Never Look at the Empty Seats

by Charlie Daniels

  I loved Tommy like a brother and was saddened beyond words when George called to let me know he had passed away. It just didn’t seem possible. I had just attended the funeral of the younger Caldwell brother, Tim, who had been killed in a car accident just one month before. I knew that Toy and Mr. and Mrs. Caldwell had to be devastated.

  We cancelled our television schedule for a couple of days. Little Charlie was on the road with me, and the two of us, David Corlew, and Wayne Smith caught a plane to Spartanburg, South Carolina. I took solace in the only way I knew how, by writing a piece I called “To a Brother,” and using it as a dedication on our next album.

  TO A BROTHER

  I guess we who take the highway are a different breed of men

  With a special kind of feeling, for the ones that we call friend

  It’s an arm around your shoulder when the morning comes too soon

  And a late night conversation in a thousand motel rooms

  It’s a flood in California and a snowstorm in St. Paul

  And it takes a tough old soldier to keep going through it all

  But we’re so much less than human when we lose one of our own

  Now there’s one more empty saddle

  This old cowboy has gone home.

  Tommy Caldwell had been much more than a friend; he had been a supporter and a buddy. Toy and Tommy had been so close, brothers in every sense of the word. It would take super strength for Toy to go on with The Marshall Tucker Band without his brother beside him. But the Caldwell boys were made out of tough material, and Toy and the guys would keep on keeping on.

  We went back to California to resume our television taping. While I was there, I did some vocal parts on a really unique concept album called The Legend of Jesse James, featuring Johnny Cash, Levon Helm, and Emmylou Harris. It was written by a brilliant young Englishman named Paul Kennerley. It was a fine piece of work, and I was honored to be a part of it.

  By January 12, 1980, the Volunteer Jam had taken on a mystique and life of its own. The annual show that had started as a live recording session in 1974 had spawned television specials, a movie, and a couple of live albums. It had been broadcast across the United States and around the world and attracted fans from all over the nation who traveled to Nashville to be a part of it. There was one group who called themselves the Long Island Jam Delegation who drove down from New York every year to see the show. In 1980, we put twenty-five acts onstage in eight hours, which is a testament to the caliber and efficiency of the CDB road crew and office staff.

  CHAPTER 34

  BROKEN ARMS AND GRAMMYS

  On January 29, 1980, I was at home at Twin Pines Ranch with a crew of guys digging postholes for a new fence. I’ve never been good around machinery and should have stayed away from the posthole digger, which is an auger attached to the power drive on the back of a tractor. It turns around and drills holes in the ground. The first thing I knew, my right arm was wrapped up in the posthole auger and snapping bones like twigs.

  I was on my knees with my arm tangled in the auger up to my shoulder. Another turn or two probably would have pulled my whole arm off. David Corlew was sitting at the controls and quickly switched the power off. But sometimes a diesel engine will jerk another turn even after the power is killed. I remember crying, “Help me, Lord,” and He did. The engine shut down immediately.

  They unwrapped my arm from the auger and rushed me to the hospital seven miles away in Lebanon, where I got a pain shot and was transferred to an ambulance and taken to Baptist Hospital in Nashville where Dr. Don Eyler had the operating room ready and a surgical team assembled. My terrified wife had hurried to Lebanon and rode in the ambulance with me.

  Just before we went into the operating room, I told Dr. Eyler, “Just get me to where I can hold a guitar pick and a fiddle bow.” But he wasn’t making any promises.

  My arm was badly broken in three places. The bone broke completely in two and was coming through the skin in two of them. Dr. Eyler worked on me for several hours, putting pins in my bones and closing the wounds. When he finished, he looked at me and said, “You’re going to be all right.”

  Even in my highly sedated condition, the message got through. I would be able to play again when my arm healed. Thanks and glory be to our merciful God. There was no major muscle or nerve damage, just badly broken bones. In the liner notes of our next album, I gave thanks to God for saving my right arm.

