Devil Sent the Rain (7 page)

“Leave your bags in your car,” he said. “I gotta do an errand here; you can come with me.”

By the time I climbed into his passenger seat, Martin was trying to maneuver the limo into a five-point U-turn so that he could get it out of his driveway. He worked the gear shift, which was on the steering column, with dogged concentration and without saying a word. The hood was as big as a queen-sized bed. On the first leg of the turn the limo stalled, and Martin cursed and restarted it with effort. The car stalled twice more before he got it through the turn; at one point he spun the wheels and they splattered mud all over my car, which was about twenty feet behind the limo. Finally, the turn was completed and we coasted down the driveway with the engine gurgling uncertainly, and out onto the road.

Once we were under way I tried a few conversation openers, but it was like trying to play tennis in the sand. It took three long minutes, driving at about fifteen miles an hour, to get to our destination just off the main road; the back of a one-story brick building where somebody was busy throwing wood and other garbage into an incinerator.

“Wait here,” Martin said, getting out and slamming the door. For the first time I turned and looked in the back area of the limo, which was upholstered in blue velvet, but not very well cared for, littered with scraps of paper and junk. In the middle of the back seat were two giant bags of garbage and a broken crutch. Martin opened the back door, grabbed the garbage, and closed it again. I watched him bring it over to the guy; they stood around talking, inaudibly to me, for about five minutes while I sat in the front seat.

When they were finished Martin got back in without any explanation, and we headed back to the house, with the limo stalling only once more.

The dogs were really whooping it up when we arrived, and Martin hollered at them as we got out and they skulked away quietly. At the end of the driveway stood a big
STOP
sign, with stick-on letters added, reading
BAD DOG WILL BITE TAIL
. I grabbed my bags out of my car and followed Martin inside.

We walked under a carport and through a storm door into an unheated den, where the floor was piled with boxes of cassettes, CDs, an upright bass, sound equipment, and other stuff. I followed him up a few steps, through a door and past a daybed, where a collection of mesh caps of all sorts was displayed, then through another door into a vestibule with a bathroom and a bedroom off of it, which led directly into the kitchen. It was obviously a bachelor's house: clothes were set out to dry on a chair by the heater, and at the Formica kitchen table space would have had to be cleared amid papers, mail-order catalogs, letters, and empty cassette cases to make room for a second person to eat. I unpacked my cassette recorder and notebook while Martin wordlessly looked through some mail, but before we got started I was going to give him the whiskey I had promised him.

I had put some thought into the choice, actually. I had initially bought him a bottle of Knob Creek, a very good Kentucky bourbon. But after I bought it I wondered if there wouldn't be some state loyalty involved in Martin's whiskey preference. He had begun life in Tennessee, after all, and had spent the past twenty-five years living there. Tennessee was the home of the Grand Ole Opry, etc., etc., and for all I knew some kind of horrible blood rivalry might exist between Tennessee and Kentucky. So I went back to the liquor store and picked up a bottle of Gentleman Jack as well, to cover the Tennessee base.

Now I reminded him of the conversation, made a little speech about my rationale for the choice, during which he looked blankly at the bottles, and then I handed the bottles to him, feeling proud of myself.

“I drink Seagram's 7,” he said. Then he walked across the kitchen, stashed the bottles in a cabinet, and that was that.

The interview started slowly. We discussed a few things perfunctorily for a while (Do you have a favorite country singer? “George Jones.” Why? “ 'Cause he's the best.”). He also said he liked Hank Williams, Roy Acuff, Ernest Tubb, Bill Monroe, Lester Flatt and Earl Scruggs, and Marty Stuart. His favorite guitarists were Chet Atkins and Doc Watson. Not Merle Travis? I asked. “Well, yeah, I would have to say Merle Travis. Put Merle Travis in there . . .”

