Back in the 70’s when I was young and eager and had a better attitude, artist gigs were easy to come by in Nashville. I always had a gig. All I ever had to do was hang out on Broadway, sit in, drink a few beers with some other pickers and let it be known that I was looking, and a gig always popped up. I wasn’t a particularly great player, but I had a good tone and I had an idea of how to back up a singer.
My first gig here was with an unknown; I found it at Tootsie’s while I was up visiting from Houston during the DJ Convention. I didn’t like the gig much, so after a while I quit and left town.
I returned shortly thereafter. I really wanted to be a Nashville Cat. The first or second night I ran into Lynn Owsley at Deemen’s Den on Broadway. I’d met him in Houston when he was at Dancetown with Ernest Tubb. Lynn had heard me play, and he recommended me for the Stonewall Jackson gig. The first gig with Stonewall was Ralph Emery’s early morning TV show on WSM, at 5:00am, or some such ridiculous hour. Lynn, bless his little pea-pickin’ heart, went to the studio with me to make sure everything was cool. He introduced me to ‘Wall, helped me get set up, and stood by in case I freaked out in front of a live TV camera.
When I got tired of playing “Me and You and a Dog Named Boo” I went with Little Jimmy Dickens. I knew him from backstage at the Opry, and when he needed a steel he asked me if I wanted the job. Made Stonewall pretty mad. When Tater’s bus broke down and he began touring in a van I said the hell with Nashville and I went back to Houston to work clubs.
Bad timing, though. This was during the Disco craze of the late 70’s, and steel guitars weren’t required, even in Texas, and I was let go so they could hire a keyboard. So I did the smart thing – I got married and moved back to Nashville. No money, no job, no place to live… But the first night back I was asking around at Deemen’s Den about a gig and got one with Red Sovine. A year later the Faron Young steel gig came open. Some of his band knew me from the Den and I became a Deputy. That’s how easy it was back then.
[...] My first Nashville artist gig was with Stonewall Jackson. Lynn Owsley, who knew Stonewall, recommended me for it. I knew Lynn because I’d gone out to a club to see Ernest Tubb at a club when I lived in Houston, and I went back to the hotel with the Troubadours after the gig and we jammed a little in the room. Lynn’s a good ol’ boy; he lugged his steel guitar from the bus up to the room just so I could play it, and we stayed up most of the night drinking beer, picking and talking about country music. I saw him again on Broadway a few months later when I was hanging out down there looking for fame and fortune, and when I told him I needed a gig he fixed me up, and I was a Minitman. There’s more about that here. [...]