Josh’s songwriting talent came to the attention of Music Row’s executives even before he graduated. Within a few months of his 2001 graduation, Josh Turner was signed to his recording contract.
On December 21, 2001, Josh Turner stepped onto the Opry stage for the first time. Bill Anderson introduced him. After just one verse and chorus of “Long Black Train,” the audience began cheering. By the end of the song, the crowd was on its feet.
“Josh, make that train a little longer,” suggested Bill. Getting an encore so overwhelmed Josh that he choked up, began to cry, and skipped a couple of verses. Then he got another standing ovation.
In 2002, Josh Turner issued his debut single, the ballad “She’ll Go on You.” It flopped. “Long Black Train” was selected as Josh’s second single. As predicted by its Grand Ole Opry reception, it emerged as Josh’s first big hit.
While “Long Black Train” was climbing the charts, Josh married Jennifer in Atlanta on June 14, 2003. After her graduation from Belmont, she’d earned her master’s degree in music at the University of Georgia and had begun teaching voice and piano.
Josh’s deep, rich singing voice and boyish good looks were immensely appealing to country fans. The Long Black Train album eventually sold a million copies. In 2005–2006, “Your Man” and “Would You Go with Me” became back-to-back number-one hits. As a result, Josh’s Your Man album sold two million copies. Two of his guests on the collection were Grand Ole Opry stars Ralph Stanley and Diamond Rio.
His career was exploding, but Josh and Jennifer took some time off when Jennifer gave birth to son Hampton Otis Turner on October 6, 2006.
In the six years following his debut on the show, the rising star made nearly one hundred guest appearances on the Opry. On September 29, 2007, Roy Clark surprised Josh by inviting him to become a cast member. After singing his hit “Firecracker,” Josh was inducted by Vince Gill on October 27, 2007.
“Thank you, Grand Ole Opry,” Josh responded. “Country music has always been a huge part of my life. I have always been willing and able to fight for it, and that’s what I want to continue to do—and just continue to make great music for all these great country fans out there.”
With his induction, Josh Turner replaced Dierks Bentley as the youngest member of the Grand Ole Opry’s cast. The two share a November 20th birthday, but Josh is two years younger than Dierks.
With a happy, healthy baby, a wife who supports him both on and offstage, and cast membership in the Grand Ole Opry, Josh Turner is one contented young man. The title of his third album says it all: Everything Is Fine.
30
The Harmonica Wizard
The first documented polio epidemic in America was in 1894, when 132 cases were reported in the state of Vermont. The disease is almost unknown in this country today, but throughout the first half of the twentieth century, it crippled and killed hundreds of thousands of young people.
Around 1900, localized paralytic polio epidemics began springing up in various U.S. communities. Three-year-old DeFord Bailey was afflicted in 1902, more than fifty years before a vaccine was developed to inoculate children against the paralyzing disease. The future Grand Ole Opry star turned what should have been a tragedy into musical triumph.
AMONG POLIO’S SURVIVORS HAVE been President Franklin D. Roosevelt, Olympic athlete Wilma Rudolph, golfer Jack Nicklaus, actors Alan Alda and Mia Farrow, painter Frida Kahlo, and photographer Dorothea Lange, as well as musicians such as Donovan, Neil Young, bluegrass star Mac Wiseman, and “The Nashville Nightingale,” Dinah Shore. Like them, DeFord Bailey not only survived, he became a star.
He was born December 14, 1899, in rural Smith County, Tennessee. His mother died when he was only a year old. He was taken in by his father’s sister Barbara Lou and her husband Clark Odum, who raised him as one of their own. When he came down with polio, so did the son of the local doctor. Bedridden, he was able to move only his arms and head for nearly a year.
“My daddy would give me a harp [harmonica] or hang an old guitar or banjo around my neck and let me pick on it for hours at a time,” DeFord recalled. “I couldn’t do much else. I probably made more noise than music back then, but I’ve been playing my harp or something ever since then.”
The physician gave up on DeFord, but Barbara Lou didn’t. Day after day, she rubbed his legs with various folk remedies, including the grease cooked from an owl. One liniment, lubricant, or salve must have worked. Unlike many polio victims, DeFord was eventually able to walk without braces, though the disease did stunt his growth—he only grew to 4 foot 10 inches tall and 100 pounds.
