A magazine story about the handsome, square-jawed country youngster caught the eye of carnival huckster and concert promoter Tom Parker. He came from Florida to the Opry to court the up-and-comer, whom he’d met earlier at Pee Wee King shows. Sensing impending stardom, Parker talked Eddy Arnold into signing with him as the singer’s exclusive manager. Parker’s timing coincided perfectly with WSM executives engineering an RCA Victor recording contract for their radio protégé.
On December 4, 1944, Eddy Arnold went to the WSM studio to record instead of broadcast. He remembered well the session that gave birth to Nashville as a recording capital.
“Well, the first session in Nashville was in a radio studio,” he related. “The thing I remember most is that we recorded on what we called a transcription, you know, a record . . . that they used on radio. This was long before tape was ever, I guess, thought of. And of course, at that time, if you made a mistake or one of the musicians made a mistake, you had to do it all over again. You couldn’t just do one little part, which you can today.
“We never thought we were doing anything historic. You never think about it being important at the time. All I wanted to do was just make one record. I sang a song called ‘Mommy Please Stay Home with Me.’ I did ‘Cattle Call.’ I did a song called ‘Each Minute Seems a Million Years.’”
The third title became the first of 145 charting Eddy Arnold discs of 1945–1983. “Cattle Call,” re-recorded as a duet with LeAnn Rimes, became his 146th, in 1999.
Tom Parker worked Eddy Arnold and His Tennessee Plowboys band relentlessly throughout 1945. In addition to touring, Parker arranged for his star to perform on a weekday afternoon radio show and a weekly one, both sponsored by Purina on the Mutual network, as well as on a prerecorded program to which three hundred stations subscribed. While Eddy logged thousands of miles traveling from show to show, his record sales were exploding to unheard-of heights in 1946, 1947, and 1948.
“I never felt like I was a superstar,” he remarked. “I guess I was too busy then.”
His chart-topping hits “Anytime” and “Texarkana Baby” were both recorded at New York sessions in 1947. During that visit, RCA Victor vice president Jim Murray summoned Eddy to his office. The singer went to see the boss with trepidation.
“I thought, ‘Golly, what does he want to see me for? What’s he gonna do? Tear up my contract?’ But it was the opposite. The guy stood up and shook my hand and wanted to give me a cigar. I was scared to death. He said, ‘Sit down, son.’ So I sat down. He said, ‘I wanted to see what you looked like. I see these orders for your records coming across my desk every Monday morning.’ He was very nice to me. I didn’t realize I was selling. I didn’t know anything about the record business. I was so dumb.
“That’s how I found out I was outselling everybody else. And see, a country boy had never done that to them.”
Eddy earned a reported $500,000 in 1949. During that year, Tom Parker arranged for him to appear on Milton Berle’s top-rated national television show, booked him for his first shows in Las Vegas, and had him star in two movies that Eddy described as “cheap.” Both Feudin’ Rhythm and Hoedown were released to theaters in 1950, and Eddy and his band performed in theaters that screened them.
“You know how I met Elvis? I met him before he ever happened. In ’49 I did two movies over in Hollywood. And then when the movies were released, I traveled with them. They’d play the movie, and I’d appear in the theater. I came to Memphis, and Presley came down. I had The Jordanaires on the bill with me. He wanted to meet The Jordanaires. He’d heard them on the radio. And that’s when I met Elvis Presley. Tom Parker, of course, was managing me then.”
The crude, cheap stunts of his slovenly, uncouth manager increasingly embarrassed Eddy Arnold. In the wake of his TV series that began in 1952, the singer began to aspire to a more sophisticated image. “The Colonel,” as Parker had anointed himself, was taking an unethical 25 percent of Eddy’s earnings and was violating his “exclusive” agreement by secretly promoting Tommy Sands, Opry star Hank Snow (1914–1999), and others. After a heated argument in Las Vegas, Eddy Arnold fired “Colonel” Tom Parker in 1953. Three years later, Parker signed Elvis Presley to the most notorious management agreement in music history.
The rise of Elvis and rock ’n’ roll initially damaged country music’s popularity badly. The industry fought back by crafting increasingly sophisticated productions in a style of recording that became known as the Nashville Sound. Eddy Arnold became one of the new style’s most enthusiastic proponents.
