“Yeah, sure,” I said, not thinking much of it. When Norma Jean put Wendell on the phone and I heard his voice, my knees buckled. I started stuttering and had difficulty getting my thoughts together. It sounds crazy, but it was as if I instantly fell for him, just from hearing his voice. I couldn’t wait to meet him. I wanted to see what this guy looked like, if just talking to him on the phone had that effect on me!
I returned to Oklahoma City at the end of the month on a night when Norma Jean happened to have a date with Wendell. I called her and said, “Come by the house later. I want to see you and meet your new boyfriend.” As soon as they came into the house and I saw Wendell, that was it. It was love at first sight. I’d had it. I thought, How in the world can I ever be with this guy when he’s with my best friend? Little did I know that as soon as Wendell saw me, he was thinking, How am I gonna get rid of Norma Jean so I can date Wanda?
Every time I’d come in from the road I’d call Norma Jean. I was with Daddy day and night when I was touring, so the last thing I wanted to do was sit around the house with him when I was home. I wanted to go out with my friends, but they were all getting married and having kids. Norma Jean was my reliable single friend, but it seemed like maybe I was losing her, too. It got to the point where every time I’d call she’d say, “Well, I’ve got a date with Wendell tonight, so I guess we can’t do anything.”
“I don’t want to sit here all night,” I said. “Ask Wendell if I could go along with y’all. I’ll pay my way if you go to a movie or whatever.” She asked him, and he said it sure seemed strange, but he said okay because he had his eye on me and I had mine on him. I wanted to be around him. Poor Norma. We used her, I guess. Wendell said he was the most popular guy in town. He had a blonde on one arm and a brunette on the other. We’d go out to eat or go dancing, and Wendell ended up paying for both of us. He wouldn’t let me pay for anything.
If I’m honest, I was beginning to get a little jealous that Norma Jean had found such a great guy. I had had a heartbreak along the way here and there that just made me kind of cynical about relationships. I remember one time I got in the car with Norma and Wendell. I was mad because Daddy had been talking to me about something. I got in and said, “I know the secret now. You have to just work, work, work, and make all the money you can. You can’t have any other kind of life. I’m not going to do anything but work from now on!” I just felt left out of life. I provided the entertainment and watched while other people had a great time. But I wasn’t having a great time. I was working. If I was upset or in pain, I still had to work. I had to make that job. There was no time for love and romance for Wanda, and I was afraid my best friend was about to run off with the guy of my dreams.
Around that time things were changing at the Ozark Jubilee. ABC didn’t think a country music show could hold its own if they didn’t bring in some pop performers. They brought in Don Cherry as the pop singer, as well as Pat Boone, who was Red Foley’s son-in-law. That always irked us a little bit. We country folks started the show, and it was getting more and more popular. Why did we need pop artists to come in to help us or make us more legitimate? Well, we didn’t! They were all nice people, so it wasn’t anything personal, but the spirit of the show changed over time. After a while, it began to feel like it just wasn’t really going anywhere. We stopped getting the really good country guests when the flavor of the show changed, and I was also getting tired of making that long drive between Oklahoma and Springfield. I could see the handwriting on the wall and decided to leave. I think the show was taken off the air not long after that.
During this period, our friend Porter Wagoner had established a solid career thanks to his appearances on The Ozark Jubilee. He had several big hits in the 1950s, including “A Satisfied Mind” and “What Would You Do? (If Jesus Came to Your House)” that earned him an invitation to join the cast of the Grand Ole Opry. He decided to leave the Jubilee and head to Nashville. He eventually had the opportunity to launch his own television show. Porter always had a “girl singer” on his TV program and, even though Dolly Parton was the best known, she wasn’t the first. When he was just getting his show off the ground, Porter asked Norma Jean to leave the Jubilee and join the cast of his show in Nashville. It was a great opportunity for her, but it would mean leaving Oklahoma City—and her new boyfriend, Wendell—behind.
Norma decided to take the job with Porter. Right before she left, she pulled me aside and said, “Wanda, I don’t think Wendell has a lot of friends here. It hasn’t been that long since he moved up from Texas, and he’s not really settled yet. He mostly works with older people at his job, and I just hate leaving him all alone. Would you be willing to look after him?”