  They took me to a hospital room, and I lay there with a morphine drip, my arm hanging straight up, swollen as big as a football. I was drifting in and out of sleep, and during one of my out periods, the phone in the room rang. Little Charlie, who was fourteen at the time, answered it. It was President Jimmy Carter’s office. They had called so President Carter could speak to me and see how I was doing. Little Charlie told them I was asleep and couldn’t be disturbed. I don’t know how the local TV stations found out about it, but they had a ball talking about Little Charlie refusing to let the president of the United States speak to his daddy because he was asleep. Mr. Carter was nice enough to call back again when I was awake.

  I stayed in the hospital for a few days, and then Hazel took me home to experience one of the most frustrating periods of my life. I couldn’t play my instruments, and we had to cancel the show dates we had on the books at one of the hottest periods of our career.

  I was in pain, but the medicine they gave me for it made me feel crazy, so I avoided it as much as I could. I had a hospital bed in the bedroom and one in the basement where the big-screen television was. The Winter Olympics were on that year, and it provided some much-needed distraction and enjoyment, especially when the young American hockey team beat the Russians and won the gold medal. I almost jumped out of bed, arm and all.

  The 1980 Grammy Awards were in February in Los Angeles. “The Devil Went Down to Georgia” was nominated. They wanted us to perform the song live on the show, but there was no way I could even hold a fiddle, much less play one. But I sure didn’t want to miss out on playing our nominated song before millions of people on national television.

  I didn’t relish the long plane flight to Los Angeles, but I figured I could manage it, and a plan was devised. Buddy Spicher and Vassar Clements would join the band onstage and play the fiddle parts. I would stand there with my arm in a sling and sing. Vassar Clements and Buddy Spicher were two of the finest fiddle players on the planet. “The Devil Went Down to Georgia” had probably never been performed with the precision it was played with that night.

  Shortly after the performance, Johnny Cash and June Carter presented the Grammy for Best Country Single of the Year. When they called out our name, all the hassle of coming to Los Angeles with a broken arm was worth it. What an incredible night, to win a Grammy and have the great Johnny Cash and June Carter present it.

  The Grammy was the first of many awards we would win in 1980. We won Touring Band of the Year at the Academy of Country Music Awards. We won Single of the Year and Performance Group of the Year and I won Instrumentalist of the Year at the Country Music Association Awards. We also won several others, including one from NARAS (National Academy of Recording Arts and Sciences).

  It seemed like a lot longer, but I was only out of commission for four months. I was elated to get that sling off and get back to my instruments. My arms and fingers were as stiff as a board. I practiced scales on my guitar two hours a day to loosen up. I had done nothing but sit around for four months, and I was in horrible shape. As soon as I could, I started walking. I could only make it for about one hundred yards to start with, but I kept increasing the level of exercise. Soon I was jogging a couple of miles a day.

  When you’re young, you take your health and well-being for granted, but as you put on a few years or experience a near catastrophic accident like I had, it dawns on you that health, and life for that matter, can disappear in a hurry and you should make every effort to maintain it.

  I learned a big lesson and have done some form of exercise on a regular
basis ever since.

  Another lesson I learned is that no matter what the exercise gurus and fad videos advise, pick a level of exercise you’re comfortable with, something you can do every day. If you start doing something beyond your daily capabilities, you’ll finally get worn out on it and quit. Consistency is the name of the game, and I believe that if you’re breaking a sweat, walking, running, or whatever, and doing it on a regular basis, you’ll benefit.

  God is so good. He has saved me from catastrophe so many times. I know in my heart that He has blessed me so very much to bring me back from the brink of disaster and restore me to the career that I love so much.

  CHAPTER 35

  JUST A HILL WITH SOME TALL TREES WHERE A CREEK COMES BUBBLING BY

  No story of my life could ever be complete without including Twin Pines Ranch. It has been a major part of my life for the past forty years and, God willing, will be a major part of my life until He calls me home.

