Waylon (17 page)

Sue’s place was located in a triplex apartment building at 911 B Eighteenth Avenue South. The building is still there; there
were two apartments downstairs, but you’d take the middle door and head upstairs to the Boar’s Nest. To the right was a bedroom
and left was the living room with the wall of fame. You could run into anybody and everybody there. People would park on the
street or, if it was too crowded, just pull their car into the front yard.

One night Richie was coming up the steps and ran into Jack Clement. He knew Jack had produced Johnny Cash’s records, and thought
this might be a good time to meet him. He said “Hi, Jack, I’m Richie Albright,” and stuck his hand out. Jack took it and promptly
got sick in the bushes, hanging onto Richie’s hand and shaking it and throwing up.

I was married to Barbara by now. After I got my formal divorce from Lynne, it was either get hitched or go our ways. I wasn’t
ready for that. I loved her, and she did me. We thought marriage was the missing ingredient, and we added it to our already-spicy
relationship on October 22, 1967. She was shaking like a leaf as she walked down the aisle at her parents’ house. I thought
she might be scared, but when she got next to me, she said “Goddamn, I’ve got to go to the bathroom.”

Consequently, I didn’t get out and around a lot. But Richie moved into an apartment behind Sue’s, and I would drop over and
see him. I got to be friendly with little Mikey. I’d take him to buy a toy and pick something out. “How ’bout that?” I’d ask
him.

“Well,” he’d say, all of four years old, “that’s a little high-priced.” I think Mikey kind of looked at me as his second dad
for a long time. His real dad always ignored him. One time he came by when Mikey was playing downstairs. He started walking
up to Sue’s. “You better not go inside,” Mikey warned him. “Waylon Jennings is up there and he’ll knock you right back down
them stairs.”

Sue talked about sex till the day she died. She had cancer, several times, but she never let it stop her laughter. They kept
operating, but it was a losing battle. I leased her a house, and took care of her for the last few years of her life, but
there came a time when she just couldn’t stand the pain any longer. Even then, she could let loose that Sue Brewer smile whenever
I walked in the room.

We still give out two music scholarships a year in her name, and in 1984 I helped put together a television special in her
memory. We called it
The Door Is Always Open,
because that’s the way it was at Sue’s house. Roger, Faron Young, Hank Williams Jr., Willie Nelson, Harlan Howard, Mickey
Newbury, and me sat around in a circle and had an old-fashioned guitar pull, singing songs and telling tales about Sue. It
was the best kind of tribute we could make to her.

You could go to a lot of other good-time places to drink and hit on people—and that’s not to say you couldn’t do that at Sue’s—but
the Boar’s Nest was where the music was. Sing her a song, and you had the key to the front door.

Downtown, it was closing time at Tootsie’s Orchid Lounge. Tootsie Bess herself might give you a big chubby welcoming hug when
you came in, but she didn’t care for anybody when the night was over. She’d blow that police whistle, and if you didn’t move
fast enough for her liking, Tootsie would stick you right in the ass with a hat pin. We’d spill out on the sidewalks and cross
the street to Linebaugh’s.

Broadway. On the shores of the Cumberland. Nashville, U.S.A. Beneath the long shadow cast by the Ryman Auditorium, home of
the Grand Ole Opry, everything was happening, played out in a block or two that became a country music mecca for anyone who’d
ever crossed a fiddle with a steel guitar.

There was no Opryland or TNN. No Branson. Nothing had moved away. Nashville was a big small town down there, a place to hang
out, with Ernest Tubb’s Record Shop and Roy Acuff’s museum to watering holes like Tootsie’s and the Wagon Wheel.

Linebaugh’s served as the local cafe. It was the greasy spoon of the world. Their specialty was hot dogs split down the middle
and served on a hamburger bun. There was a big plate-glass window all the way across the front, and you could look in to see
who was there. It was just a square room, with some booths against the wall and tables in the middle. They had lights across
the ceiling, as bright as a power station. It looked like it was daytime, all the time. They probably sold about fifty gallons
of coffee over the course of an evening. Everybody was wired to the gills, staying up, looking for somebody to talk to. People
clustered. You sat wherever you could find a seat.

