“We went into Tony’s office together and sat down. Of course, I was very nervous, because I am not a great guitarist. I kind of know how, because I taught myself. I play at it enough to write, but I’m really not a picker. So I played for them. We talked. Then I started becoming comfortable with Emory, because he was very sensitive to the way that I was feeling and knew that I was nervous. I began to really like him.”
Tony and Emory decided to coproduce Patty’s debut album. While preparing to make the record, Emory was the one who worked most closely with her.
“Tony turned it over to Emory to do the preproduction with me in order to prepare me to go into the studio. We really got so much done during this time and ended up really liking being with each other, having fun and talking about a variety of music. Not just country, but many varieties of music. At first, I didn’t really know much about him. I remember I thought his first name was ‘Gordy.’ Then when I started checking into it, I said, ‘Oh, how stupid are you?’ A lot of the artists that I was very much influenced by—Linda Ronstadt and Emmylou Harris—Emory had been a part of them.
“When I was like fifteen or sixteen years old, I had started becoming more interested in the musicians and who they were. There was the artist, but the music that was made behind them was made by ‘unknown artists.’ That is the way I called them, ‘unknown artists.’” Patty soon realized that her coproducer was one of the top recording-session musicians in America.
Coproduced by Emory, “Lonely Days, Lonely Nights” appeared as Patty’s debut single at the end of 1985. “Wicked Ways” succeeded it in 1986. “After All” and her self-composed “I Did” appeared in 1987, as did her debut album, Patty Loveless.
“I had gone on the road [to promote the early singles], and when I was on the road, I was missing him a lot,” Patty recalls. “Emory called me and talked to me many times. I think he was starting to fall for me. He finally admitted it to me after the record was finished. He expressed his feelings for me. Here he was telling me he was falling in love with me. I was going, ‘I can’t really say that I don’t feel the same.’ A part of me felt like I had feelings for this man. But I was just so shy of getting into a relationship, especially since my divorce wasn’t final. I was afraid. But, you know, a heart can’t help how it feels.
“When people fall in love, I think it’s real important to be friends first and then let love take over. Your heart knows. The more we worked together, I just knew.”
None of the early records became hits, but Emory and Tony joined her again in the studio to create 1988’s If My Heart Had Windows. The title tune, Patty’s revival of a 1967 George Jones favorite, became her first top-ten hit, and the album also contained her second, “A Little Bit in Love.” For her third album, 1988’s Honky Tonk Angel, Emory Gordy stepped out of the picture, both as a producer and a musician. He was also absent on 1990’s On Down the Line.
“He was very nervous about becoming involved with his artist,” Patty explains. “I mean, I couldn’t even get Emory to listen to what I was doing until it was completely finished. He said, ‘No, that’s between you and Tony. Tony’s your producer. I don’t need to be stepping into Tony’s territory.’ But even during the two records that I did with Tony, Emory was actually helping me with the road band.”
Those two records yielded such career-building hits as “Don’t Toss Us Away,” “Timber I’m Falling in Love,” “Chains,” “On Down the Line,” and “I’m That Kind of Girl.” As her star rose, concert offers poured in.
“Emory enjoyed working with the band and helping me put the shows and the music together. He’d show up and either play keyboards, guitar, or bass, just fill in wherever he was needed. He traveled to Europe with me, on that USO tour I did.”
Among the many events that consumed her time during this star-making period was Patty’s induction into the cast of the Grand Ole Opry. On June 11, 1988, she was welcomed to the Opry stage by her old mentor, Porter Wagoner. Because the Opry had been part of her life for so long, she was thrilled by the honor. Her only regret was that Emory was back in Georgia and couldn’t attend that evening.
“It was a shame,” she comments, “because Emory just loves everybody at the Opry. I think they feel the same way about him. His whole family has such high respect for the Opry and its artists.
