Behind the Grand Ole Opry Curtain

by Grand Ole Opry

  “There never was a better man than Jim Reeves at keeping his word,” says Maxine Brown. After signing with RCA, The Browns made history with “The Three Bells” as a number-one country and pop smash of 1959.

  On Jim’s own musical front, Cindy Walker’s gentle ballad “Anna Marie” followed in the footsteps of “Four Walls.” But Boudleaux Bryant’s “Blue Boy” of 1958 was a teen-type tune with a “walking” bass line. Roger Miller’s “Billy Bayou” reverted to Jim’s upbeat novelty style. And Danny Dill’s “Partners” of 1959 was an eerie story song about a miner who murders his gold-mining companion. Everyone who attended these recording sessions remembers a man who approached his work with deadpan seriousness. Unlike the shenanigans at, say, a session with Marty Robbins or Faron Young, there was no good-natured banter or kidding around when Jim Reeves was in the studio.

  “Even today, we have to wipe a smile off our face when we talk about Jim Reeves, because there wasn’t anything funny on his sessions,” recalls Gordon Stoker of The Jordanaires. “You hardly cracked a smile, because he would have thought you were laughing at him. The biggest hit we did with him was ‘Four Walls.’ Everything was very serious. You couldn’t joke around. You couldn’t tell any jokes, couldn’t laugh. He concentrated strictly on the song. He watched that clock. He wanted to at least turn out three songs per session. We were told by RCA that Jim’s records had all been up high and hard driving country. Once he did [ballads], it was a whole new world. That’s the way he got that ‘Gentleman’ name.”

  “Jim Reeves was one of the great artists of all time,” recalled Chet Atkins (1924–2001). “He’s a fellow that worked harder than anybody at finding good songs. He would look the country over, then he’d get in his studio and record the songs and he would decide which ones he liked, which ones he might have a problem chord-wise or range-wise in his voice. So he was always prepared, well before we got into the recording studio. I found about half and he found the other half of the hits we had.”

  Jim’s and Chet’s song quests led them to “He’ll Have to Go” in 1959. This time, Gentleman Jim’s velvet vocal was accompanied by teardrop notes from a vibraphone and the sighing of The Anita Kerr Singers. When he asked “to turn the jukebox way down low,” Jim dropped his voice an octave on the word “low,” creating an unforgettable sound. In the early weeks of 1960, “He’ll Have to Go” spent fourteen weeks at the top of the country charts and crossed over to become a major pop hit as well. In addition, the ballad became the first of the singer’s many British pop hits.

  On April 23, 1960, Chet Atkins walked onto the Ryman Auditorium stage during Jim’s Grand Ole Opry performance. In his arms, Chet held a framed gold record, which he presented to Jim for “He’ll Have to Go.”

  In keeping with his pop stardom, Jim Reeves changed his image. He and the band ditched their western duds and donned sport coats or tuxedos, depending on the engagement. Jim renamed his group The Blue Boys—after his 1958 hit title—and donated its previous name, The Wagonmasters, to fellow Opry star Porter Wagoner.

  “He’ll Have to Go” was followed by the hit 1960 ballad “I’m Getting Better,” then a remake of “Am I Losing You” that added a lilting string section and then the gently lulling “I Missed Me,” the last-named written by Bill Anderson, who would join Jim as an Opry cast member in 1961.

  But chafing at the Opry’s performance requirements, Jim quit the cast in 1962. The demanding perfectionist was spending more and more time on the road, as though insecure about his financial future.

  Unlike most of his country contemporaries, Jim Reeves became hugely popular overseas. In 1962, he headlined a tour of South Africa, where his records outsold Elvis Presley’s. Upon arriving, Jim and his entourage were mobbed at the airport by fans. Hysteria greeted him at his Johannesburg hotel, where frenzied crowd members tore at his clothes, and his hand was bloodied by one who tried to strip a ring from his finger. At shows, he endeared himself to attendees by singing two songs in their native Afrikaans. The following year, he returned to South Africa to star in the feature film Kimberly Jim.

  Also in 1963, Jim Reeves toured Ireland and England. His Irish concert promoters put Jim and The Blue Boys on a punishing schedule and booked them at substandard rural dives with broken-down pianos. Jim retaliated by cutting shows short and curtly refusing to sign autographs.

