CMT Blog: Archive

In doing interviews to promote my new book, Behind the Grand Ole Opry Curtain, one question comes up repeatedly. The question is, “How did you get interested in country music?” And the answer always fills me with memories of some of the happiest days of my childhood.

During summer and Christmas vacations, the family would travel from Pittsburgh up into the mountains of “Pennsyltucky.” My dad was from Punxsutawney, home of the groundhog. My mother was from DuBois, home of my grandmother’s store, Lowe’s House of Music.

It had creaking oak floors, big glass display cases, an old-time pressed-tin ceiling and a massive brass cash register with a hand crank and a loud bell. She sold sheet music, band uniforms, instruments, records and just about anything else having to do with music, because hers was the only such establishment for miles. Buddy Spicher, a famous musician who is from Clearfield County, bought his first fiddle from my grandma.

In the back room of the store were row after row of jukeboxes and pinball machines being repaired or waiting to be delivered to the taverns and diners my uncles serviced every week in little mill and mining towns.

Depending on the locale, those jukeboxes held R&B records, polka records, easy listening pop records, rock ‘n’ roll records or hillbilly records. I loved to clerk in Grammy’s store, and she paid me in used jukebox 45s.

As a teen, I was completely into soul music. But I never throw records away. The country 45s stayed in a black cardboard carrying case in the back of my closet.

When I went away to college, I began to read about rock music history and saw references to Hank Williams. I thought, “I have records by him.” I went home, dug out those hillbilly records I’d ignored. The passion in Hank’s voice, the pent-up intensity of Kitty Wells, those country-boogie sides by Red Foley, the electrifying harmonies of the Louvin Brothers and those yellow Sun Records by Johnny Cash all moved me deeply. They’d been waiting for me all those years.

I “got it” that country music was soul music, too.

Then I was profoundly touched when I heard the songs of Kris Kristofferson, Merle Haggard, Dolly Parton and Tom T. Hall. I played their records for anyone who would listen. I was like an evangelist, trying to convert others into loving this music. And I’ve been doing it ever since.

Read a chapter from Behind the Grand Ole Opry Curtain.