waltz,” so the two Opry stars began swaying to the music in each other’s arms in the wings. Others on the TNN cablecast that night included Roy Acuff and Dottie’s buddy Minnie Pearl. Onstage, the glamorous redhead offered “A Lesson in Leavin’,” “Here Comes My Baby,” and other signature songs to the cheering Opry fans.
Sadly, that Grand Ole Opry show was one of the last of Dottie West’s triumphs. Her singles stopped making the popularity charts later that year, and after 1986, her concert bookings dwindled. In 1988, she separated from third husband Alan Winters. Then she discovered that her financial manager had horribly mishandled her money.
“I can spend money real quick—I’m real good at that,” she admitted in a 1984 interview. “I know ways to use money, yes. The best thing is to learn how to use money and not abuse it. As far as being a businesswoman and all that, I’m a Libra, and we love to spend money. And there’s been times that maybe I spent it in a way that I shouldn’t. But I’ve always enjoyed it. And with good health, I’ll just keep on working and make more, and hope to make more people happy.”
Her third divorce became final in January 1990. She filed for bankruptcy in August and faced money-seeking lawsuits from both her ex-husband and her ex-manager. Her possessions were seized in the summer of 1990 to satisfy a $1.3 million debt to the Internal Revenue Service. Then came the humiliating Entertainment Tonight appearance.
In March 1991, officials discovered two storage facilities and a condo full of crates of valuables she’d hidden from the creditors. These were confiscated and auctioned off during that June’s Fan Fair celebration. Dottie attended, bidding on her own possessions. In July 1991 she was involved in a car accident that lacerated her nose, resulting in missed concerts whose proceeds she badly needed.
“It’s not easy being a woman alone,” said manager Wayne Oliver sympathetically at the time. “You work for years, and you wake up one morning and everything’s gone.”
On August 30, 1991, Dottie West began driving from her West End Nashville condominium to the Opry House for a Friday-night appearance. But the Kenny Rogers Chrysler broke down just a few blocks from home. George Thackston, eighty-one, stopped to see if he could help. Because she was running late for her Opry date, he volunteered to drive her to the show.
As he entered the exit ramp that leads from Briley Parkway to the Opry House, he was going 55 miles an hour, more than double the posted speed limit. Thackston lost control of the vehicle, which went 180 feet across the grass, struck an embankment, flew 80 feet through the air, and nose-dived into the earth. The reckless driver survived. The star lost massive amounts of blood and suffered grave injuries to her liver, spleen, and neck. She died at Vanderbilt University Medical Center during surgery on September 4, 1991.
“I find it hard to even accept right now that Dottie is gone,” says her fellow Opry star Jan Howard. “All that talent and all that love for life and for her fellow man, gone. The night that she had the accident, we were both on the same portion of the Opry, or supposed to be. Dottie was supposed to be on first, and I was down toward the last of that segment. They came and said, ‘Janny, c-can you go on now?’ And I said, ‘Sure.’ I just thought, ‘Well, Dottie’s late,’ you know? But that’s when she had the wreck. I don’t accept it to this day that she isn’t here. She’s going to be here forever. And forever beautiful. So good inside. And so talented, so darn talented. It was so tragic.”
Duane Allen of the Oak Ridge Boys said, “It’s sad when someone who contributed so much in such a positive way has to die in such a tragic way.”
Kenny Rogers eulogized, “What made Dottie unique is that when she sang about pain, she felt pain; when she sang about love, she felt love; and when she sang about beauty, she felt that beauty. While some performers sang words, she sang emotions. She lived her songs.”
“It’s like losing a member of the family,” said Roger Miller. “She was the sister we all loved. Dottie was a songwriter’s friend. I remember the early days when Willie [Nelson], Justin Tubb, Hank Cochran, and I would get together at her house and play our new songs. It’s hard to lose a member of the old gang.”
Larry Gatlin recalled that she sent him the one
-way airplane ticket that brought him to Nashville: “She was the first person who believed in me as a songwriter. If it had not been for Dorothy Marie [West], Larry Wayne [Gatlin] would probably have been a bad lawyer somewhere in Houston.”
Dottie’s best friend at the Opry was Jeannie Seely, who reminisced, “She recorded one of my songs in 1964, before I ever moved here. That gave me the encouragement to move here. I can’t walk through my house without seeing Dottie. She’s everywhere, from pictures on the wall to the clothes in my closet. Dottie was always my hero.”
