My friend, Paul Watts, made a comment on one of my stories the other day that got me thinking about it. Paul wrote, "stan, just seeing those names, who is doing the music now? when you worked with those guys, in a studio,jamming or a club,,,you had to be better than you were..they made you do that..what pickers..and the love of the music, nothing like finishing a date, song or whatever..and know that it was good, you didn't think about the money or stuff, it was that it was good music."
I answered Paul, with, “Yes, Paul, you are right, and that is why they called us “Starving Musicians, but they didn’t know the treasure we were making.”
When I arrived in Nashville, in 1962, ready to do a life of music, I had the remnants of a borrowed $50, to make it from Springfield, Missouri to Nashville. I figured that would do me, until the big money started rolling in. After all, I had a major recording contract with Columbia Records, I had my first record out, I had already guested on the Grand Ole Opry…man, what else could you ask for? Uh, well Hitchcock, money might be a pleasant surprise.
After I got my bed and two drawers in a chest of drawers, and about 1 foot of space in a narrow closet at Mom Upchurch’s boarding house for pickers..paying 8 dollars a week and glad to get it, I started doing my figuring on a thing called “how am I gonna live as a Country Music Star?” Well let’s see now, Si Siman was paying me $50 per week to run his Publishing Company on Music Row, The Opry paid $7 for a guest spot, Linebaugh’s Restaurant, on Broadway across from Tootsie’s had a great bowl of Chili for a dollar, a tall glass of milk for 50 cents, all the Catsup and crackers you could eat, crumbled up and poured into the Chili, gas, in Nashville, was 50 cents a gallon, but the gas you got from Linebaugh’s was free. Shoot, that ought to do me ‘til I got into the big money. The point of this exercise in poverty was that…we all did survive.
Paul was right, and that is what helped us survive…the love of the music we were making. Our reasons for going through the entry level starvation lifestyle had to be the music. I reckon a picker is born, not made. As an old Ozark hillbilly once told me, “Hillbilly Singers is just born’d thataway…they got the love of the music in’em…they cain’t hep it…hits just the way they are.”
In the 1950’s and 60’s in Nashville, when you went to get your Electric, Water or Sewer turned on, if you told them you were a Musician…you paid twice the usual deposit. That’s how it was. The Nashville business community did not take to the ‘billies in a welcoming manner.
But, there were some notable exceptions. Clarence Reynolds, Vice President at Commerce Union Bank, actually loaned all of us money, when other banks wouldn’t even talk to us. Fuller Arnold, Vice President of Williamson County Bank in Franklin, did the same thing.
The backed us in buying Buses, homes, sound systems, instruments…and they made it possible for us to grow in the lifestyle of entertainment and music.
Gradually, Nashville realized that the term, “Athens Of The South”, didn’t draw tourists like “Music City USA”, and they opened their arms to us…”Come on in, boys and girls, we’ll take your money and let you draw the tourists!”
And, we all lived happily ever after.
Stan
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