by Bruce Feiler
Perhaps the most distinguishing feature of the country music community is its unabashed feeling of clubbiness. With the music and its stars long subject to derision, some country fans keep their passion hidden away. I was amazed when I first announced my intention to move to Nashville by the number of people in places like Washington, D.C., or Manhattan who pulled me away from the earshot of others and confessed their secret obsession with Trisha Yearwood, Alan Jackson, or George Strait. “What did it for you?” one publishing sales rep asked me. “For me it was Garth Brooks’s ‘Friends in Low Places.’” “It’s like therapy,” one U.S. Senate staffer said. “I know my problems aren’t as bad when I listen to Patty Loveless.” Others, meanwhile, have responded to the sense of shame by flinging open the attic doors with glee. It’s these fans who force colleagues to listen to country radio at work or pull out a Tanya Tucker album when friends come to visit. (Gotcha!) It’s these fans especially who make up the backbone of the Elks lodge of country music. For twenty years, the den mother of that lodge has been Hazel Smith.
Hazel Smith need make no pretension to being country. The future doyenne of country music gossip—the Liz Smith or Army Archerd of Music Row—was born in a house with no electricity off a dirt road in Caswell County, North Carolina, not far from the Virginia border. Her father was a tobacco farmer and deputy sheriff.
“Did you go to any college?” I asked as we waited for her syndicated radio broadcast to begin. I had come to see what she had to say about Wynonna and the most hotly anticipated event of the year.
“You must be kidding!” she squealed. “The way I talk. You know I ain’t been to no college. I finished high school, that’s all. I got married when I was nineteen, and everybody thought I was an old maid because they were all married and making babies. That marriage lasted fifteen and a half miserable years.”
Her husband worked at the Lorillard Tobacco Company making Kent cigarettes while Hazel raised tobacco on the side. “At the time I was a pretty good-lookin’ woman,” she said, “and let me tell you, my friend, I got top dollar for my crop.” On the weekends, her husband, a fiddler, played square dances and weddings, and Hazel wrote songs. “I was always attracted to the music,” Hazel said, “but I hated being married. I never liked somebody who was not as smart as I was trying to tell me what to do. And I don’t mean to say that to sound like a female chauvinist piglet. I simply say it because it was the truth. Fifteen and a half years is a long time to live with someone who’s telling you you’re never going to amount to nothin’.”
Finally, in a scenario repeated countless times across the South and immortalized by Loretta Lynn (a coal miner’s daughter), Dolly Parton (also a tobacco farmer’s daughter), and Naomi Judd (a gas station attendant’s daughter), Hazel Smith left her husband, took her children, and followed the music in an almost blindly self-destructive way until it led to the threshold of the Grand Ole Opry. “It was 1969,” she said. “I was staying in a motel down by the Ryman. I had no idea where to go or what to do. I just fell down beside the bed and started praying, and when I come to my senses the bedspread was wet I had cried so hard.” Noticing a phone book beside her on the table, she opened it up. Her eyes fell on the Reverend John Christian, Goodlettsville, Tennessee. “I called him and said, ‘I’ve got two children, three hundred dollars, and I’ve just got me a job at an employment agency.’ And he said, ‘I know where there’s a place that I can get for you for seventy-five dollars a month. It’s in the middle of a cow pasture.’ I said, ‘I don’t care, I’m a country girl.’ I was just so happy to be there. It was freedom. It was free-dom!”
In time Hazel got a songwriting contract at a local music publisher that paid $100 a week as an advance on future royalties. There she met Tompall Glaser and Kinky Friedman (leader of the Texas Jewboys), two of Nashville’s more colorful characters. They hired her to do publicity. “We went to New York once and I wore this cowboy hat that said ’Kinky’ on the front and didn’t know why this girl said, ‘Do you want to go out with me?’ That’s how dumb I was.” It was the early 1970s. Country music was about to be turned upside down by Glaser, Friedman, and their pals Willie Nelson and Waylon Jennings, all of whom worked out of a small, windowless stucco building on 916 19th Avenue South known as Hillbilly Central. It was Hazel who first called the members of the movement the Outlaws.
