View From The Front Porch-Stan Hitchcock-October 14, 2012

This is where I checked in to stay for a week in early 1962, while I was still living in the Ozarks, and in Nashville to do my very first recording session for Don Law who had signed me to a Columbia Record contract, to be released on their newly formed Epic Records label. I had a ground floor room, facing the parking lot. I sat in my room with the door open and welcomed a constant stream of songwriters, carrying their guitars or 7 l/2 inch tapes of songs to pitch to me for my session. I had a Wollensak Tape Recorder, provided by Si Siman, who had brought me to Nashville to record, and I could listen to the scratch songwriter tapes, or the songwriter could sit on the bed and sing the songs they had written, accompanying themselves on guitar. Bob Tubert, who had worked for Si, had put the word out that I was getting ready to record and it must have been a slow week for about all of the serious songwriters had showed up. Roger Miller was there along with Bill Anderson, Red Lane, Hank Cochran, Harlan Howard, Sonny James and my old friend from the Ozarks, Jimmy Gateley and a host of others that I cannot remember the names now…but, at that time I didn’t know any of them except Bill Anderson and Sonny James, who I had met through Jimmy Gateley…but, I, in my 25 year old country wisdom, was starting to figure this here entertainment business out….what you did was, you sat in a cheap motel room with the door open and strangers and near strangers would come in and play you their songs that they had written….you picked your favorites off this smorgasbord of country music…you went into this nice studio and these friendly musicians would come in and play behind you as you sang these songs you had learned….the record company would make little black 45 rpm records out of it…send it to radio stations all across the country and maybe the world….they would play it….and soon the money would start rolling in and you could afford to buy a new pair of jeans and get your old boots half soled….yessir, I was getting the drift of it now. Stanley, you dumb hillbilly, you didn’t even have sense enough to have coherent dreams about the music business, let alone have anything figured out…as you stuck your toe in the music water to see how it felt….kinda liked it so you stuck it in a little more…liked it even more….so, you jump in head over heels and spend the next 50 years swimming against the current, keeping your head above water, staying out of the whirlpools that threaten to suck you under…holding your breath when your head goes under sometimes….but surviving.

Six months later, in the winter of ’62, and believe me it was the coldest winter the Mid South suffered through in many a year, I moved to Nashville to stay. Music Row was like a carnival sideshow to me then, and I was drawn to it like a magnet. I lived on those few streets and fewer blocks that comprised the Row, there seven days a week, even Sundays when I might be the only hillbilly in sight, but I didn’t care I wanted to be there. And I was there, except for the times I had to go on the road to do a show. I guess what hooked me on the Row was the recording sessions. It’s hard to explain what it felt like to go into Bradley’s Quonset Hut Studio, when you are the featured artist of the days session, surrounded by the most incredible grouping of musicians, back up singers, recording engineers and producers the world shall ever know. I’m leaning on the stool, next to the big microphone in the vocalist spot, looking out across this historic room….there is Ray Edenton, tuning up his old flat top with the high third string tuned an octave higher than standard to make it cut high and ringing on the rhythm, Pete Wade, Wayne Moss or Jimmy Capps, running their fingers down the neck of their electric guitars and fiddling with their control settings on their amps and talking to one of the studio engineers who is setting all the mikes, Buddy Harmon or Willie Ackerman striking the rim of their snare and tuning it to get just the right sound, Bob Moore, Lightning Chance or Henry Strezlecki setting up their big stand up bass to get comfortable in their little area close to the drums, Pig Robbins tinkling on the high notes of the piano, flexing his fingers as his sightless eyes seem to not miss a thing that is happening in this special room full of his friends, Harold Bradley or Tommy Allsup with their tic tac Delelectro bass guitars, quiet, calm but ready for whatever is needed to make this record, Charley McCoy, arranging his harps just the way he wants them and adjusting the mike a little lower down, Buddy Spicher and Johnny Gimble have already tuned their fiddles or violins (whatever the session calls for) and both of them have such warm personalities that it lights up the space that they are inhabiting, the background voices, a combination of Jordanaires and Anita Kerr Singers, or one or the other depending on the producers taste in voices, are quietly talking in their spot to the side and close to me, the singer, so we can work in unison and they can see my mouth to catch my phrasing, for they have worked together for so long that they can look at each other, when the recording light is on and telegraph a signal instantly that might fit the song. Meanwhile, Mort Thomasson or Selby Coffeen, the magic makers on the big board in the control room come out and adjust my mike and Mort always handed me a stick of gum for me to chew to keep me from popping the mike when I sang…although In a little while I figured out the routine and started bringing my own gum…I’m just an independent cuss, I reckon…and with this kind of massive creative talent tuned up and ready to go finally….and they have listened to the acetate on the little phonograph machine in the back of the studio…taking pencil and paper and writing their secret number system for chords that only Nashville ever had…don’t stick sheet music in front of these folks…they got their own system, thank you…so now, the focus is on you….all eyes are watching, getting into the mood that you are sending out…wanting to match the music to the mood of the song…Buddy counts the song off over on the drums…the guitar and steel twin the intro…and son you are flying…you are so full of music that you feel like you could burst…so you do burst…out in song. So now that song that the songwriter sat on the Motel bed and hefted his guitar up and delivered in such honesty and raw emotion…and your heart swelled and you said to yourself….yes, this is mine, I will sing this…I can feel it….but, nothing prepared you for the feeling that hits you in that studio when the music swells and reverberates, the background voices pick up the thread, Pig hits just an incredible piano lick, the steel cries out so hauntingly that your voice catches a little in the back of your throat…but, it comes out as true emotion because that is what it is…no fake…no put on….everyone in the room feels it and reacts on it…and the last note rings out and slowly fades,,..and your eyes are damp from the reality of it all….and a performace becomes a piece of merchandise, that lives somewhere in somebody’s record rack, or in a newly transferred digital file….and some one, some where remembers that song and that performance that you were a part of, and to someone it matters. Music is central to all our lives, whether you be giver or seeker, performer or audience, to all of us, at some time, music has touched us where nothing else can reach. And that, my friends, is a good thing. God bless us all with a song of joy, a heart of love and a life to make a difference in your piece of earth.    -Stan