Reba: My Story (22 page)

So we recorded the song, and it almost didn’t make the album. They chose it as the last single released off the album, but it hit. This business is a huge gamble. No one ever knows which song is gonna be “the one”!

The song belonged to Loretta Lynn’s publishing company, and when it went number one, she sent me a beautiful silk-flower arrangement that I cherish to this day. Later, she sent me a beautiful diamond necklace, which was stolen from my suitcase a few years later along with some other pieces of jewelry I was very fond of. I had forgotten to take the bag out of the trunk of a rented car I’d just returned to the airport lot. By the time I realized what I’d done, the jewelry was gone.

I hated to lose that necklace, because it came from Loretta. I’m very proud to say that I’m one of her friends, and she certainly is one of mine. She’s a sweet, fun person to be around, and quite a character!

I
N THE WAKE OF THAT NUMBER-ONE SONG, DON WILLIAMS, MY
manager, got me an invitation to “The Tonight Show,” which was a very big breakthrough for a country singer. In the days before Country Music Television and The Nashville Network, country entertainers rarely appeared on national TV. The reason was probably the fact that country music wasn’t nearly as popular as it is today. But country music was very well represented on weekly TV shows, such as “The Wilburn Brothers Show,” “Ernest Tubb’s TV Show,” “Glenn Campbell Hour,” “Johnny Cash,” “Hee Haw,” “Pop Goes the Country,” “Nashville on the Road,” and I was fortunate enough to have performed on some of them.

In 1981, I’d gotten to be a part of a wonderful television special, Johnny Cash and “The Ladies of Country Music”—twenty of us—with Johnny being the only man. I was so honored to be chosen, because I was really just starting out then; I hadn’t even done my first major tour. Johnny did a very generous thing for that show—he furnished gowns for all the ladies and at the end of the taping gave them the gowns to keep. Mine was a beautiful aqua, slim-styled evening gown with spaghetti straps.

Not many television hosts would have even thought to make such a kind and sensitive gesture, and I, for one, was very grateful. It’s that kind of openheartedness, along with his great music, that has made Johnny Cash a legend. He has never lost sight of his roots.

Then, two years later, came my chance to meet the other Johnny, Johnny Carson, the late-night king himself and host of the granddaddy of all the network television shows. On that first, 1983, “Tonight Show” date, for good luck—and because I couldn’t afford anything else—I wore that same dress that Johnny Cash had given me for his TV special. Naturally, I was a bundle of nerves, but when I met
Carson backstage before the show, he was very nice and gracious.

I was to sing two songs, with Narvel playing the steel guitar with the Tonight Show Orchestra and Susie singing harmony from inside a sound-control booth. Neither of the songs was my number-one record “Can’t Even Get the Blues.” Instead, the producers asked me to sing “You Lift Me Up to Heaven,” my first Top Ten record, and “Only You,” the old Platters song I’d done a remake of.

I wouldn’t get the real guest treatment—the chance to be called to the interview couch—until my third appearance. That time Johnny questioned me about my background in rodeo, and I explained that I had been a barrel racer. He seemed fascinated by the way I said “barrel” and kept asking me to repeat it, impersonating me and making fun of how I said “barrel.”

Well, Johnny’s from Nebraska, and that’s about as rural as Oklahoma. I guess he lost his Nebraskan accent a long time ago. But, in hindsight, I can see that Johnny meant no harm—he was just trying to break the ice.

I
WOULD GO ON TO HAVE ONLY ONE MORE NUMBER-ONE SONG
with Mercury—“You’re the First Time I’ve Thought About Leaving”—among the seventy songs I recorded there. Not bad, but not exactly a terrific track record, either. I just didn’t feel that Mercury was pushing my songs hard enough, and they in turn had to be unhappy with my sales. I was grateful that Mercury had stuck with me and had supported me for the eight years I was with them, but I felt it was time to move on. The taste of a number-one record was something I wanted to taste again.

So I called a meeting of me, Jerry Kennedy, Don Williams, and Don’s lawyer, Bill Carter, to see what could be done. After a lengthy discussion, I asked that Mercury release me from my contract so I could get a fresh start somewhere else. Of course, I was scared to take such a
strong stand and to leave my safe and familiar “home” of eight years for the unknown territory of a new record label. And I knew I would miss Jerry Kennedy, who after seven albums had become as much my friend as my producer. Later, though, Jerry said that he didn’t blame me for leaving.

Looking back, I can see that the best things that ever happened in my life happened when I went with my gut feelings. I can sometimes “feel” what is right for me better than others can rationalize it. If I go by my heart or my gut, I usually don’t go wrong—and this time was no exception.

Don Williams started pulling in offers from other labels, with the help of Bill Carter. “I remember vividly that we had a contract from CBS on the desk,” Carter says. “And the negotiation was right up to being … well, had ended, and [we were] ready to sign.”

But then Carter got a call from Irving Azoff, the ex-manager of the 1970s rock stars the Eagles and the new head of MCA. “I’m on my way to London,” Carter recalls Azoff saying. “Don’t sign that contract! You just take the deal that you’ve got from CBS, add a comfortable figure to it, and then telegraph me in London with your terms.”

“And the next morning,” Carter says, “about 5:30
A.M.
, the phone rang. It was Zack Horowitz, head of business affairs for MCA. He said, ‘I’m sending you a confirmation that you’ve got a contract.’ Actually, I nearly flipped. I had no idea that they might accept!”

