by Don Keith
"Don't know, Dee. I guess I just figure I've got to ask for what I want if I'm going to make anybody listen to me. And if I've got the facts on my side and if I do my homework, I'll get it. I can get anything I want if I want it bad enough."
"Well, sometimes you scare me just a little bit. That's all."
Then Dee was quiet for a while, the roar of the highway under the tires the only sound. Ten miles farther along, he turned to Jimmy and spoke again.
"Did you see that big old FM tower today?"
"Damn right! I can't wait to climb that mother!"
And they laughed for the next mile.
The sun was disappearing over the nose of Lookout Mountain as Jimmy flipped the radio on near Chattanooga, and, for some reason, switched to the AM band. He knew the sky wave would be bouncing back distant signals soon and he still loved the magic of that nightly miracle.
He punched up WLAC in Nashville at 1510 and there was a delicious, throbbing blues song pumping out of the dashboard speakers. Then he hit 650 for the "Mother Church of Country Music," WSM. Hank Snow was just opening the first segment of the Saturday night Grand Ole Opry. It sounded as if he and Dee were sitting on the front row until the ionosphere shifted slightly and let the signal drift away from them. But at 770, WABC was bursting through the static from Manhattan, with a frenetic deejay and the thumping songs he spun sounding just a shade less than musical anarchy. A commercial for a truck stop in Utah boiled out of Ft. Worth on WBAP. And when Jimmy dialed down to the high numbers at the right side of the band, a gravelly-voiced preacher was wailing away, gasping for breath and salvation, on one of the high-powered Mexican border stations.
When Jimmy twisted the knob back to the left, the AM station in Atlanta they had passed on buying only a few hours before filled the Buick with sound. A newscaster took them to an anti-Vietnam-War rally in Washington, and the audio perfectly captured the anger of the speaker, the shouts of the crowd, and the distant sirens of police cars. Then the station switched to Europe for a satellite feed on the peace talks going on there. And to a reporter in the suburbs for an on-the-scene report at a local anti-war demonstration. Another man checked in from a golf tournament in town, interviewing players and spectators. A happy-voiced disk jockey spun a couple of up-tempo records. Then, finally, with a flourish of music and the roar of an excited crowd, the station took them to a Georgia Tech football game for all the play-by-play.
The signal never wavered, even as they passed through the girders of the Tennessee River bridge near downtown Chattanooga. It easily over-rode the ambient night-time static, blanketing the countryside across forty states and most of the Caribbean.
Jimmy looked at Detroit’s face, illuminated in the dim light from the radio dial. Dee was looking right back at him. They read each other’s minds.
"Okay, okay. I'll call Goldberg first thing Monday morning and do a deal for the
AM, too."
The big signal rode with them all the way across Monteagle Mountain and back to Nashville.
Twenty-one
There had never before been anyone in Jimmy Gill's life like Cleo Michaels. He was nervous as a schoolboy driving out Franklin Road to the massive iron gate that blocked intruders and curious fans from entering her estate. The long, snaking driveway gave him a quick glimpse or two of her low-slung mansion, of acres of ponds and shrubs and towering trees.
He had spoken to her briefly on the phone on Monday. Then again over the speaker that was mounted on a pole at the entrance gate. Her voice had left him numb and stunned both times. Now she was coming out the front door of the mansion to greet him, wearing faded jeans and a sloppy plaid shirt. She was all smiles as she hugged him like a long, lost friend, grabbed his hand and led him back inside into her huge living room.
She sat down on the couch next to him, turning to face him, all smiles, welcoming. Her beauty left him breathless. Her natural manner disarmed him of his usual aloofness.
"Thank you for coming! Do I call you 'Brother' or 'James' or what?"
"Well, do I call you Hester or Miss Cudsworth?"
She just grinned, amazed that somehow he had found out something she had always tried to keep secret: her real name.
"Cleo, for God's sake," she said. "Don't tell anybody what my momma did to me at birth or I’ll have to have you killed! How'd you know that name? I’ve spent more money than I care to think of to try to keep it buried."