Would I? That was just the chance I’d been looking for! “Okay,” I told Norma. “I’ll be sure to take care of him.” That gave me a license. Norma Jean left in March, and the way was clear for me and Wendell. I wanted to call him the minute she pulled out of town, but I managed to restrain myself for about a week. Finally, I called him up and asked him out for a date. Girls did not do that in 1961, but I just wanted to be with this guy so bad. We both liked to bowl, so I suggested we go bowling that night. He jumped at the chance. Once we got there we talked about Norma Jean. But that only lasted for about five minutes before we quickly moved on to other topics.
Being with Wendell seemed like the most natural thing in the world. I was gone a lot, but whenever I was at home we were together. When I was on the road we talked on the phone whenever possible. I had always enjoyed dating and had a thing for handsome guys, but this was something different. After Elvis and I drifted apart my girlfriends would ask, “Why didn’t you latch on to him?” I had a crush on him, but something told me that what I had with Elvis just wasn’t meant to last. I wasn’t in love, even though Elvis was great. Or maybe I just wasn’t that serious about wanting to get married at the time. With Wendell it was completely different. There was just a connection between us, as if we were designed to be together.
Wendell told me later that he fell in love with me the first time he heard the song “Right or Wrong,” even though he didn’t know me then. It’s funny, because I realized later that I had written that song about Wendell, even though I hadn’t met him yet. It was about the kind of relationship I was looking for, and the one I found with him.
About a month after we started dating, Wendell came to see me play at the Trianon Ballroom in Oklahoma City. I was wearing a beautiful dress that night that Mother had made for me. In fact, it’s the same dress I’m wearing on the cover of the second CD box set that Bear Family Records released of my recordings. After my set we were out on the dance floor together when Wendell told me he loved me. Up to that point I would usually say “love ya” when I’d tell him goodbye or write it in notes and things. But when he said “I love you” it was different. The sincerity of his words almost caught me off guard. I probably didn’t give the right response. Instead of saying, “Oh, Wendell, I love you, too,” I wound up saying, “Are you sure?” I don’t know what prompted me to say that. I knew he was sure. I was sure, too. I knew it was real, and I knew I loved him, too.
My relationship with Wendell felt like just the right fit. Somehow, we both knew we’d spend the rest of our lives together. About four months after we started dating, I was playing a show in Minneapolis. I was in my motel room talking on the phone with Wendell when he said, “Your mother was wondering if you wanted to register for some nice dishes for our home.”
“Well, wait a minute,” I said. “Y’all are moving pretty fast, don’t you think? You haven’t even asked me to marry you yet!” Wendell kind of laughed to himself.
“I haven’t? Well, Wanda, I was wondering if you’d make me the happiest man in the world by becoming my wife. Will you marry me?”
He asked me right then and there on the phone! Of course, I said yes. We both just knew. In fact, we knew it so deeply that Wendell truly hadn’t realized that he’d not actually asked me yet!
Even thoug
h I was engaged, I wasn’t the stereotypical twenty-three-year-old bride-to-be you would find in 1961. I never did want a big wedding. That didn’t even enter my mind. I was a bridesmaid for cousins and friends with all the to-do, and I would think, Why would anyone spend all that money? Just go marry the boy and live happily ever after! It finally dawned on me that I didn’t have to have my special day, because I already had it all the time. I always had the spotlight, so I didn’t need a fairy-tale wedding. That part of me was already fulfilled. I’m sure that made Daddy and Wendell happy when it came to the planning.
I was out on the road most of the time, so Mother and Wendell took care of arranging everything. I had all these dates booked, so we had to find a small window of time when we could get married. I only had two requests. I said, “I will be married in a Baptist church, and Mother and Daddy will be there.” They found a little time in my schedule for us to get married in early November, and it was Mother who helped Wendell pick our first apartment and furnish it in preparation for our new life together.
