Waylon (19 page)

Chet wasn’t wrong. You wait all of your life to be able to go to Nashville and record with the likes of Chet Atkins. He’d
hire the best musicians, guys like Jerry Reed on lead guitar, Fred Carter Jr. on dobro, Ray Eddington on rhythm guitar, Charlie
McCoy on harp, or piano players like Floyd Cramer or Hargus “Pig” Robbins. I always thought you could’ve had a piano player
that owned the world if he’d have Pig’s left hand and Floyd’s right. Ray Stevens would play keyboards and do harmony. Sometimes
it made it harder to get my point across. Bobby Bare had told Chet when he went to record for him that he didn’t want any
well-known musicians to play on his sessions. “Who am I to go up to Grady Martin and say ’Don’t play it like that, play it
like this,’ ’Bobby would tell me. It wasn’t his place, nor was it mine.

Bobby had told Chet that the best way to record me was with my band, but after the first session or two, Chet got nervous
and called in the studio pickers. In his view, he probably had a point. Bands that work in clubs with the artist aren’t very
fast about learning new arrangements, or changing things on the spot.

Chet called it the Shotgun Method, and it had been around in country music since the twenties. It was partly an offshoot of
recording in radio stations, like WSM, with one microphone in the middle of the room and ten people grouped around it, and
the need to get four songs in three hours. Part of it was convenience, because the hits kept coming. Part of it was because
there wasn’t a lot of competition, and part of it was that country records didn’t sell all that much in the sixties unless
you went “pop,” which was considered a dirty word.

Chet would get together with me and discuss who to hire in the studio, and we would wait to get to the session to work out
the arrangement. At first I was a little hesitant about suggesting things, but Chet appreciated ideas. He believed that, in
the record business, you sell an awful lot of records by not following trends; instead, the idea was to start a trend of your
own. We both had the same idea, but we were coming at it from different directions. The important thing was to find somebody
who was different, and unusual and appealing, and he thought I had an individual manner. “I found myself a star” was about
the way he put it.

You sang the song as it went down. You had about one overdub, and I could do my own harmony, but most of the time it was live
in the studio. On one side would be the musicians; on the other would be the background singers. I’d be in a little booth.
Chet usually stayed in the control room, head down, concentrating. He didn’t like to play on his own sessions, preferring
instead to keep his attention on getting a good sound and the balance he wanted.

One time he did pick his guitar on a session of mine. When he was done, I laid back and shrugged my shoulders. “Chet, that
sounds pretty good.…”

We’d gather around the piano before we started and sing the song over and over, structuring the arrangement. Chet and I talked
over which particular effects or licks we wanted to use. He was a more open producer than someone like Owen Bradley. Owen
made very clean, precise records, mostly telling people what to play. Chet was too modest for that. It was always easier for
him to let the musicians express themselves. They all liked and admired him, and they wanted to help him get a hit. To the
musicians, Chet was an equal, and they appreciated the fact that he could probably execute anything he wanted to as well if
not better than they could.

Chet listened to the musicians; he would watch their expressions to see what was going on. He listened to everybody, which
is probably why he was a great producer. He was making so damn many records, though, juggling twenty or thirty acts, that
he could hardly concentrate on each one. Still, despite his many artists, as well as his executive duties at RCA, he would
always look to get something different in each record, trying to spot something in the rhythm section he could feature, to
make the record sound distinctive.

One of the ways we did that was with the twelve-string guitar. I like to think I helped introduce the instrument to the Nashville
Sound. After I finished
Folk-Country,
I gave Chet a twelve-string, and he gave me the guitar that’s on the front of that album. They weren’t the luckiest of instruments:
His was stolen, and mine met an undeserved fate at Barbara’s hands, smashed against the wall during an argument. Chet also
got the idea of using a Spanish dobro on records from me. When he heard “Four Strong Winds,” he picked up on a guitar lick
of mine that sounded a lot like a dobro. When he did Bobby’s version, he put Jerry Reed on the instrument, having him fret
it with his fingers instead of playing it with a bar. He was sure that helped make it a hit.

