Will You Miss Me When I'm Gone?

by Mark Zwonitzer

  The Carters arrived at Nashville’s Ryman Auditorium, home of the Grand Ole Opry, on a Saturday night in early 1950. The Ryman was not a comfortable place. Onstage, musicians in heavy spangled costumes endured sweltering heat caused by bright lights and a near total lack of ventilation. Audiences sat on hard oak pews; the color scheme of pale mint green, with gold, green, and brown accents, was not easy on the eyes. But the Ryman’s churchlike architecture gave it an atmosphere of powerful solemnity and a sense of history in the making. “It was where everyone wanted to be,” says June. “And we were like everyone.”

  The provenance of the hall itself was local legend: In 1885 Thomas Ryman was one of Nashville’s wealthiest citizens. He’d made his fortune operating a fleet of riverboats that served as floating palaces of pleasure and sin. Each of his thirty-five paddle wheelers had saloons, gambling parlors, bad, bad women, and bulging cash registers. But that year a famed evangelist, Rev. Samuel Porter Jones, blew into town railing against the salacious riverboat trade and the men who profited from it. The preacher’s sermonizing had an immediate and deleterious effect on Ryman’s bottom line, so the tycoon went to one of Jones’s revivals, hoping to catch the preacher afterward and reason with him. To do this, Ryman was compelled to sit through Jones’s sermon. Though many of Jones’s doctrines seem absurd today (including his conviction that “there is nothing more corrupting this side of hell than baseball”), he was a riveting speaker. His simple slogan—“Quit Your Meanness!”—converted thousands, including, improbably, Thomas Ryman. So thankful was Ryman for his salvation that he eventually built an auditorium to give the Reverend Jones and other traveling men of God a suitable place to preach whenever they alighted in Nashville. The Ryman Auditorium was built for function, not elegance, with a brick exterior, an ample stage, long rows of pews, and arched windows all around to provide light while suggesting some sense of godliness. The Grand Ole Opry moved into the building in 1943, making the Ryman “the Mother Church of Country Music.”

  The thousands of country-music lovers who flocked there each week were something like pilgrims. Some would take the trouble to write ahead for reserved tickets, which cost sixty cents (federal tax included), but most did not. They drove an average of five hundred miles (the demographics had been well studied) from all over the South and Midwest. The crowd would begin to line up outside a little after noon, and by 7:30, when the show began, it was not unusual for five thousand people to be waiting in a line stretching past the Hazelwood Auto lot and around the block. Others would arrive over the course of the evening, because the Opry played on until midnight, with each half hour bought by a different sponsor. Only 2,400 unreserved seats were available, but many more half-price tickets would be sold each night, because not everyone stayed for the entire evening. The pews were punishing to the human fanny; there was no air-conditioning, except what could be created waving a cardboard fan or a program; and the worst seats, beneath the balcony—the “Confederate Gallery,” which was added in 1897 to accommodate a gathering of Civil War veterans—could be especially trying. “If somebody spilled a Coke, it would leak on your head,” Loretta Lynn once said. “At least, I hope it was Coke.”

  It was pretty much the same atmosphere in which the Carters had played their entire lives, only on a larger scale. Details of their first show were unrecorded, but according to June, they were so well received, “the roof came offa that building.” The Carters had absolutely everything an Opry act of the period needed. They were venerable, wholesome, and traditional and, at the same time, young, beautiful, and contemporary. And they had remarkable energy. According to June, WSM hired them at $825 a week to play no fewer than four shows: a prime weekend slot on the Opry (8:00 P.M. on Saturday) sponsored by Martha White Flour; an evening show prior to the Opry, held for patients at Veterans’ Hospital; a daytime show called Noontime Neighbors; and a Sunday-morning gospel program. Chet Atkins was forbidden from working with anyone but the Carters for a period of six months, but after that, he could do as he liked. In later years, he minced no words in expressing his gratitude. “I owe everything to the Carters,” he said. “I don’t know what the hell would have happened to me if I hadn’t run into ’em.”

