Reba: My Story (25 page)

Then she said, “You’re Janie Fricke,” and George and Charlie broke up laughing as I took an uncomfortable lesson in humility.

Now, Janie, I’m just kidding here. You earned that award fair and square! You know I’m still your biggest fan.

I did have one frustration with the awards process itself, though, that stirred up a lot of controversy—a frustration that I hope everyone involved understood reflected no lack of appreciation for the CMA’s kind recognition. My trouble had to do with the way the ceremony was arranged back in 1984. The awards were presented at the Grand Ole Opry House, and after the show, the CMA would have all the winners go upstairs to meet the press. After all the interviews were finished there, we were shuttled to the Opryland Hotel, a mile away, where we would meet another flock of reporters in the ballroom. As you can imagine, all this moving around stretched the country music industry’s biggest night of the year to 2
A.M.
or so, and by then everyone was exhausted.

By contrast, at the Grammys, the American Music Awards, and the Academy of Country Music Awards shows, each winner talked to reporters backstage immediately after his or her award presentation.

In 1985, I suggested through my manager that the CMA do the same thing to make the night more of a celebration than a grueling marathon. But tradition doesn’t break easily inside the Nashville music establishment, or anywhere else, I guess. People often do things a certain way because they’ve always done them that way—whether or not it’s the best way. I repeated my suggestion in 1986 and was told by one CMA spokesperson, “You’ll go where we tell you to go and do what we tell you. You’re just lucky to be here.”

“Okay,” I said, “thank you very much.”

That year, I was honored with two awards, “Female Vocalist of the Year” for the third time, and at the end of the evening, the greatest prize in the world of country music, “Entertainer of the Year.”

I cried with joy, and then I returned to my seat in the audience. And when the show ended, Charlie and I headed out the side door to a waiting limousine.

Someone from the CMA rushed up to us saying, “Wait a minute! Where are you going? You have interviews to do!”

“I told you I wouldn’t do any interviews under these circumstances,” I said. And I left the building.

I wasn’t trying to act like a star, though some in the CMA may have thought so. Instead, after repeatedly asking that the CMA consider the feelings of its artists, I was trying to maintain my dignity and joy on one of the most exciting nights of my life. But the uproar over my actions persisted until the 1987 CMA awards show the following October, when I was nominated in four categories: Entertainer of the Year, Female Vocalist of the Year, and Album and Video of the Year for “What Am I Gonna Do About You?”

To clarify my position, my manager, Bill Carter, issued a press release for me, which read in part: “While I respect the CMA’s decision to maintain the current structure of the post-awards press conference, I must also abide
by my own very strong feelings that this structure is not the most efficient for the media or the artist. I firmly believe that arranging media access to the winners and nominees backstage during the program would be more beneficial to all concerned, particularly those members of the media faced with an immediate deadline.

“The CMA awards are very special to me for many reasons, not the least of which being they present a rare opportunity to share an important evening with close friends, business associates and family.”

I’m happy to say that I ended up winning my fourth “Female Vocalist of the Year” Award in 1987. But I’m almost as pleased to say that since then, the CMA has restructured its ceremony to help the artists face the press with all their wits about them—all the better to carry the banner of country music.

B
UT GETTING BACK TO THAT CMA AWARDS SHOW IN 1986: ABOUT
a week after I was named “Entertainer of the Year,” I had the most touching surprise. It came in the middle of the night.

I had been on tour and was riding through Atoka, about eighteen miles from home, when Larry Jones called me from the driver’s seat of the bus.

“Reba,” he said, “come up here.”

I stumbled sleepily up to the front of the bus and peered out the windshield. There, on billboards and marquees—even trees—were signs made by my neighbors and friends welcoming me home as “Entertainer of the Year.” My eyes filled with tears. The local folks had worked hard to make those signs and had made sure the signs stayed up until I came home seven days later. Thank you, friends.

I
N 1986, THE GRAND OLE OPRY CELEBRATED ITS FIFTIETH ANNIVERSARY
. It had begun as a radio program on WSM—the call
letters stood for “We Shield Millions,” the slogan of its insurance company sponsor—beaming out over a 1,000-watt “clear channel” from Canada to Mexico and from the Rockies to the Atlantic Ocean. In the days before TV, it had brought music and a sense of community into isolated rural homes, where it was often the only presence of the outside world. At that time, musicians would perform live on the show, and people would travel miles and jam the halls of the station to try to get a glimpse of the artists. Before long, it took an auditorium to accommodate all those fans, and so the Grand Ole Opry House was born. It was the cathedral of country music, home to the artists who have shaped the music into what it is today—alongside jazz and rhythm and blues, one of America’s great, native, unique musical languages. Now it is famous around the world.