I had most of my second album,
Leaviri’ Town,
recorded in the February before I left Phoenix. On the last session of the three in which we cut things like “(That’s What
You Get) For Lovin’ Me” and “Taos, New Mexico,” Chet came up with the left-field idea of doing a version of the Beatles’ “Norwegian
Wood.” It was this kind of unpredictability that endeared Chet to me. He loved those Beatles tunes, and I did too. After all,
the Beatles were indirectly named after Buddy Holly’s Crickets. I think I had probably done the song a few times at J.D.’s.
John Cash remembers me singing it there.

Chet did the arrangement on “Anita, You’re Dreaming” because I was too close to that song. He loved that song better than
anything, and he usually agreed with my choice of material. It takes a big load off an A&R man’s mind when you come in ready
to cut. A couple of times Chet would find a song and play it for me. He picked material by what he liked. If he heard a song
and thought, boy, that’s clever, he went with the gut feeling and never second-guessed himself. He always followed his first
impression, and he could surprise you.

Being a musician, Chet had to learn about caring for lyrics. He’d always listened to the music instead of the words, but as
a producer, he saw how important it was to understand what the singer was singing. Words are so important to country music,
you need to hear every one. He always tried to get artists to enunciate clearly, and I agreed with him. There are at least
three different ways of saying the words “beautiful” and “darling,” and each has a different meaning.

Hank Thompson, the western swing bandleader from Waco, Texas, was the first one I noticed who pronounced his phrases perfectly.
In fact, he might have overdone it a little. Though he started out on WACO as Hank the Hired Hand, he was well-educated and
would use big words in his songs; big for our neck of the woods, anyway. I think his Brazos Valley Boys were the greatest
swing band ever, and he was a superb showman. Hank’s “Wild Side of Life” was hitting number one in 1952, just about when I
was digging deep into my guitar; and though I never sounded like him, I always respected his perspicacity. What’d I say?

The first proper album that I recorded after I was living in Nashville was a tribute to Harlan Howard’s songwriting. In two
sessions spaced a week apart, on May 24 and June 1, 1966, the Waylors and I did twelve of Harlan’s numbers, one right after
the other. We rehearsed the album the night before each recording session, setting the band up in Harlan’s office with a small
two-track tape recorder. Don Davis helped on the arrangements. Some had been big hits and some hadn’t. One of my favorites
was “Beautiful Annabel Lee,” which Harlan wrote after the Edgar Allan Poe poem. And I’m not sure we ever beat the office version
of “She Called Me Baby,” despite all the leakage and phones ringing and general mayhem.

All of our recording was done in RCA Studios. This was strict company policy, etched in magnetic tape. Chet thought there
was nothing wrong with that. “Studios are all alike,” he told me. “Same equipment, everything.” But even at RCA, there were
differences. Studio B was an older studio, with a reputation for warmth, a long room with a control room where the speakers
had room to pump. Studio A was narrower and bigger, with high ceilings and a brighter sound. I cut more in Studio A, as a
rule.

If truth be told, Chet and I respected each other’s intelligence. I always had ideas, and he liked watching me make them happen.
He wanted to see where I was going. I didn’t know how much room he gave me until he used me on some other sessions, playing
twelve-string. I watched these other artists who didn’t bring anything to the table. They just went in there and Chet had
to do all the work, arranging and everything. They were just standing there, waiting for their chance to sing.

Gradually, though, I think I made Chet nervous. It was drugs, more than anything.

He hated that, period. The first thing Bobby Bare had warned me was “Don’t tell Chet you do drugs. If he asks if you take
pills, tell him no.” So, of course, about the third time I visited with Chet, he asked me if I did drugs. I thought, well,
I’m not going to start this out wrong. I said yeah. Godomighty, he was mad. From then on, he was watching me. He didn’t know
how to deal with that, and he couldn’t stand to see somebody throw their life away.

He did not understand drugs, and he didn’t understand people on them. Chet didn’t want to understand them. He’d been through
Don Gibson, and then Roger, and then here I come. Chet was from East Tennessee, where they drink moonshine all the time. When
he thought high, he thought whiskey. He never took a pill in his life. “I think you got so many beats in your heart,” he’d
say. “Why shorten them?”