DeFord’s grandfather had been the county’s champion fiddler. Various other Baileys played guitars, mandolins, banjos, fifes, drums, and harmonicas, and the family was often called upon to play what DeFord called “black hillbilly music” at church gatherings, fairs, barn dances, and other community events.
The frail little boy picked up traditional fiddle tunes, gospel songs, pop ditties, and blues numbers. He was a musical sponge who learned melodies quickly, easily, and flawlessly. He heard music all around him. There was something dreamy, almost mystical, about him. And he retained these qualities all his life.
“You know, there’s some music in everything,” DeFord believed. “Sheep. Cow. Chicken. Dog. They got music in ’em. All of ’em . . . I’m just like a microphone. I pick up everything I hear around me.” He was particularly fascinated by the bells and train whistles he could hear from the tracks that were a couple of miles away from his rural home.
While he was growing up, the Odums moved to various communities in Williamson County, south of Nashville. His obsession with the harmonica remained constant, and he never did well in school.
“They tried to teach me reading, writing, and arithmetic, but I was only interested in arithmetic,” he recalled. “I wanted to learn how to keep people from beating me out of my money. But they beat me anyhow. I did learn enough arithmetic to count my money and enough reading and writing to sign my name, but that was about it.”
Essentially illiterate and handicapped by his condition, DeFord Bailey seemed destined for a life of poverty and dependence. But he had a number of skills that eventually proved to be invaluable. He was an excellent cook. He was extremely good with his hands, able to make toys and furniture out of cast-off materials. He was good with animals. He was neat, clean, and quite tidy. He could sew. He was highly inventive.
The family moved to Nashville in late 1918, when he was nineteen years old. Barbara Lou, the only mother he had ever known, died in 1923. Clark Odum moved to Detroit to find work. Now on his own, DeFord drifted through a number of occupations in Nashville. He ran errands for a pharmacy, cleaned and worked as a houseboy, worked in the kitchen of the Maxwell House Hotel, shined shoes, washed cars, took tickets at a silent-movie theater, was a delivery boy, and became an elevator operator. No matter the job, he always played his harmonica during any downtime.
In the big city, his musical palate expanded. DeFord was fascinated by the medicine shows that set up tents in his Edgehill neighborhood in Nashville. The Bijou Theater downtown catered to African Americans, and it became a favorite haunt of his. He even worked there for a time. This is where DeFord saw such greats as Bessie Smith, Ma Rainey, Butterbeans and Susie, Sara Martin, Clara Smith, and Sammie Lewis with his Creole Steppers jazz band. All of this would influence his ever-evolving repertoire.
He got around town on a bicycle he customized with a headlight, reflectors, and other features. He got parts for his bike at a hardware store called Dad’s. When radio became popular in the early 1920s, the owner, Fred Exum, opened a shop selling parts to build receivers. To publicize it, he opened Nashville’s first radio station, WDAD. When the station went on the air in September 1925, Fred remembered his bicycle customer’s talent and invited DeFord Bailey to broadcast on it.
One of DeFord’s fellow players on WDAD was the harmonica-playing Dr. Humphrey Bate (1875–1936), who led a string band. The two men becam
e friends and mutual admirers. This relationship would lead directly to DeFord’s stardom.
On October 5, 1925, WSM went on the air in Nashville. Unlike the tiny WDAD, the new station had a powerful signal and first-class studios. From the start, WSM wanted to be the best. George D. Hay at WLS in Chicago had been voted the most popular announcer in America in 1924, so WSM enticed him to come to Nashville. Hay knew how popular country music had been on WLS, so he immediately began to feature it on WSM. On November 28, he put old-time fiddler Uncle Jimmy Thompson (1848–1931) on the air, which began the station’s tradition of broadcasting country music every Saturday night.
By the end of the year, “Judge” Hay, as he was known, had a cast of several other country acts. One was Dr. Humphrey Bate, who often went off the air on WDAD and walked up the hill to commence broadcasting on WSM. One night, he persuaded DeFord to go with him. The program was already in progress when they arrived. Dr. Bate told Judge Hay he wished to put DeFord on then and there, without an audition. When Hay objected, Bate persisted, “Judge, I will stake my reputation on the ability of this boy.”
