Reba: My Story (12 page)

Well, the rehearsal started and it was time for me to begin. I strained to maintain an uncomfortably high falsetto as everyone kind of looked around like, “Is this what it’s gonna be like for the next week?”

Stanley Draper from the Oklahoma City Chamber of Commerce heard me straining for the notes, and went to see Clem. Clem took up for me, telling Stanley that I’d get it and not to worry. The next night, the orchestra played the song in E.

A few years later, I began to sing the National Anthem from the arena floor, and sang it a cappella. I also sang it a cappella at the World Series in Kansas City. It’s my favorite song.

D
URING THE MIDDLE OF NFR WEEK, I RAN INTO KEN LANCE
, owner of the Ken Lance Sports Arena in Ada, Oklahoma. I had seen many country celebrities at Ken’s place, including Loretta Lynn. Loretta heard us sing at the Ada Pow-Wow one year, and someone later asked her manager, David Skeptner, what he thought about me. His verdict: I shouldn’t quit my day job. I’ve kidded him about that ever since.

I was hurrying off to get ready to sing the National Anthem when Ken stopped me. “Hey, Reba,” he said, “I want you to meet a friend of mine.”

There was Red Steagall—a big ole redheaded guy with a gentle look in his eyes. A longtime favorite on the rodeo circuit who did Western Swing in the tradition of Bob Wills, he had recorded several Top Ten songs and had written hits for other artists, including “Here We Go Again” for Ray Charles. I liked him immediately. I went on about my business, but I would see Red again later during Finals week.

Cowboys are both competitive and social. They’ll try to beat each other in the arena, but they’ll socialize and help each other when competition is finished. There are many stories about one cowboy lending another an entry fee, only for the borrower to beat the lender in competition. This happened as far back as Grandpap’s day. And during the Finals, as a nightly event, cowboys go to clubs or dances, or they congregate in a hotel room to swap stories and songs.

During the 1974 Finals, the Justin Boot Company was sponsoring a suite and party at the Hilton Hotel where the rodeo contestants were staying. So one night after a performance, Mama, Daddy, Pake, and I went over to the Hilton. As we got out of the car, once again we ran into Ken Lance, who told us to come up to the Justin Boot Company suite.

Red was in the suite that night too, singing and playing his guitar and passing it around so some of the others in the room could sing. That’s a tradition among country singers and is called a “guitar pull,” as one singer will often “pull” the guitar from another to do a tune. Everett Shaw, world-champion steer roper, soon said, “Hey, Reba, do ‘Joshua.’ ”

Red didn’t know the chords for “Joshua” and I didn’t play well enough to take the guitar, so I sang it a cappella. As Red put it later, “This little redheaded girl started singing, and it just blew me away.”

Later that night, Mama got to talking with Bobby Steagall, Red’s first wife, who asked Mama if I had any intention of getting serious about my singing. Mama said, “Oh yes, all the kids are very serious about their music.” Later, Mama asked Red if he could help get a recording contract in Nashville for the Singing McEntires.

“At the time,” Red said, “I just didn’t think there was any place for a trio in country music.” But kindly, he kept me in mind.

I
N JANUARY 1975, WHEN THE OKLAHOMA GROUND WAS IN THE
year’s deepest freeze, warmth came to my world in the voice of Red Steagall. He called Mama and said, “Well, Jackie, I’ve been thinking about it. I can’t take all three. But I could take Reba. She’s got something a little different.” He was asking us now to come to Nashville to record a demonstration tape. Red Steagall was offering me a shot.

Almost anyone would jump at the chance Red offered me. I eventually did, but it took some prodding from Mama, because I was scared. I knew nothing about the music business or the people in it. I knew the voices of the recording stars on the radio, but nothing else about how the entertainment industry works. I didn’t know the difference between an agent and an A & R man. I didn’t even know what they were.

I was familiar, obviously, with my family and with rodeo. Those were the circles where I was comfortable. I had been very secure in my childhood and teenage world. As I got closer and closer to the big leagues of music, I knew that business wasn’t going to be as protective and loving as my family had been.

So, when Mama and I set out for Nashville in March 1975, I kept coming up with reasons to stop the car all along the 700 miles. I suggested we stop to eat or to get ice cream. I wanted to pull over and see every tourist attraction. I came up with any excuse I could to delay my arrival.

“Now, Reba, let me tell you something,” Mama finally said. “If you don’t want to go to Nashville, we don’t have to do this. But I’m living all my dreams through you.”

That changed my attitude.

When she was a girl, my Mama was a wonderful singer whom Clark Rhyne has frequently compared to Patsy Cline. Her dream had been to go to California to try her luck, but no one was there to encourage or support her. Her folks said no; the war was on and she was needed at home. For Mama, responsibility had overridden opportunity—the opportunity I was taking lightly.

Four children and twenty-odd years later I wondered what, if any, regrets she held. And I realized a chance was being offered to me to do something bigger and maybe better with my life. When Mama told me that, it was just the kick I needed. I told Mama to drive on, and, except to get gasoline, I’m not sure we stopped again on that entire trip.