Before long, though, he steered the conversation to what turned out to be his main preoccupation: the fact that he has never been invited to join the Grand Ole Opry. His exclusion clearly causes him pain; he has various theories about why he has been passed by, but he has not given up hope of being asked. He produced letters from a number of people in and out of the music business in which they sang his praises and expressed wonder that he wasn't on it. It is obviously the great frustration of his life. To grasp why, one has to realize that to someone of Martin's generation, who grew up listening to it on the radio, the Opry
was
country music. All the greatest stars were on it; it was the pinnacle of exposure and prestige. Being on the Opry was tantamount to being in a family; being asked to join was the final seal of approval on a performer, an entrance into a pantheon that included all of one's heroes—Hank Williams, Roy Acuff, Bill Monroe, Ernest Tubb, and on and on. Martin has been lobbying for his inclusion for years, and we talked about the question for a good while before I could lead him on to other things.

Once we got past the topic he relaxed a little and actually started to be fun company. He has a good sense of humor, which balances out his tendency to talk about how rough he's had it. He really started to warm up when he talked about hunting. A perfect day, he said, is one on which he can “get my beagle dogs and take 'em out and run 'em and just enjoy their voices.” It turns out that he has named most of his hunting dogs after other country singers. “My beagle dogs,” he said, “are named George Jones, Earl Scruggs, Little Tater Dickens, and Marty Stuart. My coon dogs are Tom T. Hall, Turbo, Cas Walker, Cas Walker Jr. . . .”

“Turbo?” I said.

“He's named after that motor in them hot rods; we say his voice sounds like Number Five just went by.” Martin then did an eerily realistic dog bark—guttural at first, then quickly louder and tapering off, like a loud car passing really fast. “I go out huntin' sometimes with Marty Stuart [referring now to the man, not his canine namesake]. Earl Scruggs just called the other day; he just had a quadruple bypass operation. Little Jimmy Dickens goes hunting rabbits with me. Ain't nothin' no better than a rabbit fried in a skillet, good and brown, and make gravy in the skillet, then make you some biscuits, then you can just tell Kroger's what to do with their steaks.” At this he laughed a beautiful, infectious laugh.

“Country music,” he said, “what makes it is you're singing by the way you've had to live. And if you had a hard life to live, then you sing a hard life song. Then you turn around and sing about how good you wish it
could
have been. When I sing, whether it's recording or at a show, or just sittin' down here with you, I give it all I got from the heart. And if it'd be something sad in there, I've
hit
that sad road. 'Cause I used to be barefooted, no shoes on my feet, had no dad when I was four years old, nobody to give me a dollar to go to a show. Had to walk five miles to town to see a show. We'd get one pair of shoes when it frosted, and time it got warmin' up your toes was walkin' out of 'em. You wore 'em day and night and everywhere you went.

“In writin' songs,” he went on, “you gotta have something good to write
about
. You can't just sit down and say I'm just absolutely gonna write a song out of nowhere—and that's just about the way the song sounds. It has to
hit
you.”

Referring to a recent song he had written, he said, “
That
song started and I'm sittin' on the damn
commode
—all reared back and I start in to write that thing. And I've heard a lot of people say that's where it
started
, on the commode. Well, I'll tell you, the best place to read the newspaper, get you a glass and sit on the goddamn commode and read and read and read and enjoy it better'n anything in the world.” Again he laughed and laughed at this. He was so out front with everything, and I decided I really liked him, even if he was hard to deal with.

I asked him if he had a favorite time in his life. He thought for a second and said, “I was glad that Bill Monroe hired me, but sometimes that was rough there. Traveling six in a car, with the bass tied on top, used to sleep on each other's shoulders, that was the pillow, worked seven days a week, seven nights . . . I guess for enjoyment, when I had Paul Williams and J. D. Crowe with me, on the Louisiana Hayride, and in Wheeling, West Virginia. We could really sing it, really pick it; we had it down just right. J. D. Crowe was fourteen years old. I learned him how to sing baritone and how to tone his voice in with mine. Paul, too. We slept in the same house and could rehearse and get it down like we wanted to.