“We did get to go to his twenty-fifth high school class reunion together that spring. We actually were just starting to date each other. They had a DJ there. I went up there to make a request. I said, ‘There’s a guy here who wrote “Traces,” and I want you to play it. He said, ‘But that wasn’t part of the music at that time [Emory graduated in 1963].’ I said, ‘Well, it is now. It is tonight.’ He pulled out the record and played it. I said to Emory, ‘I want to slow dance with you.’ So they played ‘Traces.’”
He proposed. But there was no time for a wedding.
“We had talked about getting married in ’88, but we decided to wait. There was a lot going on. I had started really touring a lot to get my face out there and be known. I just felt like we didn’t have time to really break away and get married. So finally in ’89, we just decided to elope. We called our mothers, but we didn’t have any family with us at all [at the wedding]. We just went to Gatlinburg.”
They were wed in the East Tennessee mountains on February 6, 1989. Surprisingly, they were able to keep their marriage from the public for almost two more years before finally revealing their relationship in September 1991.
“Well, one of the reasons was that I didn’t want to flaunt it,” Patty says. “I mean, I was in the press so much anyway. I didn’t want to make a big deal of it because of my ex. He was still having a hard time over the divorce. We were just trying to be sensitive to other people’s feelings.
“Another reason was that I didn’t want people to think, ‘Oh, yeah, she married the producer, and that’s the reason things are really happening now.’ That wasn’t the case, because Emory was not producing recordings on me.”
After their marriage, Emory rejoined the production team to make 1991’s Up Against My Heart. It contained such hits as “Hurt Me Bad (In a Real Good Way)” and “Jealous Bone.” Now Patty Loveless underwent a metamorphosis. During the preparation for her next album, she discovered her vocal cords were damaged and in need of emergency surgery. Singer Kathy Mattea had undergone the same operation a few months earlier, so she counseled and encouraged the frightened Patty. After recuperating, Patty Loveless reemerged with a sleek new image, flame-red hair, and an album titled Only What I Feel. Produced by Emory, the 1993 collection contained such giant successes as “Blame It on Your Heart” and “How Can I Help You Say Goodbye” and became her first platinum record.
“He’s not hard to work with,” says Patty of her producer/husband. “I think I’m the one who’s hard to work with. I ask him all the time, ‘Am I tough? Do I give you a hard time?’” She adds that some of her biggest hits have been songs that she was reluctant to try but recorded at his urging.
By the mid-1990s, Patty and Emory were inseparable. Their platinum-selling 1995 creation, When Fallen Angels Fly, was named Album of the Year by the Country Music Association (CMA). “I Try to Think About Elvis,” “You Don’t Even Know Who I Am,” and its other singles made her a massive country-radio favorite. “You Can Feel Bad” and “Lonely Too Long” both became number-one hits in 1996. They were on The Trouble with the Truth, the record that earned her the CMA’s Female Vocalist of the Year award.
“I’ll share a little secret with you. I prayed for an award for the music, because Emory works so hard. . . . And prayers do work, don’t they? He was proud of the fact that we won it together.”
Patty won two more CMAs for her collaborations with George Jones and her frequent vocal partner Vince Gill. Emory continued to produce her albums, including Strong Heart (2000), on which the couple collaborated as songwriters on “Rise Up, Lazarus,” and her roots-music masterpieces Mountain Soul (2001) and Bluegrass & White Snow (2002). Subtitled
A Mountain Christmas, the 2002 CD contained “Santa Train,” “Christmas Day at My House,” and “Bluegrass, White Snow” as Patty/Emory songwriting collaborations. Is it difficult to collaborate so intimately and to be together constantly?
“We have a really large house. If we want to get away from each other, we can. It is true that one of us can start to make a statement, and the other one will take over. He goes, ‘And you’re finishing my sentences for me?’ I’ll say, ‘Yeah.’ Because we know each other that much.”
Their technique for not mixing the music business with their private life is simple: “Once we’re at home and out of the studio, we have this thing to say, ‘My office is closed for the day.’ That was our thing.