Mother, Daddy, Wendell, and I drove two hours down to Gainesville, just across the Texas border, where we were married in the fall of 1961. We had been dating for eight months. We went to Texas because you didn’t have to wait a week to get married after getting a blood test. I was hardly ever in one place for a week, so that wasn’t going to work! We went to the Justice of the Peace to get our license, then headed to a Baptist church. The preacher took us in his office and had a little talk about marriage and whether or not we were ready to commit. We were ready! We drove back to Oklahoma City that night and stopped along the way to have a spaghetti dinner to celebrate. The next day I hit the road for a tour with Johnny Cash, and Wendell took two weeks off from his job with Admiral Oil to come along. Not exactly a romantic honeymoon on a beach, but we were just thrilled to finally be married.
I was still living with Mother and Daddy when Wendell and I met, and he was still living with his parents, too. Neither of us had ever lived on our own or even had a roommate! We were both ready to get out of our parents’ houses, but it hadn’t been feasible for me before that point. Daddy took care of all my business and Mother took care of the clothes, so they wanted me there with them. Once Wendell and I moved into our first apartment, however, it seemed like we’d always been married. I felt like I was home with him.
Because we were equally inexperienced with living on our own, we did have to overcome a few little snags that most new couples have to deal with. Wendell had to shame me into hanging my clothes up, which was something Mother battled with me about forever. I had to get onto him about hanging the bathroom towels up. He’d throw them somewhere while they were damp and they wouldn’t dry out. We fought over where to squeeze the toothpaste tube for years. I don’t know why it didn’t occur to us to just buy separate tubes!
When Wendell and I got married, I don’t think I’d ever washed a load of laundry in my life. I didn’t know how to do that kind of stuff! After a couple of weeks, Wendell said, “Hon, what are you going to do about the laundry? I’m running low on socks.”
“Well, I don’t really know how,” I said.
“Call Tom and he’ll help you,” he said.
So I called Daddy and asked if he’d ever done laundry before. He said, “Sure, I can show you.” He came over and we hauled this big old bag of wash to the laundromat together. Daddy opened up the bundle and pulled out a piece. He said, “Okay, this one goes here,” and started a stack. “This one goes over here,” he said as he started another pile. He went on and on like that and was just sorting everything into three stacks.
Finally, I said, “What are these stacks for, and how do you know what goes where?”
“Well, I don’t know, but your mother always makes two or three stacks, so I think that’s what you’re supposed to do,” he said.
Needless to say, our stacks had no rhyme or reason to how they were sorted. Wendell’s black socks all wound up with fuzzy white towel lint on them, and he was probably one of the first men to ever wear pink underwear after I turned all the whites different colors!
I definitely couldn’t cook! I had a little time off from the road soon after we were married, and decided I would make Wendell a nice meal. I didn’t even know where to start, so I called my friend Beverly, who was already married and had started a family. She said, “I’ll tell you what. I’ll come over and help you.” When she got there I watched her cook a great dinner with fried chicken, gravy, and all these wonderful sides. She got out of there by 5:15, so when Wendell arrived home from work at 5:30, I had the feast spread out on the table. He had no idea Beverly had been there. After we ate, he just bragged and bragged on the meal, going on about how great it was and what a wonderful job I’d done. I didn’t have the heart to tell him that it was all Beverly’s doing. You’d think it would have occurred to me that it was going to be hard to keep up the ruse very long, but I didn’t think that far in advance. I’m sure Wendell wondered why the quality of my cooking dramatically declined by the next meal.
I didn’t even know how to mix a martini. I’d heard about having a drink before dinner. Mother didn’t approve of drinking, so that never happened at our house. But it sounded very grown up to me, so we got some bottles and made sure that we had a cocktail and a cigarette before dinner. There I was, Mrs. Wendell Goodman, embarking on a new life that felt unbelievably natural, even though it was entirely different from anything I’d known before.
Chapter 17
Mr. and Mrs. Wendell and Wanda Goodman: our wedding photo.