Dottie hired Steve Wariner for her band when he was seventeen and brought him to Nashville as well. “She went the extra mile for me, when I was just starting out in the music business,” Steve recalled. “She taught me a lot about singing, entertaining, and how you should never take your fans for granted. I’ll always remember her warmth and kindness.”
The funeral was held on September 7, 1991. Johnny Cash, Emmylou Harris, the Gatlin Brothers, Porter Wagoner, Billy Walker, Bill Carlisle, Connie Smith, Hal Durham, and the rest of her Opry family gathered to say good-bye. Steve Wariner stood and sang a lonesome, mournful “Amazing Grace” during the service.
“She said she always wanted to dance with the angels and sing in the angel band,” said the Reverend Ray Hughes. “Family, it’s happening today.”
They buried Dottie West back home in McMinnville at the Mount View Cemetery. Her likeness is etched onto one side of her tombstone with the inscription “Our Country Sunshine.” On the reverse of the monument are the opening lines of her hit “Country Girl”:
“I was born a country girl.
I will die a country girl.
My world is made of blue skies and sunshine, green fields and butterflies.
I’m so glad I’m a country girl.”
4
Barbara and Ken
Barbara Mandrell was just fourteen years old when her husband fell for her—in most states, that would have made her “jailbait.”
“No, it’s called ‘San Quentin quail’ in California,” says husband Ken Dudney with a chuckle. “I don’t know what I was thinking. I tell everyone that I must have been emotionally retarded back in those days. I was twenty-one years old, and she’s fourteen years old. I see this pretty little blonde girl come into the room. I had no idea she was fourteen. She looked a lot older than that. She had legs on her that were a lot older than that, I can tell you. And big bouffant hair.”
“Aqua Net hairspray kept it there,” Barbara interjects.
“It was unbelievable,” Ken continues. “And I was engaged to another girl at the time.”
The year was 1963. By then, Barbara was already a semiprofessional country musician. Born December 25, 1948, she was billed at age eleven as “The Princess of the Steel Guitar” when she played Las Vegas with Joe and Rose Lee Maphis, Tex Ritter, Cowboy Copas, and other stars in the summer of 1960. During that summer vacation, she also toured for two weeks in a package show with Johnny Cash, Patsy Cline, George Jones, Don Gibson, Gordon Terry, and June Carter, and made appearances on the Los Angeles country television show Town Hall Party.
Convinced that his daughter could become a full-fledged attraction, papa Irby Mandrell formed the Mandrell Family Band to back her at shows he booked at California military bases. Barbara sang and played steel guitar and saxophone. Irby was the rhythm guitarist and emcee. Mother Mary played bass. Bill Hendricks played sax and clarinet. Brian Lonbeck played lead guitar. College student Ken Dudney was hired to play drums.
Although barely out of childhood, Barbara was wildly jealous of Ken’s fiancée, a beautiful ballet dancer his own age. To this day, she becomes green-eyed when she thinks of her.
He explains his wife’s temperament by saying, “Barbara is an extremely creative person. I was engaged to a ballet dancer, a creative person. They’re very high-strung human beings. They’re very self-willed.”
“Are you comparing me to your ex?” she snaps. “That fiancée I took you away from?”
Ken: “See? Forty-four years later!”
Barbara: “I’m still so jealous of that woman.”
Ken: “She was pretty.”
Barbara: “But I got him.”
To disguise the fact that they were falling in love, Barbara and Ken pretended not to like each other in front of her parents. He teased her unmercifully.
“In the clubs when we’d be on break or something, he’d say to me, ‘Would you like to dance?’” Barbara recalls. “I’d say, ‘Yes.’ He’d say, ‘Keep sitting there, and maybe somebody will ask you.’ I fell for it every time!
“I think the reason we would yell and scream at each other is because we very much tried to mislead people closest to us, like my mother, my father and the other musicians in the group. So we would be kind of not nice to each other, so they would not know that we were in love. Then we got in the habit of it. It stemmed from that.
“I’m really happy the way we are. That’s very much a Mandrell and Dudney way. We don’t clam up. We don’t do the silent treatment. We just yell and scream. Get it over with. Say it.”
“We’re both Type A personalities,” adds Ken. “We’re even the same blood type.