  Back at home, he began 1963 by issuing the hit “Is This Me.” This was the first songwriting break for Dottie West. Jim touted her talent to Chet Atkins, and after her signing with RCA, Jim aided the newcomer by becoming her duet partner on “Love Is No Excuse.” Written by Opry star Justin Tubb, the song became Dottie’s first top-ten hit, in early 1964.

  Jim followed “Is This Me” with the melodic ballad “Guilty.” Its author, songwriter Alex Zanetis, was a licensed pilot. When Alex arrived on the Nashville scene in 1962, he reportedly inspired others to take flying lessons. Session musicians, executives, and stars such as Faron Young and Roy Drusky all began buying planes. One person that Alex felt did not belong behind the controls of an airplane was the high-strung, impatient Jim Reeves.

  “He was very skittish and nervous,” Alex said. “He had no business flying. . . . He was not plane-minded, but he still wanted to do it.”

  “I frequently hire a commercial plane to get from one place to another,” Jim said in 1963, “and generally it is piloted by someone whom I have never seen before or know anything about. . . . I just want to be prepared to land the plane in case something should happen to the pilot while we’re airborne.” At the time, regulations required licensed pilots to have only six hours of practice with an instructor.

  The band continued to travel by bus. However, Jim Reeves could fly to the shows and avoid the long, weary miles on the road. After the March 5, 1963, plane crash that killed Opry stars Patsy Cline, Cowboy Copas, and Hawkshaw Hawkins, many in the country community sold their airplanes and gave up flying. But Jim Reeves continued to fly.

  “Guilty” was followed in 1963 by another career-defining ballad, “Welcome to My World.” In England, it became Jim’s first top-ten pop hit. Between 1961 and 1964, he scored nine pop hits in the British Isles. In addition to “Welcome to My World,” they included the songs “I Love You Because,” “You’re the Only Good Thing,” “Whispering Hope,” and “There’s a Heartache Following Me,” none of which were issued as singles in the United States.

  This activity inspired yet another overseas tour, which found him headlining a bill that included Bobby Bare, Chet Atkins, and The Anita Kerr Singers. The troupe toured Germany, Austria, Denmark, Sweden, Norway, the Netherlands, and Belgium in the spring of 1964.

  The European tour’s grueling schedule frayed nerves. The volatile Jim snapped several times, sometimes resulting in bad publicity. He complained about the working conditions in practically every interview he did. In Berlin, a suitcase containing his hairpiece was stolen. Somewhere along the way, the world-weary singer confided to Chet Atkins that he didn’t believe he’d live to see age fifty.

  Back in Nashville, an exhausted Jim took off most of the month of July 1964. He golfed, vacationed with Mary, and did some recording. Then he decided to look at investment property near Batesville, Arkansas. Piano player Dean Manuel had grown up in that region, so he accompanied his bandleader on the trip. Jim leased a plane and took off on July 30. Later that day, the men examined the land. The next afternoon, Jim and Dean headed back to Music City.

  A summer thunderstorm popped up as the plane approached Nashville. Instead of flying around it, Jim foolishly decided to fly through it. At 4:52 p.m. on July 31, 1964, the plane disappeared from the airport’s radar screen. When no one had heard from Jim by 8:00 p.m., fears began to spread that the worst had happened.

  It took days to find the crash site in the heavily wooded hills of suburban Brentwood. The plane had crashed at such a steep angle that few tree limbs were broken. Finally, on Sunday, August 2, searchers found the remains of the aircraft and the dismembered bodies of Jim
Reeves and Dean Manuel.

  The long delay in confirming the accident gave Jim’s widow Mary time to compose herself and prepare his funeral arrangements. His service was held in Nashville on August 4. Chet Atkins, Skeeter Davis, Eddy Arnold, Red Foley, and dozens of other Opry stars attended. Then the body was taken for burial to Carthage, Texas, where Mary erected a handsome memorial statue of Jim Reeves. He was just forty years old at the time of his death.

  Next came the most amazing part of the Gentleman Jim saga. Mary’s astute business skills and the quality and quantity of her husband’s home recordings ensured that the late star’s record releases could continue for years to come. Between the remaining months of 1964 and the dawn of 1967, Jim Reeves had eight top-ten country hits, six of which reached number one. Included were such immortal performances as Leon Payne’s “Blue Side of Lonesome” and Cindy Walker’s “Distant Drums.” When songwriter Cindy heard the throbbing percussion, haunting bugle, and shimmering strings that Chet Atkins had dubbed onto Jim’s vocal of her song, she burst into tears. In 1967–1970, Jim Reeves had six more consecutive top-ten hits, including the classic “When Two Worlds Collide,” penned by Bill Anderson and Roger Miller.