When we got to Nashville, Mama and I stayed at the Hall of Fame Motor Hotel on Division Street, just one block from 16th Avenue South, known as “Music Row.” (The term Music Row today applies to about twelve square blocks encompassed by 15th, 16th, 17th, and 18th Avenues South.) I made my first demonstration recording in a tiny studio owned by Fred Carter, a Nashville studio guitarist who later played some road dates with Jerry Reed. For that session, Red had chosen “I’m Not Your Kind of Girl,” written by Red and Glen Sutton, Lynn Anderson’s ex-husband. The song was inspired by their ride on a Rock Island Line train from Amarillo to Memphis. Along with it, I cut three other tunes, including one that I’d written in college about one of the guys I had a crush on, called “Leave My Texas Boy Alone.”

When we were done, Red said, “Go home and forget about it.” In other words, don’t call us, we’ll call you. I returned to school and rodeoing, and waited.

“The first person I took the demo to was Jim Fogelsong, president of ABC Dot Records,” Red remembers. The label’s roster boasted Tommy Overstreet, Roy Clark, Freddy Fender, and others. “He put the tape on, but I don’t think he ever listened to it. He said, ‘Red, I don’t need another girl singer.’ That was our first rejection.”

Red also took my tape to Bob Montgomery, who had performed with Buddy Holly in high school and had written big hits such as Patsy Cline’s “Back in Baby’s Arms” and “Misty Blue,” the most performed song of 1967. By 1975, Montgomery was one of Nashville’s leading independent
record producers and owned a successful publishing company with Bobby Goldsboro.

Montgomery was polite but equally uninterested in the demo of yet another unknown girl country singer.

“I played it for a bunch of people,” Red says, “and everybody had the same remark.”

Finally, Joe Light, Red’s music publishing partner, made a pitch to Glenn Keener, who was a producer at Phonogram-Mercury. “We were pitching the song [‘I’m Not Your Kind of Girl’], not the singer,” Red recalls, “ ’cause Joe and I had the publishing on the song.”

“I really like this girl,” Red quoted Glenn as saying.

Eventually, Keener took me, but never did take the song.

Keener was an associate producer under the legendary Jerry Kennedy, who in 1975 was producing Jerry Lee Lewis, Tom T. Hall, Johnny Rodriguez, the Statler Brothers, Faron Young, Roger Miller, Patti Page, Roy Drusky, Dave Dudley, and Jacky Ward. They were affiliated with Phonogram Records, now Polygram-Mercury.

As Glenn tells it, he ended up signing me almost by chance. He’d brought two tapes to the label’s head in Chicago, who said he could sign one female singer. Glenn looked down at the tapes—one in one hand and one in the other. He can’t remember who the other girl was. He handed them mine.

Jerry’s recollection is different. He says that he recommended that Keener sign me after Jerry heard me sing “The Star-Spangled Banner.” Apparently, Jerry had gotten hold of a live recording made at that 1974 National Finals Rodeo.

Whatever the story is, thanks to Jerry and Glenn—and to Clem McSpadden, Ken Lance, and Red Steagall—I achieved every young singer’s dream.

I signed a deal with Phonogram on November 11, 1975. My advances for each of my first four years with the label were $7,500, $10,000, $15,000, and $20,000, monies
that were levied against future royalties. Only thing was, there wouldn’t be any for a while—quite a while.

B
UT WHAT ABOUT THE OTHER SINGING MCENTIRES
?
I
’
VE OFTEN
been asked the obvious and fair question: do Pake, Susie, and I have sibling rivalry? The answer is yes, but it hasn’t spoiled our relationship. I love both of them with all of my heart. Both Pake and Susie sang harmony with me on my early records, and Pake was in two of my bands. Even after my first major record on a major label, “I Don’t Want to Be a One Night Stand,” came out in 1976, Pake and Susie continued to sing with me on occasion.

Then Pake came to think that we should split our earnings three ways, as we had when we were the Singing McEntires. But he and Susie weren’t getting billing then—the bookings were in my name. I could see the arrangement wasn’t going to work, and so our careers eventually went their separate ways.

In the middle 1980s, Pake got a deal of his own on RCA Records and toured for a while as my opening act—doing fifteen minutes solo, then falling in with the band to play behind me. He said recently that that was the best deal he ever had in the music business! But he also went on to say I always seemed to be mad at him in those days, which didn’t bother him a whole lot, since I always got over it quickly.

I don’t know what he was referring to—it might be I was angry at Pake because he quit the music business so quickly. He decided to stay at home with his wife, Katie, and their three kids, and I can sure understand that. But I wish there was a way he could have stuck with it. Call me prejudiced—but I think Pake outsings them all!

Susie is a talented gospel singer who has told me that she resents the fact that more people come to my concerts than hers, even though she sings for the Lord. I suspect that her turnouts have to do with the fact that secular music is
more popular than Christian music. I’m not saying that’s the way it should be. I’m just saying that’s the way it is.

But richer or poorer, then or now, we have stayed a singing family. On September 18, 1986, Pake, Susie, and I did a special edition of “Nashville Now,” devoted entirely to the McEntire family. It had been a long time since the three of us had sung together. Pake was on RCA at the time. Susie was singing only gospel music, so we harmonized on “Farther Along” and “Stars in My Crown,” two of our favorite gospel songs. During the show, the producers got Mama on the phone from Oklahoma, so television viewers could hear her pride and excitement at seeing three of her four children performing together on one show. It was an evening that none of us will ever forget.