Authors: Ricky Skaggs
Something happened on the European tour that scared me half to death and also taught me a lesson. I had a routine with the road crew to handle the instrument changes I had to make. After I played a few songs on mandolin, a member of the crew would be there to take it from me and hand me a guitar, plugged in and ready to go. One night near the end of the tour, we had made the exchange and I happened to see, out of the corner of my eye, one roadie pitching my Loar F-5 mandolin to another. Luckily, he caught it and put it safely in the case, but I was less than happy.
When I saw that 1924 Loar flying through the air, all I could think was:
If that thing hits the ground, that's the end of it
. At that time, the mandolin was probably worth $7,500, but to me it was priceless. I decided right then that there was no way I was going to carry this precious mandolin on the road anymore and take a chance on it getting broken or stolen. So I retired my Loar from touring.
I still have that mandolin, and I still play it from time to time. It's worth a lot more than $7,500 these days, but I'd never sell it. It'll always have a special place in my heart, like an old friend you've been through so much with and will never forget.
E
mmy leaned on me for the traditional stuff, and I was happy to give her support. I was her go-to guy for the bluegrass and old-timey mountain music. Emmy wasn't just dabbling. She was serious, and I truly respected her devotion. She had an intuition for what suited her vocal style, and she knew a good song when she heard it. It's just that she didn't always know where to get the good old songs. After rehearsal and sound check, whenever we had time to kill, I'd sing country and bluegrass tunes I knew from childhood, ones that Emmylou had never heard, not even when she was singing with Gram. One she loved was “I'll Go Stepping Too” by Lester and Earl. Her bass player, Emory Gordy, was a huge bluegrass fan, and he'd usually jump in and help out. We always had a bluegrass warm-up to get ready for the show. It was a real growth period, and it led to a fruitful collaboration, the pair of traditional albums
Roses in the Snow
and
Light of the Stable
.
Emmylou and Brian had been itching to make a bonafide bluegrass record for a while.
Blue Kentucky Girl
was a critical and commercial success, earning Emmy two hit singles and a Grammy. It proved she could move closer to traditional country without sacrificing radio play and record sales. She and Brian had earned the right to do as they pleased. They wanted to wander further away from the mainstream with an acoustic record, with the material that fit that sound, and that meant bluegrass. With me in the band for a while and comfortable in my role, they figured now was the time. Emmy and Brian wanted me to help choose and arrange the songs. The idea was to highlight the stark beauty of bluegrass, the interplay of voices and instruments, and let Brian add his touches to give it a modern feel. Without the electric bass and drums, the rhythm section was anchored by Brian's giant Gibson Super 400 archtop guitar, and he focused on that aspect while I worked on the acoustic string-band arrangements, and got the right musicians for the job. First off, I brought in Tony Rice to handle lead-guitar chores on his Martin D-28 herringbone. I also wanted to bring in Jerry Douglas to play Dobro, which would replace the steel guitar sound that had been prominent on Emmylou's records. The White girls, Sharon and Cheryl, were already seasoned singers who'd worked with Emmy on
Blue Kentucky Girl
, so she asked them to add their skills on harmony.
Brian then invited a musician named Bryan Bowers to bring in his autoharp, giving us a touch of the Carter Family sound.
We'd rehearse three or four days to get the arrangements down, and then we'd go in and record. Next we'd listen to the track and make a laundry list of things we were gonna add or take outâthe exact spot in the track we wanted to put a fiddle or a Dobro. Every detail was a big deal to us. We all knew this was going to be a very special record.
It was during these sessions that I got a nickname that's followed me around ever since. I was doing some overdubbing but wasn't satisfied with my performance. Emmy said, “Picky Ricky's at it again.” It just sorta flew out of her mouth. Sharon and Cheryl were standing there, and they got to giggling. “Emmy, we've been thinking that for a long time!” So Emmy sort of coined the nickname that I'd unknowingly had for years. My dad probably wanted to call me that many a time out of frustration, but he never did.