“At that point, my record sales had dropped off a lot. As far as making country records, I had recorded every way you could think of. I wanted to try that [Nashville Sound style]. I found a song called ‘What’s He Doing in My World,’ and I think we used four violins on that. Violins, not fiddles. It was a good seller, and I realized I’d found something. I had an idea to do an LP called My World. Two years before that, a pop singer named Timi Yuro had sung ‘Make the World Go Away.’ Ray Price had recorded it. Jim Reeves had recorded it. But I just thought it fit this album. The day we did it, we were listening to the playback in the control room, and I said to Chet Atkins, ‘That sounds like a single record to me.’ So we released it as a single, and it became a big record. It still sells today.”
In 1965, “Make the World Go Away” became the biggest hit of Eddy Arnold’s career. He finished the 1960s with the major hits “I Want to Go with You,” “The Last Word in Lonesome Is Me,” “Lonely Again,” “Turn the World Around,” and eight more top-ten smashes. During this same decade, Ray Charles reintroduced such Eddy Arnold classics as “You Don’t Know Me” and “Just a Little Lovin’.” On the country charts, Marty Robbins revived “It’s a Sin” and “I Walk Alone.”
Dickey’s tragic accident and Eddy’s sacrifice on behalf of his son may have contributed to the cooling of the star’s career in the 1970s. But he shot back into the top ten with 1980’s “Let’s Get it While the Getting’s Good” and “That’s What I Get for Loving You.” His 1999 “Cattle Call” hit with LeAnn Rimes came fifty-four years after his first charted disc, setting yet another record.
Billboard magazine’s statistics rank Eddy Arnold as the number-one country artist of all time. His lifetime sales have been estimated at $75 million. Notably frugal with his finances, Eddy retired from the road in 1999 as a very wealthy man. His real estate holdings are said to be worth $12 million.
“Oh, I know what all the tour buses say,” he chuckled about the fans who pass his home each day. “They say I’m the richest guy in country music, that I drive a Volkswagen, that I donated a church to Brentwood. I’ve never owned a Volkswagen, and that church was built in 1925! Someday I’m gonna put on a disguise and ride one of those things.
“You need to be careful,” he said of his investments. “As a young person, you’re selling millions of records, and you get the feeling it’s never gonna end. You think it’s gonna go on the rest of your life. One day, there’s gonna be another young person out there that the girls are gonna run and squeal over. And they’ll forget. That’s when they gotta have something in the bank. That’s what I think about when I look at a young artist who is very, very successful. And it’s tough to be successful. To the public, we make it look like it’s so easy. It’s not easy. It’s hard.”
His “retirement” was eventful. In 2000, the White House presented him with the National Medal of Arts. In 2003, he and Sally made the largest single donation of memorabilia in history to the Country Music Hall of Fame. In 2005, he was honored with a Grammy Lifetime Achievement Award. Later that year, he recorded a new RCA collection titled After All These Years. It became the one hundredth album of his astounding career.
Sally Arnold died on March 11, 2008. “I want to be with her,” mourned Eddy. He died on May 8, 2008, exactly one week before his ninetieth birthday. In tribute, RCA issued the touching “To Life” as his final single. When it hit the charts, Eddy Arnold made history again, as the only artist
to place a record on the charts in seven consecutive decades.
In the spring of 2007, an elderly fan approached the living legend to say how much his singing on the Grand Ole Opry had meant to him as a youngster growing up on a Missouri farm. “I left the Opry more than fifty years ago!” Eddy sputtered. But no one who heard his golden voice on the fabled show ever forgot it.
8
Garth and Trisha
Sometimes people marry their best friends.”
That is how Garth Brooks talked about his blossoming romance with fellow Opry star Trisha Yearwood in 2003. The two married on December 10, 2005.
Speaking to television personality Lorianne Crook two years later, Garth said, “Trisha Yearwood is my morning and my evening. She is my breathe in and my breathe out. . . . Miss Yearwood makes me want to be a better me. I want Miss Yearwood to be so happy that we were married.”
Says Trisha, “Everything is in the best perspective of my life . . . I feel wiser. I am just very, very happy.”
