When it came to choosing songs, I had full reign. Neither Hank nor Decca really intervened, which I now realize was pretty unusual for a new artist at the time—especially one who was a junior in high school! Of course, there wasn’t too much to do for the backing band in those days. Arrangements were a lot simpler then, and it was easy to breeze through several songs in a single session. There wasn’t that much to do! I recorded four songs that day, including “If You Knew What I Know,” which was one I’d written myself, as well as “The Right to Love,” which was written by my old boyfriend, Tommy Collins. Tommy was just having his first hit with “You Better Not Do That” at the same time, but I had learned “The Right to Love” from him back when we were spending a lot of time together, and I always thought it was a cute song.
I assumed I would just be recording my four selections, but when I finished there was still time remaining. Hank said, “I’ll tell you what, guys, let’s lay down that ‘You Can’t Have My Love’ song.”
My heart sank. Hank had received the song—a duet—at his publishing company, and had already mentioned wanting me and Billy Gray to record it together. It was as cute as can be, but I didn’t like it at the time. I didn’t want to launch my career as part of a duo. I wanted to do things on my own. Hank knew I didn’t want to record it, but he tried to smooth it over by treating it very casually.
“It’ll be all right, Wanda,” he said. “We’ll just do it real quick and then we’ll have it recorded.”
“Oh no, Hank, I’m tired. Let’s call it a day.”
He just smiled. “No, we’re gonna give it a try.”
I don’t know why, but when I get mad I cry. I said, “I don’t want to do this. I’m NOT going to do it!” Tears were welling up in my eyes, and I was prepared to dig my heels in. I kind of kicked at the pricks on that one. Daddy had to take me aside and talk to me. He reminded me that it was Hank who made it possible for me to get a record deal in the first place, and that if Hank wanted me to do the song, then I should respect his request.
I finally agreed to record “You Can’t Have My Love” with Billy, but only to please Hank. I can still kind of hear the anger in my voice on that record. That probably actually helped my performance, because the girl in the song is telling the guy off. It gave me a little attitude on the recording. That’s not because I was great at adopting the character so much as it is because the whole time I was seething and thinking, Okay, I’ll sing that damn song, but it won’t be very good! Looking back, Hank bringing up that song at the last minute was probably the plan all along. He knew he would get resistance from me, but he also thought the song could be a hit. Maybe he figured that would be the easiest way to get me to go along with it.
I was disappointed when Decca released the duet of “You Can’t Have My Love” as my first single, but it turned out Hank was right about the song after all. By late July of 1954, it was making its way up the Billboard country chart. Decca thought it would be a good idea to record another duet with Billy as soon as possible to capitalize on the success of the first single. Hank wasn’t scheduled to record in Hollywood, so we hastily assembled a session at his home studio there in Oklahoma City.
Billy and I recorded a song called “If You Don’t Somebody Else Will,” which had just been released on the Chess label by a country duo called Jimmy & Johnny. Comprised of Jimmy Lee and Johnny Mathis (not to be confused with the pop singer of the same name), the duo were regulars on the Louisiana Hayride. Even though “You Can’t Have My Love” was doing well, I still didn’t think I needed a duet partner. I wanted to be recognized for my own talents, and I thought the boys might not like me as much if I was always singing with the same guy. They might think Billy and I were together and lose interest in me!
As it turned out, this was the song that actually got me out of having to be a duet act. The hit version went to Jimmy & Johnny, who already had the jump on us. Theirs had come out first and, even though Decca was a bigger label than Chess, radio audiences made the original version a Top 5 hit, while ours didn’t gain much traction. I secretly breathed a sigh of relief. If Billy and I had kept having hits together, I might have been stuck recording duets forever. Billy was a great guy and I had a lot or respect for him, but that’s just not what I wanted for my career.