Don Gibson had pretty much run Chet around the block. A notable songwriter and performer with such songs as “Oh Lonesome Me”
and “Sweet Dreams,” the latter of which he wrote for Patsy Cline, you could often find him flat on his back in Studio B, trying
to do a vocal by singing up at the microphone. Chet even had an agreement that if Don couldn’t perform in the studio, they’d
call the session off.

One night, Don was having “trouble singing,” and Chet came out to ask if they might not be better off postponing the session.
“We’ll get together another time,” he said, and on the way back to the control room, he mentioned to Don’s girlfriend at the
time that “Don’s not straight tonight, and we can’t record.” She slapped him in the face, right across the mouth. Upholding
her honor, Don threw his guitar on the floor and took up a karate pose. “I’ll kill you,” he said. Chet didn’t know what to
do. He couldn’t run. He just stood there. After they faced off for a moment, Don untensed and decided not to hit him. The
night wound up with the Browns chasing the girl down the hall, yelling “You bitch, you can’t hit Chet Atkins!”

It was that kind of manic pressure that started driving Chet crazy. He was a musician; he didn’t like being an executive—the
paperwork, the bottom-line pressure. He found it very difficult to go out and tell a singer “You’re flat on this note,” or
that he would have to drop them from the label because they weren’t selling. It tore his insides out. He was an artist himself,
and he empathized with their fears, hopes, and desires. He took it all too much to heart.

Some of the performers had trouble with their husbands and wives, and would come to him to talk about it. When Skeeter Davis
and Ralph weren’t getting along, she spent more time asking Chet advice about her troubles than being in the studio.

I was no different. When I’d get high, I would want to go and see him, knowing full well that he hated talking to people who
were on pills. Mary, his secretary, would try to intercede and head me off in another direction. She later married Felton
Jarvis; but at the time I knew her, she had the sexiest, prettiest voice. She answered the phone, and that “hello” would melt
you. Sometimes I think I went to the office just to catch a glimpse of her. In the beginning, Mary saved my ass so many times.
She maneuvered me away from Chet, got my attention diverted somewhere else, and kept us both protected.

The pills built up my courage. When I was normal, I guess I felt a little worshipful of Chet. If I was comfortable with him
in the studio, I was equally uncomfortable in his office, and maybe the drugs were a way I could tell him some of the things
that were on my mind. Music meant so much to me, and I’d get high to have enough nerve to talk. I might’ve been seeking approval.
I might’ve been tempting fate. I knew I was wrong, and he knew I knew, and when I knew he knew, we started to like each other
a little bit less.

Visiting Chet was like sticking my head into the jaws of the lion. I have to give him credit for patience. He could’ve said,
Hey, I’m not going to mess with you. You’re out of here. Anytime.

But he stayed with me, because he knew when to let things take their natural course and when to let me find my way. His sensitivity
was such that he cared, and always let somebody try what was on their mind. When we cut “The Chokin’ Kind,” in April of 1967,
Harlan Howard had just written it. We listened to the demo, which was simply Harlan and his guitar, and when we headed into
the studio, Jerry Reed got excited over the song. Him and Harlan got to running the session, and when they finished, it hadn’t
turned out the way I heard it at all. They’d just taken the song away from me.

I was so depressed. I loved that song, because it was really where I was at in my life at that time: “Well, I’d only meant
to love you, don’t you know it babe.” Mary heard that I was feeling bad, drowning my sorrows in some downtown club, and she
called and asked me what was wrong. “That session,” I told her. “They just did it and it’s done with and I didn’t even get
a chance to make my feelings known. They ruined my song.”

She called Chet and he tracked me down. He said, “Don’t ever leave the studio like that again. I will stay all night long
with you, but don’t let that happen. You come tell me that it’s not right.” He knew what music was meant to be, and how much
I cared, no matter what shape I was in.

The next morning I came back to the studio; we were scheduled for another session. “What are we going to do?” the band asked.