This power struggle, going on without my knowing it, was for a singer who was leaving a record company that had never made a profit off her work. But Carter says that Azoff didn’t care. He simply believed in my voice and even reached his decision without ever seeing me perform. I certainly had to respect the man’s nerve.

And I also had to respect Carter’s handling of the situation. During the time I had been looking for a new record label, I had also begun to think that I needed a new manager. Don had helped me a lot, but his offices were in
Los Angeles, so Charlie and I rarely saw him. Since we lived in Stringtown, Oklahoma, there was no one “minding the store” in Nashville, where my professional life was based. Having been Don’s lawyer, Carter knew how my business worked, and so it was natural for him to step in.

As my new manager, Carter had to field a call from Jim Fogelsong, the head of MCA’s Nashville division, the day after I got my contract confirmation. Fogelsong had rejected me back in the days when Red Steagall was shopping my first demo tape around, and now his boss Irving Azoff had adopted me. All he could say to Carter was “I understand we have signed Reba McEntire.”

But Fogelsong, for whatever reason, went along with it. It was under his direction that I cut my first album for MCA,
Just a Little Love
, in 1984. My producer was the creative and fun-loving Norro Wilson. Norro even came out on the road with me to observe my show and get a feel for my music. I loved working with him, but we never really got the chance to find my “direction” in music. The MCA officials didn’t like the album, and I was told to find another producer.

I think if Norro and I had gotten another chance, we could have come up with something better—something more country. But the decision wasn’t mine.

After Norro came Harold Shedd, the red-hot producer for Alabama. In those days, the early 1980s, everybody in country music was trying to record “crossover” songs—ones that would also attract the pop-music audience. So I thought to myself: “Do the opposite.” Besides, country was the music that I loved and wanted to record.

When Harold wanted to put an orchestra on my new album, I put my foot down. “If everybody else is going to do this contemporary, crossover stuff, let me do something different,” I told him.

The value of being different had been planted in my mind years earlier, when I was playing a wedding reception in Pampa, Texas. I met another girl singer there whose style
of dressing was different from everyone else’s there. Once we got to talking, I came out and asked her why she dressed the way she did.

“This is my theory,” she said. “If everybody is dressing formal, wear jeans. If everybody is wearing jeans, dress formal. Be different. They’ll notice you.”

It was a good lesson. That girl’s words, running through my mind, gave me confidence as I described my new vision for my music to Harold.

“I want to record my kind of country,” I insisted.

My kind of country is the clear, pure, old-fashioned kind, emotional and gutsy and also sentimental. The songs tell about real human problems—love and the pain of heartbreak and loss—in a way that shows you that the singer is no stranger to pain, and is tough enough to suffer and survive.

One person I had to convince was Jimmy Bowen, the record industry legend who had just succeeded Jim Fogelsong as president of MCA’s Nashville division. I’d heard that Bowen didn’t like me; when he took over MCA, he had told Bill Carter, “I’m thinking of dropping the redhead.” Today, he recalls, “Something bothered me about her voice.” Those early tapes lacked the “little jazz licks” that he likes to hear in my singing. “That was back in the days when she went into the vocal booth, got to do the song, and left,” Bowen says. “She wasn’t in the overdub, she didn’t go to the mix, she wasn’t involved in the process at all.”

Bowen would change all that.

When I met with Bowen about my problem with Harold Shedd, I knew I had to get him on my side. I gave him the tape I’d made of the kinds of songs I wanted to record—songs like Merle Haggard’s “Mama Tried,” Ray Price’s “City Lights,” Dolly Parton’s “Jolene,” and Loretta Lynn’s “If You’re Not Gone Too Long”—and he listened to it.

Then he said, “Well, we’ll have to find you a new producer.”

“No, sir,” I shot back. “I want you to produce me.”

“W-h-o-o-a!” he said. “I’ll have to think about that.”

“I don’t want anybody else producing me but you,” I said. “You’re the main man, you can make it happen.”

He told me no—that I was the one who had to make it happen.

“I can get great musicians for you,” Bowen remembers saying, “I know how—I know who should work with each other. I can make you sound great. But if you don’t know what a woman should say to cause another woman to get up from her house and drive clear across town to sort through the KISS posters just to find your record, then you’re not going to make it. We do a half-assed job of helping men do that [select their songs], and we have no prayer of helping a woman do that. You’ve got to be able to do it.”

That’s what I wanted to hear—I love a challenge! So I told him, “Sure, I can do that. How do I do it?” He put me with Don Lanier, his artist and repertoire chief, who is nicknamed “Dirt,” and we started to visit the publishing companies—lots of them—to listen, really listen to find the songs that would complete my mission. It was a process that Bowen started with me and then initiated with every other artist on the label.

We call those product meetings today. Now either I go over to the publishing company or the music publishers come to play their songs for me at the offices of my firm, Starstruck Entertainment. We have five or six appointments a day over a two- or three-day period, sometimes more if we need them and haven’t found the right songs. When I hear a song I like, I put it on “hold” until I’ve gone through all the material, and then cut back my choices to thirty songs or under.

But for that second MCA album, I really had to search, with the help of Dirt. I didn’t find really country songs, because the writers were trying for more contemporary-sounding
music. So I had to go back a few years in the catalogs of the publishing companies and find songs written five to twenty years ago, to get the country music that I wanted.

Bill Carter had suggested that I approach the highly respected Harlan Howard, whom the Nashville media calls “Mr. Songwriter.” In the 1950s, Harlan got inspired to write by copying down lyrics from Ernest Tubb songs as they were sung on the Grand Ole Opry. Whenever he missed a line, he made up a replacement. Eventually, he made up all of the lines himself.