Honky Tonk Angel (4 page)

They were runners-up. Not long after, Virginia showed the photographer a letter she’d written to the Opry to ask for an audition. She said, “A friend thinks I’m crazy to send it. What do you think?”

“By all means, do it,” Grubbs replied. “You’ve got everything to gain and nothing to lose. You’re better than some of the singers I’ve heard on the Opry!”

A couple of weeks later, Patsy got an answer from the Grand Ole Opry asking for pictures and a recording. She went to Grubbs and asked how much he’d charge to take her picture.

“I can’t rightly figure until I know exactly what you want and how much I’ll shoot. But it’ll be reasonable.”

“Will it be okay if I pay you something each week when I get back?” she pleaded. “I’ve got just enough money saved to make the trip, but I don’t know what Mama’s going to say about all this.”

Grubbs agreed. They did the session one afternoon and Virginia was in the studio the next day to select the prints.

“Hey, Virginia,” Grubbs said, “I told you a couple of days’!”

When he saw how disappointed Patsy was, Grubbs told her to return the next day and he’d have everything ready. She was there at the appointed time and selected her pictures.

“Okay, Mr. Grubbs, now tell me the bad news. How much?”

He looked at her real serious and said, “Well, let’s see.” Grubbs flipped through the pictures, as if tabulating the cost. “Virginia, I hope you agree this is fair.” He paused, then handed her the pictures. “This is a gift. It’s my contribution to getting you started in your career.”

“Oh, Mr. Grubbs, thank you! Thanks so very much!” And she reached up and hugged him.

Now Patsy worried about getting a recording. Grubbs told her he’d speak to Bob Gaines, a partner in the G&M Music Store on West Boscawen. He agreed to make the recording for free. There was no tape then. Gaines had a machine that fed a guitar string—type wire over a magnetized head.

Wally Fowler, an all-but-forgotten pioneer of the gospel caravans that traveled across the Midwest and Southeast, and his Oak Ridge Quartet were famed for their hillbilly and gospel All-Night Sings broadcast live from the Ryman Auditorium following the Grand Ole Opry. His appearance at Winchester’s Palace Theatre on South Loudoun was an event among country fans and one fan in particular. Virginia had mapped out her route to Nashville, and was about to put it into effect.

It was a night Mrs. Hensley would never forget.

“I was preparing supper when Virginia came in and put her arm around me. I thought, ‘What’s she got up her sleeve?’ She said, ‘Mama, Wally Fowler’s in town and I’m going to see if I can get on his show.’ I looked at her and asked, ‘You’re going to do what? Now, listen, Virginia!’ But she was used to that. I could see no force on earth could stop her.”

At the Palace stage door, Virginia asked to see Fowler and the attendant laughed. No way! She knew an usher, who sneaked her past the ticket taker and pointed the way backstage. Suddenly, there he was coming toward her.

“Mr. Fowler, can I audition for you?”

“Who’s this girl?” he assailed one of his entourage.

“My name’s Virginia Hensley.”

“What do you want?”

“I sing.”

“Is that right? Boys, she sings!”

“Mr. Fowler, let me—”

“So you think you can sing?”

“Yes, sir. I know so. I’d like you to tell me what you think.”

“Okay, young lady, you sing and I’ll tell you what I think!”

“Oh, Mr. Fowler, you mean it?”

“Yeah. Sing!”

“Just like this?”

“Just like this.”

“But—”

“But
what
? You wanna back down now that I’m giving you your big chance?”

“Well—”

“Are you gonna sing? I got a show to do.”

“Okay.”

She sang. Fowler listened. And that very night Miss Virginia Hensley made her theatrical debut. When Fowler introduced Virginia as his discovery from Winchester, she entered to a wild burst of applause for the hometown girl. She sang and captivated everyone.

When Patsy got home, Mrs. Hensley was in bed. “She came into my room very quietly and told me, ‘Mama, we got company.’ I said, ‘What? Now, listen, Virginia, it’s eleven o’clock!’ She replied, ‘It’s Wally Fowler.’ I answered, ‘Wally Fowler. You’ve got to be kidding.’