Once inside, you’d keep an eye peeled on the front door. Besides the folks already in there, one minute Roger Miller might
come strolling through, or the Louvin Brothers, or songwriters like Hank Cochran and Harlan Howard. A big music publisher
would have three people in tow. Marty Robbins was a day sleeper and spent the dark hours at Linebaugh’s. One night, about
three-thirty in the morning, I was sitting there trying to write a song called “The Last Time I Saw Phoenix.” Tom T. Hall
came by; I’d never met him. He was sobering up and pulled over a chair. He ordered a cup of coffee to get him home. I was
about to crash myself.

“What’re you doing?” he asked.

“I’m writing on this song,” I said, and showed him what I had.

“Can I help you?” He came up with a great verse, and part of another verse, and I finished that off. That’s all we said to
each other. We wrote the song and didn’t even ask “How you been?” I didn’t see him again for another ten years.

When it came time to lift a few, if it wasn’t past her curfew, you’d walk across the street to Tootsies. The backroom was
where the hillbillies hung out, and it was as close to an extra dressing room as the Opry had. On weekend nights it was always
packed with the stars appearing at the Ryman. Hank Williams, Patsy Cline, Cowboy Copas—they all raised a glass there. Their
signatures covered the walls. I wrote my name top to bottom when I had the chance. It’s still there, just like Tootsie’s.

Printer’s Alley, a small string of clubs and strip joints off the main drag of Nashville, was where you went when you wanted
to do it up right (or was it wrong?). It was really an alley, originally home to a big newspaper print shop, and there were
probably eight or nine clubs in a row, mostly pop-oriented cocktail lounges. The Black Poodle alternated between a strip joint
and a country club; Skull’s was run by an old carny; and then there was the Carousel, which Boots Randolph eventually bought.

The Rainbow Room was where a lot of Nashville musicians who worked sessions during the day gathered. Buddy Harman, one of
the greatest Nashville studio drummers, used to play drums for strippers every night at the Rainbow, big names from that era
like Candy Barr and Tempest Storm. When Boots took over the Carousel, he’d run jam sessions, and it wasn’t unusual to see
Chet Atkins on guitar, Floyd Cramer at the keyboard, and Gary Burton on vibes.

I high-tailed a lot with Johnny Darrell when I came to town. He was a fishing buddy of Bare’s, and a runaround buddy of mine,
with a real rich baritone. He could smell a good song from twenty miles away, though he got to be very bitter, because he
would find these great tunes and record them, and along would come a bigger artist and cover them and have the hit. It was
like he was making demos for the stars. Johnny wasn’t on a major label. His first record was “Green, Green Grass of Home,”
but I used to love to hear him sing “My Elusive Dreams,” “Hickory Holler’s Tramp,” and “With Pen in Hand.” He found “Ruby,
Don’t Take Your Love to Town” and gave it to me. Billy Reynolds was another friend. I knew Kris Kristofferson, but he was
too bashful when I was around. He was so shy he never wanted to play me his songs. He would hang out with Richie more than
he would me. He loved me and John, and one time when I got mad at “Cash” during a recording session and moved out, Kris thought
that was the most awful thing that could happen.

There was Leon Ashley, the frustrated preacher. Whenever he’d get drunk he’d start feeling guilty that he’d quit preaching.
The next thing you knew he’d be singing hymns at the top of his lungs. Mack—Basil MacDavid, who worked with me and the Waylors—was
around. So was Richie. With his long Beatle haircut, he had a girl in every bar. They were forever crying on my shoulder.
I’d have to tell them he hated the thought of marriage. He’d been married one time, for about three or four months, and was
really bitter about it. A whole three months; how could it get that bad? “She was terrible,” he used to say. “I ain’t never
doing that no more.” Like me, it took him a long time to get it right. But he liked the ladies, and for their part, the girls
had it made. Everybody would hit the road, and then somebody else would come to town. Those gals had a fresh batch every week.

The whole town went into overdrive at the end of October when the country music disc jockeys held their annual convention.
It had started when a dozen of the most influential country disc jockeys in America—Smokey Smith from Des Moines, Cracker
Jim Brooker from down at WMIE in Miami, Nelson King at WCKY in Cincinnati, Dal Stallard from Kansas City, Joe Allison from
WMAK in Nashville—held a meeting to exchange ideas. Like the apostles, they founded a church: the Country Music Disc Jockey
Association, which later became the roots of the Country Music Association as we know it today.