But Jimmy was not revealing his sources.
"And I'm Jimmy, please,” he told her and admitted, “A very nervous Jimmy, I might add."
“But why?” She seemed genuinely surprised.
“Meeting you. Being here.”
She laughed softly and blushed embarrassedly.
“I was afraid to admit that I was nervous meeting you,” she said. “I meant what I said the other night. I really am a fan of the station and especially your show.”
“Me, too. Of yours. Oh, God! Don’t let me do that number again.”
This time they both laughed.
"Coffee? Iced tea? A beer?"
He declined and surveyed the auditorium-sized room, massive furniture, and the paintings under spotlights on the fabric-covered walls. She excused herself and darted into another room, then returned with her own cup of something hot and smoking. She shoved a shiny-wood guitar aside and curled her legs under her as she again sank into the sofa next to where he sat. The plushness almost swallowed her up.
"Jimmy, I really appreciate your time," she started after one sip. He was a bit disappointed that she was getting right to business, again holding his eyes with hers with the most direct gaze he had ever seen. And especially from a woman. “I can only imagine how busy you must be, but I really don’t know of anyone else to ask about this sort of thing.”
She blew on the coffee to cool it, shifted slightly, dropped her eyes, and talked on as he leaned forward to pretend that he was actually interested.
"I'm almost thirty years old. The last two albums sold half as many units as the couple before them did. We're already getting booked into the second-tier of halls and clubs. They’re starting to talk about us as an opening act again. And to top it off, I haven't had a cut on any of the songs I’ve written...at least by a major artist...in almost a year, mostly because I have not had time to pitch them but partly because there are newer, hotter writers sleeping in offices all over Music Row, cranking them out like widgets on an assembly line."
Cleo paused for another sip of the coffee. Jimmy was surprised that the harsh realities she was ticking off so matter-of-factly did not really seem bother her.
"The ultimate signal came last week. My manager's negotiating to put together a 'greatest hits' cheapie collection for marketing on television. That's the sure sign that the sun's setting, Jimmy!"
"God, Cleo, you're the freshest thing going in country music. Any kind of music for that matter. You're the only one doing straight-ahead stuff without all the strings and syrup they're putting out now. And your lyrics are phenomenal"
He meant exactly what he was saying.
"That's what they want now, you know. Big production, lots of violins, adult-contemporary sound, smarmy ballads. Words aren’t what they are looking for at all. You don’t want the audience to have to think, for God sakes. Nothing acoustic or traditional-sounding is selling now either. Country stations say country music is too country for them to play, if you can imagine that. Tammy Wynette, Barbara Fairchild, Loretta Lynn...they can't get a song on the radio anymore. And I can't sing at all when they lay all that orchestral stuff on so thick. It’s like it chokes me."
Cleo broke eye-contact, looking off into the distance through a crimson-draped, floor-to-ceiling window. Beyond the glass, he could see a corner of a swimming pool, and beyond that, a fenced tennis court.
"It'll come back around someday. It always does. But I’m realistic enough to know that I'll be way too old to ride that horse by then. That's why I wanted to talk with you, Jimmy."
She shifted
her legs and leaned closer, setting the coffee cup on the table and using her hands for emphasis as she talked. Her every movement looked as if it was choreographed for effect, as if for a stage show, but still her performance seemed natural. Either way, Jimmy Gill was enjoying watching her dance.
“I’m listening, Cleo.”
She smiled. The morning sunlight streaming through the window dimmed in comparison.
"I've made some money and I’ve had the good sense to carefully plant it where it could grow. I don't ever want to be as poor as I was growing up in Jasper, Texas. So hungry that a mess of poke salat was a banquet for us. And I think I see a way to make sure I don't ever have to chop another row of cotton to live, no matter what happens with this music thing.