  We bought the original piece of land in 1976 and eventually built our home in 1979. After living in apartments and in neighborhoods our whole married life, the secluded fifty acres looked like Bonanza to us.

  There were open lanes and wooded trails to ride our horses on, a huge pond to fish in, plenty of safe places to fire our guns, and the privacy we wanted so much.

  We were around thirty miles out of Music City, which was handy since at that time we were still making our records in Nashville studios, and the airport was even closer.

  We built a small barn, moved our horses out, and spent as much time as we could riding.

  It was becoming apparent that there was a lot of upkeep and maintenance, fencing, bush hogging, and so on. The horses had to be looked after, so we hired our next-door neighbor’s son, a young man named Robbie Stem, to look after things.

  An additional twenty acres joining our land came up for sale and we bought it, increasing our land holdings to seventy acres and expanding our pastures by several acres. The great thing was that it had a double-wide mobile home where our family could spend nights if we wanted to ride our horses for a weekend.

  I started thinking about increasing our horse herd and making a commercial venture out of it. Before Robbie left to go to another job, he introduced me to Thurman Mullins, who was a ranger at nearby Cedars of Lebanon Park. Thurman was one of the most likable people I had ever met and one of the most knowledgeable about horses.

  I approached him and asked him how he would feel about coming to work for me and starting a horse ranch, getting into buying, selling, and breeding.

  This was a big decision for Thurman, as he was working for the State of Tennessee with job security and benefits. I couldn’t offer him these things, but he loved working with horses and was pretty fed up with the bureaucratic side of his job and decided to give it a try.

  We had just finished our new house on the ranch and were living there full-time. When Thurman agreed to sign on and start the horse business, we immediately started building a new barn with twelve stalls, automatic waterers, an oversized stall for our mares to foal in, a wash pad, a shop, and a ranch office.

  Thurman gave the state his notice and came to work in September 1979 and began buying and trading horses. At first we leaned toward Tennessee Walkers, but after a short time it became apparent to us that there was a bigger demand for the quarter horses, a more down-to-earth and common breed that made a great pleasure ride or a “using horse,” a common name for a ranch horse used for anything from roping to gathering cattle, so we headed in that direction.

  Thurman decided we needed to upgrade our bloodline, so we began hauling some of our mares down to the Santa Gertrudis division of the King Ranch in Texas, which was standing some of the finest quarter horse stallions anywhere. We bred mares to the legendary Mr. San Peppy, Peppy San Badger, and Doc Holliday, among others.

  It was obvious that we would need additional help, a top hand who was good with horses and the cattle we planned on getting into. He showed up one day in the person of Leroy Crawford, a brush-popping little cowboy from Mississippi who could rope with the best of ’em and put a handle on any horse that came through our barn.

  Leroy is an excellent roper, and we purchased a small herd of Corriente steers and started learning to team rope. We had built a lighted arena along with the barn and added a return alley and a release chute, and when I’d come home off the road, the boys had a hard time getting the regular ranch work done because I kept them in the roping arena all the time.

  The late 1970s and early 1980s were the heyday of the cutting horse, as it was also the heyday of the Texas oil business, and several well-heeled oil men got into the game. As the demand grew, the price of high-blooded cutting stock went through the ceiling. Unproven colts that had never had a saddle on their backs were selling for up to thirty thousand dollars, and the big-name cutting horse trainers had their barns full of top prospects.

  The cutting horse business was red-hot and showed no sign of cooling off until the price of oil started dropping.

  People who a few short months before were paying fifty thousand to a hundred thousand dollars or more for a competitive cutting horse were stuck with a barn full of stock they no longer wanted to feed, train, and haul. The rush to sell before the bottom dropped completely out was on.

  Thurman had been in the market for a high-blooded stallion to stand at Twin Pines and had been talking to a gentleman from Texas who had exactly what we were looking for.

