I Lived to Tell It All Read online

  If only I had been told about my dad’s decaying condition, the doctor would have seen him sooner. I would have seen to that. But nobody told me anything until it was too late. My own family kept a lot from me back then. Years later they told me they thought I was drinking too heavily to handle the truth about a lot of things.

  And yet I’m sure I was proud of how my dad, when he’d get sober for weeks, would work with the same spirit he had when he brought up eight kids as a common laborer. He once took a job selling Standard Coffee door-to-door. How hard must it have been for a man who had lived through the Depression to knock on folks’ doors and ask them to buy coffee when he knew some couldn’t afford light bread? But he never complained, and he became one of the most successful route salesmen in Standard’s history.

  My dad couldn’t have raised a big family in the wilderness unless he’d been savvy, and he never lost that quality. One of his last jobs was as a door-to-door sewing machine salesman. He earned a twenty-five-dollar commission for each machine he sold with a five-dollar down payment. So he made customers’ down payments for them, took his commission from the company, and put a twenty-dollar profit into his pocket from selling sewing machines that were probably repossessed.

  As he lay dying, I thought of those simple little Christmas gifts he had bought me years ago for pennies when pennies were a sacrifice. I would have given a fortune for those gifts when I was in the hospital.

  Thirteen months earlier, my parents had celebrated their fiftieth wedding anniversary. I threw a party at my ranch and welcomed all of their old friends from around East Texas, along with their children, grandchildren, cousins, and anybody else who happened upon the place.

  My parents were proud, and worried, about the success I was having. They were glad I was getting a name and earning a living, but they worried about my safety inside the rough honky-tonks. Mama had always wanted me to sing gospel songs.

  So on my parents’ special day I invited Sister Annie and Brother Burl. I couldn’t remember the last time I had seen them, but Annie’s voice was still a chime unto Jesus as she sang the timeless hymns.

  Folks kept hollering for me to sing my jukebox or radio hits, but I never sang one. I celebrated their fiftieth year together by singing only hymns that had lived through the centuries. I remembered that as my dad lay dying.

  I was glad I had thrown that party a year earlier, and I knew he was glad too, although he’d never say that to me again.

  I remembered affectionately how my dad would swear, as I had many times, that he would never drink again. Then my mother would find whiskey hidden where she least expected it.

  I built a house for my parents down the road from mine in the 1960s. One day we were cleaning their lot and decided to burn a hedge, not knowing that my dad had hidden several bottles inside the bushes. They began to pop and explode like the Fourth of July.

  It was funny at the time. But in the hospital, I smiled through my tears as I looked at the only dad I’d ever had, poked full of tubes that weren’t doing enough to pump him full of life.

  Everybody’s dad dies. Everybody’s dad wasn’t mine. This had to be hurting my mother, brother, and sisters. Why did I feel so alone in the pain?

  I’m glad I was able to pay all of Dad’s funeral expenses. A simple service was held, and once again the blessed hymns of old were sung. I rode with my brother and sisters in a family car to the Restlawn Cemetery north of Vidor. A day later I was out of state and onstage. I didn’t know what to do, so I did what I knew best.

  One of the former Jones Boys remembers that I seemed to be trying to force myself back into the routine that was my helter-skelter life. But forced fun rarely works.

  We were coming away from a matinee somewhere in Texas, and I had had a few drinks. For some reason the air-conditioning on the bus wasn’t working. We stopped at a light and a semitrailer pulled up next to us. My window was down, and so was the truck driver’s. For no reason, I threw my drink into his face. He came out of his cab cussing and screaming while banging on my bus door. He wanted to get ahold of me.

  The light turned green, and we left him jumping up and down amid the fumes of a belching diesel engine. Who knows why I did that? Was it just another one of my mindless drunken pranks? Or was it one more attempt to laugh to keep from crying, a way of life that I realize now I had adopted as permanent? Some of the guys in the band said for months after my dad’s death I’d get drunk and talk on and on about him. Eventually, they paid no attention to what I said, and I never remembered.