  Maybelle and her daughters could not have moved to Nashville at a better time. Commercial country music was entering its first golden age. Contemporaries of the Original Carter Family, the old-time artists who had achieved national fame in the ’20s and ’30s playing traditional numbers, hymns, and parlor tunes, were on their last legs. One of the few who lingered was Uncle Dave Macon, with his diamond-studded banjo. Macon knew more of the old songs and vaudeville numbers than anyone except the Carters; but by now he was a thoroughly nostalgic figure who had only a few more years to live.

  “Who are you with, boy?” Macon would ask Chet Atkins night after night as they waited backstage for the show to begin.

  “I play guitar with the Carter Sisters and Mother Maybelle, Uncle Dave.”

  “Oh, that’s right,” Macon would say. “Well, keep bringin’ that thumb in, son, and you’ll be just fine.”

  Few Opry-goers of 1950 came for Uncle Dave. They came to hear Roy Acuff belt out “The Great Speckled Bird,” or Ernest Tubb croak “Walkin’ the Floor Over You,” or Minnie Pearl screech “Howwwwdeee!” Country music was a $25 million business, and even judged against America’s postwar economic boom, the industry’s growth rate of nearly 25 percent a year was astonishing. Nineteen-fifty was the year “the whole country was taken with the Nashville muse,” Colliers magazine gushed. “Sponsors are lined up five deep waiting for the first spot to open up on the [Opry] show.” Red Foley’s “Chattanooga Shoe Shine Boy” topped the pop charts in February, and Patti Page’s “Tennessee Waltz” (penned by Pee Wee King and Redd Stewart) was the nation’s number one song in December.

  The Carters’ Opry performances were similar to their RadiOzark shows, only more polished and, truth be told, less far-ranging or interesting. They plucked the most popular songs from their repertoire and performed them with regularity and predictability, because that was what the Opry wanted. June Carter thrived on this big-time showbiz stage, but more as a comedienne than as a musician. She was at least as funny as Minnie Pearl and a whole lot better-looking. In no time, it was an established rule that before the Carters played a song, June would do a comedy routine with the segment’s emcee (each half hour of the Opry show was hosted by a different star). June would charge into the spotlight and tell Roy Acuff that she had been out at the local military base entertaining the troops, and while there, she had been forced to jump into “one o’ them thar wolf holes.” Roy would correct her: “Not a wolf hole, June. A fox hole.” For a moment June would look confused, then she’d answer: “Well, a fox may a-dug it, but it was shore fulla wolves when I jumped in!” While the Opry audience laughed and clapped and stomped, she would strut over to where her family stood waiting, and lead them in one of her novelty numbers such as “It’s My Lazy Day” or “Lookin’ for Henry Lee.” Later, Anita would sing “I’ll Be All Smiles Tonight” or a similar love song. If prodded, she might sing “Freight Train Blues,” a song that she still despised about as much as audiences loved it. It had a boogie-woogie beat (never her favorite), and each verse required her to yodel a little longer and a little higher, until, as one listener put it, “only the damn dogs could hear her.”

  Helen was much less forward than her sisters because, by the summer of 1950, she was pregnant. The specter of separation that had made her wedding day such a mournful occasion was at hand. But it turned out not to be as dreadful as had been feared. As Helen grew rounder, the Carters either made do without her (as they had often done without Anita when she was in school during their Knoxville days) or found a fill-in who could pick, sing, and look all right in a matching dress. In January of 1951, when Helen was delivering Pop and Maybelle’s first grandchild, Glenn Daniel Jones, the family began to grudgingly admit that marriage had an upside even for a Carter sister.

  The
world of the Opry and its road shows was glorious for Maybelle, who happily chose to stay in the background and smile. She had always gotten far more pleasure from applause for her daughters than for herself, and now it was easier than ever to just let them have it. When she did step forward, it was to pick “Wildwood Flower” or sing a hymn, always to great acclaim, and occasionally eliciting tears. It was only on the Sunday gospel show that Maybelle took center stage, because she sang lead on so many of the hymns. Her voice was beginning to take on a hint of tremolo, and was growing deeper, in part because she had recently asked her daughters for permission to take up smoking again. “I wanted to set a good example for you girls,” she said, “but I do enjoy a cigarette.” It was not unusual for her to light one up before the Sunday program, because it could be surprisingly stressful.