“It was the most exciting time,” Hazel said. “I would be walking around there barefooted and Chet Atkins would walk in or Shel Silverstein. The president of RCA came in often because they were making him big-time money. If Elvis had walked in, I woulda said, ‘Hi, Elvis, I’m Hazel. What could I do for you?’” For a country girl, the scene was eye-popping. “It was twenty-four hours a day people there,” she recalled. “I’d come in and someone would be asleep on my desk with a bottle of wine in their hand. Once Bobby Bare left the bathroom door open while he urinated and I almost fainted.” Also, since most of the men were high on drugs, it was often tense. “I remember this old Cadillac Waylon had that was the color of the sun setting down on Anna Maria Island. It looked like some great big fat woman’s dress. One day Tompall came in and said, ‘Waylon, who’s your best friend?’ ‘You are, Tompall.’ ‘Waylon, when everybody else turns your back on you, who do you call on?’ ‘You, Tompall.’ ‘Waylon, who just give you a brand-new guitar?’ ‘You, Tompall.’ ‘Waylon, guess who just ruined your new Cadillac?’ ‘You son of a bitch.’”
“So with all those wild men hanging around,” I asked her, “did you ever date any of them?”
“I did not,” she said matter-of-factly. “I had somebody I cared about. And they all knew that, and they respected that. At one time Dave Hickey, who was a marvelous, marvelous writer, said, ‘Hazel can’t love nobody but a legend.’ That was all that was ever said.”
“So who was that legend?” I said, sitting up in my chair.
Hazel thought for a moment, then grinned. “Baby, you haven’t learned that by now? Stick around here long enough, you will.”
After about fifteen minutes, the telephone rang again and Hazel hurried into her paneled office. “Hey, baby,” she answered. “What’s up?” The sun was just beginning to reach her backyard. A lone locust tree lorded over a rusty swing set, and a few red squirrels pranced around the grass.
“Tell me what the plan is,” she said. “How much time do we have this morning?”
For the past eighteen years, Hazel has lived in a modest redbrick house in the barren bedroom community of Madison, a dozen miles north of Nashville. From her office window she could clearly see the woods, where deer strolled in the afternoon. Across the yard her neighbors’ homes were decorated with iron animals and JESUS CARES placards. “People call Madison the butthole of Nashville,” Hazel said, “but I like it.” A few miles farther north was Goodlettsville, the town where Bill Monroe had a farm and where Garth had purchased a 400-acre piece of land, fittingly, from the previous mayor of Nashville. Farther to the north was Hendersonville, home of Johnny Cash, George Jones, and Trisha Yearwood. “In the old days, all the country stars had to live out here because the folks in Belle Meade wouldn’t let ’em live around the country club,” she explained, referring to what she called the “snootiest” neighborhood in town. “Loretta Lynn used to live in Madison. And Kitty Wells. Patsy Cline got in a bad wreck over yonder between here and Kroger. Every time I go through there, I think of her. Nowadays the country people got more money, and those rich folks got no choice but to respect them. They even let them play golf.”
That story of country music’s rise to prominence parallels the story of Hazel Smith’s life and, in part, is responsible for how she grew from part-time tobacco hocker to national radio personality. After Hazel had spent several years answering the telephones and dodging drug busts at 916 19th Avenue South, the editor of Country Music magazine, the most influential of the several fan magazines devoted exclusively to covering Nashville, asked her if she would write a column. Called “Hillbilly Central,” it contained homespun reports
on the various parties, seen-about-towns, and heard-on-the-streets of Music Row. Hazel has continued writing the column through various jobs over the years, including her latest, as a compiler of K-tel greatest hits packages sold in supermarkets and on late-night television. “The qualifications were the best schmoozer in Nashville that goes to all the parties and knows everybody. My friend Bill Isaacs told them that was me.”