"About the only good thing I remember growing up was listening to our old Crosley table-model radio. When the electricity hadn’t been turned off, that is. We could get the Grand Ole Opry from Nashville, the 'Barn Dance' from Chicago on WLS and another ‘Barn Dance’ from Knoxville on WNOX, and all the country music and big band shows from Dallas and Houston and San Antonio. Daddy bought me a Sears and Roebuck guitar when he was working at the sugar cane mill, and I learned to chord listening every night to an old guy named Boots Crockett on WGOJ in Jasper. He'd pick and sing on his show and call out the chords when he forgot the words. Which was regularly, because old Boots apparently did love to drink."
Her eyes were now moist with the remembering, and Jimmy was afraid he was about to tear up a bit himself. Of all things, he had found a kindred spirit here in the living room of a mansion on Franklin Road in Nashville. Cleo Michaels was another soul raised on the magic of radio!
When she paused for another swallow of coffee, he launched into his own story, telling of his hours spent on the cold linoleum floor dragging in any signal he could find, surfing the tide of radio waves that floated in and out on the ether.
"Somehow, I knew you would understand," she told him. "I can hear the love for the music, the passion you have for radio when you talk into that microphone at The River. It's not just a job for you, Jimmy. Certainly not just another investment like a hamburger stand or a filling station or some kind of dull old franchise would be. They’ve tried to sell me on ‘Cleo’s Chicken Shack’ and a dozen other ideas just as stupid."
Then she told him about her dream. He was struck by how similar it was to the one he was in the midst of realizing. Of how she wanted to put country music on the emerging FM band, where its clean melodies and from-the-heart picking could shine through without all the static and nighttime fades.
"You know for yourself how great our music sounds on a good record player, Jimmy. You wouldn’t believe how great it is in the studio," she said and he nodded. "Folks need to hear it without the noise and in stereo. The producers here in Nashville are all old rock and roll guys and the production values are as good as anything ever put on disk, no matter the kind of music. Country music desperately needs a medium that can do it some justice. I think FM will do it just fine, and when people really hear it, when there’s something there worth listening to, they’ll come over to it in droves."
Conventional wisdom had it that no one would listen to anything as hokey as country music on FM. They had said the same thing about the brashness of rock and roll. That the FM band was only good for classical music and easy listening, like Percy Faith and Lawrence Welk.
"A disk jockey I got to know in Dallas told me about an AM and FM station that is up for sale out there, and I sort of got excited about it for a minute and a half. My manager, Gene Cooper, threw a bucket of cold water on the whole thing, though. He thinks I'm off my rocker. Says I don't know doodly-squat about broadcasting and he's right, of course. He usually is. But you do, Jimmy. You want to be partners?"
“Uh...well...”
Cleo Michaels could be as straight and abrupt as her gaze, it appeared.
“You don’t have to answer me now. I’ll give you...oh...twelve minutes.”
She mimicked looking at a watch on her bare arm and they laughed again. Then Jimmy told her he would appreciate a cup of that coffee after all. It smelled wonderful.
A woman so direct put him totally off balance. He had caught himself nodding positively with nothing more than her enthusiasm to base it on. Sure, he agreed with her about country music's possibilities on the new band. And when she told him the legendary call letters of the AM station she was talking about, he filled her in about his own ideas for the Atlanta AM station on which he and Dee had just reached the agreement. She listened to him intently, as if he was singing the world's most beautiful song.
For the next hour, they were like a couple of drunks pouring each other shots of rye whiskey. She sang him a few of the songs she was working on for the next album. He told her of his dreams for The River and the new stations in Atlanta.
He finally had to stand and tell her point blank that he had to go. Bankers, clients, the sales staff, and a lobby full of record promoters awaited him back at The River. She saw him to the door and kissed him ‘bye on the cheek. It was a totally natural act, completely lacking in pretense.
As he steered back down the twisting drive away from her, he knew, somewhere deep inside, that he was completely, undeniably, irretrievably in love with this woman with the direct eyes and the enchanting voice and the love for radio that came so damned close to matching his own.
Twenty-two
It took Detroit Simmons about ten seconds to throw his own bucket of icy cold water on Jimmy’s hot, hot fire.