These weren’t just radio announcers. All the disc jockeys promoted shows in their area, and there wasn’t one country artist
in Nashville who could have his or her records played without working for the affiliated stations that played their records.
It was a very cozy, inbred system.

Soon, with four or five thousand disc jockeys gathering under one roof, the record companies discovered it was a perfect way
to showcase their artists. They’d host suites with free booze and food, open all day and all night. It just kept getting wilder.
They made sure the disc jockeys went home remembering what a great time they’d had in Nashville, in the hopes they’d play
their records for the rest of the year.

Nobody went to bed for a week. We’d terrorize the town. Everybody was drunk, everybody was high, everybody was everything.
In the hotels, all the rooms had their doors open, and each had a little guitar pull going. People wandered the halls. You
never knew who you would run into around the next corner.

I performed there as a new RCA artist. Lynne came up with me from Phoenix, and I was on the same show as Willie. Hank Locklin
was the older, more established artist headlining. Hank was sitting right beside me and across from Lynne, talking about that
beautiful red-headed woman over there. “Look at her,” he kept saying. “She is so goddamn fine. I wonder who that is.”

I allowed him to go on for a while, but finally I had to let him in on the secret. “Well, she’s my wife.”

Hank didn’t bat an eye. “She reminds me so much of my daughter,” he said, real quick.

I was walking with Barbara along the hall from the apartment I shared with John to the apartment I shared with her. We were
having it out, for a change. The more she yelled, the quieter I got.

Barbara’s hair was down that day. It was long, almost three feet down the small of her back, and I caught it from the corner
of my eye, swinging in an arc. She had her hand back and cocked. She went plumb to Fort Worth to get that punch. I turned
around just in time for her to hit me right in the chin.

You do see stars. I felt my knees go. My first instinct was to fight back. She covered up her face like I was going to pop
her one in return. But I got tickled when I thought of her stretched out, hair flying, eyes squinting, five foot ten inches
of long tall girl taking aim at me. I just cracked up laughing.

Really, it was Barbara who never knew what hit her. I’d taken her out of Phoenix, in the West where she felt at home, and
brought her to Nashville. Transplanted, her desert flower couldn’t blossom; she just sat in the apartment all day. She hated
Music City: what I was, what I was doing. She had a lot of innocence about her, and the music business brought out all her
insecurities. She just knew that any minute someone was going to come along and I was going to run off. She thought I was
going to be a big star and want to leave her.

She didn’t stand a chance. Barbara was a good woman, but she got me at a point where I didn’t trust women. She deserved a
better shot than she got. We fought like cats and dogs. When she got hysterical, I didn’t know what else to do but clam up.
I wouldn’t argue. It was something I’d learned from Lynne.

Barbara and I never got along on the road, and my drug use didn’t help. She didn’t use drugs; none of my wives did. I’d be
up all night, roaming around, and she’d get disgusted and storm home. Then she’d get all torn apart not knowing what I was
doing, and suspecting what I was up to. She didn’t want to be in hotels; she couldn’t take me on the stage, with the girls
at my feet, throwing themselves at me. Everywhere we went, there was a town full of females. That just drove her up a tree.

Yet she had a tender heart. If she saw a bird with a broken wing, she’d take it home and try to feed it and nurse it back
to health. When it died, it was a traumatic experience for her. She couldn’t even step on an ant accidentally. Maybe she hoped
that deep down inside I was some sort of stray cat that needed taking care of, looking for a home to be content. Love is like
a mirror sometimes; we only see our own reflection.

She wanted me to settle down and be a husband. Barbara was the only daughter of a very rich man, and her father once offered
me anything I wanted if I would just make his daughter happy. He wanted to give me enough money so I wouldn’t have to travel,
or even work. “I’m buying blue sky” was the way he put it. I don’t blame him, though. That’s what she had in mind, getting
me away from the music business. The very thing that drew her to me she wanted to change. She couldn’t separate me from my
image. She couldn’t separate the music from the man.