45 RPM Records, Country Singers and One Front Desk Receptionist

Just in case don't know, this is a 45 rpm record.  

  When I started in radio it was still a time when singers would drop in on local radio stations hawking their first ever recorded song, hoping their visit would get it played, hoping they’d have a hit.

  If you ever saw the movie “Coal Miner’s Daughter,” the story of Country singer Loretta Lynn, you may recall the scene where she and her husband Mooney went to stations with her first record.

  For all the people who came by radio stations where I worked, fresh 45 rpm records in their hands, nary a one ever made “The Big Time.”

  Now I do remember a few who dropped by.

  There was Stu Palmer*, hard workin’ honky-tonk singer.  The dude had a big barrel chest and a beer gut to match packed tight into a pearl snap Western shirt.  He’d walk into the radio station with his freshest new country song on 45 and you’d just wonder if his shirt was going to burst open and his freed gut would send someone flying across the room.  Lots of trailer park women in the West Virginia mountains thought Stu was a hunka-hunka burnin’ love. 

  One of the things that got me about a number of these folks who strolled into the radio station with their new single is a day or two after they’d drop by people would start calling in requesting the song.  No doubt the singer had set his fans in motion to make the calls.

 Of all the country singers who came by stations I worked at over the years that happened most often with Stu’s songs.

  Stu dropped dead on the county fair stage one hot August night while he was doing his Elvis imitation.

  Stu’s wife and girlfriend met each other for the first time that night as they both rushed to his side.  The rescue squad people said it looked like Stu had one of those massive heart attacks, that he was dead before he hit the stage.  He wasn’t much past 35 years old.

  Then there was Viv Stansfield*.  Viv sounded awful.  I mean you had to give the guy credit because he kept trying to be a country star and threw his heart into it.  His untrained vocals were all over the place in a song.  About every 6 months or so Viv managed to scrounge up enough money to cut another song, have some 45s pressed then he’d make his way around the regional radio stations asking for airplay.  Viv never lacked for enthusiasm.  Each time he came to the station he was like a wide-eyed kid in a candy store.  He was full of hope that maybe THIS TIME, he’d hit the big time.

  One time, just for the helluvit, the boss dropped a line to the late Biff Collie asking a favor.  Biff was a big time Country personality who had his own, short, weekday Nashville Country gossip radio show called “Inside Nashville.”  The boss asked Biff if he could just mention Viv on his show one time.  And Biff did.

  “Keep your eye on Viv Stansfield,” said Biff on his radio show.  “He’s a real up and comer.”

  Viv called the radio station within minutes.

  “Didja hear that?!?!” Viv practically screamed in the phone.  “Biff Collie said my name on his radio show.”

  Country music fame never found Viv.  I think he ended up being an insurance salesman.

  There were guys I thought should’ve made it and probably would’ve if they had just…

  Tom Brumby* was a guy like that. 

    Tom came by the radio station with his song, a pretty good one, called “You Left and I Ain’t Right.”  He stood in the station lobby, shoulders slumped forward, holding out his 45.  I wanted to tell the dude to stand up straight, it’d give him an air of confidence, probably be good for his back too.  But Tom and I had just met so I didn’t feel it was my place to say.

  I invited him back into the studio and put his record on the turntable.  It was a tight country song.  And those vocals?  Strong, good.  I mean if I hadn’t seen Tom I’d never guess the guy on the record was the tall, mousy guy sitting across from me.

Next thing we knew Tom had made it to that Country music talent show “You Can Be a Star,” a show arguably a precursor to “American Idol.”

  I just wished someone’d been there to coach Tom to stand up straight and have some confidence.

 There was Tom on national TV with his shoulders slumped looking like his sport coat was going to swallow him whole.  Yet there was that wonderful voice of his singing that great song of his.

  Tom didn’t make it on “You Can Be a Star” but his song was requested by our listeners years after that TV show went off the air.

  The guy I remember most of all was Bobby Lee Johnson.* I remember Bobby Lee not for his song, but because he ran off with our radio station receptionist.

  It was a summer day in 1978 that Bobby Lee dropped by that li’l ol’ radio station I was working at back in the hills and hollers of Appalachian coal country.

  The Paul Harvey 15 minute news show was on so I got up from my “air chair” and went out in the lobby to shake the hand of this fellow who just walked in, Bobby Lee Johnson.

  Bobby Lee had come over from the mountains right up against the Virginia/Kentucky line.

  Bobby Lee had recorded a cover of a Conway Twitty hit from 9 years earlier, “I Love You More Today.”

  “I figger I can breathe new life into a great song,” said Bobby Lee as he handed me the record, a “45.”

  Bobby Lee was a young man in his prime:  Full head of brown wavy hair, muscled, held himself well.  I probably wouldn’t’ve mentioned this if it hadn’t been for all the ladies in the radio station having made their way into the station lobby to ogle Bobby Lee.

  There was Katy* the station’s lone salesperson, well aside from Doug* the owner.  There was Linda* the front office receptionist.  Even Lindsey*, the former hippie commune resident who was our traffic director, had left her back office and come up front to have a gander at Bobby Lee.

