Country Yodeler Don Walser

Show: FRESH AIR
Date: SEPTEMBER 01, 1998
Time: 12:00
Tran: 090101np.217
Type: FEATURE
Head: Interview with Singer/Songwriter Merle Haggard
Sect: Entertainment
Time: 12:06

TERRY GROSS, HOST: This is FRESH AIR. I'm Terry Gross.

It's country music week on our show. No one in contemporary popular music has created a more impressive legacy or one that spans a wider variety of styles than Merle Haggard, according to music critic Peter Gurrelnik (ph).

Haggard's best known songs include "Mama Tried," "The Bottle Let Me Down," "Okie From Muskogee," and "Today I Started Loving You Again."

As a young man, Haggard was in and out of prison and hardly seemed destined for success. Those prison experiences are reflected in many of the songs in his repertoire.

Before we hear a 1995 interview with Merle Haggard, let's hear him sing one of the songs he wrote that he's best known for, "Mama Tried."

(BEGIN AUDIO CLIP -- SINGER MERLE HAGGARD PERFORMING "MAMA TRIED")

MERLE HAGGARD, SINGER: (SINGING)

The first thing I remember knowing
Was a lonesome whistle blowing
And a young'uns dream of growing up to ride
On a freight train leaving town
Not knowing where I'm bound
And no one could change my mind
But Mama tried.

One and only rebel child
From a family meek and mild
My mama seemed to know what lay in store
In spite of all my Sunday learning
Towards the bad I kept on turning
'Til mama couldn't hold me anymore

I turned 21 in prison doing life without parole
No one could steer me right
But mama tried, mama tried
Mama tried to raise me better
But her pleading I denied
That leaves only me to blame
'Cause mama tried

GROSS: Merle Haggard, is this song autobiographical?

MERLE HAGGARD, COUNTRY MUSIC SINGER AND SONGWRITER: Well, it really is very close, at least. There's some things we fudged on slightly to make it rhyme, but the majority of it -- I'd say 97 percent of it's pretty accurate, I guess.

GROSS: Your father died when you were nine, is that right?

HAGGARD: Nine. Right.

GROSS: So your mother had to raise you alone after that.

HAGGARD: Yeah, and I was a, to say the least, probably the most incorrigible child you could think of. I was just -- I was already on the way to prison before I realized it, actually. I was really a kind of a screw-up, but -- and I really don't know why. I think it was mostly just out of boredom and lack of a father's attention, I think.

GROSS: I think you were 14 when your mother put you in a juvenile home?

HAGGARD: No, she didn't put me in a juvenile home. They -- the authorities put me in there for truancy, for not going to school. And that -- they gave me six months in a -- like a road camp situation, and I ran off from there and stole a car. And so then the next time, I went back it was for something serious. Then I spent the next seven years running off from places. I think I escaped 17 times from different institutions in California.

And all it was was just a matter of the authorities running me off. You know, they were drumming up business for themselves. I -- I really feel sorry for the way they do some of the kids, you know, and I was one of those kids. I'm going to snitch on them if I get a chance.

LAUGHTER

GROSS: How would you escape from reform school and youth institutions?

HAGGARD: Well, it was -- there was different institutions and different methods. There was -- some of them were minimum security, some were maximum security. Some of them were kid joints and some of them were adult jailhouses. I just didn't stay no where. I was just -- I think Willie Sutton (ph) was my idol, if you know him.

At the time, I was in the middle of becoming an outlaw, and escaping from jail and escaping from places that had me locked up in was part of the thing that I wanted to do.

GROSS: Now, was there an outlaw mystique that you wanted to have?

HAGGARD: I guess. I don't know -- I -- you know, I -- I admired people like Jesse James, you know, along with a lot of other kids. But I guess I took it too far, you know.

GROSS: So what was your most ingenious escape?

HAGGARD: Probably the one that was the most ingenious was one that I didn't actually go on. I was at San Quentin. I was all set to go with the only completely successful escape out of San Quentin, I think, in 21 years. But the people that gave me the chance to go were the same people that talked me out of it because they felt like that I was just doing it for the sport of it, and that it was a very serious thing to the other fellow that was going.

And they had a big judge's chambers sort of desk that they were building in the furniture factory in San Quentin. And I had a friend who was building a place for two guys to be transported out. That was before they had X-rays and things of that nature. And I just -- and I could have gone, and I didn't go, and the guy that went with wound up being executed in the gas chamber. He went out and held court in the street and killed a highway patrolman. And so it was really good that I didn't go.

GROSS: Was that a real sobering experience for you?