  “Oh, gosh,” Maybelle would fret as she sped toward WSM’s studio, still bleary-eyed from a Saturday-night show, “I hope Albert doesn’t make it today.” The girls would laugh, and then Maybelle would laugh a little, too. “Oh, goodness,” she would go on, “Albert cannot sing. Can’t sing at all. What am I going to do?”

  When they arrived at the studio, the Jordanaires—soon to become famous as Elvis Presley’s backup singers—would be finishing their early-morning show. And as the Carters unpacked their instruments, the leader of the quartet, Gordon Stoker, would always ask: “Mama Maybelle, would you play me just a little bit of that ‘Cannonball Blues’?” Stoker could tell that Maybelle was tired and distracted, but he couldn’t help himself, and he always made it a point to ask politely. “I just loved that song so much,” he recalled much later. “And no matter how tired she was, she always played it for me.”

  The dreaded Albert—aka Tennessee senator Albert Gore Sr.—would usually walk in shortly after the show had commenced. Gore was a real country boy, a populist pol who understood where his audience would be on Sunday morning, and how to keep himself in their thoughts. He never asked permission or announced himself ahead of time, for a good politician, like a good traveling salesman, doesn’t wait for an invitation. “Oh, Senator Gore,” Mother Maybelle would say. “How nice to have you with us. If you know this song, you are welcome to sing along.” Senator Gore wasn’t shy. Whether he knew the song or not, he’d join in on a key of his own invention. In later years, the senator would sometimes bring along his little son, future vice president Albert Gore Jr., whom June recalls as “a nice, very well-mannered young fella who sat down and listened to the show and seemed to enjoy it very much.”

  If the early ’50s was a time of wide-open opportunity for the Carters, they exploited it with mixed success. As a group, the Carter Sisters and Mother Maybelle recorded eighteen singles for RCA Victor and Columbia in four years. But they leaned too heavily toward mournful, even gloomy material: “Willow, Will You Weep for Me?,” “Down on My Knees,” and “Columbus, Georgia” (better known as “Columbus Stockade”). They never had anything close to a hit. In 1954 they recorded a catchy comic song called “He Went Slipping Around,” and though it, too, failed to reach the charts, its mixture of good humor and musical chops suggests that a more upbeat repertoire might have been more successful. But “Slipping Around” turned out to be the group’s last recording of the decade.

  Meanwhile, June was going in the opposite direction with her solo career, recording the kind of comic and novelty songs that drew vigorous applause from Opry audiences. These included “Mommie’s Real Peculiar,” “Bashful Rascal,” and “No Swallowing Place,” a song that she wrote with Frank Loesser when he dropped by to say hello to the woman who had lampooned his “Baby It’s Cold Outside.” Helen recorded about ten singles, including two with Atkins, none of which attracted much attention. Anita had the greatest success—though not with any of the half-dozen solo disks she recorded in this period.

  Anita’s big break came partly as a result of Maybelle’s emerging friendship with Minnie Snow, wife of Canadian singer Hank Snow, who had arrived at the Opry just about the same time as the Carters. Shortly after hitting town, Snow recorded his classic “I’m Movin’ On” and became a national sensation. Maybelle and Minnie proved extremely compatible: Both were new in town; both were addicted to cardplaying; and both were content to putter around Maybelle’s kitchen, scraping carrots and talking about their children. Min quickly became Maybelle’s closest friend in Nashville. Whether it was this friendship, as Anita always modestly said, or her mesmerizing voice that brought her to the attention of Hank Snow, Anita was nonplussed when she received a telephone call from Snow, asking her in his deep, serious voice if she would record with him. “Sure,” she said.

  Anita was just seventeen at the time, and her teenage, devil-may-care attitude worried Steve Sholes, RCA’s brilliant and ambitious producer. He had already come a cropper of Snow’s short fuse and monstrous ego, and warned Anita to be on her best behavior in the studio. “For goodness sake, don’t play with him, Anita,” Sholes warned. “Hank doesn’t play.” And sure enough, shortly after the session began, Anita razzed Snow for singing the wrong harmony. “Hush, Hank,” she told him, “you’re singin’ on my part!” Sholes held his breath, but Snow just burst out laughing. The record, “Bluebird Island” backed with “Down the Trail of Broken Hearts,” went to number four on the country charts.