  But they did say I frequently talked about my dad’s painful struggles to rehabilitate. Three years before he died, his children had him committed to an asylum, where he struggled inside a straitjacket. Can you imagine the humiliation of that strapping man inside that containment? He had whipped poverty, famine, drought, and various other blights with two bare hands. Yet those same hands could not free themselves from woven cotton.

  That straitjacket only made him dry. It did little to make him sober. When his hospitalization was finished, his drinking resumed.

  And as he lay dying, and as I looked at the dad who couldn’t look back at me, I wondered if we had done the right thing. Should we have put him in a hospital for a drinking problem he couldn’t control? Was it like putting him in prison for a crime he didn’t commit?

  Those are the random thoughts that ran uncontrollably through my hurting and confused mind during those awful days and nights. I don’t ponder those questions today. I’ve changed a lot in thirty years.

  There are questions I’m still not wise enough to answer, just wise enough to no longer ask.

  Chapter 10

  My move to Nashville once again raised my desire to have a performance place with my name on it. During the next twenty years I owned various nightclubs and theme parks where my friends and I played.

  In 1967 I opened the first Possum Holler, a five-hundred-seat nightclub on Nashville’s legendary lower Broadway Street. It was situated in the heart of the tourist district, across the street from the Ernest Tubb Record Shop, next door to the world-famous Tootsie’s Orchid Lounge, across the alley from the Ryman Auditorium, then the home of the Grand Ole Opry.

  A lot of country entertainers at that time were paying their bands by the day. The Jones Boys wanted to work as much as they could, so they played Possum Holler with and without me when we weren’t working the road.

  I worked Possum Holler as much as I wanted, but probably not as much as I should have. But there was hardly ever a shortage of talent inside the old room, which had a high ceiling and was located on the top floor of an old building.

  The club was open during the days when Nashville’s country stars were an unofficial “family.” We hung out together. Today’s stars are so reclusive that they work entire tours together and never see each other. In an earlier day stars struggled together financially. Today they’re rich by themselves.

  Every songwriter in Nashville hung out at Possum Holler. A lot of songs that became hit records were written by, or pitched by their writers to, recording artists inside the smoky dance hall with its scuffed hardwood floor.

  On Saturday nights at the Opry, stars did their sets, then walked over to Tootsie’s for a beer or two before going back for another Opry show. When the Opry adjourned at midnight, many came to Possum Holler and stayed until closing time.

  Billy Wilhite said he remembers seeing as many as twelve famous singers and musicians onstage at once inside my old nightclub. They came to see each other and to sing together. The audience got the benefits.

  Those who casually played at various times inside my club included Merle Haggard, Jack Greene, Jeannie Seely, Mel Tillis, Charley Pride, Willie Nelson, Roger Miller, Kris Kristofferson, Carl Smith, Faron Young, Porter Wagoner, Dolly Parton, Webb Pierce, Ernest Tubb, Roy Acuff, Waylon Jennings, and Dottie West. Many brought their bands.

  “I think it would be easier to try to think of the stars who didn’t come inside that place,” Wilhite said
, “and I can’t think of one from that day and time, unless it was Johnny Cash. I don’t think he was ever in there.”

  Possum Holler had a manager, bouncer, bartender, and four waitresses. The manager and bouncer are dead, nobody remembers who tended bar, and the waitresses, who are now married, won’t own up to having worked there.

  The Four Guys, a Grand Ole Opry quartet, owned a nightclub of their own at the time. Between sets at their place, they came to Possum Holler to relieve the Jones Boys. Except for the Jones Boys, the Four Guys was the only act who was ever paid. Everybody else just got up and did his or her thing free of charge. Many acts came to Possum Holler just to try out a new song on the crowd.

  Merle Haggard released “Branded Man,” “I Threw Away the Rose,” and “Sing Me Back Home” the year I opened Possum Holler. He and his band, the Strangers, sang each tune inside the club.