Hank, perhaps recognizing that I wasn’t enthused about recording duets, suggested that I record a solo number that day at his home studio. I decided to record an original called “You’d Be the First One to Know.” It was actually the first song I’d ever written, and came to me one day when I was in the ninth grade. I never did care much for school. I was so restless and always felt like my spirit just wanted to fly away. My mind was focused on my career, or maybe sketching out a design in my notebook for a new dress to wear on stage. I was constantly going to sharpen my pencil just to get out of my desk and look through the window at the world beyond the prison of the classroom. I was standing at that pencil sharpener one day when I thought to myself, I wonder what it would be like to write a song of my own? I went back to my desk and came up with that idea in my head.
The thought behind the lyric was, “If I ever break up with somebody, I want him to be the first to know. I don’t want him to hear that it’s going to happen from someone else. I’ll be the one to tell him.” It was actually a bit of autobiography. As I mentioned, my second boyfriend named Leonard had given me his ring. I wanted to break up with him, and I was going to have to give it back to him. I was glad I went to him first because I would have hated for him to find out via other means. I knew I was doing it right, but I don’t like confrontation, and it was probably the hardest thing I’d ever had to do up to that point in my life. After school I raced home to the piano to see what it was going to sound like.
I was pretty excited to have come up with something like that by myself. Looking back, it’s not a very good song, but in terms of structure I accidentally got it right. Hank later told me that the first verse of a song is where you tell what the story is. The chorus is where you go in depth, and the verses after the chorus tell the present and the future. He helped me understand song structure and the various rhyming patterns, such as ABAB or AABB. Fortunately, I stumbled upon it even before I understood the rules.
That second Decca session at Hank’s house was in August of 1954. By September, I was starting my senior year of high school with a Top 10 hit, thanks to “You Can’t Have My Love” climbing all the way up to number eight on Billboard’s national country chart. Take that, Mr. History Teacher!
My classmates seemed to like me, even if they weren’t big country music fans. Country wasn’t that popular yet. It was just a small group of people who listened to it. Mother or Daddy used to talk about how you’d go up to a house and hear country music playing on a record or over the radio. If you knocked or rang the doorbell, they’d turn it off or change the station before answering. Given that country music wasn’t the coolest thing at the time, I attribute much of my popularity at school to my one true blue friend, Beverly Wright. She was so genuine, and such the life of the party, that people just loved her. She was my greatest cheerleader, and the fact that she was always championing me and promoting me contributed to my popularity.
I would often sing in school assemblies, and the kids really liked the Hank Williams songs, like “Jambalaya” and “Kaw-liga” that were already staples of my performances. The one they loved the most was “Hot Dog! That Made Him Mad.” I was always looking for songs to add to my repertoire and often found good material through movie musicals. I was a film buff and would go to the theater every chance I got. In fact, I’d take a little note pad and jot down song lyrics or, as color movies became more common, I’d make notes about color combinations and plans for dresses based on what I’d seen. I always wanted to meet Elizabeth Taylor. Marilyn, too, of course. I loved Esther Williams, Betty Grable, and all those starlets of the silver screen. I don’t remember the name of the movie, but I heard “Hot Dog! That Made Him Mad” at a matinee one
Saturday and was knocked out by it. The singer was Betty Hutton, who was a pop artist on Capitol, but she also sang and danced in the movies. When I heard it I thought, Man, I’d sure like to sing that. I called Mother and asked if I could stay to watch the movie again just so I could hear the song once more. She agreed, and soon after, I hunted down the single and learned how to play it.
The girls at school just loved “Hot Dog! That Made Him Mad” because there weren’t many songs out about getting back at a guy. It got to where anytime I played for a school assembly, I had to do that song. One day I was called into the principal’s office.
“Wanda, I’m sorry, but you can’t sing that ‘Hot Dog’ song anymore,” the principal said. “It’s entirely too suggestive.” But it actually wasn’t! I never got that.