"Jimmy Gill! There's no doubt at all now that you've lost your ever-lovin' mind! We got a tiger by the tail here in Nashville, we’re borrowing more bloody drug money from the Georges to jump into a snake pit down there in Atlanta, and now you’re about to tie up with a hillbilly singer and risk everything we’ve built, all for another station you’ve never even heard in a town that you’ve never even been to!"
Detroit was so mad he turned his back to Jimmy and stared out his shop window at the traffic zipping past outside on Music Row. Then he cursed loudly, picked up the chassis of some dingus he was working on and slammed it back down on the work bench so hard several tools danced off the edge and rattled noisily on the hard floor. Jimmy had put his ideas into logical sequence on the drive back into town from Cleo's. He had just begun laying out the facts in exactly the way he knew Detroit couldn’t resist, no matter how skeptical he might be, when the man had suddenly blown a gasket.
Jimmy stood there, shocked at Detroit’s anger. He was about to turn and leave, saving the rest of the scenario for a time when he might be more in a mood to listen. He was going to do the deal. He did not need Detroit Simmons for that. It was only a courtesy mentioning it to him in the first place. But then, Detroit spun around suddenly and blasted him with a cold stare Jimmy had rarely seen on his friend’s face.
An ugly thought slipped up on Detroit and he spoke before he meant to.
"Are you tapping that woman?"
"What?"
"You sleeping with her?"
“Frankly, it’s none of your damned business.”
Jimmy almost went farther, maybe even bounding across the office and hitting him. But he realized immediately that he loved him too much for that. Instead, he only bit his tongue and turned abruptly to stomp down the hallway to his office. He slammed his door behind him so hard it dislodged two framed gold records hanging on the wall and sent them crashing to the floor.
Detroit did not follow. He wanted to say more, something profound to try to keep Jimmy Gill from blundering into the unknown blinded by the beauty of this woman he had only just met. Why couldn't Jimmy ever think things through, line up the pros and cons on each side of a ledger and balance the decision on cold hard facts instead of raw, wild emotion? Detroit tried to lose himself in a schematic that unfolded over the entire work bench but the lines kept merging and the symbols blurred.
Jimmy sat, reared back in his big office chair, studying the patterns of the ceiling tile over his hea
d. He had spent two hours with Cleo Michaels and, once past the initial stun of her beauty, he had been so lost in their talk of radio signals and music that lust had not cropped up again at all. And he had meant exactly what he had growled to Detroit. It was none of his business who he was doing what to or when or why.
If Jimmy wanted to buy half the radio stations in Texas, it was none of Detroit’s business regardless of what expedient, made-up legal title he might have in front of his silly name on the top of a piece of letterhead. He could wire radio equipment together all right and keep a transmitter humming on spit and tin foil, but he better keep his nose out of the rest of the business that he did not know jack about.
Jimmy knew it was Detroit’s weak knock at his door ten minutes later. He let him try three more times, though, before he grunted a reluctant, "Come on in." That fifteen seconds gave Jimmy Gill all the time he needed to reload his weapons.
"Look, Jimmy. I'm sorry," Detroit said, obviously pulling the apology from somewhere deep inside. "It's just that we both have worked so hard on building up these stations and I can't stand to see us risk it all for some..."
"Dee, you got to trust me! Hear me out for once without jumping to conclusions!" Jimmy was practically yelling at his only friend, but he wanted to slam him down viciously in a chair and force him to listen to what he had to say. Detroit fought to stay cool himself, standing there a full, quiet half minute, shifting from foot to foot, uncomfortable as he always was when the two of them had suffered through such disagreements before. He wanted to make sure whatever he said and however he said it would not send Jimmy storming away again before they could make things right between them. They always had before. Now, more than ever was riding on them coming to an agreement on things.
"Jimmy, I just want to make sure you’re not grabbing hold of some high voltage you can't let go of," Detroit finally said to the carpet, and then sank tiredly into the chair across from him before his feet betrayed him and he fled back to the sanctuary of his shop. "I know what it's like to fall for somebody. I haven't been the same since I met Rachel."