After DeFord played some tunes, Judge Hay tossed his trademark wooden steamboat whistle into the air in delight. He gave DeFord $2 and told him to return. At the time, the show’s performers weren’t paid. Thus, DeFord Bailey became WSM’s first paid professional musician.
In addition to blowing his steamboat whistle and adopting the character of “The Solemn Old Judge,” Hay came up with colorful names for his performers. Bate’s string band, for instance, was renamed “The Possum Hunters.” Fiddler George Wilkerson’s group was dubbed “The Fruit Jar Drinkers.” Mandolin and guitar player Paul Warmack’s band became “The Gully Jumpers.” In 1926, Hay dubbed DeFord Bailey “The Harmonica Wizard,” and beginning that summer, that is how DeFord was listed in every newspaper radio schedule.
Hay also had his acts costume themselves in overalls to convey a hayseed image, even though their occupations included policeman (Matthew Crook), auto mechanic (Warmack), jeweler (the Binkley Brothers), and barber (Howard Ragsdale). They might have had rural roots, but they weren’t farmers. Still, Hay perpetuated the image in press releases that read like this:
“During the week, most of these performers are farmers and hunters, men of the soil. When Saturday night comes, they take down their fiddles, banjoes, jugs, washboards, mouth harps, and the like, and come to the jamboree.”
DeFord Bailey would have none of it. He refused to wear a rube getup and always appeared in a tailored suit, starched shirt, tie, and hat. He kept his clothes in immaculate condition and comported himself as a gentleman.
The Harmonica Wizard soon became a huge favorite with the station’s listeners. Fan mail, telegrams, and phone calls arrived with praise and requests. His segments on what was then called WSM’s Barn Dance or Saturday Night Barn Dance became longer and more frequent.
By 1927, DeFord Bailey and banjo-playing vaudevillian Uncle Dave Macon were by far the most popular performers on WSM’s weekly show. Uncle Dave was already recording by then. Hay used his show-business contacts to arrange for his other star to record for Columbia Records in Atlanta that spring. The company recorded two songs but released neither. Angered, Hay cancelled the deal and sent DeFord to New York and Brunswick Records.
“They sat me down on a little seat,” DeFord remembered, “and showed me three lights on the wall. One light was my signal telling me to get ready, one told me to start, and the last one was the signal to stop playing. I watched the lights and timed my tunes to fit ’em. Each record was three minutes. I stopped right on time for each one. I had played so long, I knowed right when to stop. One time was all it took, since I didn’t make a single mistake on none of them. I recorded eight tunes, and I played every one perfect the first time. They couldn’t get over that.”
The first song he recorded was “Pan-American Blues,” wherein his harmonica imitates a locomotive. “Dixie Flyer” was another of his “train” pieces. “Old Hen Cackle” was a fiddle tune he’d learned from his grandfather. “Evening Prayer Blues” also came from his boyhood. “Up Country Blues” and “Muscle Shoals Blues” were tunes he learned from seeing Bessie Smith at the Bijou Theater. The showplace was probably also where he learned “Alcoholic Blues,” a tune that bothered him since he neither drank nor smoked. “The Fox Chase” was a tour de force in which he imitates dogs barking, riders’ shouts, and fox howls associated with a hunt.
When he returned to Nashville, he introduced “The Fox Chase” and “Pan-American Blues” to WSM listeners. Both became wildly popular. In fact, “Pan-American Blues” was practically the Barn Dance’s theme song. It is the tune that inspired the name that the show has to this day.
In the fall of 1927, WSM was broadcasting a classical-music show from New York called The Music Appreciation Hour. Host Walter Damrosch introduced a piece by saying, “Most artists realize that there is no place in the classics for realism, nevertheless, I am going to break one of my rules and present a composition by a young composer from Iowa who sent us his latest number which depicts the on-rush of a locomotive.”
Judge Hay was listening. When the classical show ended, he opened his country-music show by saying, “Friends, the program which just came to a close was devoted to the classics. Doctor Damrosch told us that it was generally agreed that there is no place in the classics for realism. However, from here on out for the next three hours, we will present nothing but realism. It will be down to earth for the earthy.”