HAGGARD: Yeah, I've had a lot of those things in my life. And you know, those -- are the sort of things that a guy unknowingly like myself, you just -- I guess I was gathering up meat for songs, you know. I don't know what I was doing. I really -- kind of was crazy as a kid and then all of a sudden, you know, while I was in San Quentin, I just -- I one day understood that -- saw the light. And I just didn't want to do that no more and I realized what a mess I'd made out of my life and I got out of there and stayed out of there, never did go back. And went and apologized to all the people I'd wronged, and tried to pay back the people that I'd taken money from, borrowed money from or whatever.

I think when I was 31 years old, I paid everybody back that I'd ever taken anything from, including my mother.

GROSS: What did you say to your mother when you changed your life around?

HAGGARD: Well, it was just obvious. You know, there was no -- I don't think there was ever any time that anybody in my family was worried about me staying with this. It was just the way that, you know, some people grow up in the army and, you know, it's hard to be 18 years old. And you know, they send 18-year-old boys to war because they don't know what to do with them.

And I was one that -- I wound up going to prison, rather than war. And instead of growing up in the middle of a battlefield with bullets flying around me, I grew up on the isolation ward and death row. And that's where the song "Mama Tried" gets close to being autobiographical.

GROSS: You were on death row?

HAGGARD: Yeah, I was -- I got caught for making beer -- making some beer up there and I got too much of my own beer and got drunk in the yard and got arrested. It's hard to get arrested in San Quentin, but I did. And they sent me to what was known as "the shelf" and the shelf is part of the north block, which you share with the inmates on death row.

And it's kind of like the -- there's not too many more stops for you, actually. And that was the, as you put it, "sobering" experience for me. I wound up with nothing to lay on except a Bible and an old concrete slab. And woke up from that drunk that I'd been on that day, and I could hear some prisoners talking in the area next to me. In other words, there was a alleyway between the back of the cells, and I could hear people talking over there. And I recognized the guy as being Caryl Chessman -- a guy that they were fixing to execute.

And I don't know. There was just something about the whole situation that I knew that if I ever got out of there -- if I was lucky enough to get out, I made up my mind while I still had that hangover that I was all finished.

GROSS: How were you lucky enough to get out?

HAGGARD: Well, I went back down on the yard and I went down and asked for the roughest job in the penitentiary, which was a textile mill. And went down and just started building my reputation, you know. Just started running in reverse from what I'd been doing and started trying to build up a long line of good things to be proud of, and that's what I've been doing since then.

GROSS: Back in the days when you were in prison, was music a big part of your life then? Were you singing, playing, writing songs?

HAGGARD: Yeah -- yeah, I was already into doing that. I really didn't, I don't think, believe that I sincerely had a future in it. I think I was just kind of like doing what I thought was probably a waste of time or a hobby at the very most, and maybe some extra money on the weekend sort of thing. But that's, you know, that's when I was in San Quentin. I still didn't really thoroughly realize that I had to do this the rest of my life and that it was going to be this successful for me, and I was going to, you know, have all the things happen that have happened.

I had no idea that -- you could never have convinced me of a minute amount of the success I've had. I would never have believed it.

GROSS: Did your musical ability have anything to do with people noticing you in prison and thinking that you could make it when you got out? Did that help you at all in the warden's eyes?

HAGGARD: Yeah, that was -- that was the basic reason, I think, that these friends of mine talked me out of going on that escape. They felt that I had talent and they -- they felt that I was just a ornery kid and could probably make something out of my life. And you know, believe it or not, in the penitentiary, there's some pretty nice people, and very unfortunate people.

And they love to let somebody, so to speak, get up on their shoulders. You know, they like to boost somebody over the wall if they can. If they can't make it themselves, they, I think sincerely, love to see someone else make it. I finally made a successful escape, you might say.

GROSS: My guest is Merle Haggard. We'll talk more after a break.

This is FRESH AIR.

BREAK

GROSS: Before we get back to our Merle Haggard interview, let's hear him sing "The Bottle Let Me Down."

(BEGIN AUDIO CLIP -- SINGER MERLE HAGGARD PERFORMING "THE BOTTLE LET ME DOWN")

MERLE HAGGARD, SINGER: (SINGING)

Each night I leave the barroom when it's over
Not feeling any pain at closing time
But tonight your memory found me much too sober
Couldn't drink enough to keep you off my mind.

Tonight the bottle let me down
And let your memory come around
The one true friend I thought I'd found
Tonight the bottle let me down.

GROSS: Tell us the story of how you got your first guitar.

HAGGARD: My first guitar?

GROSS: Yeah. Or how you started to play guitar, whoever's it was.