  Three years earlier, Dottie West became the first woman in country music to win a Grammy Award, with “Here Comes My Baby.” She sang that song many times at Possum Holler.

  For all of that talent and stargazing, no customer ever paid more than a five-dollar admission charge.

  Possum Holler not only captured the stars of Nashville, it captured their spirits. The music business today is virtually run from 9 A.M. to 5 P.M. by businessmen, lawyers, and accountants. Its songwriters write on schedule, not necessarily on inspiration. The Nashville of the 1960s was a fun-loving, mischief-making paradise for a bunch of kids in adult bodies who didn’t want to grow up. We made music for money. We had fun for a living.

  Jimmy Dickens, one of country’s biggest stars of the 1950s and 1960s, came into the club one night when he didn’t know he was being followed by Roger Miller. Roger was a giant star. He had won five Grammy Awards just two years earlier. Miller was short, but Dickens was much shorter.

  Without saying a word, Roger eased a hundred-dollar bill from his billfold and held it over Dickens’s head.

  “One hundred dollars to the man who can whip my little brother!” he yelled. Roger had pulled that stunt at many places, and it never failed to get a laugh. It brought the house down at Possum Holler.

  Country stars used to have publicity pictures that were eight-by-ten-inch glossy prints of themselves with giant smiles. We never used the mood shots that are popular today.

  One of the pinball machines had a girl in a bikini as part of its flashing sign. The likeness of a muscular man stood next to her. Someone cut out Ernest Tubb’s smiling face from his publicity photograph and pasted it over the muscular guy’s face. When a player’s ball hit the button that made the bikini glow, Ernest’s grinning face also lit up.

  Ernest’s biggest hit was “Walking the Floor over You.” The refrain began, “I’m walking the floor over you, I can’t sleep a wink, that is true.” Someone changed the words and pasted them in a circle next to Ernest’s face. The new words said, “I’m walking my winky to the floor with you.”

  Such mindless mischief told of an earlier, more fun, more innocent Nashville.

  We never ran any drink tabs at Possum Holler. First of all, I didn’t feel right in charging my friends. And I didn’t want to run tabs on the tourists because I didn’t know them. I would have had a hard time collecting because credit cards weren’t so common thirty years ago. Our customers paid in cash, and they paid for their drinks by the round.

  But not one guy. When the bartender turned away, this customer took off, leaving nothing but an empty glass. Well, almost nothing.

  “I came in here to have a drink because my mouth was hurting, but the drink didn’t help a bit,” said a note he left. “I know now what the problem was.”

  He had left his false teeth on the bar.

  Country stars used to come to Possum Holler for a few belts before getting on their bus or airplane for the long journey to their next show.

  One night Billy Wilhite, Roger Miller, and I got pretty well oiled and barely got out of the club in time to catch a flight. We were seated in first class, where we were talking about how well someone had sung at Possum Holler. We had a few more drinks.

  The next thing I knew Roger was talking to the flight attendant. The next thing I knew he was talking on the intercom.

  “May I have your attention, may I have your attention, please?” Roger said. Each passenger grew quiet, thinking he was hearing the pilot’s voice. “Engine number one has just gone out,” Roger continued.

  People gasped.

  “Engine number two has just gone out,” Roger said.

  Folks were really scared.

  “Engine number three has just gone out, engine number four has just gone out,” Roger went on.

  Someone yelled that the airplane only had two engines.

  “This is a recording, recording, recording, recording …” Roger said.

  He then stepped from the first-class section into the main cabin. Roger had had his own network television show, and everyone on board recognized him. They knew instantly that they had been taken, and they loved it. They actually applauded.

  “And now, ladies and gentlemen,” he said, “I’m going back to my microphone, where I’ll be joined by the great George Jones.”

  The passengers clapped, and at thirty thousand feet Roger and I sang a duet into a static-filled microphone. Then Roger invited everyone on board to visit Possum Holler when they were in Nashville.

  Can you imagine what the Federal Aviation Administration would say about such carrying on today?