“We don’t fight, but we do have disagreements. If we do, and it’s getting heated, I just go, ‘Let’s not go there’ or ‘Let’s talk about this later.’ I don’t like confrontation. It makes me very uncomfortable. I never enjoy hearing people fight or even raise their voices. I don’t like being yelled at. If that happens, you can bring me to tears. I can even be brought to tears if people I care about are arguing.”
In addition to being an artist he produces and his songwriting collaborator, Patty Loveless has fulfilled another role for Emory Gordy in recent years. By necessity, she has become his nurse. Since 1996, he has been through four major surgeries, three for abdominal problems and one for a collapsed lung.
“He no longer has a gallbladder. He no longer has a spleen. They had to do a whole reconstruction. He was pretty much staying a mess, but he’s doing a lot better. He is doing really great these days. I was telling him, ‘Maybe it’s because I’m at home with you.’ I’ve nursed him through quite a bit.”
The couple moved back to Emory’s home state of Georgia to be near his children from his first marriage and to allow him to recuperate from his health problems. Patty has declared that she plans to live the rest of her days in their rural home in Dallas, die there, and haunt it afterward. Located northwest of Atlanta, the expansive home sits on 150 secluded acres next to 8,000 acres of protected forest. It has five fireplaces, a huge vegetable garden, and a lake. It also has a home studio, in which they prepared music for Patty’s albums On Your Way Home (2003) and Dreamin’ My Dreams (2005).
Emory Gordy Jr. was inducted into the Georgia Music Hall of Fame in 1992. Because of her longtime residency in the state, Patty Loveless joined him as a member of that hall of fame in 2005.
“To tell you the truth, the music truly comes from both of us,” she says. “With all these songs, we really put our heads together.
“I’ve always been kind of shy and humble. I never wanted to be the center of attention. I sing because I want to touch people. I want to make you feel. If you’re buying that ticket . . . I want you to come for the music, not for the flash.
“For me, singing is almost like a crying out from the heart. Songs and music have a way for me to connect to people. They’re my way of communicating about myself. He’s a shy-type person, too. I tend to open my feelings to him more so than to anybody else. I think we both feel these songs. That’s why he’s an awesome producer.
“Sometimes I look back on it all, and I think we were meant to be. It took a long time for us to come together. I really believe that Emory and I were meant for each other. It just seems like we were brought together for a reason.”
20
Some Memories Just Won’t Die
Marty Robbins believed himself to be ugly.
Perhaps equally surprising, the Grand Ole Opry’s most dashing and charismatic showman was private and not very sociable offstage. He was terrified of pain, yet participated in the dangerous sport of auto racing. He had both an outrageous sense of humor and a temper with a short fuse. His concerts were like parties, but he didn’t even drink. His image was of a man with a healthy ego and dazzling self-confidence. In reality, he was shy and humble.
These are just a few of the contrasts in the personality of one of the most gifted and complex men in the history of country music. The final irony is that no one seemed more vibrant and alive than Marty Robbins, but he died too young, at age fifty-seven.
“I’m not satisfied at all with what I have done,” he said not long before his death. “I want to do more. I haven’t lost the drive.”
It was typical of his restlessly creative spirit that he still felt that way after placing more than seventy-five titles on the country charts. More than fifty top-ten country hits, two Grammy Awards, six gold records, seven top-twenty pop smashes, membership in the Nashville Songwriters Hall of Fame, and election into the Country Music Hall of Fame never dulled his desire to succeed. During his astonishing career, he became a master of a staggering range of musical styles, meeting every challenge with ease.
Broadcaster Ralph Emery aptly dubbed him “Golden Throat” and recalls, “Marty overflowed with energy and ambition.”
In the beginning, Marty Robbins had nowhere to go but up. Stories of childhood poverty are common in country music, but what Martin David Robinson overcame was truly extraordinary. He was born on September 26, 1925. “Home” was a series of shacks and tents in the Arizona desert. Marty had eight brothers and sisters. There was no electricity. There was no running water. There was no indoor plumbing.