Garth and Trisha were singing partners for many years before their friendship turned into a courtship. They were introduced to one another in early 1989 by songwriter Kent Blazy, who cowrote Garth’s hits “If Tomorrow Never Comes,” “Ain’t Goin’ Down (’Til the Sun Comes Up),” “Somewhere Other Than the Night,” “It’s Midnight Cinderella,” and “She’s Gonna Make It.” At the time, Trisha was a studio demo singer, making tapes of songs that were played in the hope that stars would record them. Garth was a demo singer, too. Although he had signed a contract with Capitol Records, his first single had yet to be released. Kent believed in Trisha’s talent and had a hunch that her voice would blend well with Garth’s. He was right. Garth was floored by her vocal prowess when they sang together at Kent’s house.
Garth promised Trisha that if he ever went on tour, he would hire her as his opening act. In the year that followed, he rose to stardom, and she got a recording contract at MCA. While her debut single, “She’s in Love with the Boy,” was rising to number one in 1991, Trisha was on the road, opening shows on the Garth Brooks tour.
They came to Nashville on very different paths. Born Troyal Garth Brooks on February 7, 1962, he is “to the manner born.” Mother Colleen Carroll Brooks sang on the Ozark Jubilee and recorded four singles for Capitol Records in 1955–1957. She even guest starred on the Grand Ole Opry. Garth is the youngest of six children, several of whom took up music. He began playing in bands in his hometown of Yukon, Oklahoma, at age seventeen.
He attended Oklahoma State in Stillwater and graduated with a journalism degree. Garth married his first wife, Sandy, in 1986, and they moved to Nashville the following year. By then, Garth was a seasoned stage professional with plenty of nightclub work behind him. When he earned his recording contract in 1988, he was ready to rock.
Trisha Yearwood, by contrast, had very little stage experience. Born Patricia Lynn Yearwood on September 19, 1964, she was raised in Monticello, Georgia, by a banker father and a schoolteacher mother. Trisha idolized Linda Ronstadt and Emmylou Harris and yearned to follow in their footsteps. As teenagers, she and her sister Beth sang duets of Linda’s and Emmy’s songs. When Trisha moved to Nashville in 1985, it was the farthest she’d ever been from home.
Trisha enrolled in Belmont University’s music-business program. She was an intern in the publicity department at MTM Records and after graduation became the office’s receptionist. She married fellow Belmont student Chris Latham in 1987. They divorced in 1991.
“We probably would have gotten divorced two years sooner except that I was afraid of what my parents would think,” Trisha commented at the time. “And you don’t want to admit you’ve failed at something. Divorce is always difficult. But the good part was, I had the career to really throw myself into.
“That’s probably one of the problems that I’ve had in my personal life . . . my career has always been more important.”
After singing studio demo recordings for two and a half years, Trisha was spotted singing in Nashville’s Douglas Corner club by producer Garth Fundis. He introduced her to MCA Records. In 1991–1992, Trisha exploded on the popularity charts with such tunes as “The Woman Before Me” and “Wrong Side of Memphis.” The latter contained the memorable lyric, “I’ve had this dream from a tender age/Calling my name from the Opry stage.”
By then, Garth’s Opry dream had already come true. He first appeared on the show as a guest on June 24, 1989. He wept for joy that night. On October 6, 1990, Garth officially joined the Grand Ole Opry cast. He was inducted by Johnny Russell and sang his hits “Friends in Low Places,” “If Tomorrow Never Comes,” and “The Dance.”
“I’ve always been treated like family when I was at the Opry,” said Garth. “But now to be recognized as a member is among the class of honors that will never be topped, no matter how long or how far my career goes.”
In 1992, Garth and Sandy named their first daughter partially after the Opry’s Minnie Pearl. The little girl was christened Taylor Mayne Pearl Brooks. A second daughter, August Anna, was born in 1994. Allie Colleen Brooks, born in 1996, carries Garth’s mother’s name.
Garth and Sandy’s marriage weathered some rough spots. Early in his career, she caught him cheating on her and threatened to leave him. He begged her to forgive him, and she did. Garth took his wife and baby on the road with him in 1993. But in 1995, they quarreled over his nonstop working. They separated in early 1999.