During the sessions, Emmylou was pregnant with her daughter Meghann. As we recorded, she just kept getting bigger. Sometimes she'd stand up while she sang, and sometimes she'd have to sit and try to lay down vocal tracks that way. She never complained, and it can't have been easy. I really don't know how she got enough air to sing at full strength, but somehow she managed it. I've always said that I think
Roses in the Snow
, as well as
Light of the Stable
, features some of the very best singing I've ever heard her do, and she's had some beautiful performances through the years. To this day, she's still a truly amazing singer.
There was one song I brought to Emmy that she really fell in love with. It was a Stanley Brothers gospel song, “The Darkest Hour Is Just Before Dawn,” and she always asked me to sing it for her. It's one of Ralph's best sacred numbers, and we wanted to get some bluegrass hymns onto
Roses
. We were working up the song in the living room on Lania Lane, getting the vocal arrangement together, and Emmy asked, “Why don't you sing a verse?” That was the first time she featured my lead vocals on one of her songs, and my first lead vocal on a country record.
Working with Emmy got my name out beyond the bluegrass world, and for that, I'll always be grateful. It was amazing hearing my voice come through the speakers all alone. You have to remember, I'd been singing harmony all my life, even in Boone Creek. I was not a lead singer and didn't think of myself that way. Emmylou was introducing my voice to a new audience, and it was such a nice thing to do. When she was starting out, Gram Parsons invited her to sing solo on his records, “Return of the Grievous Angel” and “Love Hurts” to name a couple. He helped her step out, and she was giving me the same chance. It wasn't only me. Emmy was willing to let all of her musicians step out on a solo and try new things. Some bandleaders aren't as generous. She gave of herself when she didn't have to. The great bandleaders, from Duke Ellington to Bill Monroe, love to see their musicians shine and take a solo and inspire the rest of the band. They didn't want to hog the spotlight. They wanted to share it, and Emmylou did, too. Whenever we were introduced on stage, it was always “Emmylou Harris and the Hot Band.”
Now, Emmy's record label wasn't as excited about the bluegrass records we were making as we were. When Emmylou took the tapes for
Roses
to the execs at Warner Bros., they turned up their noses and pressured her not to release it. She stuck to her guns and told 'em that she was passionate about this music and really felt it was the direction she wanted to go. She was willing to put her career on the line. Luckily the label came around.
Roses in the Snow
went gold faster than any album of Emmylou's career.
Another nice thing about Emmy as a boss: She had no problem letting us pursue solo projects, as long as it didn't interfere with the Hot Band. So when I had some time off, I drove down to Nashville from Lexington and cut an album for an independent bluegrass label called Sugar Hill. Barry Poss was headman, and he rented out a basement studio called the Pond and hired Nashville pros like Buddy Emmons and Bobby Hicks, and I called on my buddies like Jerry Douglas and Albert Lee and Tony Rice and Marc Pruett, and we made
Sweet Temptation
. We cut the whole album in two days on a budget of ten thousand dollars, which for a small indie like Sugar Hill was a lot of money. But Barry had faith in me, and here was a chance to see what I could do on my own.
It was a freedom I'd never known in the studio, with no agenda other than to try to make a great record. Barry helped round up the musicians and let me go at it. I was only twenty-four, but I was ready to give it a fair shot. Brian Ahern showed me you could mix a bluegrass instrument like a mandolin as loud as an electric guitar if it was recorded properly. And I'd always felt that a lot of Flatt & Scruggs and Stanley Brothers songs were basically acoustic country. So I wanted to try to blend classic bluegrass and country, with the fiddle and mandolin working right alongside the drums and steel guitars, and some good ol' mountain harmony. I wanted to do my own versions of favorites by the Carter Family and the Stanleys. And Merle Travis. Buck White's piano added just the right touch of western swing for the Travis songs. I didn't know if it'd work or not, but I was gonna have fun trying.
What a baptism it was! I was finally getting the chance to cut Carter Stanley's “I'll Take the Blame” the way I'd heard it in my head, with Buddy's pedal steel guitar kicking the song off and leading the way. Radical for bluegrass purists' ears, maybe. But to me, the sound of Buddy's steel was exactly what you oughta hear when you think “country.” Emmylou was kind enough to sing harmony on another Stanley Brothers song, “Could You Love Me One More Time,” and two other tracks. I couldn't believe that my boss even pitched in on my moonlighting project. But that was the camaraderie we all felt for each other. If only every album I've done since could have been as fun!