A WOMAN LIVES FOR LOVE
When Wendell and I met he was an IBM Supervisor for a chain of grocery stores called Humpty Dumpty. He took care of the programming and installation of their computer systems, and ran various facets of bookkeeping and accounting back in the days when a computer took up an entire room. He worked for Humpty Dumpty for seven or eight years before leaving to take a job with Admiral Oil Company, which was preparing for a major installation of new IBM equipment. He was overseeing the programming and set-up for that system when we first married, while I was out on the road playing shows all over the country. Wendell’s job was reliable and paid well, but he was definitely firmly planted in the traditional nine-to-five career path, while my life was anything but conventional.
Daddy continued to go out on the road with me as my manager and driver after I married. I appreciated his company, but it was hard being away from Wendell so often. Of course, we talked on the phone pretty much every day, but we got married to be together, not in separate cities talking long distance.
It wasn’t working to have me traveling and Wendell staying at home. One night I said, “Wendell, you know I love my career. I love getting on that stage and singing for people, and there’s almost nothing in the world that could make me give that up. But there is one thing I love more, and that’s you. We’re pulling in opposite directions, and something’s gotta change. You have a good career, and I’m willing to give it up so I can stay home, we can be with each other all the time, and I can just focus on being your wife.” He was quiet for several seconds.
“I don’t know what the answer is,” he sighed, “but I don’t want to ask you to sacrifice something that means so much to you. Let’s think about it for a little while before we make any quick decisions.”
In early 1962 I was booked for another extended run out in Las Vegas. Wendell and I were talking one night when he said, “I miss you, Wanda. I’m just going to fly out there this weekend so I can see your face.” That was great news. He came out, and having him in my world for a couple of days reminded me how much I missed him when we were apart. He was just about to fly back to Oklahoma City when I offered, once again, to give up my career for him. He shook his head. “You know what?” Wendell replied, “Your job seems a lot more exciting than babysitting a bunch of computers all day. I love being around your world and I think I like the show business life. Plus, your parties are a lot more interesting than mine. Why don’t
we try your life, with me helping you out, and see what happens? As long as I can be helpful, I’ll be there. I’m not going to just tag along, but if I can make a real contribution and we can be partners, I think we can make it work.”
Wendell called Admiral Oil and submitted his two weeks’ notice. They said, “We wondered how long it would be before you gave up this job to be with Wanda. We even had bets going about it!” That made me feel good because it meant that others could see the devotion that Wendell and I had to each other. Wendell worked alongside Daddy for a little while learning the ropes of the business and life on the road, and he eventually took over all the business side of my career. He never did just tag along. Though I was the one with the spotlight, Wendell was as important to the operation as I was. And we did it that way for five-and-a-half decades.
At first, Wendell primarily handled the driving. Over time, he started taking over more and more of the responsibilities of a road manager. There were several places where I could count on drawing good crowds, so there were a handful of venues that I returned to regularly. Wendell picked up on Daddy’s practice of going out in the audience each night to make sure that the sound mix was right and that I could he heard. As we passed through the same cities multiple times, Wendell began to get acquainted with the various club owners and promoters.
Jim Halsey was still my booking agent at the time. I was the second client he signed after Hank Thompson, but by the 1960s Halsey was one of the most powerful agents in country music. He was an innovator and a visionary who knew how to get exposure for rising stars. But he had a lot of things going by then, and I was beginning to feel like the forgotten stepchild of his organization. He wasn’t pushing me and Hank into new territory, like he was with some of the other acts he handled. He was just booking the reliable dates, so it felt like we were on autopilot. After Wendell took over he said, “You know, Halsey is just booking you in the same places all the time. He doesn’t know these people. I’m the one out there meeting them and talking with them. I can start doing it myself and we’ll save the commission we’re paying him.” I don’t remember exactly, but it was about 10% or 15% that came off the top from our bookings that we would be able to keep. I thought it was a great idea, and I knew Wendell had the right kind of business sense for handling bookings. Jim Halsey served his clients well, and I’m proud that he learned his skills through working with me and Hank. Times change, however, and different business relationships have their seasons. We knew it was time to move on, so Hank Thompson and I both pulled out around the same time and struck out on our own. With Wendell by my side, I knew it would work out just fine.
Every Night Is Saturday Night Page 17