TRISHA YEARWOOD MARRIED ROBERT Reynolds of The Mavericks in 1994. The ceremony was the first event held in the newly renovated Ryman Auditorium. Mavericks lead singer Raul Malo serenaded the couple with the Elvis Presley ballad “Can’t Help Falling in Love.”
Both Trisha and The Mavericks then entered their most prolific hit-making eras. The band was named the Country Music Association’s Group of the Year in 1995 and 1996 and scored on the charts with “All You Ever Do Is Bring Me Down.” Trisha’s 1995–1997 output included “Thinkin’ About You,” “Believe Me Baby (I Lied),” and “How Do I Live.” She was named CMA Female Vocalist of the Year in 1997 and 1998.
Trisha and Garth continued to sing harmonies on each other’s albums throughout the decade. In 1997, they finally issued a full-fledged duet, “In Another’s Eyes.” It won the team a Grammy Award and led to their 1998 concert tour together. Subsequent duets have included “Where Your Road Leads” (1998) and “Squeeze Me In” (2001), and they have often talked about doing an entire album of them.
Ricky Skaggs invited Trisha Yearwood to become an Opry member during a Ryman Auditorium show on January 16, 1999. On March 13, 1999, Porter Wagoner inducted Trisha into the cast of the Grand Ole Opry.
“I’ve done a lot of things in my life, so far, but this night takes the cake,” she said. “I’m really proud that you could all be here.
“I’m excited to be part of a group of artists who seem to be really committed to letting people know how important the Opry is, people like Vince [Gill], Garth, Steve Wariner and Ricky Skaggs, artists who are going to take this to the next generation, to teach the younger artists the importance of it, to try to keep it going for future generations.”
At the Opry House induction ceremony, Patsy Cline’s widower Charlie Dick and daughter Julie presented Trisha with a silver necklace that had belonged to Patsy. In the legend’s honor, Trisha sang “Sweet Dreams.”
“Right before I started [to sing], I looked down at the circle of wood [from the Ryman stage], and I definitely felt Patsy was there,” Trisha said backstage.
Later that year, Trisha and Robert divorced amicably. They have remained friends.
Also in 1999, Garth’s mother died of cancer. He had long been dedicating his 1998 inspirational hit “It’s Your Song” to her. After her death, Garth began talking seriously of retiring. He made it official at a press conference in October 2000. He stated that he would issue one more album and also indicated that he and Sandy had discussed divorcing. A week later, that became official, too, when divorce papers were filed. The divo
rce was finalized in 2001.
Garth and Trisha began appearing in public as a couple in 2002. She kept her house in Nashville but started spending more and more time with him in Oklahoma during 2003. Garth moved from Nashville to Claremore, a town northeast of Tulsa, because that is where Sandy had moved with their daughters. He and Trisha built a 30,000-square-foot mansion there, not far from Sandy’s house. The Brooks daughters divide their time between the two residences.
On May 25, 2005, Garth went down on bended knee and proposed to Trisha in Bakersfield, California, at Buck Owens’s Crystal Palace nightclub. Some seven thousand fans cheered when she said, “Yes.”
“What’s new with you guys?” Trisha playfully asked the crowd at her concert that summer at the CMA Music Festival in Nashville. She waved her hand playfully in front of her, showing off her engagement ring. “Me? Nothing’s really new with me,” she added coyly. Thousands roared with laughter. That December, Garth and Trisha wed in a quiet ceremony at their house.
“From the first day that I met her, you knew there was something special,” says Garth. “She’s as beautiful inside as she is outside. You just love her when you meet her.”
“I fought it, and fought it, and fought it, for so long,” says Trisha of their romance. “I said, ‘Okay, let’s explore it and see what happens.’ This is the guy. He’s it. I feel it’s the right place to be.”
“She is a dream, she is a doll, an amazing cook,” says Garth. “She loves our three girls, and they love her. And she gets along great with Sandy. . . . Everybody gets along great. . . . That’s gotta be my biggest thank-you.”
“I’ve met a couple of soccer moms, and we get together three or four times a week,” Trisha says of her daily life in Claremore. “We do a four-mile hike on the farm. It’s wonderful, because I’m hanging out with women who don’t understand chart positions and don’t care. We talk about other things, and it’s a really nice time for me.
Behind the Grand Ole Opry Curtain Page 9