DeFord Bailey executed his dazzling “Pan-American Blues.” Inspired, Hay added, “For the past hour, we have been listening to music largely from Grand Opera, but from now on, we will present The Grand Ole Opry.” By December, newspapers were using the new name, and Hay was promoting it vigorously.
In 1928, DeFord Bailey performed on the Opry twice as often as any other artist. But he sometimes chafed at Judge Hay’s paternalistic behavior. DeFord had been paid $400 for his Brunswick recordings, $50 a song. Hay had the money sent to himself, took 25 percent, gave DeFord $75, and doled out the rest in $10 increments. Moreover, the $10 replaced DeFord’s usual Opry pay of $7 per show. At that point, he should have been getting $17 a week but wasn’t. When the $300 was paid out, he was returned to $7 a night.
A second recording session took place that fall, when Victor Records came to town to record some of the Opry performers. The Binkley Brothers and their Clodhoppers kicked things off on September 28, 1928. Paul Warmack & His Gully Jumpers were next, recording both on that date and on October 1. Then it was DeFord Bailey’s turn. On October 2, he recorded eight titles, three of which eventually appeared on disc, “Davidson County Blues,” “Ice Water Blues,” and “John Henry.” Since DeFord didn’t make mistakes, it is speculated that perhaps the wax masters of the other five titles were damaged or broken en route back to New York. This time, The Harmonica Wizard was paid a flat fee of $200 for his work.
Despite the increased income, DeFord still believed “I wasn’t getting nowhere.” So when WNOX in Knoxville offered him $20 a show, he moved there for three months. Hay agreed to match the $20 per appearance fee. DeFord returned to the Grand Ole Opry in early 1929.
His teenaged neighbor Ida Lee Jones loved music and danced while DeFord practiced. The two dated and decided to get married in 1929. Son DeFord Bailey Jr. was born in 1932, followed by daughters Dezoral Lee (1934) and Christine Lamb (1936).
In October 1929, the stock market crashed. Because of the ensuing Great Depression, WSM cut salaries for its performers and staff in half. Seeking extra income, DeFord built a cedarwood building designed to look like a log cabin and opened his Grand Ole Opry DeFord Bailey Barbecue Stand next to his house on Lafayette Street in 1930. He began renting rooms to both blacks and whites, essentially operating the first integrated hotel in Nashville. His shoeshine stand, which he opened in 1933, was also fully integrated.
He and the other Opry stars soon realized that they were going to have to tour to make ends meet. DeF
ord played hundreds of shows in the 1930s, traveling with Uncle Dave Macon, Sam & Kirk McGee, Sarie and Sally, Arthur Smith, and the other early Opry stars. Traveling in the then-segregated South was difficult. Uncle Dave insisted to hotel managers that DeFord was his valet in order to get him in his room. Sometimes DeFord had to sleep in the car while the others found lodgings. Often, he ate a sandwich outside while his touring partners dined in a restaurant.
Kindest of all were The Delmore Brothers. They refused to eat in restaurants if DeFord couldn’t get a meal in the kitchen. They told him when he was being cheated financially. They let the diminutive Harmonica Wizard sleep between them in their hotel bed. They treated him like their younger brother.
“I’ve been studying people, two sets of people [blacks and whites], since I was eleven years old,” said DeFord. “I remember sitting on a fence watching the stock in the field. They don’t seem to notice no difference in the color of the other cows and horses. I wondered why it was different with people. That’s when I first started trying to figure out people.”
On the road, audiences were wild for DeFord Bailey. Because of his small stature—he stood on a crate to reach microphones—he wasn’t a threat to anyone. He was deliberately not showy or brash in performance, so as not to appear “uppity.” But he was a showman. DeFord devised a megaphone to increase his harmonica’s volume. He also had a rack to hold it as well as a number of items for creating sound effects.
Roy Acuff came to the Opry in 1938. He knew of DeFord Bailey’s drawing power and asked him to join his touring troupe.
“I was an unknown when I began touring with DeFord,” Acuff later recalled. “He could draw a crowd, not me. He helped me get started.”
When Bill Monroe came to the Grand Ole Opry in 1939, he did the same thing, taking DeFord along to ensure he’d have big audiences. “He was a good, decent man,” said Monroe. “When we toured together, people even in rural areas knew that he was black, but it didn’t matter to them.”
Behind the Grand Ole Opry Curtain Page 33