Behind the Grand Ole Opry Curtain

by Grand Ole Opry

  For a while, Marty Robbins lived it up as a local celebrity. But a car wreck in December 1950 led him to quit drinking. He remained sober for the rest of his life. In later years, Marty also told a story about Ronny falling gravely ill. He promised God he would quit drinking if Ronny’s life was spared. The boy immediately recovered, and Marty kept his word.

  By 1951, he was appearing on KPHO in Phoenix. When it opened the city’s first TV station that year, Marty became the host of its Western Caravan show. At this point, he was so averse to doing television that he threw up before every broadcast.

  “I’m not pretty enough,” he commented about his reluctance to be on camera. “My face—especially my nose—looks like I’ve been a boxer all my life and received quite a few knockout blows.” Throughout his career, handsome Marty Robbins would refer to himself as “ugly.” He was also somewhat sensitive about his 5-foot 7-inch height.

  The Grand Ole Opry’s Jimmy Dickens was a guest star on Marty’s Phoenix TV show. Impressed, Jimmy recommended Marty to his label, Columbia Records. Former Opry executive Harry Stone was another who reportedly scouted Marty for the “big leagues.” Columbia signed Marty on May 25, 1951.

  Marty Robbins had begun copyrighting his songs in 1950. In 1952, he signed with Nashville’s Acuff-Rose as his song publisher. His self-penned heartache tune “I’ll Go on Alone” became his first number-one hit. As a result, he was invited to become an Opry cast member on January 19, 1953. The family moved to Music City.

  Alabama songwriter Melvin Endsley was crippled by polio, but he managed to get backstage at the Ryman one night to give Marty his composition “Singing the Blues.” Marty added a yodel to the word “cry” and wound up with a number-one country smash in late 1956. Marty returned to Melvin Endsley for “Knee Deep in the Blues,” placing both Endsley songs with Acuff-Rose. He later realized that he could have formed his own publishing company for them and pocketed the profits himself. As a result, Marty Robbins formed both a short-lived record label as well as his own song-publishing business and booking agency. For most of his career, Marty managed himself and booked his own concert dates. Many of his valuable song copyrights remain in the family’s hands to this day.

  At his next recording sessions, Marty aimed squarely for the pop hit parade. Under the guidance of Mitch Miller and Ray Conniff in New York, he recorded the prom-themed “A White Sport Coat.”

  “I wrote ‘A White Sport Coat’ in eleven miles in 1956,” Marty reported. “We were driving somewhere in Ohio, and I just happened to look up and see this sign that read eleven miles to the next town. And I had the song finished by the time we got to that town. Where the idea came from, I have no idea. I’d never heard of a white sport coat and a pink carnation!” Son Ronny thinks his dad passed a teen school dance and was inspired.

  “A White Sport Coat” was an unqualified pop and country smash in 1957. Marty followed it with the similarly themed “Teen-Age Dream,” “Just Married,” “She Was Only Seventeen,” and the bouncy “The Story of My Life.” But at thirty-two, Marty was too mature for this kind of material. It was time for a change.

  In late 1957, he showed his love of Hawaiian music by releasing one of Nashville’s first “concept” LPs, Song of the Islands. He followed this in 1959 with a nod to his kinship with Texas Bob and a salute to his boyhood hero Gene Autry, recording his landmark Gunfighter Ballads and Trail Songs album in one day. It included “El Paso,” a saga of romance and death in West Texas that became the first number-one pop hit of the 1960s.

  “‘El Paso’ I wrote in one day when I was driving through [Texas, en route from Nashville to Phoenix]. I never even got it down on paper until I got to Phoenix the next day. But I couldn’t forget it, because it was like a movie, and I didn’t know how it was going to end. I must have been going one hundred miles an hour when I ended it. It was so exciting! I did not know how it was going to end, but once I got started, it just rolled out. I never changed a word.” His unforgettable recording is now enshrined in the Grammy Hall of Fame.

  In 1961, the throbbing “Don’t Worry” became his next pop and country smash. It was not only one of his most beautiful melodies, it introduced a new sound. During the recording session, Grady Martin’s guitar was distorted by a malfunctioning preamp in the mixing console, resulting in fuzztone. This was the first time this sound was ever recorded. It was later adopted by The Doors, Jefferson Airplane, and many others making “psychedelic” rock music.