LAUGHTER

HAGGARD: Well -- I have an older brother named Lowell (ph) and Lowell had a service station at the time. And there was a guy that came in and wanted a couple of dollars worth of gas, didn't have no money, and he left a little old Bronson (ph) sort of a Stella (ph), Sears and Roebuck-type guitar as collateral, and he never did come back after it. And that old guitar sat in the closet there for a couple of years.

And finally, I think my mother showed me a couple of chords. My brother didn't know how to play and my dad had passed away. He was the musician in the family. So mama showed me C-chord that daddy had showed her. And she didn't know how to make C-chord very good. And I went and took it from that, and I beat around on that old Bronson -- I think it was a Bronson guitar.

GROSS: I imagine when you first got the guitar you were playing the songs that you heard on the radio. How did you start writing songs yourself?

HAGGARD: Well I -- about the same time that I discovered Jimmie Rodgers -- I was about 12 years old -- I discovered Hank Williams. And I remember seeing on the yellow MGM records, there was a -- the artist's name and then there was another name underneath that artist. It was small, very small letters, and it said "composer." And I didn't know what a composer was. And I asked my mother. I said: "What does this mean?" And she said: "I don't' know." And she called the record store sand they told her. That's the writer. That's the guy that writes the songs.

And it seemed to me very important to have your name in both places there. I noticed that Hank Williams had a little extra clout because he wrote his own songs; Jimmie Rodgers the same thing, you know. So I felt it was just as necessary to become a songwriter as it was to try to learn to play the guitar or, you know, it was certainly a tool that most people I think in the business would like to be a singer-songwriter if they could be because it is in some way your retirement.

You know, you can have a great career, and if you don't write songs or have a publishing company or something to lean back on when it's all over, it's a pretty hard drop back to reality, you know. And once you've learned to live under the conditions I've learned to live under, you better have yourself a publishing company or I'll have to go back to being an outlaw.

LAUGHTER

GROSS: When you started writing songs, did you realize that you could write autobiographical songs from your own life? Or did you think you had to copy other people's songs?

HAGGARD: Well, I really didn't realize what method to take at first. I must have wrote maybe 1,500 songs that weren't any good, or at least I, you know, I never kept them. And finally with a lot of help and a lot of people who had written hit songs I'd become friends with, such as Fuzzy Owen (ph), who became my personal manager -- was a songwriter, and he helped me -- he taught me how to write songs.

And finally I wrote one that was worth keeping, and I think I've written about 300 keepers or so -- maybe 400.

GROSS: Do you remember the first one that you felt: This is worth keeping.

HAGGARD: Yeah, it was a sort of a rock and roll song -- Elvis-type rock and roll thing. It was called "If You Want To Be My Woman." And Glen Campbell opened his shows with it for years, and I still do the song. I wrote it when I was about 14. But I didn't keep very many. That was probably one out of that 1,500 that got kept.

GROSS: Could you sing a couple of bars of it?

HAGGARD: (SINGING)

You like riding in the country in my Cadillac
And you keep ... -- I don't know -- there's a ..
I keep pushing -- you keep pushing me back ...

Something about --- la, da, da, ...
On the money that I earn
You refuse to give me
Something equal in return

Don't look at me
Like maybe you don't understand
If you want to be my woman
You know, you got to let me be your man.

GROSS: And how old were you when you wrote it?

HAGGARD: Something like that. Huh?

GROSS: How old were you?

HAGGARD: Fourteen.

GROSS: Wow. So this was just about the time that you started that whole round of reform schools.

HAGGARD: Yeah -- yeah. I might have been as much as 15 or 16 when I wrote that song. I was in -- it was between 14 and 17, I'm not sure.

GROSS: Was it hard for you to adjust to success and stardom, having come from poverty, and you know, having lived in prison off and on for so many years? I think it's hard for a lot of people to adjust to that.

HAGGARD: Well, the -- you know, a lot of people may or may not understand how hard it is for a person coming out of an institution, you know, whether it be a prison or whether it be some sort of a mental institution; whether it be the army or whatever.

There's a -- there's a thing that happens like when you leave the penitentiary when you've been there for three years. You have friends and you have a way of life and you have a routine, and a whole way of life that you just give up all of a sudden. One day you're there and you're -- next day you're not there, and you don't' have any more friends from the outside 'cause things went on when you left, and you can't find anybody there.

And the people you left behind in prison are your really only -- are really your only friends. And there's a period of adjustment that took me about 120 days. I don't know -- about four months. A couple of times, I really wanted to go back. And it's really a weird sensation, but it's the loneliest feeling in the world, about the second night out of the penitentiary.

GROSS: Merle Haggard, recorded in 1995. He's currently on tour. Some of the cities he'll play this month are Laredo, Corpus Christi, Austin, Houston, Zanesville (ph), Wichita Falls, and Oklahoma City.