“All right, Mr. Higgins,” I said. “I won’t sing it anymore.” The next time I was asked to perform at an assembly, Mr. Higgins introduced me. The minute I started walking across the stage the kids started chanting, “Hot Dog! Hot Dog! Hot Dog!” They wouldn’t stop. I figured, “Hot dog, it might make ’em mad, but to heck with school. They can throw me out if they want, but my audience wants this song.” I found out later that the chanting was a lot of Beverly’s doing. I had told her what the principal said to me, so she spread the word and orchestrated everything with the students. Even Mr. Higgins couldn’t say much after that. He had to let me do my thing.
Even though I was in no danger of becoming the valedictorian, I did find a few ways to make high school more bearable. I had been a twirler with the band in middle school, and became the Capitol Hill band queen in high school. It sounds more glamorous than it is. The job of the band queen was to pass out the music, call roll, and march next to the leader. It was a lot of fun, and at least I was around music.
Another highlight of senior year was when I had my one and only chance in life to do some acting. I got the lead role of Reno Sweeny in Cole Porter’s Anything Goes, which was our high school musical that year. I always wondered how I got that role when I was so country, but Ms. Munday, our speech teacher and the director of our play, said, “Wanda, you should try out for this.” I found a boy I knew who could play piano by ear, and I worked with him to prepare for the tryouts. I auditioned with Marilyn Monroe’s “Diamonds Are a Girl’s Best Friend,” and I think that was the song that let them see I could do something besides pure country. As we got into rehearsals, Ms. Munday would always say, “Stop everything! Stop it! Wanda, you can’t tap your foot! Please stop tapping your foot to the music!” I didn’t even realize I was doing it. When I heard music I just felt it, and that’s what happened. When we performed the play, it was done at the Municipal Auditorium in downtown Oklahoma City. It was quite an affair, and I really enjoyed the chance to stretch my musical boundaries.
Though I enjoyed my school friends, and I have fond memories of my various activities, the only thing I really wanted to do was sing. I was still working with Hank, but he hardly paid me anything. I don’t blame him. He was the one who was doing most of the work, but I craved it like you wouldn’t believe. Daddy would drive me to wherever we were performing. We didn’t do many out-of-town gigs, but we were playing at plenty of contests and other little shows locally. I begged him to let me quit school, but Daddy was a stickler. “No,” he told me. “No matter what, you have to get your diploma.”
Chapter 7
With fiddler Tommy Jackson and Daddy at my first recording session in Nashville.
TEARS AT THE GRAND OLE OPRY
By early 1955 I was traveling with Hank Thompson to a handful of dates in Indiana, New Jersey, Maryland, and Texas, but I wasn’t able to go on the road as much as I would have liked. Daddy, of course, was very rigid about me attending school and would only rarely let me miss classes to perform. I was making twenty dollars per night on Hank’s show, but it wouldn’t have made a bit of difference to me if I was making two dollars or two thousand. I was just happy to be on a stage. Sometimes getting to that stage was a challenge. They didn’t exactly roll out the red carpet for us country stars in those days. I remember one gig where the dressing room situation was so pathetic that I had to go to a gas station to change before the show. I went in to discover that the lady’s room had flooded. Beverly was with me, and she had to help me get up on the toilet seat just to get my hose on without touching the floor. I’m sure we were quite a sight!
In March, Daddy and I headed down to Nashville for another Decca recording session. It was my first time to ever travel to the budding country music capital, and I was pretty excited. Even though I was building a career in country music, we didn’t consider moving to Tennessee. Mother had lived out of state when we were in California, and it just would not have gone over for her to leave her mother and siblings again. Plus, she had a good government job, so it’s not something we even discussed. As a result, there was something about Nashville that always remained mysterious to me. I was part of the industry that built the city, but I was never really part of the music community there.
When Daddy and I checked into the hotel on that first Nashville trip, the phone kept ringing in our room. I would answer and Daddy would hear me say, “No thank you, but I appreciate you calling.” Finally, after this happened three or four times, Daddy said, “Who keeps calling so much?” I said, “They’re all black songwriters who want me to record their material, but I sing country, not blues. I don’t know why in the world they’re calling me!” As it turned out, the word had gotten out among the songwriting community that I was in town to record. The folks who were calling were actually white country writers, but the white Tennessee accent sounded like a black Oklahoma accent to me. There’s no telling what A-list country songwriters I turned down when they called my room. I could have used a hit, so I should have paid more attention!