  “I wrote that one night in the four miles that it takes to drive from the Grand Ole Opry to where I lived then,” said Marty of “Don’t Worry.” “I had started it when I left and had it finished by the time I ever got home. I went right in and played it on the piano. I never even put it down on paper until copyright-filing time, after I sang it [in the studio].”

  Marty continued to top the charts and by the mid-1960s had settled into his tradition of closing Opry shows. Initially, this was because he wanted to come to the Ryman after he’d finished dirt-track racing at Highland Rim Speedway, north of Nashville. But soon it became a habit for him to perform well after the broadcasts ended, doing encore after encore. He mugged for the fans, posed for pictures, clowned around, and shamelessly milked crowds for applause. His showboating endeared him to thousands. Marty soon amassed “Marty’s Army,” one of the largest fan clubs in country-music history.

  “When I’m onstage, I’m having such a good time, and I’m so happy to be there that there is no way the audience can’t have a good time, too,” he explained. “I like to kid around with the people in the audience, carry on conversations with them and have a big time. I talk to an audience, not over their heads. And that makes them feel appreciated.”

  But after the shows were over and the applause fell silent, Marty went home to be with his family. There were no Music Row parties, just quality time at home. Daughter Janet had been born in 1959, and he wanted to be the father to her and Ronny that he had never had.

  “Other than relatives, I’ve really only had two people over to my house as guests in the last twenty years,” he once admitted. “That was Eddy Arnold and Roy Wiggins, the steel guitar player. I’m just not much of one for parties and that sort of thing.”

  “He had another life, offstage,” says son Ronny Robbins. “Music was not a big part of Marty Robbins, to me. To me, he was ‘Dad.’ As kids, we never thought much about the Opry or the TV shows or the concerts. That was just what he did, something that took Daddy away from us for several months out of the year.

  “When he was home, he tried extra hard to be a good father. Partly because he was gone so much and partly because of his own upbringing, he didn’t know what a father was supposed to act like.

  “Daddy was real protective of that home life. He was always home for Christmas. I don’t grieve for Marty Robbins the star, because I probably didn’t know him that well. I knew Marty Robbins the father very well.” Marty kept Marizona and the children out of the limelight. Ronny and Janet never saw a Marty Robbins show until they were teenagers. Both kids were rock ’n’ roll fans, so they didn’t watch his syndicated TV series The Drifter (1965) and The Marty Robbins Show (1968–1969), nor the seven movies he appeared in during the 1950s and 1960s.

  Ronny does remember music drifting through the air ducts in the Robbins home late at night. Marty was an insomniac who frequently stayed up in his music room, writing songs. Later, he became a regular visitor to disc jockey Ralph Emery’s all-night radio show on WSM. On these occasions, he would reel off song after song on the air. Marty knew more than one thousand songs and could easily sing all night without repeating himself.

  In 1964, the Gallup Poll named Marty Robbins one of the most admired men in America. That was the year he campaigned for conservative Republican presidential candidate Barry Goldwater. In 1968, he worked for the presidential campaign of Alabama governor George Wallace.

  This was also the period when Marty began racing on the NASCAR circuit. One often-told tale had him running in se
cond place at the Nashville Speedway during a 1968 race but pulling over and withdrawing so that he could make it to the Opry on time.

  “I drive for the fun of it,” he said. “I try to stay out of the way of these other fellows, who are out there trying to make a living. I just love to be on the track with them.”

  As the 1960s drew to a close, Marty’s popularity was undimmed, but a shadow began to fall over the star. In 1968, he’d had an undiagnosed and untreated heart attack while racing at the Charlotte 500. A year later, he collapsed after a show in Vegas. He checked himself out of the hospital after promising his doctors he’d fly to Nashville to see his own physician. Instead, he flew to Ohio to fulfill a concert date. He had a heart attack on his tour bus, yet played the show anyway. He was hospitalized in Cleveland but was soon on the road again.

  On January 27, 1970, Marty underwent a then-experimental triple bypass surgery in Nashville. While recuperating, he received 22,000 pieces of fan mail.