I'm Terry Gross and this is FRESH AIR.

Here's a Haggard song that he wrote with Buck Owens. This is a version Haggard recorded in the '90s.

(BEGIN AUDIO CLIP -- SINGER MERLE HAGGARD PERFORMING "TODAY I STARTED LOVING YOU AGAIN")

MERLE HAGGARD, SINGER: (SINGING)

Today I started loving you again
And I'm right back where I've really always been
I got over you just long enough to let my heartache mend
And then today I started loving you again.

What a fool I was to think I could get by
With only these few million tears I've cried...

This is a rush transcript. This copy may not
be in its final form and may be updated.

TO PURCHASE AN AUDIOTAPE OF THIS PIECE, PLEASE CALL 888-NPR-NEWS

Dateline: Terry Gross
Guest: Merle Haggard
High: Country music singer and songwriter MERLE HAGGARD. Before he became a musician, he lived the kind of life that's often mythological in song: hopping freight trains and doing time in prison. In 1994, HAGGARD was inducted into the Country Music Hall of Fame. Through his career, HAGGARD has released over 65 albums, most of which have been charted in the major trades. He landed a Grammy Award in 1984 for Best Male Country Vocal Performance for "That's The Way Love Goes." His most recent album was "1996" released years ago.
Spec: Music Industry; Entertainment; Art
Please note, this is not the final feed of record
Copy: Content and programming copyright 1998 WHYY, Inc. All rights reserved. Transcribed by FDCH, Inc. under license from WHYY, Inc. Formatting copyright 1998 FDCH, Inc. All rights reserved. No quotes from the materials contained herein may be used in any media without attribution to WHYY, Inc. This transcript may not be reproduced in whole or in part without prior written permission.
End-Story: Interview with Singer/Songwriter Merle Haggard

Show: FRESH AIR
Date: SEPTEMBER 01, 1998
Time: 12:00
Tran: 090102NP.217
Type: FEATURE
Head: Interview with Country Singer Don Walser
Sect: Entertainment
Time: 12:30

TERRY GROSS, HOST: This is FRESH AIR. I'm Terry Gross.

It's country music week on our show. Country music styles have come and gone. Don Walser says he's still singing the same way he did back in the '50s when he sometimes shared the bill with a young Buddy Holly in small Texas towns.

Walser has a gift for singing ballads and for yodeling, but he never made it commercially so he kept his day job. He worked in the National Guard as a mechanic and administrator, then worked for the State of Texas.

He retired in 1994 when he turned 60. His retirement coincided with his first commercially-released recording, "Rolling Stone from Texas" on the Austin-based label "Watermelon."

Walser's lived in Austin since the late '80s where he has developed a large following among alternative rock fans, as well as fans of classic country music.

Before we feature a 1994 interview with Don Walser, let's hear his recording of the yodeling cowboy ballad "Cowpoke."

(BEGIN AUDIO CLIP -- COUNTRY MUSIC SINGER AND YODELER DON WALSER PERFORMING "COWPOKE")

DON WALSER, SINGER/YODELER: (SINGING)

I'm lonesome but I'm happy
Rich but I'm broke
And the good knows the reason
I'm just a cowpoke

From Dallas to Austin
The ranges I know
I live with the wind
No one cares where I go

GROSS: Don Walser, welcome to FRESH AIR.

DON WALSER, COUNTRY MUSIC SINGER AND YODELER: Thank you very much. I'm glad to be talking with you today.

GROSS: What happens to your voice when you yodel? How do you do it?

WALSER: Well, it's kind of done down in your throat, and you hit a falsetto and then you just come right back out of it to something else, you know. You know, like (YODELING SOUND). You know, it sounds kind of dumb when you're doing it like that, but then if you speed it up, it's (YODELING SOUND).

You see what I'm saying?

GROSS: Mmm-hm. Well, you do an Eddy Arnold song "I'll Hold You In My Heart 'Til I Can Hold You In My Arms" -- and one of the things I love about your version of this song is that you have -- you don't yodel in the song, but you use that kind of falsetto yodel-like quality in the melody. You just like work it into the melody line.

WALSER: Right. That was Ray Benson's (ph) idea. He -- we were -- him and T.J. McFarlane (ph) produced this CD and he said: "Why don't you try a falsetto on the end of it, and just do the melody" -- he'd heard me do it before on other songs. And so that's -- it -- I have to blame that on him. That wasn't the way I usually sung it.

But I'm glad that he came up with the idea because I really enjoy it.

GROSS: Well this is "I'll Hold You In My Heart" from Don Walser's new album "Rolling Stone From Texas."

