I settled into life at my grandma’s pretty easily. She wasn’t up my ass as much as my mom would have been, and that was a blessing. In this slightly more relaxed atmosphere I was better able to lie about the completion of my homework assignments. That left plenty of time for the important things like television and my afterschool play activities. My youngest aunt had married and left home (she and her husband lived in my family’s house while mom and dad were away), and I had run of the granny’s house.
At first the music I was exposed to came mostly from television. Aside from the usual sources like Ed Sullivan or some other variety show, I began to listen more intently to television theme music than before. Some of that changed because of a friend of my middle aunt’s who became a regular visitor at granny’s, and who was also an Elvis fan. She brought by the great Doc Pomus song Surrender performed by The King. Granny hated the song, but I liked it and wanted to revisit the Elvis collection. After some snooping, I was able to find a cache in a special, plastic Elvis folder that my youngest aunt had left behind. The old Phillips record player was hidden nearby, so I started jamming right away.
I was unfamiliar with many of the songs I found, and some of the 45’s had as many as six songs, three per side, on them. Looking back, I suppose these were re-issues of some sort, packaged for youngsters who didn’t own stereos. Whatever the case, they made me happy.
I guess Elvis made my grandmother happy, too, because she had seen G.I. Blues and Blue Hawaii while I summered in Norfolk, and since the stereo was still around, someone had purchased the LP soundtracks to those movies. I played the Elvis titles, and the patriotic songs from a Johnny Horton LP, in regular rotation.
Now anyone who lived in the south between the early 60’s and early 80’s also had another musical source in the telecasts of regional (and some nationally known) artists on Saturday afternoons (I believe they were broadcast on WATE, Channel 6 from Knoxville, though I believe they all originated in Nashville). The constant was Flatt & Scruggs and The Wilburn Brothers, but there were also others like Porter Wagoner and The Stonemans, all of whom played country music or bluegrass. I really liked these shows, but they were a bit like soap operas in that if you watched them only once a month you caught all the new music on tap because they held onto the same playlists for at least that long. A few of these shows, Porter Wagoner’s and Arthur Smith’s, for instance, found places in local stations’ 7 PM time slots, so you really couldn’t miss them.
I must backtrack a minute to mention my dad’s taste and influence. Dad was a country guy through and through. He could play a little on guitar, and he sang several songs (his favorite seemed to be Down in the Mines). Whenever I rode with dad he always listened to some country station. When I was younger I liked it, but liked it a little less so in my teens. Both he and mom fell in love with the music of Jim Reeves, and I liked it, too. There’ll be more about dad later.
Things went along at my granny’s pretty much as I described for awhile. Granny loved country music just like my dad, and we listened to a Sweetwater station with a country format as much for weather and school information as anything else. I still got to hear a little bit of new pop music on the radio of a gray 1951 Chevy parked in the family carport. The Chevy had the kind of ignition that would turn without the key. One day I turned it and the radio came on. I knew the battery would eventually go down, so it was used sparingly.
My grades during that first complete year with my grandmother took a nosedive. Some of the cause, I suppose, could be attributed to the separation from the routines of my parents, but I’m convinced that most of it had to do with competing interests. In addition to music and television were the movies, comics, and toys. I assure you that no homework assignment could possibly outshine any leisure pastime. The fun of the world was all the diversion I needed.
Going to the movies on Saturday afternoons might seem harmless, and in the big picture it was, but some movies stuck with me past their view dates. I saw The Three Stooges, Elvis, and lots of drive-in fare at the beautiful old Hollywood Theatre, right next to The Big Chief Restaurant. Always attracted to smart mouthed dialog and jokes, I oft carried wise guy lingo and manner home and to school after such a viewing experience. Other influences included the people who came to town to see the show. Of course I saw quite a few from my neighborhood since it was walking distance away, and that meant that kids from all directions of walking distance also came.
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