My book is in one of my favorite magazines this month.

By Anita Garner

My gospel-singing family appears in the March, 2022 issue of Reminisce Extra magazine.  I’m thrilled.  My parents, Sister Fern and Brother Ray Jones, would be thrilled too.  This excerpt from my book, “The Glory Road: a Gospel Gypsy Life” continues a years-long relationship with the company that publishes this magazine.

It’s from a chapter about Johnny Cash recording
a song Mother wrote.

Our family read every issue of Readers Digest until the pages were soft as tissue then we passed them along to others.  Readers Digest is owned today by Trusted Media Brands, a company that also owns several other magazines.  Years ago I received a gift subscription to one of their publications, “Taste Of Home” magazine, fell in love with it, saw an ad for “Reminisce” and subscribed. Every other month, it’s “Reminisce Extra.”  Which brings us to today, when my advance copy arrived with a story from my new book inside.

Thanks to Trusted Media Brands’ Mary-Liz Shaw, my publisher, University of Alabama Press and UAP Marketing Director, Clint Kimberling for putting this together.

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Anita Garner’s Website

 

L.A. Radio Guest Columnist – I’m it today.

Anita Garner

Our esteemed host, Don Barrett, invited me to tell the story about one more media person’s memoir – mine.  It’s been in the works for a while and now it’s in the “Coming Soon” category.  Here’s the cover.

Turning the tables on Don, I should let you know that he’s been part of this project from way back.  We met when he was writing his first book, “Los Angeles Radio People” in the 90s.  Thousands of people from around the world visit his site, laradio.com, every day.  Click his artwork above to join them.

Don was conducting one of his thorough interviews about my time on the air and we bonded over the fact that both of our mothers had ALS and we were caring for them.

I showed him a short story, material planned for a someday book about my gospel-singing family and our life in the Deep South during the 1950s.  He sent the story to a friend in the movie industry whose wife was an agent. She liked the material and asked if I’d adapt it for the stage. I did and we had play readings in Los Angeles, so though I haven’t been steadily working on this book since the 90’s when I met Don, pieces of it did exist back then.

I knew I needed to finish telling the stories I’d begun, so I set myself the task of finishing a book manuscript by a certain date in 2017, pulling out reams of stories and rough chapter outlines and notes on scraps of paper and putting in long days and nights until it was ready.

I submitted to a university press in the Deep South. The Glory Road:A Gospel Gypsy Life, is a first-person memoir, but it’s more like a novel about some colorful characters I’m related to, singers and songwriters and musicians, with American music history woven through.  It takes place during times of enormous change in music and religion, when Saturday night came to Sunday mornings, when my family’s gospel music merged with rockabilly and church became entertainment.

My brother and I sang harmony with the family and lived much of our lives on Route 66 moving from tent revivals to radio stations to All Day Singings to churches and just about any place a microphone and amplifier and speakers were set up. I wanted this material and the music the family made to become part of Southern history. I learned that many university presses keep their books in circulation and keep printing for years into the future. That matters to me.

What does this have to do with radio?  Just about everything.  Without radio, my parents’ music wouldn’t have been heard by people who eventually recorded it, and who later offered Mother her own recording contract. We appeared on radio stations where the studio was in the antenna shack outside of town and other stations located in fancy hotels. My first radio appearance was on WDAK, Columbus, Georgia, at age three.  No adjustable booms.  Stand the little girl on a chair stacked with stuff until she can reach the mic and she’ll sing her part.

After my parents passed, a record label re-issued their music and it appears everywhere these days – movies, TV shows, downloads, wherever there’s music. I’ll post a couple of links that’ll take you to a current Netflix show soundtrack where my mother, Sister Fern Jones is singing and a wayback link to Johnny Cash singing a song she wrote.

My book releases April 21, 2021.  Here’s the publisher.

And here’s a nice thing someone said about them.

“University presses have long been key in the literary ecosystem when it comes to issuing original, risky work, and ’Bama’s is one of the most innovative.”

Just this week, the contract arrived from my audio book publisher. Media people, especially voiceovers, tend to record their own manuscripts. I’m not doing that. I want to sit back and listen to someone else tell these stories.

I write a new blog about once a week here at this site Dave Williams (KLIF/Dallas) and I share.  I write often about The Glory Road and sometimes I include excerpts from those days.