  I was talking to Bobby Lee about his music while the office ladies lined up on the front desk counter, leaning over and staring, running their fingers through their hair and moving this way and that.

  I may have been naïve about some stuff in life but I recognized tacit primate pre-copulatory things going on twixt the ladies and Bobby Lee.  It made me wonder if it was his looks or if he was one of those guys who seemed to give off more than a heapin’ helpin’ of pheromones.

  So I took Bobby Lee’s 45, thanked him for dropping by and I turned and went back into the studio.  I went back to spinning the records.

  As I sat there I looked through the big plate glass window into the lobby and watched as Bobby Lee stood, leaning on the counter with the ladies, and talking.

  Every now and then Linda would reach up and touch Bobby Lee’s hair like she was brushing it from his face.

  Soon Katy wandered off.  Not long after that Lindsey went back to her office leaving Linda and Bobby Lee leaning on the counter talking to each other.

  Then Katy came into the studio from a side door.

  “I think Linda’s gonna get her some Bobby Lee,” said Katy, standing with her arms crossed, looking out the big window.

  “I reckon,” I said, leaning back in my swivel chair.

  “I don’t understand,” said Katy.  “I’m better’n her.  Hell, ain’t he looking at her nasty teeth?”

  Linda’s teeth were pretty messed up and stained to boot.  But I don’t think Bobby Lee was looking at her teeth.

  “C’mon, Katy, you KNOW what Bobby Lee is looking at,” I said.

  Katy stared at me, I stared at her.

  “Okay,” said Katy, “It’s her BOOBS.  HER GIANT BOOBS.”

  “Shhhhhhh,” I said furrowing my brow, “They might hear you.”

  “I don’t care,” and with that Katy turned and walked out of the studio.  Katy and Linda were roommates, they shared a mobile home in a trailer park on the outskirts of town.  I wondered about their conversation, how it would go when they got home from work after this.

  I kept on playing the records while I lost interest in what was going on with Linda and Bobby Lee.

  Sometime later I saw movement through the window and watched as Bobby Lee was walking out the door.  He turned and gave me a wave and I waved back.  Then he was gone.

  I looked over at Linda.  She was watching Bobby Lee drive away.

  Then she turned and looked at me and winked.

  The next day 8am came and went and there was no Linda at the front desk.

  Katy came in around 815, walked in the front door and just stood there.  She looked at the front desk, she looked at me.  She walked into the studio.

  “That’s not like Linda to not come to work,” said Katy.

  “You live with her,” I said.  “Did she stay out all night.”

  “I don’t know,” said Katy.  “She has her own room.  I thought she’d gone on to work.”

  Just then the boss, Doug, walked in. 

  Doug stopped in the lobby, looked at the front desk then looked into the air studio at me and Katy.

  Doug walked in the studio.

  “Anyone heard from Linda?” he said.

  “No sir,” I said.

  “Nope,” said Katy.

  “You live with her,” Doug said to Katy.  “Where is she?”

  “We live together Doug but we have our own rooms,” said Katy.  “I don’t know.”

  Doug turned and left the studio.  He didn’t look happy.

  Well Linda didn’t show up that day.  No one heard from her that day.

  Or the next.

  On the third day there was a sensation in town as a woman’s body was found in a burning car up a holler.  We thought it was Linda, but by the afternoon the dead woman had been identified…it wasn’t Linda.  Four young men were arrested in the death.

  On the fourth day Linda came sashaying into the radio station right on time at 8.

  The top of the hour news was on so I went into the lobby.

  “Where the hell have you been?”

  “Me and Bobby Lee drove down to Boone,” said Linda with a smile.  Boone was down in North Carolina.  “We’re going to get married.”

  “Really!” I said, trying to keep from laughing.  I don’t know why I thought it was funny, maybe because it was just….just….it just was weird.  “Well, congratulations.”

  I turned and went back into the air studio.  I sat in my chair just as Doug came in the front door.  He stood there, looked at Linda, spoke to her and as he did he sharply pointed at his office door.  Linda got up and went with Doug into his office.  I heard a door slam.

  Probably no more than 5 minutes later Linda was walking out the front door.  She turned and waved at me.

  She was still smiling.

E P I L O G U E

  Bobby Lee and Linda did not get married.

  I learned this from Katy.

  Katy said Linda never heard from Bobby Lee ever again.

  Not long after Doug fired her, Linda got a job as a secretary with a coal company.  Not long after that she had an abortion.  All this I learned from Katy.

  I lost track of Linda not long after that.

  Katy packed up and moved to Norfolk.  I looked her up on The Great and Powerful Internet and saw that she died of The Cancer a few years ago just like Doug did a few years before that.

  And Bobby Lee?  His song never charted as is the fate of many an aspiring singer.  I looked him up on The Internet and found that after a 35 year career with the Tennessee Valley Authority he retired to Florida where he sings in a Key West bar on Saturday nights.

  Bobby Lee gets good reviews on the bar’s website…all written by women…almost every one mentioning how handsome he is.

  Only a few mention his singin’ and playin’.

-30-

*These names are fictitious.