It Wasn’t Hazel Smith’s Story After All
Last week I gushed over a book of fictional stories and “true” recollections by country songwriters called A Guitar and a Pen. I was particularly effusive about the tale of Bill Monroe’s encounter with Frank Sinatra at the White House, which the book — and I, in turn — identified as having been written by CMT.com’s Hazel Smith. Hazel just told me that while the core of the story is true, she didn’t write it. Nor did she accompany Monroe on the trip to Washington, as the story says. These substantial departures from fact call into question all the other pieces presented as real happenings.
I first read of the Monroe-Sinatra meeting in 2000 in Richard D. Smith’s Can’t You Hear Me Callin’: The Life of Bill Monroe. In that telling, the person accompanying Monroe to the White House was his booking agent, Tony Conway. Hazel assures me that Conway should have gotten credit for the story and that she should have been left out, even though she did have a long and close friendship with Monroe. I used to teach literary criticism to college students, so I can deal with the elasticity of imaginative fiction. But it distresses me when real people and real events are joined in such a way that renders them fictional but labels them true.
In an e-mail to me, the book’s co-editor, Robert Hicks, explains the deceptions thusly: “First of all, it is simply one of the best ‘tales’ any of us have ever heard to come out of Nashville. It has always seemed to be the great urban myth of the music industry. … Secondly, it was very important to me, given her often unsung role in so much of the industry’s history, that Hazel be in the mix.” So truth doesn’t matter?
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OutlawSteph says:
Strange. I can’t comprehend how anyone can lie about their presence at important historical events in country music and expect to get away with it. I might have read this book. Thanks for the warning. It isn’t worth the paper it is printed on. Smith’s status as a writer for this website should be evaluated. There is a lot of talent out there in music journalism. Some of the writers from No Depression might need some work. Yes, the truth counts for everything.
-Stephanie
Gnossos says:
That’s not entirely how it happened. I’m familiar with what happened, and I think I can clear some things up.
First, Robert Hicks did not invent this story. Hazel Smith did, and has been telling it for years.
Second, Hazel Smith wanted to be in the anthology, but didn’t want to actually write down one of her stories. Hicks volunteered to write down one of her stories for her.
Third, Hazel Smith is being paid for her contribution. When it came time to sign the contract, she was offered the opportunity to read and edit her story. She refused.
Fourth, On March 17, Hazel was so excited about her contribution to the anthology, that she wrote about it in her “Hot Dish” feature on CMT News: http://www.cmt.com/news/hot-dish/1583468/hot-dish-alan-jackson-and-ashton-shepherd-excel-with-their-new-albums.jhtml
Fifth, because Hicks did not invent this story — Hazel Smith did — errors of fact are Hazel Smith’s. Hicks merely volunteered to help an old friend (and they are very old friends) by writing down her story for her, at her request. There are dozens of people in Nashville who have heard her tell that story just that way, with all of those so-called “facts”.
Hicks agreed to include her story in the anthology, and even did the work of writing down the story she often told to the best of his recollection. He offered her the opportunity to edit it, to make sure he’d put down the story as she remembered it, and she refused. And he did this all out of real love for Hazel Smith. He has a picture of Hazel Smith above his desk, for heaven’s sake. He’s had her sons out to the house to play for industry folks, to help them out.
They’ve been friends for many years, and now she throws him under the bus. Very nice and very Christian of her.