(BEGIN AUDIO CLIP -- SINGER DON WALSER PERFORMING "I'LL HOLD YOU IN MY HEART")

DON WALSER, SINGER: (SINGING)

I'll hold you in my heart
'Til I can hold you in my arms
Like you've never been held before
I think of you every day
And then I'll dream the night away
'Til you are in my arms once more

GROSS: It's really a beautiful recording. Don Walser, I'd like to get back to your yodeling for a moment. Do you feel like you know different styles of yodeling? Or is there just one style that's the Don Walser style?

WALSER: Well, I think that I do a Jimmie Rodgers-type yodel. I think we put one -- yeah, we did -- we put "California Blues" on there and it's a different kind of yodel. But I sort of do a Swiss yodel, and I kind of patterned that after hearing the Jimmy Wakely (ph) song that Slim Whitman (ph) did back in the late '40s I believe it was. I believe it was in the late '40s, that he did "Casting My Lasso."

And I liked that Swiss yodel and I starting doing that more. And of course, Alton Britt (ph) did some things like "Cannonball Yodel" and stuff like that that got me to doing that.

GROSS: What the difference between a Swiss yodel and a cowboy yodel? Maybe you could demonstrate the difference for us.

WALSER: Well, a cowboy yodel is sort of like (YODELING).

Sort of like that, you know. And the a Swiss yodel is more like (YODELING).

You know, it's more of a double yodel than the cowboy yodel is. And you know, like an old cowboy song I remember I used to do one when I was growing up, called "Rainbow On The Real Colorado." And it has a kind of different yodel to it, too. And I don't know -- it's just -- I just sort of developed a lot of the yodels because I didn't have access out there where I grew up to anyone else's yodels. And I still haven't really paid much attention. I've been, you know, so busy throughout my life that I really haven't bought and listened to other folks yodeling.

GROSS: Take us back to your childhood a little bit. Would you describe for us where you grew up?

WALSER: I grew up in a little farming community of Lamesa, Texas, right between Lubbock and Big Spring, out on the plains -- the south plains of Texas -- that little strip of land right below the panhandle. And my mother passed away when I was about not quite 12 years old, and in those days, the Lubbock County and up in there had a lot of cotton. And the old Lamesa Cotton Oil Mill was where my father worked. And he was a night superintendent.

And back in those days, when the mill run, well, you had to be there all the time because -- so he worked from six in the afternoon -- in the evening -- until six in the morning, seven days a week while the mill was running, and that was usually at least six to eight months during the year, sometimes even longer, according to the size of the crop.

GROSS: So your mother died when you were 12. Your father worked -- what? -- 12 hours a day at the mill. Who took care of you?

WALSER: Nobody. I just stayed at home and so, you know, I was kind of -- you know, when you're young like that, you kind of -- you see things that's not there, you know.

LAUGHTER

So I kept the radio going all the time, you know. Even at night, I'd go to sleep with it, and if I woke up during the night, well, I'd listen to it a while, and it was always on one of those old border stations from down in Mexico or the Grand Ole Opry. And I just grew up on that old music. And I almost had a photographic memory and I remembered most of those songs and I still do remember most of them.

And I never wanted to sing anything but those songs because they sort of helped me make it, you know, through life.

GROSS: Is there a song that you found particularly comforting when you were home alone at night, and a little afraid, and you'd put on the radio?

WALSER: Well, I liked the old heart songs and the ballads more than I did the boogie-woogies and things like that. But I think, you know, back in those days, the B-movies and the old radio programs that they had, they depicted life I think just a little bit better than what it is. And I think today, the music we hear, a lot of it, and a lot of the movies that we see depict life a lot worse than what it really is, you know.

And I think that's where I got most of my raising was from listening to those songs. I remember Eddy Arnold had a song out one time called "Rocking Alone In An Old Rocking Chair." And it was about a neglected grandmother. And after listening to that, I said: "Boy, I'll never let mine do that."

LAUGHTER

GROSS: Can you sing a couple of lines of that?

WALSER: Yeah, let me get my guitar here.

(SINGING)

Rocking alone in an old rocking chair
I spied an old mother with silvery hair
She seemed so neglected as I saw her there
Rocking alone in that old rocking chair

Her hands were calloused, withered and old
A life of hard work was the story they told
And I thought of angels as I saw her there
Rocking alone in an old rocking chair

It wouldn't take much to gladden her heart
Just some small remembrance on somebody's part
A card or a letter would bright life there
Rocking alone in an old rocking chair

I know some kids in an orphan's home
Who'd think they owned heaven if she were their own
They'd never be glad to let her sit there
Rocking alone in an old rocking chair

GROSS: Oh, that sounds great. Thank you so much for singing that for us. I think I can really understand why you alone, without a mother, would so related to this song, about a woman alone who was neglected.