“Seems like that's when I liked to sing, and . . . We'd ride along in the cars and sing our songs and enjoy it, get it to soundin' good. In those days everybody liked to sing, and liked to hear that harmony, liked to get it better so they could make more money. Playin' in them little bars for five dollars a night and tips. And sayin', ‘Oh, God, please help me get good enough to get out of here.' And
mean
that. Now the boys meet me at the festivals backstage, we show up—“Are you in tune?” “Yeah, let me see if we are”—go on, do the show, and go off . . . It just ain't as good as it was then. And I hate to say this, but it never
will
be, because it's run different. Most of the bands don't even travel in the same car and come to the shows together. They come with their girlfriends, or their wives, or whatsoever, so it's a girlfriend deal, it's not a professional deal. And it shouldn't be like that; business should be
business
. If you're gonna make a living at it.

“They're payin' big money, though,” he said, with a tinge of bitterness audible now. “But there's little rehearsin'.
No
rehearsin', to tell you the truth. My band don't know what it is to rehearse. If they get out there the night before I do, or stay a night after, they might jam out there and play everything in the world, but there's no rehearsin'. Nothin'
serious
. You can't go into a job just laughin' and having fun and expect to show what you're doing. If you're driving a bulldozer you're liable to run over something. You got to have your mind down to the
business
. And I've been told this many times: ‘You just take your music too serious.' I don't see how you could be too serious about somethin' that's gonna feed your family and make you a living the rest of your life. I don't see as you could
get
too serious about that.” At my expression of surprise, Martin said, “The man who said that couldn't
pick
. A man that don't wanta get serious about somethin', he don't wanta get
good
. Am I right?” He was, of course, right, but the pressure behind the way he said it spoke of some buried frustration, a sense of injustice, of not being sufficiently recognized for his own abilities while standards were falling apart all around him . . .

As I was thinking this, he looked at me and said, “But the biggest thing I have been asked by the public is, ‘Why ain't you on the Grand Ole Opry? Why can't we hear you on the Grand Ole Opry?' I just laugh back and I say, ‘Well, I guess I just ain't good enough.' ”

He showed me a photo of a plaque commemorating his induction into the International Bluegrass Music Association Hall of Honor, which he was very proud of. Then we started to wind down. We had gotten along well, after all, and I liked him. He was opinionated as hell, cranky and overbearing, but he was honest and had a great sense of gusto for life, and real passion about his music. He was himself, nothing else, and that alone is hard to come by. Still, I felt we had only scratched the surface, and I wanted to see him in some other context if possible, get a feeling for how he related to other people. He said he enjoyed our conversation, and we talked about getting together again later in the weekend, since I was staying in Nashville until Sunday.

At one point I mentioned that I was going to try and get to see the Grand Ole Opry, and he cautioned me to get my ticket quick if I didn't have one already. Then he suggested that we might go together.

“Really?” I said.

Sure, he said, they all knew him backstage, and we could just go inside that way.

I didn't want to scare him off by seeming too excited about the idea, but it was perfect. He asked me to check and see who was going to be on the Opry, which runs on Friday and Saturday nights, and we agreed to talk about it the next day.

On my way out, walking through the den, Martin gave me two of his cassettes out of a couple of big cardboard boxes, and sold me two more at ten dollars apiece. Then he pointed out a selection of mesh caps in various colors, emblazoned with a “Jimmy Martin—King Of Bluegrass” logo. I chose one in burgundy with gold lettering, which I thought was a bargain at five dollars. Now I had the rest of the day to look around Nashville.

Roughly speaking, Nashville today is at least two towns. First, and best, is downtown, where you can find the old Ryman Auditorium (home of the Grand Ole Opry until its move to suburban Opryland in 1974), the original Ernest Tubb Record Shop (where they used to have the post-Opry broadcasts on Saturday nights after the crowds left the Ryman), Tootsie's Orchid Lounge, and other landmarks. Downtown is the province of the ghosts who make country music something worth thinking about seriously—Hank Williams, Roy Acuff, Lefty Frizzell, and on and on. It attracts the hipper tourists, and musicians with a sense of tradition, as well as quite a few aging, struggling characters in denim, Western shirts, and cowboy boots.