My first Nashville session was held at Owen Bradley’s recording studio on 16th Avenue, where more timeless country songs have been recorded than anyone could possibly list. I remember that Chet Atkins played guitar. The steel guitar duties were handled by Jerry Byrd, who played on many classic recordings, including Hank Williams’s “I’m So Lonesome I Could Cry” and “Lovesick Blues.” Of all the musicians there that day, however, Daddy was most excited about Tommy Jackson. Tommy’s fiddle appeared on so many wonderful recordings by Red Foley, Webb Pierce, Ray Price, and others, but he was also pretty well known for his square dance albums that he recorded in the 1950s. He was an idol to country fiddle players, and Daddy loved his style.
The session was produced by Paul Cohen, the man who signed me to Decca Records. It’s funny, but since the contracts were sent in the mail, I hadn’t actually met Mr. Cohen in person until that day. My connection with Decca was really through Hank. I didn’t actually know anyone there. Mr. Cohen was very friendly and welcomed us warmly when we arrived at the studio. I always sang with my guitar onstage, so I brought it with me to the studio thinking I would play along with the band. We kicked off the proceedings with a waltz called “It’s the Same Old World (Wherever You Go).” We got about halfway through the first take before Paul stopped everybody and came out of the control room. “Wanda,” he smiled, “we’re getting an awful lot of your guitar on your vocal mic. Why don’t we try having you play with a felt pick so it’s not so loud?”
We started again, but we didn’t get very far into it before he stopped us a second time. “Wanda, honey, I’m still hearing a good bit of that guitar. Why don’t we try one without you playing along?”
It’s funny that, even with that felt pick, they couldn’t get me to play soft enough. I guess I was just banging away, which would serve me much better in the years to come after I discovered rock and roll. At that moment, though, it just wasn’t working. I agreed to stop playing, but I was pretty nervous about the next take. I had never sung without that guitar in my hand. It was my crutch and my security blanket all rolled into one. “Could I just hold it if I promise not to strum?” I asked.
“Of course, sweetie, that’ll be
fine,” Mr. Cohen answered.
After that, I knocked out three more songs in that two-hour session without any trouble at all. Later on, some of the guys started calling me “One Take Wanda” because I was able to record a song correctly the first time. I could do it again for them if they wanted, but it wouldn’t be any different. Quite a few of the songs I’ve recorded over the years were done in one take if the band got it right. And, of course, when we were recording with some of the best musicians in Nashville—or the world, for that matter—it was an easy process. Those guys were amazing, so everything moved very fast. Today artists might hole up for months to record a new album, but we used to go in and get at least four songs in the can during a three-hour session. There was nothing painstaking about it. It was quick; it was easy; and it was fun!
One of the things that surprised me about recording in Nashville, however, was the difference in the sound from what we were doing out West. I was used to Hank Thompson’s band. Even Merl Lindsay’s band had horns, so I was accustomed to a pretty full sound. There just weren’t many instruments used on Nashville recordings at the time. It was the sound of commercial country music of the day, so I didn’t ask for drums and all the extra stuff I was used to. I probably could have requested it, but I didn’t know to ask.
One of the songs I recorded at that first Nashville session was called “Tears at the Grand Ole Opry.” It was written by a guy named Cowboy Howard Vokes, who was known as Pennsylvania’s King of Country Music at one time. He got into writing songs during a lengthy hospital stay following a hunting accident. Apparently, he was shot in the ankle with a high-powered rifle and nearly lost his right foot. Howard booked a lot of country music shows in his home state, and I think “Tears at the Grand Ole Opry” was a song he passed along to Hank Thompson somewhere along the way. It found its way to me and I agreed to record it.
Every Night Is Saturday Night Page 7