  The only problem was that the price was astronomically out of our budget. But the calls persisted. The price kept coming down, and when the rancher asked us to make him an offer for the Stallion and thirty-eight other well-bred mares and geldings, Thurman told him that he didn’t want to insult him by offering him what the ranch could afford to pay.

  The gentleman kept insisting that Thurman make an offer, and when he did, thinking he’d probably be laughed at, the man said, “Come and get ’em.”

  What we figured was that the rancher wanted out. He wanted the expense of feeding and maintaining a sizable bunch of horses off his hands, but knowing how people gossip, he didn’t want to sell cheap in his own backyard. But if he sold out of state to a reputable barn and the buyers kept the price a secret, it looked a lot better. All of a sudden, the horse herd at Twin Pines Ranch doubled in size and quadrupled in quality.

  Several of the mares already had their register of merit in cutting, but we were not so interested in that aspect. What we wanted was good, solid quarter horses that could be trained for team roping or broke for pleasure, gentle horses the whole family could ride.

  The boys began hauling the horses in and got busy turning them into what we needed.

  But the horse that owned every heart at Twin Pines was a 14/3-hand stud horse we called King Bear. He was born on the ranch out of one of our mares and a California stallion named Sun Fritz and was the sweetest-tempered little guy you could ever hope to put a saddle on. When he turned three, Leroy started working with him. After he had been riding him for two months or so, I was at the barn one day when he had him saddled and he told me, “Get on him, Boss.”

  I said, “Leroy, you know I don’t ride fresh horses.”

  He said, “Just get on him and ride him like you would old Freckles.” Freckles was one of our using horses I rode a lot.

  And Leroy was right. I crawled aboard, and he became one of my regular mounts.

  King Bear was the standing stallion at Twin Pines until he got too old to breed and passed the torch to his own son. We called him Little Bear.

  In January 7, 2011, Hazel and I were on vacation in Colorado when Thurman called and told me that the barn was on fire. Our barn was a thirty-year-old wooden structure and went up like kindling wood.

  It was frustrating being fifteen hundred miles away and getting periodic reports on the phone as our barn burned to the ground. And with the wind blowing, we were concerned about our house, which was just up the hill.

  The Gladeville Volunteer Fire Department
showed up immediately. But we didn’t have a hydrant anywhere close to the barn, and they had to continually haul water in from outside the ranch. The efforts of our neighbors kept the fire from spreading any farther; you can’t beat country folks. Even our county sheriff, Terry Ashe, came out and helped watch over things.

  After the fire was out, the damage was assessed. We had lost both tractors, the dually ranch pickup and stock trailer, which was hooked up and left in the barn loaded with a bull Thurman was delivering the next morning, all of our saddles and tack, and a lot of memorabilia that can never be replaced.

  But the heartbreaking thing was that nine of our finest horses perished in the fire. All the other things we lost were material things, most of which could be replaced. But knowing that nine horses and a bull died in a barn fire they had no way of escaping from was depressing.

  It really bothered me, but it bothered Thurman more than anything I had seen him face in the twenty-five years I’d known him. He kept thinking that if he had only been able to get there a few minutes earlier he could have saved some of the stock, but the truth is that once the fire started, with the wind blowing and the dryness of the wood, it was gone in a few minutes and getting there earlier would only have made the experience even more frustrating.

  In one fell swoop we had lost a blood line we had worked with for more than twenty years, with no way to replace it. Little Bear had been in the barn that night. The next morning on a phone call, I told a very depressed Thurman Mullins that we’d start over, that we’d make a new beginning.

  We went through the long process of the insurance investigation. The prognosis was that a squirrel or a raccoon had chewed into some electric wires and started the fire.

  The burned scraps were removed, and our new barn began to rise. We got two new tractors and a dually pickup and trailer, ordered saddles and tack, and slowly replaced the replaceable things.

  But the King Bear blood line was gone forever, or at least that’s what we thought.