Reba: My Story (21 page)

“Why did you do that?” I asked him.

“Do what?” he said.

“Why did you drive through that water and wreck the bus?” I shouted.

He walked outside and stared dumbly at the damaged wheel. He couldn’t believe his eyes.

By the time he got back on board, I had gone to the stateroom. Soon, there was a weak knock.

Larry was like a kid caught with his hand in the cookie jar. He kept apologizing all over himself, saying that Preecher had said it was okay to drive through the water.

I was still furious.

“Go get Preecher,” I said in a low tone.

Preecher had some excuse about not knowing how
deep the water was, and that, to me, was all the more reason he should not have told Larry to drive through it.

Eventually, everyone settled down. Although the incident happened on a Sunday afternoon, welders were brought in to pull the frame off the left front wheel and fix the fender. Larry confessed years later that not only the wheel but also the front end of the bus on the driver’s side was damaged. But somehow the welders repaired the bus enough to make it drivable. And the miles and music resumed.

It was a long time before we were able to laugh about that one.

B
UT IN A WAY, I COULD UNDERSTAND LARRY AND PREECHER
’
S
carelessness. Life on the road is so tiring that it is hard to keep your wits about you. It can also be real boring, and sometimes musicians stir things up just to pass the time. Myself included.

One night I worked a show with Steve Wariner at the Bo Jangles Club in Amarillo, Texas. It was Preecher’s birthday, so we’d done a little celebrating that night. We were leaving the club for the hotel, and while the guys were inside getting their gear, I sat in the bus listening to the CB radio. When I heard the overcolorful language of the truckers, I decided to get on the air.

I pretended to be a nun and scolded them harshly for their talk. I had many of them apologizing for their awful language. Well, I had to laugh. It was so funny to hear those tough, burly guys say they knew better than to talk that way.

Another time when we were on the road, Charlie and I were staying at a four-star hotel in Los Angeles, down off Sunset. One morning we decided to take a swim in the rooftop pool. I was on a health kick and suggested we take the stairs.

We walked up several stories in our swimming suits,
bathrobes, and house slippers. No one else could see us. Charlie was griping about the long haul when we finally reached the top floor.

He reached for the door to the pool. It was locked.

“No entrance to the pool from this area,” a sign said.

He was grumbling as we started back down the stairs to the lower floor. That door also was locked. We found that to be the case with every floor until we reached the bottom. That door led out into the street, so we had to go around the hotel and walk into the lobby of the new Bel Age Inn in our swimming suits and bathrobes. The concierge pulled her glasses down and looked at us.

I was dying laughing. Charlie was just dying.

“Fine mess you got us into this time,” he said.

B
ESIDES LITERALLY AND FIGURATIVELY CLEANING UP OUR ACT
, there were other important measures I had to take to really get a grip on my career. Red Steagall, who had been overseeing my career, convinced me that the time had come to bring in a professional. He was good enough to introduce me first to Gary Hart and then to his own manager, Don Williams.

Then, shortly after joining my show, Narvel approached Charlie and said he thought the band needed a leader.

“Well, if you think we need one and you want to be one, then you’re it,” Charlie told Narvel.

Later, Preecher, our road manager, got sick and wanted to go home. He said he didn’t want to come back, because he had had his fill of road life.

Narvel knocked on our hotel room door one day while we were playing in Las Vegas.

“What’s up?” I said.

“I guess Charlie told you that I now want to be tour manager,” Narvel said.

“No,” I said, “this is the first I’ve heard of it.”

But Narvel and Charlie had discussed it earlier, and Narvel got the job.

By then Charlie and I knew Narvel very well and trusted him immensely. Even the story of his marriage was evidence of his integrity. When Narvel was fourteen years old, he dated a girl named Lisa Ritter off and on up until the time he got his driver’s license, at sixteen; then he started dating other girls. But one night she and Narvel went to a Merle Haggard concert. A few weeks after the concert, Lisa called to tell him that she was pregnant.

So, with the persuasion of his mother, Narvel chose to quit music, school, and his apprenticeship at a print shop and marry her. Narvel’s dad and Lisa’s mom were not for the wedding. Gloria, Narvel’s mom, knew that marriage was the right thing to do.

Despite all the strikes against him, Narvel was determined to prove himself. To support his wife and child, he took the best job he could find, selling Kirby vacuum cleaners door to door.

One day he stopped at the home of a man who was impressed by Narvel’s selling techniques.

“Man,” he said, “you’re good. You ought to think about selling insurance.”

That’s how Narvel became one of the top salesmen at Prudential Insurance.

To other players, working for me was a job. For Narvel, it seemed to be a career. He was always coming up with ideas to improve the show or our travel conditions. That drive and enthusiasm are what made Narvel the best partner I ever had.