  The original Possum Holler was open only a few months, but they allowed years’ worth of good times.

  The late Roy Acuff, even three decades ago, was the undisputed king of country music. He brought dignity to our industry, and everybody, fans and performers alike, knew it. I don’t think I ever saw him when he wasn’t wearing a coat and a necktie.

  Everybody called him Mr. Acuff. None of the other men ever called any of the other men in country music “Mister.”

  One floor below Possum Holler sat Mr. Acuff’s famous “Roy Acuff Exhibits,” a museum containing his first fiddle, photographs from his Hollywood movies, posters from the time he ran for governor, and much more, including shining trophies galore. Mr. Acuff was so proud of that place that he was known to hand-polish the exhibits himself.

  Then a commode backed up inside Possum Holler and leaked into one of Mr. Acuff’s trophy cases below.

  Mr. Acuff had visited Possum Holler as much or more than anyone else. He was always great about signing autographs for its customers. I’m positive he hated to see it close. But he owned the building, and he owned his prized exhibits.

  He was as calm as calm could be when he told Billy that we would have to close the doors to Possum Holler.

  “But why, Mr. Acuff?” Billy asked. “You love this place.”

  “I know it, son,” he said, “I know it. But we just can’t have turds inside my exhibits.”

  The doors were locked forever that very night.

  My touring continued before, during, and after my ownership of Possum Holler. I’ve told millions of people in thousands of crowds that as long as the fans want to see me, I’ll be on the road. That, and the fact that I haven’t wisely managed my money, is why I’m still out there today.

  I look at guys like Buck Owens who were smart in investing their money. Sometimes I envy the way they stay home. I’d be lying if I told you that there aren’t plenty of times when I’m bone tired and, at sixty-four, want to spend my evenings listening to a crackling fire at home instead of the whine of bus tires a thousand miles away.

  But in the same breath I’d have to tell you that the music I make for the people can’t be any better than the music of their applause. There is nothing like twenty thousand people rewarding you for a three-minute song. It is the world’s highest natural high.

  That’s why I was in Kansas City, Missouri, for still another show in still another town less than twenty-four hours after the Possum Holler closing. We drank a lot during the club’s last night of b
usiness and kept right on during the all-night and next-day drive from Nashville to the show.

  I was plastered when I went onstage.

  The Jones Boys and I were part of a package with various big country stars. I had sung three songs when I decided to do some impersonations. I used to like to do them when I’d been drinking.

  On this particular night, I impersonated Johnny Cash. I told the crowd that Cash would sound like this if he were drunk. Then I proceeded to lower my voice and stagger around the stage, acting like I was Cash and drunk.

  The drunk part required no acting.

  I intentionally reeled toward the drums and unintentionally got my feet tangled. Drunk, I fell over an amplifier and off the back of the stage. Thousands of people saw me.

  The crowd knew I had pretended to be drunk to cover the fact that I was.

  Backstage people were running to help me as I picked myself off the concrete floor. I was hurting. Because of the curtain I couldn’t see, but I could hear, the audience. People were laughing at me.

  So I didn’t go back out.

  People began to boo and holler for George Jones, and the Jones Boys tried to settle them down by playing an instrumental. It didn’t work. James Hollie, who played bass guitar for me for fourteen years, came backstage, and I spoke before he could make a sound.

  “Say one word,” I told him, “and you’re fired!”

  “But …” he said, and that’s as far as he got.

  “You’re fired!” I said.

  By then the band was filtering off one member at a time. I stood there rubbing my injuries and fired each one as he passed me. I can’t count the times I’ve gotten drunk and fired the band for a bad, or for no, reason at all. I always rehired them the next day, and they came to expect it. When a new player joined, he often asked if I had really meant to fire him when I’d been drunk. After a while, he stopped asking. He just knew that come the next day he was supposed to assume that my tantrum from the night before was forgotten.

  “All of you sons of bitches are fired at once,” I said to one group of players when the three Adams brothers were a part of the Jones Boys.