  After the operation, he called newspaper reporter Larry Woody and invited him to bring a photographer to the hospital to “make a picture of the most carved up chest in Nashville.” Kidding aside, the experience had deepened the superstar’s faith. Marty was always religious but seldom spoke about his beliefs in public, which was in keeping with his private side.

  “I know a lot of things don’t seem fair in life,” he said of his chronic heart condition. “But it all comes down to how you believe, how you accept life. I don’t like to get off on religion, but I have my beliefs. I don’t ask anybody else to believe the way I do; but then again, no one else could ever change the way I feel.”

  His self-composed “My Woman, My Woman, My Wife” returned him to the top of the charts in 1970 and led to his second Grammy Award. “Love Me,” written by future Opry star Jeanne Pruett, was a top-ten hit in 1973, and he penned his 1974 hit single “Twentieth Century Drifter” about his love of auto racing.

  Marty’s best finish in a NASCAR race was fifth at Michigan International Speedway in 1974. Four months later, a Charlotte 500 crash resulted in thirty-seven stitches to his face and a broken nose. He’d purposefully crashed into a concrete wall at 150 miles an hour to avoid hitting and possibly killing star drivers Richard Childress and A. J. Foyt.

  Later he quipped, “You’ve heard of stars putting their footprints in concrete? Well, I tried to put my face print in a concrete wall, only the concrete had already dried.” He crashed again at Daytona and Talladega in 1975. He said he’d give up racing but didn’t.

  He also continued to write hit songs, including the lilting “El Paso City,” a number-one hit in 1976 that completed the unique trilogy of thematically linked tunes following 1965’s “Faleena (From El Paso)” and the original “El Paso.” Like many of its predecessors, “El Paso City” came to Marty while he was traveling.

  “Every time I flew over El Paso, I was usually getting some sleep. Well, it never failed that I would always wake up about five minutes before the pilot would say, ‘And off to the left is the city of El Paso.’ So I thought about writing that song for so long. And one time when I heard the pilot say that, I asked the stewardess for a pen and a paper. And I had that song written before we even got across the state of New Mexico. By the time I was in L.A., I had the tune and everything.”

  After “Among My Souvenirs” became his second number-one hit of 1976, he decided to try television again. Marty Robbins Spotlight ran for three years, 1977–1979. On the road, he teamed up with Merle Haggard, who so admired him that he named his son Marty Haggard after the living legend. Opry stars Marty Stuart and Marty Roe of Diamond Rio are also named after Marty Robbins.

  At the Opry, he continued his show-closing ways. The program had relocated to the Opry House in the Opryland theme park in 1974. The bigger facility allowed Marty to expand his activities. Now, following his encores and kidding around, the Pied Piper led the crowds to the building’s front lobby. There he’d pose for snapshots, answer questions, sign autographs, and mingle with “Marty’s Army,” sometimes until past 3:00 a.m.

  The year 1982 began with his third triumphant tour of Great Britain. In April, Esquire magazine declared him “a national treasure.” At June’s Fan Fair celebration in Nashville, he threw a “Marty Party” for two thousand fans at the Opryland Hotel. He performed for two and a half hours, then signed autographs until 2:00 a.m. In August, “Some Memories Just Won’t Die” returned him to the top ten. On October 11, 1982, Eddy Arnold inducted Marty Robbins into the Country Music Hall of Fame.

  “I was really surprised when I got it,” Marty remarked afterward. “I thought Jimmy Dickens should get it and would get it before I did. . . . But I got it,” he added with a mischievous laugh, “and I’m not gonna give it back!”

  On December 2, 1982, he was scheduled to be at the world premiere of Clint Eastwood’s movie Honkytonk Man in Nashville. Marty appeared in the film and sang its hit title tune. He returned from a concert in Cincinnati that morning complaining of chest pains. Marizona checked him into the hospital, and he was rushed into surgery. A week-long vigil followed as Marty clung to life. The damage to his heart was too great. Marty Robbins died the night of December 8, 1982.

  At Marizona’s request, Brenda Lee sang “One Day at a Time” at the funeral service. “I think a lot of people thought Marty Robbins was bigger than life,” mused Brenda, “and a lot of others probably thought he was bigger than death, too. That’s what has made this so tragic. It’s hard to imagine anyone who was more alive than Marty.”