Here’s a song from Sister Fern.  You can find others on You Tube.

And here’s a song she wrote, recorded by Johnny Cash with the Tennessee Two

Johnny Cash - I Was There When It Happened

 

Thanks, Don, for the invitation.  It’s good to visit laradio.com.  I do it every day.

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You gotta help somebody.

By Anita Garner

Patsy & Loretta & Kris & Johnny

Music stories touch on the close relationships between Patsy Cline and Loretta Lynn, Kris Kristofferson and Johnny Cash.  In each case, one got out in front a bit and reached back to bring another one along, to make a living writing, performing, touring, getting steady work in the music business, maybe getting on The Opry.  Patsy had hits, met Loretta, loved her and looked out for her.  Kris wrote great songs but when he met Johnny, he was a janitor at a recording studio just trying to get someone to hear them.  Johnny listened.

In the 1950’s, Mother (Sister Fern Jones) was writing songs and looking for a recording artist to record one of them.  Her options were limited.  She wrote and performed only gospel. She needed to find  a popular artist who also sang “inspirational” songs now and then.

She handed her packages to my brother and me to take to the post office, packages containing tapes of her singing her songs.  One went to the home of The Singing Governor, Jimmie Davis, in Louisiana, the man with the hit song, “You Are My Sunshine.”

We didn’t know how she got his attention in the first place.  We didn’t ask.  We were young kids, not that curious about our parents’ activities that didn’t concern us.

It could have been Kousin Karl, a country radio deejay, who let everyone know how much he liked the music sung by Sister Fern.  Karl was well connected and he emceed shows all over the place.  It could have been  gospel recording artists appearing on the same bill with her or musicians from all over the South who showed up to accompany the singers.

Did Sister Fern fit into that group of people who reached back to help?  Did she ever promote someone else’s work?  Daddy did.  Helping other people was his job as a preacher, and it was also how he believed, but if Mother helped other people, she never spoke of any such relationships.

We didn’t find out until after she passed.   Going through her files (multiple tall filing cabinets chronicling her life in music) there were audition tapes and rough music manuscripts and head shots and demo records sent to her from strangers from all over the world, hoping she’d connect them with someone else.  I don’t know how those people found her address and phone number, but they reached her in surprising numbers

She kept all the material she received and copies of her responses, handwritten on those self-carboned note papers.  To some, she offered names and addresses of contacts.  By then there were multiple television shows featuring gospel music and she seemed to know all of them.

Once in a while today we hear a right-place-at-the-right-time story, but not as often as we used to.  Back then, without any apparent expectation of reciprocity, country and gospel performers helped each other.  It’s how things worked.

I hear Daddy saying from the pulpit, “You gotta help somebody,” and then I have to go listen to this song.

Billy Eckstine, “If I Can Help Somebody” (Nat King Cole show, 1957)

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Country Music Connections

By Anita Garner

We’re still talking about Ken Burns Country Music on PBS. People who know about The Glory Road asked, so I’m answering questions about my family’s music and how our history fits into the decades depicted in the show.

Early in the series Ralph Peer set up recording equipment in the South and pickers and singers came down from the hills to start a  country music revolution. Ralph Peer connects to our family in more than one way. (See  below.)

In the early episodes there’s shape-note singing, taught in small country churches and sponsored by sheet music salespeople. Daddy (Brother Ray) was there, sent with his brothers and sisters by his Mama, who insisted everyone in their house would carry a tune.

Governor Jimmie Davis, Louisiana’s Singing Governor, was already famous for You Are My Sunshine when  he recorded a song Mother (Sister Fern) wrote.  He was responsible for the earliest acknowledgement of her songwriting.

Johnny Cash heard Jimmie Davis sing I Was There When It Happened on the radio in the early 50’s and learned the song to please his mother.  When my Mother wrote it, the deal she was offered to get it published was to sell half the copyright to Governor Davis, whose publisher was Ralph Peer. Today our family still shares the copyright with Peer Music.  Johnny continued to record and perform the song throughout his career. (See link below.)