I got to sing on the Fiftieth Anniversary show in the company of such country music greats as Dolly Parton, Loretta Lynn, and Willie Nelson. The late Grant Turner, who brought me onstage, had been at the Opry the night the great Hank Williams premiered there, and had done many skits with such country music legends as Roy Acuff and Minnie Pearl. After the show I took pictures with almost everyone, which I have framed at home now. They were some of my childhood heroes. I felt more like a fan than a performer!

And then, three days after the Fiftieth Anniversary show, I became a member of the Grand Ole Opry myself. For my part of the show, I sang “Somebody Should Leave.” It was a very special, highly emotional night because, since I was a kid, I’d always wanted to be a member.

Ralph Emery, the host of “Nashville Now,” had predicted that 1986 was going to be a big year for me. Thank God, he had been right.

I
HAD ANOTHER HIT SONG THAT YEAR
, “
WHOEVER
’
S IN NEW
England,” one that did more to broaden my audience than
any record I’d made so far. It brought me to the attention of people who’d never listened to country music and who had never heard the name Reba McEntire. Songs like that are called “career records,” and this was my first one.

I never set out to record a “crossover” record. As I’ve said, I’ve always considered myself a country artist and never wanted to abandon my roots. I had simply come to the conclusion that it would be better for me just to do good material, and if it happened to reach across the pop charts—well, fine—that would be an unexpected little extra. But sometimes, the purest country songs have crossed over to non-country charts, such as Merle Haggard’s “Okie From Muskogee” or Johnny Cash’s “Folsom Prison Blues” or Jeannie C. Riley’s “Harper Valley P.T.A.”

My first career song was about a woman whose husband spends so much time working in New England, she suspects he’s having an affair. Don “Dirt” Laniere says that he heard the song a year before he played it for me but thought it was so pop-sounding that it would scare me to death. Still he wanted me to have it. As he says, “She is the best natural singer I’ve ever heard, and that song [would] really let her show her vocal aerobics.”

Knowing that it wouldn’t fit on the album I was recording at the time, in any case, he asked the song’s publisher to “stick it under a rock” until he felt I was ready to hear it.

That wouldn’t be for another eight months. I remember hearing the song for the first time and getting chills! I even have the sheet of paper where I wrote down
HIT!
beside the song’s title.

But as Jimmy Bowen remembers the story: “Dirt and I schemed for two months to make sure she did that song. We did everything we could to have her keep it in the final ten [songs scheduled for recording] and we came in to record it, the last one we were going to do on that album. She was tired and didn’t want to do it. I said, ‘Let’s just do it; we don’t have to use it.’ ”

He insists that even after I cut the song, its theme, adultery, made me leery about releasing it. Well, that may be so, but again, I remember the story differently. I used to believe that you can’t sing songs that contradict your own personal lifestyle. But after a few years of maturing, I found that it’s best to find the songs people can relate to—whether you can or not. There are a lot of people listening to country music who don’t have perfect lives, who have the problems we sing about, whether it’s wife abuse, drinking, cheating, or whatever. If it’s a good song and people hear the message—the person in that song fixed his marriage and so can I, or the woman in this song walked out on a man who was beating up on her and so can I—well, you’ve used your music to make a statement and maybe to offer hope or another way.

So, whether Bowen and Dirt led me, tricked me—or if I went into “New England” with my eyes wide open—I’ll always be glad we recorded that song.

O
NE THING I
’
M SURE ABOUT IS THAT, SOON AFTER HEARING
“New England,” I began to think “music video.” I had never done a music video before. And Bowen didn’t believe in them a whole lot back then. He thought they didn’t sell enough records to justify their production cost. But that song was meant to have a video with it. I could see the story unfolding as I heard the lyrics.

Bill Carter was nothing if not persistent. He kept arguing with Bowen about me doing a video, and Bowen finally agreed to it,
if
I would pay half of the production costs. So, off we went to Boston in the dead of winter. The city was covered with beautiful white snow.

Jon Small, the video producer and director, took one look at me and told me that my jeans were too long. He insisted I’d have to cut them off or get a shorter pair before we started shooting. “This is the way we wear them in
Oklahoma,” I told him. He fussed some more, but as you can see, long jeans made the video.