“I got up, put a robe on and went into the living room. And there was Wally Fowler. I nearly dropped dead!”

“Now don’t let me interrupt anything, ma’am,” Fowler said. “I just wanted to talk to you about Virginia. She wants to be a singer on the Grand Ole Opry.”

“Yes, sir.”

“She has an amazing voice. I’d like to arrange an audition for her in Nashville with WSM Radio and the Opry officials.”

As Fowler explained what he would do, Virginia got more and more excited. Mrs. Hensley wasn’t in favor of the plan but finally capitulated.

“He left that night and I honestly never expected we’d hear from him. It was all Virginia talked about for days and days. She kept saying, ‘Mama, if Wally Fowler came over here, he must have liked the way I sing.’ I prayed that God in His eternal wisdom would have Mr. Fowler call so I could have some peace.”

Of course, Mrs. Hensley didn’t know Fowler had a reputation of “discovering” young girl singers in the towns he played. He’d audition them and they’d never hear from him again.

“When I next saw Virginia at Gaunt’s,” said Grubbs, “she was preparing to go to Nashville. I didn’t know whether the audition was a result of her letter or Wally Fowler’s visit.”

Mrs. Hensley reported, “Mr. Fowler was a man of his word. He took a genuine interest in Patsy. He called and asked if I could bring Virginia to Nashville for an
audition at WSM Radio. We were to see Jim Denny, the general manager of the Opry. I knew I’d be a goner if I said no, so I agreed. Mr. Fowler called back in a few days with the arrangements.”

It was two weeks later, on a Friday morning. “The trip was nearly eight hundred miles and our old car wouldn’t make it. A friend took us. The Gaunts gave Patsy the day off. I had no one to leave Sylvia Mae and Sammy with, so we took them along. Since we had no money for a motel, we drove all Thursday night.

“Oh, dear, what a mess it was! Virginia was fidgety, the kids were fidgety, I was fidgety and we drove our friend fidgety.”

They arrived on the outskirts of Nashville as the sun was rising and pulled into a picnic area. Virginia saw the tables and said, “Mama, I’m tired. I’m gonna take a nap.” On the way into town, they stopped at an Esso station to wash up.

“There we were in this tiny cubicle,” Mrs. Hensley recalled, “with the kids doing one thing or another and Virginia trying to change into her good dress and put on makeup.”

Patsy spoke of the incident later to Del Wood. In the Ryman Auditorium “girl singers’ dressing room” (nothing more than a tiny restroom), she joked, “Before I ever came to the Opry, I had a better dressing room than this. And it was a crapper, too!”

The Grand Ole Opry, since its inception on November 28, 1925, has been a revered institution and show-business phenomenon.

The National Life and Accident Insurance Company’s Nashville radio station WSM—its call letters reflecting the firm’s goals: “We Shield Millions”—began broadcasting that October with a thousand watts of power, one of only two such stations in the South. George D. Hay, a Chicago announcer calling himself “the solemn old judge,” had originated the WLS Barn Dance. When he joined WSM, he launched the WSM Barn Dance.

WSM, an NBC affiliate, carried “The Music Appreciation Hour” hosted by composer and Metropolitan Opera conductor Dr. Walter Damrosch. Hays followed with three hours of country music. One night, Damrosch, citing the need for realism in classical music, presented a young Iowa composer who, with symphony backing, depicted the onrush of a locomotive.

Judge Hay, not to be outdone by a Yankee, said to his listeners upon signing on: “Dr. Damrosch told us it is generally agreed that there is no place in the classics for realism. However, for the next three hours we will present nothing but realism. It will be down to earth for the earthy.” At the close of a solo by DeFord Bailey, a black harmonica wizard, Hay intoned, “For the past hour we have been listening to music taken largely from grand opera, but from now on we will present the Grand Ole Opry.”

Crowds from throughout Tennessee and the South clogged the corridors of WSM at Seventh Avenue and Union Street in downtown Nashville. This popularity led to the construction of the 500-seat Studio C.