More than just a presence at every Music Row shindig—often as many as two or three a night—Hazel soon developed a reputation as the conscience of Nashville, the person who loved the music above all else. “I know a lot of people think that country music is all about Mama, dead babies, apple pie, funerals, the flag, God, the Bible, and so forth, but it’s more than that,” Hazel told me. “It’s the truth. Country music tells the story of the truth. Listen at Tom T. Hall. Listen at Hank Williams. ‘Your cheating heart / will make you weep. I cry and cry / And try to sleep.’ I remember the first time I saw Elvis. I was sitting on the fourth row. When Elvis walked out, I could have touched him had I wanted to. He was bigger than life, and when I came to my good senses I was standing there with my hands up, like I was at an altar. I totally lost it for a little while. That’s the kind of effect he had on you. It was a worshipful situation. But you’ve got to know why. I love the music.”
In that role she voluntarily takes on any outsiders whom she considers to be detrimental to the industry. At one time that included me. I had noticed Hazel during one of my early visits to Nashville. I attended the CMA’s annual awards in October and received a pass to sit backstage where various reporters, managers, and publicists gathered to watch the show. Hazel was clearly the center of attention in that room. Like a quiet power broker, she cheered her favorite artists, cried at the speeches, and scowled at any subpar performance. Those around her mimicked her every emotion. With her Mrs. Claus appearance and “Beverly Hillbillies” accent, I thought her a cartoon, an example of the lack of sophistication I had already witnessed in the music industry press. Finally, after several such encounters, I decided to introduce myself. I approached her over a platter of cubed cheese one night at the Opryland Hotel and told her of my plan to write about the music community in Nashville. Without batting an eye, she asked me a question: “Are you a lifelong country music fan?” Somewhat taken aback, I said, “No, I’m a recent convert.” “Well, then,” she said, “you’re no good. With you it’s all head and no heart.”
Stung, I slithered away.
At times Hazel carried this role as protector of Nashville into public battle. Several weeks after I had my encounter with Hazel, Dick Clark, the renowned host of “American Bandstand” and a four-decade force in the music industry, called a press conference in town to announce that he would be the new executive producer of the nightly talk show on TNN and that Tom Wopat, late of “The Dukes of Hazzard,” would be the host. Hazel was not pleased. At the press conference, held in the Country Music Hall of Fame, Hazel deposited herself in the front row. After Dick Clark and the various dignitaries made their pronouncements, they asked if anyone had any questions. Hazel immediately raised her hand. As she did, the head of the Country Music Association, whom Hazel describes as “the very staid Mr. Ed Benson,” muttered, “Uh-oh.”
“I don’t have a question,” Hazel said. “I have a request.”
“Yes, what is it?” Dick Clark said.
“I just want to ask you not to look down your long nose at us and make us look stupid, like we’ve got hay in our hair, because we ain’t.”
Dick Clark was aghast. “I would never do anything like that,” he said.
“Dick,” she came back, “you know and I know and everybody in this room knows that all Hollywood has ever done is thought we was plum stupid. You make movies like that. You make TV shows like that. You look down on us. You giggle about us—way we talk, way we go to church, way we walk, everything about us. And I’m just asking you not to do that.” Then she crossed her arms with an audible harumph.
As soon as the meeting was over, he approached Hazel in the crowd. “Why did you say that hay thing?” he asked her.
“Dick, if you don’t ask, you don’t know,” she said.
“Well, what made you say it?”
“Past experience.”
“For example.”
“Let’s start with Elvis and Steve Allen,” she said, taking what was for her a familiar posture, linking Elvis with Nashville, where he recorded. “Steve Allen had Elvis sing to a dog as he sung ‘Hound Dog.’ I wept. What a sorry thing he did to make Elvis Presley sing to a damn dog. The only good dog is a hot dog or a dead dog anyway.”
Dick Clark took a step back. “I see what you’re talking about, Hazel. Now, don’t you worry. We won’t do anything like that.”
“Dick,” she said, “the worst thing I’ve ever seen on television in my life was the great Garth Brooks singing ‘Friends in Low Places’ a couple of years ago on the Academy of Country Music Awards, which you produce. And you had those ‘Solid Gold’ dancers parading around behind him in bodysuits that looked like they were perfectly nude. I’ve never been so embarrassed in my life. I almost wept then.”
Dick Clark had no response to that. Four months later, when support on Music Row failed to materialize for the new host, Tom Wopat was fired.
“Goooood mahnin’, country music fans! This is Hazel, down here in Music Town.” In a few minutes, Hazel was introduced by the host in Indianapolis, Jim.