  But for most country acts of that time, the big money was still in public appearances, not records. As “Stars of the Grand Ole Opry,” the Carters were more in demand than ever and could charge more, too. They continued and even increased the pace they’d set for themselves in Knoxville and Springfield. Their schedule for the first week of January 1952 was typical, with road shows every day of the week: the Rex Theater in Galax, Virginia, on Monday; the Palace in Petersburg on Tuesday, followed by the Isis in Lynchburg; the State in Bluefield, West Virginia; and, on Friday, the Capitol in Elizabethon, Tennessee. They were paid about half of the gross receipts for every show, minus a 5 percent agent’s fee, straight cash. By the time they arrived home for their Saturday Opry appearances, the banks were closed, so they’d stash huge wads of greenbacks in the blue roaster on Maybelle’s kitchen shelf, where it would reside until Monday morning, when the banks reopened.

  Weekends were devoted to the Opry. They made friends quickly in the Opry’s cramped, unglamourous dressing rooms, but declined invitations to Mom’s (later Tootsie’s), the bar behind the theater frequented by musicians. Mom’s was loud, boozy, and profane, a perfect microcosm of the Nashville music scene, which was a boy’s club through and through. Most of the old-timers knew of the Original Carter Family, and they taught the youngsters how to treat Maybelle and her daughters with the requisite respect. Around Maybelle, they’d watch their manners and their language. “I don’t care where they went, they were always treated with respect,” says a woman who traveled with the Carters in the fifties. “And no one had to rise up and demand it. It was just taken for granted.”

  There were plenty of big stars playing the Opry in 1950, but the man who impressed the Carters more than any other was a tall, white, hunched skeleton of a man who smelled of liquor and hair tonic: twenty-seven-year-old Hank Williams. Hank was especially respectful of Maybelle and told the Carters that he had admired their RadiOzark shows out of Springfield. He had been struck by Anita’s beautiful renditions of a few of his own songs, and perhaps that accounted for rumors about Hank lobbying hard to bring the family to the Opry.

  There was pride in that, because Hank Williams was already a bona fide superstar. He’d once had six encores at the Ryman. By 1950 he’d charted with more than a dozen hits, mostly about being lonesome, lovesick, and just plain blue; he’d been on the charts almost constantly for two years. No one was more impressed with Hank than Eck. Pop would marvel as Williams crooned one of his poetic compositions such as “Teardrop on a Rose.” “He’s a genius,” Pop would exclaim. “And no education!”

  By the time the Carters were getting to know him in 1951, Hank Williams was Nashville’s greatest artist, but he was also its mo
st incorrigible drunk—caught in a vicious, though not uncommon, cycle. His drinking caused problems in his marriage, and his teetering marriage fed his alcoholism. When Hank’s wife, Audrey, discovered she was pregnant again, she was not happy. The Williamses were already raising two children, Lycrecia Guy from Audrey’s first marriage and Randall Hank, and Audrey didn’t think they could handle another. Abortion was illegal, but Audrey procured one anyway, and the infection that followed landed her in the hospital. The story, as recorded by Colin Escott in Hank Williams: The Biography, goes that Hank went to visit his sick wife in the hospital. But when he leaned down to kiss her, Audrey shrank from him. “You sorry son of a bitch,” she hissed, “it was you that caused me to suffer this.” Hank went back home and sighed to his children’s nanny that he was married to a woman with a “cold, cold heart.”

  A few months later, Williams stood on the Opry stage and sang a new masterpiece: “Why can’t I free your doubtful mind and melt your cold, cold heart?” As he sang, Anita Carter stood transfixed, listening. By the time he got to the second verse, there were tears in her eyes, and before he finished the third, she was weeping openly. “I thought it was the saddest and most beautiful thing I’d ever heard,” she said. She must have been quite a sight in the wings, eyes glistening with tears, lips trembling. Williams certainly noticed her, and asked her for a date.

  He was at least a little drunk when he made the proposition, and Anita wasn’t sure how to answer him. She’d never had liquor herself and didn’t really understand its effect on people. Standing in front of Anita, Williams was so tall and gangly and three-sheets-to-the-wind that he swayed like a cobra. He scared her and he was married, but she made a counterproposal that really knocked him off balance: She’d be happy to go out with Hank, she said. In fact, her whole family would be happy to go out with him.