  “I realized when Jim died that it was up to me to carry on the business that Jim had started, that we both loved so much,” said Mary. “Like a song, so the business must go on. Why should I throw away everything that we have built up through the years together?

  “I know Jim would want it this way,” she continued. “The heritage that Jim left me is indeed priceless . . . and I want to keep the image there as long as possible in good taste.”

  RCA continued its overseas marketing of Jim Reeves as well. Between the time of his death and 1972, Jim had twenty more hits in England, with “Distant Drums” becoming a number-one pop smash there in 1966. He remained a favorite in numerous other nations around the world. Many overseas fans believe that he is still alive.

  In 1972, Jim crooned “Missing You” into the country top-ten. By the time of 1973’s “Am I That Easy to Forget” and 1974’s “I’d Fight the World,” his hit streak had become longer in death than it was during his lifetime. In 1979–1980, newcomer Deborah Allen overdubbed harmony vocals onto Jim’s performances to create three more top-ten hits, “Don’t Let Me Cross Over,” “Oh How I Miss You Tonight,” and “Take Me in Your Arms and Hold Me.” In 1981, the voices of the late Jim Reeves and the late Patsy Cline were spliced together for a hit “duet” of “Have You Ever Been Lonely.”

  Mary bought a two-hundred-year-old historic home called Evergreen Place and opened the Jim Reeves Museum in it in 1981. It was the most elegant, serene, and beautiful of all the country-star museums in Nashville. Unfortunately, developers illegally tore down the historic museum building in 2005, after Mary’s death in 1999.

  The music of Jim Reeves continues to enthrall listeners today. In India, his Christmas album remains an annual favorite. In the Netherlands, three of his hits were among that country’s most popular radio tunes of 2003. A Dutch Jim Reeves fan club has been operating continuously since 1975. He is still reportedly the best-selling Western artist in Nigeria and Kenya. Fans in Tanzania have made his “Christmas Polka” a holiday evergreen. Sri Lankan officials once launched an investigation to determine whether Jim was still alive. He sells steadily in the Caribbean, South America, Australia, and Germany. And he remains a legendary figure in South Africa.

  Gentleman Jim Reeves has been a member of the Country Music Hall of Fame since 1967. His worldwide record sales are said to exceed eighty million. As recently as 2004, his estate was earning $400,000 a year in royalties, forty years after his death.

  “Jim Reeves was born to sing,” wrote Cindy Walker in her liner notes to The Jim Reeves Way, “as sure as the sun was made to shine. . . . Keep this album, and any other Reeves album that you have, for your children and for their children, as you would a treasure, for treasures they will be. If ever there was a voice destined to remain a favorite with generations of listeners, this is it, the voice of Jim Reeves.”

  13

  Dolly’s Mystery Man

  The whole world might be in love with Dolly Parton, but she’s a one-man woman.

  “I doubt that I would ever marry again if something happened to Carl,” Dolly says. “I doubt that either of us would ever marry again. We’ve always hoped that we’d die at the same time.

  “I was his first true love, and he was my first true love. I just can’t imagine that I would want to live in a house with somebody else or sleep with somebody else. One never knows what life’s going to bring, but I certainly would never love anybody in all the ways that I love Carl.

  “We’re in this for the long haul.”

  “Carl” is Carl Dean, Dolly’s husband of more than forty years. Theirs is one of the most enduring marriages in country music. Yet Carl is a celebrity’s husband whom few have seen and even fewer have known well. Some have even questioned his existence. But Carl Dean has been by Dolly’s side since 1966, throughout her meteoric rise.

  She was born Dolly Rebecca Parton on January 19, 1946, and was raised in Appalachian poverty in East Tennessee. She was the fourth of twelve children, not all of whom survived. Her father was a sharecropper who paid the physician attending Dolly’s home birth with a sack of cornmeal. The one-room cabin had no electricity, telephone, or indoor plumbing.