“We see couples who are just so bland in their personalities with each other. They never argue about anything. It’s ‘Whatever you want, Dear.’ And we’re going, ‘Man, those are the dumbest boring people I’ve ever seen in my life.’”
Barbara and Ken’s courtship was volatile from the start. They bickered and argued, made up, and bickered again.
“When we were dating, everything I would do, I was thinking about him,” Barbara recalls. “I would sit in class when I was supposed to be listening, and I would be practicing writing ‘Mrs. Ken Dudney.’ ‘Mrs. Barbara Dudney.’ I mean, I was possessed.”
“When we were first dating, I had the most horrendous jealous demeanor,” Ken confesses. “Jealousy is a sickness. It was terrible. We would break up because we would fight. I remember she had a date with another guy one time. I stood across the street in the neighbor’s bushes waiting for her to come home. How horrible is that? But I got over that. I have no idea how. Maybe with the help of God.
“It’s a good thing, too, because there’s a lot of hugging in show business.”
When she was sixteen, he bought her an engagement ring: “I wasn’t going to let her have it, but she just begged me for it. I was going off to navy flight school—the superhuman beings of the world: I was going to be a naval aviator. She wanted something to remember me by when I’m gone. So I let her have it. I didn’t know if she’d wear it.”
Barbara kept it in her room in a dresser drawer during the day. At night, she put it on to sleep with it. When she went off to high school, back it went into the drawer. One morning, she forgot and left it out. Her mother found it. When Barbara got home from school that day, her parents lit into her. They insisted she return the ring to Ken’s mother. Irby called Ken at a navy base in Florida and threatened to get him in trouble with the commanding officer. Ken was instructed not to call, write, or have any further contact with Barbara. Both agreed to date others.
“I was on The Dating Game TV show,” Barbara reports. “If you count that date, I had seven different guys that I dated in my life. Six of whom—not The Dating Game guy—proposed. What can I say?”
“Some of them even proposed marriage,” Ken wisecracks.
Just before Barbara turned eighteen, Ken came home on leave. He proposed. She knew the Mandrells were scheduled to return to Vietnam for their second tour entertaining the troops, so she chose May 28, 1967, as their wedding date. It was ten days before her high school graduation and two weeks before she was scheduled to fly to Asia. She spent her honeymoon studying for her science test so she could graduate. Ken tutored her.
She headed for Vietnam. He traveled to his naval assignment in Washington State. Barbara Mandrell made a record that year called “Queen for a Day” that was fairly successful. But when she returned stateside, the ei
ghteen-year-old vowed she was quitting show business to become a navy wife.
Barbara dutifully studied navy protocol and tended to cooking and cleaning while Ken flew jumbo jets off an aircraft carrier. Her housewife days ended in 1968, when Ken was deployed for nine months aboard a carrier in the Mediterranean Sea.
She went to visit her parents, who were in Nashville by then. They took her to the Grand Ole Opry. She saw Dolly Parton there. That was it. Barbara Mandrell decided that she wanted to get back into music. She phoned her husband overseas to tell him of her decision.
“I had no concept of what that was,” Ken says. “That didn’t mean anything to me. I just thought, ‘Okay, she wants to play music again. That’s fine.’ See, we had no concept, or I had not anyway, of what being a star meant.”
“I had done the TV thing, and I had done the tour with Johnny Cash thing, but I didn’t realize,” she agrees. “I just knew that music was fun, and that I enjoyed it. And people were nice to me and would say nice things. So this is what I want to do. When I saw the Opry, I thought, ‘I can do that.’ I didn’t see the hard work and the sacrifice.”
Although he loved the navy, Ken resigned. He joined Barbara in Nashville and began to give flying lessons. Then he became a pilot for the State of Tennessee, in charge of transporting its governors in its private Leer jet. For the first few years of his wife’s musical career, Ken Dudney was the family’s chief breadwinner.
Fiddler-singer Louise Mandrell joined her older sister on the road in 1969. That was the same year that Barbara Mandrell debuted on the national country charts with her “blue-eyed soul” version of Otis Redding’s “I’ve Been Loving You Too Long.”
The family band was barely making ends meet when Barbara learned that she was pregnant, in 1970. She was taking birth control pills but slipped up one day.
Behind the Grand Ole Opry Curtain Page 4