When WSM could no longer accommodate the throngs, the Opry moved to the
Hillsboro Theatre in southwest Nashville. The Opry’s next home, in 1929, was the Dixie Tabernacle across the Cumberland River in east Nashville.

The setting of splintery benches and sawdust on the floor was ideal but within two years the Opry was on the move again. At the new War Memorial Auditorium, near the state capitol, twenty-five cents admission was charged in an effort to curb the ever-growing crowds. It was no deterrent. The weekly fans averaged more than three thousand and many in the overflow crowds had traveled long distances.

In 1943, the Grand Ole Opry relocated to Fourth Avenue near lower Broadway in the Ryman Auditorium. Riverboat captain Tom Ryman had built it in 1831 as a tabernacle for a preacher he heckled and who subsequently brought him to the Lord. The Opry quickly became the most popular and strongest single voice for the propagation of country music. (It remained there until 1974 when it moved to a 4,400-seat theatrical and television facility in the Opryland music theme park, now owned by Oklahoma-based Gaylord Entertainment.)

So it was with trepidation that Virginia Hensley came to her audition with “the biggest country music program in all of the United States.” “But,” noted Mrs. Hensley, “if she was nervous, you could have fooled me.”

Virginia had to see the Ryman Auditorium and take pictures.

“Mama, I thought it would be bigger.”

“Honey, maybe it is. This is only the outside.”

At the stroke of nine in the WSM Radio offices, Mrs. Hensley asked for Jim Denny, who ushered Virginia into a studio and introduced her to pianist Moon Mullican. She screamed, “Oh, my God, Moon Mullican.”

“Yes, ma’am, that’s me—the Moon Mullican part anyway!”

Mullican, a deft Texas musician who adapted the blues to suit a swinging country beat, had the tag King of the Hillbilly Piano Players. In over six hundred releases, he had numerous best-sellers, including the standard “New Jole Blon,” written with Lou Wayne. Ernest Tubb noted that Mullican’s playing style became synonymous with country music.

“Don’t let all these big shots running around scare you,” Mullican advised Virginia. “They’re just like me and you. Stay calm and just be sincere.”

When she began singing, Mullican looked up from the piano in great surprise. Denny, having auditioned other Wally Fowler “finds,” was impressed. She sang another song, and then Denny and Mullican conferred. Denny asked the Hensleys to return the next morning so other executives could hear Virginia. Mrs. Hensley stated her situation with the children, her friend, and the borrowed car but was too embarrassed to say she didn’t have the money to stay over. Nor did Denny volunteer any.

“It wasn’t an easy decision,” she admitted. “I felt I was holding Virginia’s future in my hands. It was obvious their reaction was positive.” Mullican even remarked that Virginia would be one of the youngest performers to appear on the Opry.

Roy Acuff came in and asked Mullican whom he’d heard singing. “Roy, I want you to meet Miss Virginia Hensley from Winchester, Virginia. Y’all, this is Roy Acuff.” Mrs. Hensley noted that, for once, her daughter was speechless.

“Virginia, that’s one of the sweetest voices I’ve ever heard,” Acuff said. “I’m
hosting ‘Noon-Time Neighbors.’ Will you do me the honor of singing a little song?” Virginia managed to utter, “Oh, Mr. Acuff! Yes, sir!”

After the show, Denny and Mrs. Hensley spoke. He needed more time. She told him it wasn’t possible to spend the night. Denny advised them to stay put while he tried to locate some people.

“I knew Virginia had her heart set,” she said. “I thought maybe the others could go back and we’d take the bus, but I only had enough money for gas to get us home. Things began to drag into late afternoon. It looked like whatever Mr. Denny wanted to do would take a while. Finally, when we hadn’t heard anything, I took Virginia aside and told her we’d have to leave but that we could always come back. She took the news better than I expected.” They returned to Winchester. “We never got a letter or call from Mr. Denny or anyone,” Mrs. Hensley said, piqued. “I thought that was a shame. He let us down.”