When Johnny auditioned for Sun Records, he and the Tennessee Two, Marshall and Luther, sang the song for Sam Phillips who, it turned out, didn’t want to record any gospel. This story appears in the movie, Walk The Line. Marshall Grant, one of the Tennessee Two, wrote a book about his time with Johnny and titled it with Mother’s song.  His book, I Was There When It Happened, is still available, I believe.  Through the movie I met Dan John Miller, talented actor/singer/musician, who played Marshall in Walk The Line.  Dan John was kind enough to play Brother Ray at a Los Angeles reading of my play.

Nashville’s A Team, fabulous studio musicians, played on Sister Fern’s recording sessions at Owen and Hal Bradley’s Quonset Hut in Nashville.  When I was writing my book and musical, Hal was still playing sessions, and was President of Nashville Musicians Union.  He was generous with his time and advice.

Mac Wiseman, bluegrass star, introduced Mother to Randy Wood, President of Dot Records, where she got her own recording contract.

The Joneses made their records later in the 50’s and their music mostly falls into the rockabilly/Southern Gospel sound, but Daddy kept his hill country/high lonesome tenor.  He married it with Mother’s blues wail and honky tonk attitude while they sang songs about Jesus.  When their music was re-mastered and released by Numero Group in 2005, some of the earliest fans came from progressive radio and college radio stations who’ve embraced roots music all over again.

I’m glad the series was produced during a time when so many of the people who played significant roles were still around to tell their stories in their own words.  Sadly, we’ve lost several of these pioneers since the show began filming.   Praise is due Ken Burns and co-producers, Julie Dunfey and Dayton Duncan.  I’m in awe of Dayton’s writing. He’s a beautiful storyteller.  And of course there’s no voice like narrator, Peter Coyote’s.

Park Hill is the mansion Ralph Peer owned in the Hollywood Hills.  My daughter, Cathleen, later worked for Peer Music (with Ralph Peer Jr. in charge) while I was on the air at KBIG radio just around the corner. Here’s one view of the Peer mansion.  Tucked away in and around the estate are guest houses, a grotto, and Monique Peer’s (Ralph Sr.’s widow) prize camellias.  Lots of camellias.  This magnificent estate housed the headquarters of the publishing company.

Here’s where Cath sat at her desk, inside the entryway, writing the company newsletter.

Peer Music represents all the works of the man who some say started it all – Jimmie Rodgers.  Daddy revered him and Cath arranged for her Grandpa Ray to have copies of all Jimmie Rodgers’ recordings.

Here’s Johnny Cash singing Mother’s song, I Was There When It Happened, at Town Hall Party in Los Angeles.  Click the picture for the video

Here’s Mother, singing, Keeps Me Busy, a song from the Numero Group album, Fern Jones The Glory Road recorded with Nashville’s A Team.  Click the picture to listen.I wrote a story, Hank Williams Was A Friend of Mine, which won several awards, including a Marin County Arts Grant.  The friendship in the title refers to Daddy, who prayed for Hank every day. I’ll post it here one day.

For years I was a voiceover (V/O) for KCET-TV, PBS for Southern California.  Once in a while I got to say things like “Coming up tonight, Ken Burns’ (fill in the name of any of his films.)”

And one almost-connection.  I lived in Mill Valley, California for years.  In that very small town I often spotted fellow Mill Valley resident, Peter Coyote, actor/narrator, and I always meant to say, “Nice job on the Ken Burns (fill in the name of the show)” but I never did.

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On The Glory Road – Johnny Cash changes things.

By Anita Garner

Fern Jones, my mother, a transplant from juke joints and honky-tonks, was the wife of a small town preacher in Arkansas when she started writing gospel songs.  She married In her teens, got religion and turned her church songs into rockabilly.

In a story from my book, The Glory Road: A Gospel Gypsy Life,  (Spring 2021 from University of Alabama Press) Johnny Cash heard a song she wrote and sang it for his audition at Sun Records (performed in the movie Walk The Line by Joaquin Phoenix.) Though Sam Phillips at Sun recorded the song, he didn’t take to gospel at the time and didn’t plan to release it until he got Johnny to sing some grittier stuff first.

Johnny became a star who sang what he wanted to sing.  He performed I Was There When It Happened  everywhere throughout his career and included it on several albums, so this one song Mother wrote was recorded by a big ol’ bass-singing country boy on his way up and it changed everything for her.

Watch Johnny and the Tennessee Two perform  I Was There When It Happened on the Town Hall Party  TV show in Los Angeles in the 1950’s.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Pp70V6a8r00

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