  21

  Live Fast, Love Hard, Die Young, and Leave a Beautiful Memory

  Faron Young, who starred on the Opry from 1952 to 1964, was one of country’s most colorful characters and biggest hit makers, but he believed himself to be forsaken and forgotten when he committed suicide in 1996.

  “The industry is not trying to help the older artists anymore,” Faron had complained a few years earlier. “They’ve hired these young boys to come in who really don’t know anything about what we did or what we stood for. Back in the day, Ernest Tubb and myself and Carl Smith, Webb Pierce, Ferlin Husky, and Hank Snow were beatin’ that road, making this business what it is today. Thanks to us old bastards, there’s still a country-music business to be in.

  “They have big buses and airplanes to travel in. We drove around with cars pulling trailers. We were more of a family. We’d get together at each other’s homes and have cookouts and things like that. We toured in package shows together. It was a family affair. But it ain’t no more. There’s no camaraderie about it anymore.

  “There’s no use in me recording anymore. I don’t have the heart to do it.”

  In the later years of his life, Faron Young was alone. Wife Hilda had divorced him in 1986, but friends said he never stopped loving her. He developed emphysema and was despondent when he had to acquire and use an oxygen tank. Dismayed that younger performers were paid so much more than he was for concerts, he let his band go in 1994. The week before his death, he was treated for a chronic and painful prostate condition. He became more and more isolated.

  “I tried to call him, but he stopped returning my calls,” reported Opry star Jeannie Seely. “When I saw him, I asked him why, and he said, ‘because you’ll want me to do something, and I don’t want to do anything.’ Faron was sending out every signal, when you think about it.”

  He sold his tour bus and gave away many of his belongings. He cleaned out his storage room and even found a new home for his only companion, his dog. Still, no one anticipated what happened next. On the morning of December 9, 1996, Faron Young, sixty-four, put a .38-caliber revolver to his temple and shot himself. He left a suicide note with the day’s date and a time of 11:40 a.m.

  Former band member Ray Emmett came to visit his old friend at 12:30 p.m. When Faron didn’t answer his calls at the back door, Ray entered the house and found the critically wounded star on his bed. Faron was taken to a nearby hospital but died of his injuries the following day.

  �
��He said it best, himself,” said Jeannie Seely. “‘I’m gonna live fast, love hard, die young, and leave a beautiful memory.’ It turned out to be his prophecy. He certainly left some beautiful memories for us.”

  The Faron Young stories told in Nashville are endless. He drank alcohol in epic quantities, was a world-class smart aleck, could cuss longer and better than anybody, got into brawls, wrecked cars, was overbearingly sassy and cocky, had numerous run-ins with the law, was usually the proverbial life of the party, boasted one of the quickest wits in Music City, and was notoriously frank and outspoken. His wild escapades and frequent misbehavior only fueled his legend. And no matter how obnoxious he could be, everybody loved him dearly.

  Just as numerous as stories of his hell-raising are tales of his kindness and generosity. Faron was known as “the softest touch in Nashville.” He’d hand a complete stranger $50 if the fellow looked needy. He reached out to help Roger Miller, Kris Kristofferson, Willie Nelson, Bill Anderson, Roy Drusky, Johnny Paycheck, Don Gibson, Sonny James, Johnny Cash, The Wilburn Brothers, Charley Pride, and many others when they were unknowns trying to make it on Music Row.

  He was also regarded as one of the finest showmen of his era. And his tally of more than forty top-ten country classics speaks for itself.

  Faron Young was born on February 25, 1932, the youngest of six children. As a boy, his home was a dairy farm on the outskirts of Shreveport, Louisiana. The children were expected to milk the cows at the crack of dawn and again when they returned home from school.

  “I developed my voice from calling the cows up,” Faron said with a chuckle. “I was singing ever since I was a little boy. I sang pop music until I was about a senior in high school. My football coach had a little country band, so I sang with the band. My desire was to get off of a farm. I didn’t care if it was music that got me away from there. It might have been bank robbery. Whatever was more convenient.”