WALSER: Well, that's kind of the -- why I love these old songs because -- and why I try to keep them alive.

GROSS: When did you get a guitar? I mean, your family was poor.

LAUGHTER

WALSER: That's a -- that's another story. There's a cousin of mine, J.R. Wright (ph) was his name. He married one of my cousins. And they always -- I used to get up in a tree, you know, when I'd come home from school, even before mother died. I would get up in that tree and sing because I had to -- I just had to sing every day. And I had to find a place where I could do it because I was kind of ashamed to do it in front of anybody.

And I'd get up in the tree and sing. And sometimes I'd stay up there 'til after dark, and then I'd get down and come in the house after dark. But I remember that years later, I would meet some of the folks from home and they'd say: "Oh, you're the little guy that used to get up in the tree and sing." And I didn't realize they was even listening to me. And my kinfolks would always make me sing because they enjoyed what I sung.

And -- but they all said: "You need to learn how to play a guitar." And J.R. Wright bought me an old Stella guitar, a way back when I was about 13 or 14 years old. And of course, I didn't have a book to learn from and I learned how to -- I'd grip it like a club instead of pushing your hand out and playing it right, you know.

But I learned -- I went to a Tex Ritter movie and saw -- and learned the C-chord. I got to watching where his fingers were. And some guy down the street knew three or four chords. And I just sort of learned it from other people, and watching them and I really learned it the wrong way. If I'd a been able to, you know, afford a teacher or something, I'd probably have been -- I'm still not a very good guitar player. I can just sort of get by.

GROSS: My guest is Don Walser. We'll talk more after a break.

This is FRESH AIR.

BREAK

GROSS: Back with singer and guitarist Don Walser.

Now I know that where you grew up was not far from Lubbock.

WALSER: That's right.

GROSS: Of course, Lubbock's big star was Buddy Holly. And I know there were times you shared a bill with him, right?

WALSER: Oh, yes. Of course, back then, I didn't really know who he was, but there was a drive-in theater there in Lamesa, Texas that -- Skeet and Art (ph) had this old drive-in called the Sky-Vue, and in fact it's still operating. It's one of the last ones that hasn't been closed down.

And he had a ramp house where you would -- could go sit in the winter time and watch it, instead of running your heater in your car. And you had seats that you could watch through the glass in the ramp house. Then he had a big projection room there that he -- and he had a little stage on top of it. And he would bring in guys like Cole Nicks (ph) and Buddy Holly. And I would always play with them. You know, each time I would play some. And they'd have a new recording guy, you know, somebody that would come out with a new hit song that lived in that part of the country. And they would have him come down and play at the Sky-Vue during -- between the movies, you know. And I would share bills with them.

And then also one of his first -- Buddy Holly's first -- I don't know if he was a manager or just worked with him -- his name was High Pockets Duncan. And I don't know his real name, but he was a disc jockey on KDAV there in Lubbock.

And I didn't have a telephone and he would -- well, he'd get in touch with me -- he'd say, well, "some of you folks over there in Lamesa, tell old" -- they called me "Donny" back then -- "tell old Donny Walser that I want him to be at such and such place at such and such a time." And that's the way I'd get word -- someone would hear it and they'd come tell me. "High Pockets wants you to be at a certain certain place" -- you know.

And that's kind of the way I found and the way I did share bills with lots of people. And back then, he was just a tall -- Buddy Holly was just a tall boy with glasses and I didn't really realize who he was until many years later.

GROSS: Did rock and roll make it hard for you to do your music?

WALSER: Yeah, it put a bunch of us almost out of business there for a while, when Elvis and some of those guys came in. And it was good music and I even did a little of it myself, but it never was -- my heart never was there, you know, and so I just kept doing what -- plugging away at what I do now, you know.

GROSS: Which Elvis songs did you do?

WALSER: Oh, "Heartbreak Hotel" and some of those -- I guess three or four of them -- just enough to satisfy some of the young girls that was in the crowd.

LAUGHTER

Oh, do a couple of bars of "Heartbreak Hotel" the way you do it.

WALSER: Oh, I don't even know if I can do it anymore. It's been so many years. Let's see.

(SINGING)

Well -- oops.

LAUGHTER

I gotta find the right key here.

(SINGING)

Well, since my baby left me
I found a new place to dwell
Down at the end of Lonely Street
At Heartbreak Hotel
I get so lonely, baby
I get so lonely
I get so lonely I could die.

That's not very good, but ...

GROSS: That's great. So -- so there was a period when you felt like Elvis and other rock and rollers were starting to put you out of business. What did you do?