M
Y FINAL STEP TOWARD PROFESSIONALISM WAS GETTING MYSELF
an agent, but I almost lost my chance, through no fault of my own. In March 1981, I was scheduled to do a show at the Mabee Center at Oral Roberts University in Tulsa, Oklahoma. The William Morris Agency folks were coming
out to see me perform. A lot of artists feel that William Morris has more prestige than any other talent or literary agency, and after only five years in the business, I was nervous about performing for their representatives. Two had flown in all the way from New York City to watch me.

On that all-important show I appeared with Red Steagall, Darrell McCall, a local band, and George Jones. The show was sponsored by a radio station that gave away free tickets. The 17,000-seat hall was filled to overflowing.

George Jones has made no secret of the thirty-year battle he had with alcohol. Recently, he released a videotaped autobiography called “The Same Old Me,” which mentioned a period of hospitalization shortly after that Mabee Center show. In it he said that his IQ was down to 74 because of the booze, and he talked at length about all the personal appearances he missed over the years because he was too drunk to go onstage.

He got the nickname of “No Show Jones” for all of those missed dates. After he became sober, he wrote a song called “No Show Jones,” which he uses now to open his stage shows. Then he tells the crowd that he’s going to quit singing that song because he’s been sober for so long. That always makes for a lot of applause.

Tom Carter, who was reviewing the show that night for the
Tulsa World
, said that for the Mabee Center show, George rode all the way from Nashville to Tulsa for a matinee, and he arrived sober.

Then he started to drink.

George’s road manager went to Kathy Bee, who had booked the entertainment, and told her she had better put Jones onstage while he was still in good shape. He was belting down drinks pretty fast.

“I can’t,” Kathy said. “Reba has got folks here from William Morris waiting to watch her, and Jones is supposed to be the headliner. He’s supposed to close the show. He’s the star.”

Jones suddenly announced he wouldn’t go on at all if
Kathy didn’t find him a girlfriend. Kathy became furious and told him she was running a concert, not an escort service.

Meanwhile, George kept drinking, and saying he would go onstage only if he could go right then, and only if he had a girlfriend first. And the girl, he demanded, had to be short.

Kathy is a wise ole gal who had been around drinking men before.

“Okay,” she finally told George, “we’ll compromise. You go onstage now and do your show. And when you come off, I’ll have you a girlfriend here.”

So George went out, did his forty-five minutes, and walked offstage directly to a bottle and to Kathy.

“Where is my girl?” Jones demanded.

“George,” Kathy said, “that girl was a no-show.”

He became angry and left. By then, the lineup was hopelessly out of order, and a local band closed the show starring George Jones.

But the next day, the
Tulsa World
published Tom’s review that said, in part, “Reba McEntire is destined to become country music’s next female superstar. She has the vocal prowess of Patsy Cline, the natural charm of Loretta Lynn. The comparative newcomer eased through her repertoire with all the control of a diamond cutter on deadline.”

Now you see why I chose Tom Carter as my co-writer.

Not long after, I was signed by William Morris, and after some time away from the agency, I’m back with them today for all my movie and literary contacts.

And I’m happy and proud to say that with the help of his wife, Nancy, George won his battle with the bottle. They are a wonderful, happy, beautiful couple today. I love them both very much!

I
N 1983, THE BAND AND I WERE SITTING IN A GARAGE IN DE SOTO
, Texas—and not by choice. The lug nuts on the front left tire of “Ole Mae,” my bus, had loosened so much that we were afraid to go any further without having it checked. That bus looked good, but it had more style than substance. We were no strangers to breakdowns.

While the mechanic wrestled with the tire, I called my manager, Don Williams, just to see if anything was happening.

“Well,” he said. “As a matter of fact, there is something going on. Your song just went number one.”

I couldn’t believe it! There, in that greasy garage, I began to bawl. I called Charlie. “Yeah,” he said, “Don’s already called me.” I called Mama, and we laughed and cried. It had finally happened—the one thing Mama and I had waited a lifetime for.

My first number-one song was “Can’t Even Get the
Blues,” and I had stumbled on it almost through pure luck. One day, I was in Jerry Kennedy’s office listening to songs for my next album project. I loved to visit Jerry, because he told me war stories about veterans in the music business. His recollections were always hilarious.

“Let me play you a song I’ve got for Jacky Ward,” Jerry said.

By that time, Jerry and I had largely fallen into a pattern of recording waltzes at medium tempo. Two of our biggest Mercury hits were waltzes, “I’m Not That Lonely Yet” and “There Ain’t No Future in This.” But the song Jerry played me was completely different, an up-tempo sassy tune I loved from the first time I heard it. It had a story line people could relate to, about a woman whose man has left her—again—and it doesn’t bother her anymore. It was a strong-woman song.

“Why wouldn’t you pitch me a song like that?” I asked. “Why wouldn’t you think I could record it?”

“Well,” he said, “could you?”

“In a heartbeat,” I said.