And the fun was only beginning. Sugar Hill released “I'll Take the Blame” as a single, and suddenly it was getting airplay. I'd made the record almost as an experiment, and come to find out, folks liked it. It was number one for six weeks in Houston, and then it became a local hit in Detroit and down in Orlando, Florida, too.
I had a few days of down time from Emmy's band, and I spent it at Brian's Enactron Truck studio recording tracks for my second Sugar Hill album. Right around then, Dolly Parton came through town, working on a project with Emmy and Linda Ronstadt. I met her at those sessions, and after a few minutes we felt more like family than some musicians I'd known for years.
Dolly and I shared the same kind of mountain upbringing and church background and Mom and Dad and brothers and sisters, and we loved the same kind of good ol' country cooking and, of course, the same kind of music. She said she loved to hear me sing 'cause it reminded her of her home back in the Smoky Mountains of east Tennessee.
I told her how much I loved her singing, too, and how when I was a kid me and my folks couldn't wait to see
The Porter Wagoner Show
on TV every week just to hear her sweet voice! I told her that I was working on my second record for Sugar Hill, and that it was gonna be real country with some ol' mountain bluegrass thrown in for good measure.
Then I got up my nerve, took a deep breath, and asked her if she'd sing harmony on a couple of songs I was working on. She immediately said she'd love to, and just to let her know when I was ready for her. I thought,
Lord Jesus, did she just say YES?
I couldn't hardly believe it. I thought,
Oh my God, Dolly Parton is gonna sing on my record!
Then the thought came to me that maybe she had said yes just to save face, and that she really wouldn't do it. When it comes time to record, I was thinking, she'll say she's too busy. That's how the Devil works; he's always trying to steal your joy and make you believe things about people that just ain't true. But I really didn't know Dolly. She's a woman of integrity. If she tells you something, she means it. That's just how she is. A straight shooter. I've never known her to be any other way.
I wanted her to sing on a few Stanley Brothers songs. It turned out that she'd seen Carter and Ralph play a show at a little schoolhouse in Sevierville, Tennessee, when she was a girl, around the same time I had. It was so easy for her. She fell right into that ol' mountain stream of music she'd swum in many years ago, and she was lovin' it. This was the kind of music that was close to her heart, and Dolly is all about heart.
I'll never forget when we cut Carter's “A Vision of Mother,” one of his most beautiful, almost mystical, songs. Dolly sang Pee Wee's high-trio part, and it came so natural she nailed it in no time. I remember she hit a note that she didn't mean to sing and wanted to fix it, but I loved it. It wasn't a wrong note; it was just something that came out that she wasn't planning to sing. I didn't want her to re-sing it or try to do it over. It came out of a deep place in her spirit, and I felt it, and I wanted the listener to feel it, too.
There I was, making a record with Dolly Parton and having the time of my life. I thought,
How stinking cool is this?
To be here and get to experience this. I felt extremely blessed. And you know, Dolly's spirit of generosity may have blessed the project in a whole other way I wasn't even aware of, 'cause things were about to get bigger than I'd ever imagined.
S
ome call it fate, or destiny, or a God thing. Some things really do seem like they were just Meant to Be. You think back and you wonder how different your life could have been if things had gone another way, if you'd walked down one street and not the other, opened one door and not the other, taken one flight and not the other.
Well, I'm sure thankful for the day I took a flight from Los Angeles to Nashville. I got bumped up to first-class, and I settled into a seat with my Walkman. I had four or five songs on tape that I'd done for my second record for Sugar Hill. They were just unfinished masters, rough mixes that I wanted to keep fooling with. One was the Stanley Brothers' “Don't Cheat in Our Hometown,” and another was a remake of the Webb Pierce song “Honey (Open That Door).”
Somehow I got to talking with the guy in the next seat. He turned out to be Jim Mazza, vice president of Capitol/EMI/United Artists in Los Angeles. He didn't know me from Adam, and I'd never heard of him, either, but we hit it off. I told him I played with Emmylou but was working on my own music and had some demos on my Walkman. He was a record man down to his bones, so he was open to new sounds. “Mind if I take a listen to some of your stuff?”