“People who think they’re poor now never had it any worse than I did, never,” he recalled. “I know what it is like to be laughed at because your shoe doesn’t have a sole in it and because your pants have holes in them. Not only other kids, but I know what it’s like to be ridiculed by a teacher. That used to hurt me so much. I was poor, and there was nothin’ I could do about it.”
There were few toys, but Marty found entertainment in the yarns told by his maternal grandfather, Texas Bob Heckle. Texas Bob’s wife Anna was a Paiute Indian, and she was just as colorful as he was.
“Grandfather was a drummer in the Civil War, or so he told me. He sold patent medicines. . . . The old man could really tell stories. He was a Texas Ranger, or so he told me. He was a poet. My love for the Old West came from him. He died when I was six, but I remember him very well.”
Marty’s father John Robinson, on the other hand, was an abusive alcoholic. Even many years afterward, the star seldom spoke of him.
“He would whip me for no reason,” Marty said in one of the rare occasions when he talked about his father. “I wasn’t one of his favorites. His favorite was one of my younger brothers. I remember my brother and I got into it one time, and he called for my father. My dad had a bad temper. I ran away and wouldn’t come back. He chased me and threw a hammer at me like a tomahawk. I picked it up and threw it back as hard as I could and hit him in the chest. He never bothered me after that.”
Mother Emma separated from her husband when Marty was twelve. The family moved into a shack near the railroad tracks in Glendale, Arizona, and she took in laundry to support them.
“I’m not sure what happened to him,” said Marty indifferently. “I never looked into it. My mother was always the one who took care of me.”
Marty worked in cotton fields for twenty-five cents a day. He idolized Gene Autry (1907–1998), and would save his earnings so that he could see his hero on the silver screen each week. School did not interest him in the least.
“I went to high school for three years without passing a single subject. Usually, I didn’t even bother to show up. I ran with a rough crowd, just one step away from reform school. . . . The police were always talking to me about something.”
It was difficult for Marty to speak about this part of his life, but by age fourteen, he was a juvenile delinquent committing petty crimes. He stole, jumped freight trains, and got into fights. After one boy he beat up wound up in the hospital, Marty outran the law by fleeing into the countryside to live on a friend’s goat ranch.
At age seventeen, he enlisted in the navy. It was the height of World War II, and Marty saw combat in the Pacific. He piloted landing craft on beaches and came under fire during the campaign for the Solomon
Islands. While in the service, Marty began playing guitar. This is also almost certainly when he fell in love with Hawaiian music. Another navy pastime was boxing, which he continued to do briefly, semiprofessionally, after his honorable discharge in early 1946.
Settling in Phoenix, the youngster flailed around aimlessly throughout 1946 and 1947. He took and quit one menial job after another—mechanic’s helper, electrician’s helper, well driller, and driver of milk-, brick-, and ice-delivery trucks.
“I never knew what I wanted,” he admitted. “I’m lazy. . . . I had never considered anything close to work, because I didn’t like to work. I had eight jobs in six months. I only got fired from the last one. I quit all the others. I’d only work long enough for a payday. I found out that work was just not what I was suited for.”
While listening to the radio in his brick truck one day, he decided that he could sing as well as the guy who had the country show on the Phoenix station. He took the next day off, hopped on his motorcycle, drove to KOY, auditioned for the station manager by singing “The Strawberry Roan,” and got the job.
Marty married Marizona Baldwin about a month later, on September 27, 1948. He’d met her at the soda fountain where she clerked. While they were dating, he didn’t tell her he was singer “Marty Robbins.” When he finally did, Marizona was thrilled. Like him, she’d grown up poor, and she’d always dreamed that someday a romantic singing cowboy would come to her rescue. Son Ronny was born in 1949. The former ne’er-do-well was now a happy man.
“I got a job in a nightclub . . . and I played three nights in a row and made thirty bucks. And that was great: Getting paid that much for doing something I loved! Pretty soon, I was making sixty bucks a week. There’s no way I could have made that much otherwise. I really wasn’t skilled labor.” By 1952, he was making $750 a week.
Behind the Grand Ole Opry Curtain Page 23