WALSER: Well, we just kept playing. We would do a few of those songs. And I loved Chuck Berry. We used to do a lot of Chuck Berry songs -- not a lot of them, but a few -- enough to get us -- get us through the night, you know.

GROSS: Mmm-hm.

WALSER: But no, I think that old rock and roll music was great music, and I still love to hear it. We got the group here in Austin called the "High Noon Boys" that do that stuff. They even made a 78 rpm record not too long ago, using the old tube stuff that they used to record with back in those days.

GROSS: Did you ever want to be the young singer who was really good looking and all the girls fell for, and you know, to become a big like romantic hero as well as a singer?

WALSER: I think all of us did -- that going. I had the star syndrome there for a couple of years until I realized that -- that I was having more fun than the stars were, you know. I was getting to play for weddings and old VFW halls and getting right there with the people, and I didn't have to worry about Carnegie Hall or any of those places.

But I did have to take my wife -- I told her when we married, I said "I'm in the National Guard and I'll stay there 'til I retire, and I'm going to be gone some each year to go to summer camp." And I said I'm going to play my music all my life, and so you've got to get used to that. And if you want to -- if you don't trust me, then you've got to go with me. And I sort of insisted when we were young that she go with me.

And so she could see that I was straight. You know what I mean?

LAUGHTER

But I wasn't a bad looking old boy when I was younger and had a few pounds off of me, and I did have a few of them try to chase me, but they always was afraid of my wife. You know how that goes.

LAUGHTER

GROSS: So she did travel with you through the years?

WALSER: Oh yeah. She went everywhere I went, back in those days. Now -- now, she doesn't go to every place. She comes out to a couple of places and helps me sell what products we have and so forth. But she trusts me now after all these years, and she says I'm like an old dog chasing a car anyway. If the dog caught the car, he couldn't drive it anyway.

LAUGHTER

GROSS: Don Walser recorded in 1994. His latest CD is called "Down At The Sky-Vue Drive-In." It's named after the drive-in where he used to perform in the '50s. Let's hear a song from it.

(BEGIN AUDIO CLIP -- SINGER DON WALSER PERFORMING TRACK FROM "DOWN AT THE SKY-VUE DRIVE-IN")

DON WALSER, SINGER: (SINGING)

Pardon me if I'm sentimental
When we say good-bye
Don't be angry with me
Should I cry

Though you're far, yet I'll dream
A little dream as years roll by
Now and then there's a fool
Such as I

Now and then there's a fool
Such as I am over you
You taught me how
To love and now
You say that we are through

I'm a fool, but I love you dear
Until the day that I die
Now and then
There's a fool
Such as I

GROSS: Our country music week series continues tomorrow with three of the founders of the country outlaw movement: Willie Nelson, Waylon Jennings and Billy Joe Shaver (ph).

Coming up, Maureen Corrigan reviews a new biography of Helen Keller.

This is FRESH AIR.

This is a rush transcript. This copy may not
be in its final form and may be updated.

TO PURCHASE AN AUDIOTAPE OF THIS PIECE, PLEASE CALL 888-NPR-NEWS

Dateline: Terry Gross, Washington, DC
Guest: Don Walser
High: Country music singer and yodeler DON WALSER. He has released the new album"Down At the Sky-Vue Drive-In" on Sire Records. Walser has developed a "punk" like following, attracting fans of all different ages.
Spec: Music Industry; Entertainment; Art
Please note, this is not the final feed of record
Copy: Content and programming copyright 1998 WHYY, Inc. All rights reserved. Transcribed by FDCH, Inc. under license from WHYY, Inc. Formatting copyright 1998 FDCH, Inc. All rights reserved. No quotes from the materials contained herein may be used in any media without attribution to WHYY, Inc. This transcript may not be reproduced in whole or in part without prior written permission.
End-Story: Interview with Country Singer Don Walser

Show: FRESH AIR
Date: SEPTEMBER 01, 1998
Time: 12:00
Tran: 090103NP.217
Type: REVIEW
Head: Helen Keller Biography
Sect: Entertainment
Time: 12:52

TERRY GROSS, HOST: How did Helen Keller almost destroy her saintly reputation? According to a new biography by Dorothy Herrmann, the answer is by publicly advocating birth control, women's rights, and socialism -- and at the end of her life, by indulging in martinis and mink coats.

Book critic Maureen Corrigan says that Herrmann's nuanced portrait of Helen Keller is no joke.

MAUREEN CORRIGAN, BOOK CRITIC: In the preface to her rich and compelling biography of Helen Keller, Dorothy Herrmann says that over the past few years, she's been subjected to a lot of those dumb Helen Keller jokes. I also heard those jokes recently, whenever I'd mention whose biography I was reading.

