The birds are singing extra loud this morning, trying their best to bring the Sun through the overcast clouds, but their efforts will be in vain this time. All the birds, by this time in the Spring, have found their mates, and are flying, and perching in the trees around our old farm house, in twos. I am sure that is why our Mockingbird sings so loud, he has found his mate and he is mighty happy about it. I understand that feeling very well.
I like to think about the timetables of my life. 1948-The first guitar. 1952-The first meeting of a country music star.
I was attending my first country music show, at the Shrine Mosque in Springfield, Missouri. 16 years old, and already a die hard fan. Headlining the show were two of my favorites, Carl Smith and Little Jimmy Dickens, along with Stringbean, a Square dance group and a local band. I remember the night with perfect clarity. Carl Smith had on a red sport coat, white pants, and white bucks, Little Jimmy had his custom made little Western suit and patent leather cowboy boots, and Stringbean had his famous pants that came to his knees with the shirt that went all the way up and his porkpie hat. The Square dancers had on matching outfits, and when the girls would twirl around you could see their bloomers, and, of course, that was pretty exciting for my 16 year old self. Yessir, this country music was pretty sexy stuff in the 1950's.
I eased around close to the backstage door, during the intermission between shows, waited til the guard had stepped away to talk to someone, and slipped into the hallowed area that I had never entered before...the Star dressing rooms! I had just come up the steps and was standing on the stage level in front of the dressing rooms, when the door opened, and there stood Little Jimmy Dickens. I was paralyzed, deer in the headlights time...until Little Jimmy said, "Hi, how ya' doin'?" He had the biggest J200 Gibson strapped around his shoulders, that covered up most of his body, so all you saw was his arms and shoulders and head, and his legs from about the knees down. I said the first thing that popped into my head, "Gosh, Mr. Dickens, that sure is a big guitar." He paused for a few seconds, and then said, "Here, ya' want to hold it?" And unstrapped it from around his neck and handed it to me. Dang thing weighed as much as a sack of horse feed, it seemed like, as I strapped it on and strummed a chord. I handed it back and we talked awhile, and all the awe and fear stammering just went away. I realized that my heroes were just nice, normal people, friendly and open in a way I never imagined. Twelve years later, Little Jimmy was a guest on my first "Stan Hitchcock Television Show", in Nashville, and I told him about our earlier meeting, he was wearing the same heavy guitar, and he took it off, and said, "Here, you want to hold it again?"
Looking back, it is amazing to me that I ended up with a lifetime of music and television. Ya' see, back in the Ozarks, we didn't have a television. The first tv set I ever saw, outside of a department store window on the Square in Springfield, was when I went aboard ship, USS Bryce Canyon (AD36), in 1954, after joining the Navy at 18 (another timeline in life). Just 10 years later, 1964, I had my first nationwide television series, with all my heroes as guests, and that is just awesome to me, even now. A ten year timeline that changed the course of my life, forever. In that ten years, I did four years in the Navy, then came home and help start a Boys Ranch for three years, started singing and landed a recording contract, moved to Nashville, and here I was, a Hillbilly Singer with my own Show, and I still don't know how I managed it.
Little Jimmy, Carl Smith and Stringbean all became friends, as I entered into the fraternity of artists, in 1961, as a recording act on Columbia's Epic Records. Something I never dreamed was possible, in my room in the attic of the old farm house, just South of Pleasant Hope, listening to WSM radio on my little radio that sat by my bed. Why, that was another world that I could not imagine ever being allowed into.
What a wonderful, interesting timeline, my life has followed in the pursuit of music and all that it entails. I cannot imagine a more exciting way to spend a life.
Thank you Lord, for allowing me to sing my way through some mighty tough times, and come out on the other side, with my mind and body, still pretty much intact, and my good dog, Buck The Collie, content to lay at my feet during the morning coffee time. Stan
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