“The first item I have this morning is called ‘Leap of Faith.’ It’s about Faith and Tim going hand in hand to an ob-gyn out there on Murphy Avenue here in Music Town, and then going back several weeks later for an ultrasound. It’s a leap of faith, and ‘Faithless’ has done it again.
“And guess what happened Saturday? Dolly Parton sang ‘I Will Always Love You’ at her nephew’s wedding. Isn’t that sweet. That Dolly is a doll. She ain’t gonna cure cancer, but she’s as nice as they come.
“And guess who was out shopping at Sam’s Club, you know the place where you can get things cheaper? The biggest money-making country star of all time, Garth Brooks, along with his wife Sandy and their daughter August.” She cackled. “Garth and Sandy are expecting their third child. ‘Every time I get my weight down,’ Sandy told me, ‘I end up pregnant again. He just won’t leave me alone.’ I send my best to country music’s crown prince and princess.”
Hazel listed a few more tidbits, but she was clearly building to her one big coup. Wynonna Judd had been, for a decade now, one of Nashville’s biggest stars. Though her music helped, it was clearly augmented by her unusual life. “I was totally surprised that a mother and daughter could travel in a bus and not kill each other,” Hazel told me. “Remember, Wynonna was a sloppy teenager who ate candy and threw the paper on the floor, while Naomi was a perfect mother. Naomi was driven. She’d be over there at Maude’s Restaurant all the time driving that red car. I had no idea she had a grown child.” Later, when Naomi bought Maude’s and turned it into Trilogy, Hazel had a story. “Naomi Judd has opened a new eatery called Trilogy near Music Row. Lord, I wish I was Wynonna. Now she’s got a place to eat and doesn’t have to pay.”
This morning the news was bigger.
“Now, before I go any further, I got a scoop for all you Wynonna fans out there. By this time Monday, Wynonna Judd will be Mrs. Arch Kelley III. ‘No,’ you say. How do I know this? On Monday I was walking at Rivergate Mall and I ran into the guitar player for the Nashville Bluegrass Band. He said Ashley Judd had called him over the weekend and said Wynonna’s getting married on Sunday and wants us to play at the reception. Ashley said she and Wynonna had gotten custom-made dresses, but that Naomi had gotten her dress over at McClures. Off the rack, ladies! Don’t you know that Naomi could have just killed her for saying that. Anyway, don’t you worry, I’ll be back next week with all the details.”
Hazel slunk back in total satisfaction, almost as if she had just had sex.
“Well, that’s all I’ve got for today. I have
my poem ready, though. With all this wedding excitement down here, I thought it was my Christian duty to help you women out there in Radioland save your marriages, so here we go. Listen closely for the name of my sponsor, the Little Bit of Texas dance club: ‘Girl, here is the way to keep your man going right / Keep him well fed by day, and well loved by night / After early romance show him a Little Bit of Texas floor / Make that man dance and dance, till he wants nothing more.’
“Good weekend, America. Love ya, Jim. Bye-bye!”
At the sight of the first helicopter in the sky above Trilogy, the group of paparazzi huddled on the curb seemed, for a second, to be truly impressed. At the sight of the second, they chuckled. And by the time the fifteenth police car with flashing blue lights passed the pink stucco building, the photographers had managed to remuster their disdain.
“Who the hell cares about Wynonna anyway?” said Fred from the evening Banner. He had long hair, a backward baseball cap, and a distinctly unnuptial attitude. “People in this town make such a big deal out of country music. I remember when rock ‘n’ roll ruled, even here. I used to manage the Exit-In back in the seventies when Robert Altman was in town shooting Nashville. The Police came in, before they were big, Emmylou Harris, even Dylan. One night Jimmy Buffett sat at my bar and threw up on someone next to him. That’s what it used to be about. Now we’ve got helicopters, consultants, and publicists.” Just then a white limousine drove by. “It’s them, it’s them!” someone shouted, and Fred went sprinting for the corner. When the limousine didn’t stop, he returned to the curb.
“Why am I even bothering?” he said. “Somebody inside will get a picture,” he said. “A butler. A maid. A driver. And they’ll sell it to the tabloids for a fortune.”