But I also heard something else. At least five women said to me: "Oh, Helen Keller. I read everything about her when I was a kid." I wonder about this obsession with Helen Keller that so many girls -- myself included -- seem to have experienced.

Certainly, Helen was a safe female for us to have admired. She was smart and indomitable. But her blindness and deafness rendered her dependent, thus ensuring that her strengths didn't overwhelm her femininity. After finishing Herrmann's biography, I also suspect that Annie Sullivan had a lot to do with our fascination with Helen's story -- a story that goes like this.

Once upon a time, there was a beautiful child lost in emptiness. Then one day, a young woman, also beautiful, comes along and rescues her. She takes the place of the child's ineffectual mother. Forever after, she barely leaves her side.

As Herrmann vividly chronicles, Helen's singular relationship with Annie Sullivan sounds like a fantasy about the perfect mother, as well as a chaste fair tale romance. At times, however, their relationship also felt like a dungeon to the two women -- one they each sporadically tried to escape.

There are also a couple of princes bearing threatening slobbering kisses in Herrmann's unexpurgated life of Helen Keller. But they didn't stick around long enough to loosen the tormented love knot that bound Helen and Annie.

Sex and politics are the two biggest bombshells Herrmann drops in this biography. Helen once told her friend Alexander Graham Bell that she couldn't imagine a man wanting to marry here. She said: "I should think it would seem like marrying a statue."

Nevertheless, in 1914, when she was 36, Helen and her 29-year-old male secretary Peter Fagin (ph) fell in love. The romance was a secret one. Helen knew that her mother, and especially Annie Sullivan who, as Herrmann points out, derived her identity and livelihood from their association, would never have approved.

So Helen and Fagin planned to elope, going so far as to apply for a marriage license in Boston. Their scheme was eventually exposed, and Fagin disappeared. But Herrmann speculates that given the socialist, free-love circles the pair moved in, their affair was consummated.

Helen Keller, a socialist? A wobbly who hailed the birth of the Soviet Union and palled around with the likes of John Reed and Emma Goldman? Those grammar school hagiographies that we girls lapped up tactfully omitted mention of Helen's radical leanings. It was Annie's husband, John Macy (ph), another male who eventually realized he was the third wheel in a relationship built for two, who introduced Helen to socialism.

Whenever she expressed her beliefs, however, the public scoffed. How could a deaf-blind woman know anything about politics? Instead, Helen's audience only wanted uplifting accounts of her courageous life.

I've short-changed Annie Sullivan here, but fortunately Herrmann doesn't. Like many others who've studied Helen and her teacher, Herrmann believes that Annie was the truly brilliant partner in the relationship, especially given that she fought her way out of her own version of the darkness that imprisoned Helen.

Herrmann graphically describes Annie's childhood spent in a poorhouse where she shared quarters with sexually abusive adults, as well as corpses. Ironically, her escape was bought at the price of her personal freedom. Annie suffered daily from headaches and nausea, after hours and hours of spelling the world into Helen's demanding hand.

Annie once admitted that she and the adult Helen had such fundamentally different conceptions of life that they would have loathed each other had they met under ordinary circumstances. Nonetheless, the image Herrmann leaves readers with is of Annie and Helen side by side; their ashes interned together at Washington's National Cathedral -- like so many other couples, bound for eternity by love and circumstance and chafing mutual dependency.

GROSS: Maureen Corrigan teaches literature at Georgetown University. she reviewed "Helen Keller: A Life."

I'm Terry Gross.

This is a rush transcript. This copy may not
be in its final form and may be updated.

TO PURCHASE AN AUDIOTAPE OF THIS PIECE, PLEASE CALL 888-NPR-NEWS

Dateline: Terry Gross, Washington, DC
Guest: Maureen Corrigan
High: Book critic Maureen Corrigan reviews Dorothy Herrmann's new biography "Helen Keller: A Life." (Knopf)
Spec: Women; Lifestyle; Profiles
Please note, this is not the final feed of record
Copy: Content and programming copyright 1998 WHYY, Inc. All rights reserved. Transcribed by FDCH, Inc. under license from WHYY, Inc. Formatting copyright 1998 FDCH, Inc. All rights reserved. No quotes from the materials contained herein may be used in any media without attribution to WHYY, Inc. This transcript may not be reproduced in whole or in part without prior written permission.
End-Story: Helen Keller Biography
Transcripts are created on a rush deadline, and accuracy and availability may vary. This text may not be in its final form and may be updated or revised in the future. Please be aware that the authoritative record of Fresh Air interviews and reviews are the audio recordings of each segment.