  The family, particularly on Dolly’s mother’s side, was highly musical. Dolly was making up songs before she could read and write. At age ten, she became a regular on radio and TV in nearby Knoxville, Tennessee. She recorded a single for Goldband Records called “Puppy Love” at age fourteen and parlayed it into a guest appearance on the Grand Ole Opry. Even more obscure is “So Little I Wanted, So Little I Got”/“Forbidden Love,” a pair of duets with her uncle Bill Owens issued on Circle B Records. She first recorded on Music Row at age sixteen, the result being “It’s Sure Gonna Hurt” on Mercury Records. A 1963 album called Hits Made Famous by Country Queens on Somerset Records featured Dolly singing six songs popularized by Kitty Wells.

  In 1964, Dolly became the first member of her family to graduate from high school. The graduation ceremony in Sevierville, Tennessee, took place on a Friday night. On Saturday morning, she boarded a bus for Nashville carrying sacks of dirty clothes, her songs, and her dreams. On her first day in Music City, she took the clothes to a Laundromat, dropped in her coins, and went outside to look around.

  Nashville native Carl Dean spotted the pretty blonde while driving by. He honked his horn. She waved. He stopped. They chatted. Every day for the next week, he visited her at the home where she was babysitting. She fell for the handsome, lanky, 6-foot 2-inch Carl at once.

  Carl Thomas Dean was born in Nashville’s Saint Thomas Hospital on July 20, 1942. He attended Central High School with his friend Ronnie Shacklett, who later became Brenda Lee’s husband. After graduation, Carl went to work for his father’s asphalt-paving business.

  “I met him the first day I got here,” Dolly recalls. “I think one of the things that made me feel real attached to him was because he made my heart happy. He made me laugh a lot. This is when I first came to Nashville, and I was kind of sad because I had left home. My heart was lonely. That’s in addition to the fact that he was very handsome. And Carl’s very deep and very sensitive. So he had a lot of qualities that just suckered me in. The thing that made me love him at the start is the same thing that keeps us together through the years—we make each other happy.

  “I found this out later. Before he even talked to me, he said, ‘There’s the girl I’m going to marry.’ At the end of that first week of babysitting, the first date we had, he took me to his mamma’s house and said, ‘This is the girl I’m gonna marry. Fix her a plate,’ because they were having supper. I thought, ‘Well, how bold of you! You didn’t say any of this to me.’ Then I thought, ‘Well, is he kidding?’ Because I knew he had an off-the-wall sense of humor. But he said he wasn’t kidding. And he evidently wasn’t.”<
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  Carl enlisted in the National Guard, and during his two-year duty, Dolly visited him at military bases. She also continued to pursue her dreams. She took part-time jobs as a receptionist for a neon-sign company, a waitress in a family restaurant, and a singer on local early-morning TV. But she kept her focus on promoting her songwriting.

  Bill Phillips recorded Dolly’s “Put It Off Until Tomorrow” and featured her singing a prominent harmony vocal on it. The disc became a top-ten hit in the spring of 1966. In early 1967, Skeeter Davis had a hit with Dolly’s “Fuel to the Flame,” and Hank Williams Jr. released Dolly’s “I’m in No Condition.”

  In the meantime, Carl had returned to Nashville, and he and Dolly were courting like never before.

  “How did he propose? I was living over in Madison, and he was working in the pavement company. He was staying over at my house until two and three o’clock in the morning every night, because we were so in love. You know how that goes. He was going to work, and he was just wore out. So the way he proposed to me was this: ‘You’re either going to have to move on the other end of town, or we’re going to have to get married.’ That was his proposal. I said, ‘Well then, I guess we’ll just get married.’ And that’s how that happened.”

  They went to the no-waiting Southern marriage capital of Ringgold, Georgia. Carl and Dolly married on Memorial Day, May 30, 1966.

  At first, she kept the news to herself. Thanks to her songwriting success, Dolly had signed a recording contract with Monument Records, and she knew that the label’s Fred Foster would not approve of her marrying. Monument was noted for pop-music success with such artists as Roy Orbison and Boots Randolph. Early Dolly singles for the company, like “Happy, Happy Birthday Baby,” “Busy Signal,” and “Don’t Drop Out,” were aimed at the teen market by producer Ray Stevens. In early 1967, Dolly switched to her true style and began to attract attention with country singles such as “Dumb Blonde” and “Something Fishy.”