University of Alabama Press Archives – Anita Garner

Christmas, 2023

I haven’t sent Christmas cards in a while, though I love receiving yours and your newsletters and pictures. I hold memories close and this is a time for being in touch.

Until recently I lived in Mill Valley, California in a cottage surrounded by redwoods and fog. I loved every minute of it. Daughter, Cathleen and the grand, Caedan Ray lived in Woodland Hills. We commuted to visit from Northern to Southern California, reverse and repeat. Things change. I’m older. My immediate family is tiny. We decided to merge. Less time on I-5 and more time together. Sacramento is home base now. We lived here decades ago when Cath was little. In our neighborhood, it seems every time a home sells, the new occupants are San Francisco commuters.

An actor friend, mentioning a TV show or movie he’s in, prefaces it with “SSP” (Shameless Self Promotion) which is the only way we’ll know the what and the where, and I still don’t know a better way to update what I’m doing except with a bit of SSP. It’s been a while, so in case I haven’t mentioned it, I finally finished the book I was writing. It’s “The Glory Road: A Gospel Gypsy Life” published by University of Alabama Press. Sold everywhere. Updates will follow at www.anitagarner.com.

Libraries have always been the goal. I hope these stories about Southern musical pioneers, my parents among them, will always be available. Once in a while I need to drop in at a library to make sure it’s really happened. Friends sent this picture from Boston Public Library, one of the most beautiful libraries I’ve ever seen. Daddy and Mother are walking in some high cotton in this music section with Marvin Gaye and Judy Garland.

Many scenes in the book were previewed in theatre performances in Los Angeles years ago, when we put The Joneses, their family and other music makers onstage. Talented directors, actors, singers, musicians and audiences added the magic, bringing the stories to life.

The Joneses’ 1950s recording sessions have since been restored as “Fern Jones The Glory Road” released by music label, Numero Group. They re-mastered the album Mother recorded in Nashville for Dot Records and also preserved vintage tracks with both Daddy and Mother for downloading from an earlier album. Songs Mother wrote are featured today in movies and TV shows all over the world and their music is sold everywhere.

Director, Greg North Zerkle (https://gregorynorthactor.com) and I are headed back to theatres. We’re putting together a new play-with-music, this time, based on the book. Full circle. Stories-stage-book-stage. Rewrites are underway. Greg commutes between NYC and L.A and we work on the phone while he travels around, doing what he does, acting, singing, dancing, directing and what-all. When I hand over this version, he’ll search for a stage, maybe New York, maybe Los Angeles, and we’ll follow “The Glory Road” where it takes us.

On to the holidays. At Thanksgiving, the girls and I cooked every traditional Southern dish, the way we do every year, exactly the way Gramma K did it. For Christmas we decided on fireplace, lasagna, movie and dessert. I hope you enjoy the season exactly the way you choose.

******

Click picture to visit my website

Outside Again

By Anita Garner

Happy people in Blithedale Canyon,
Mill Valley, CA

Finally some of us are seeing each other in person again. It’s been so long. It wasn’t just two years of not gathering, it was also a lot of booking then un-booking during our mutual commitment to staying safe.

I was invited to attend an in-person luncheon last week to discuss my book. If you’re new to this protracted book release story all you need to know is that “The Glory Road: A Gospel Gypsy Life” was released last year into the pandemic. All book tour plans changed, not just for me but for all authors. Some were cancelled, others switched to zoom appearances.

High praise for this gadget I’m in love with. It’s been zoom-ing with me for a while and now it goes traveling too. I spotted it during a CBS-TV interview with Hilary Clinton and Louise Penny a while back when they recounted their (remote) co-authoring of a new book. I load songs onto tablet or phone to demonstrate music. Last week’s hostess has Alexa so all she needed was a list of the songs I would play. Alexa had all but one and my trusty iPad carried that one.

This tablet/phone holder swivels,
raises and lowers and has a weighted bottom
(you should pardon the expression.)

We planned to gather in Marin County on a beautiful Spring day. After not going out much for a while I was a bit behind in the wardrobe department. This trip was a good reason to make the annual transfer. My closet was still stocked with flannel shirts while Spring had crept in again. I put flannel into storage and brought out floral prints.

We were invited to Marilyn’s home to share potluck lunch on her beautiful deck in the trees. Potluck lunch. Friends. Trees. Those things can make me smile for days.

Elaine shuttled some of us up the hill in her snappy electric Tesla. Tricia surprised us with an old fashioned raisin pie baked in honor of Sister Fern’s pies featured in The Glory Road. I’d like to stress here that in-person pie is much more fun than virtual pie. It was delicious.

Another happy combination: Platters of good food and thoughtful conversations. The group was ready with questions and those who hadn’t yet read the book knew its themes and shared personal observations. We talked about the South and music and food and religion and family.

As we introduced ourselves around the tables we were invited to state one thing for which we’re grateful. Jan offered a toast for the confirmation of Judge Ketanji Brown Jackson which was happening as we gathered.

Any writer would be honored to be among this group of good souls and open hearts and while I remain happy to zoom everywhere, connecting in person is a gift I’m moving up near the top of my gratitude list.

******

If your group would like to book a Glory Road discussion, there’s a contact form at my website. www.anitagarner.com.

“The Glory Road: A Gospel Gypsy Life” is available wherever books are sold. My publisher, University of Alabama Press, offers a discount for groups or ask your local library to order copies in advance for your group in hardcover, eBook and audiobook.

Have you heard? Our kids don’t want our stuff.

By Anita Garner

I’ve read several columns lately reminding seniors to pare down, don’t leave it all for our heirs to do. Lots of reminders about this from AARP. I did pare down some after each parent passed but you wouldn’t think so to look at the number of boxes I still have.

Mother kept everything, not as a hoarder but as a person who knew what she had and why. She labeled and neatly cataloged containers. Did I mention there was SO MUCH stuff? I’ve already been through several rounds of decision making about what to keep, what to sell and what to donate.

Thank goodness her songs are preserved so our family can continue sharing the music she wrote and recorded. Her scrapbooks have also been a valuable resource for me as a writer. The fact that Fern Jones was an organized keeper of things turned out to be important for future generations. We have professional help with her music (“Fern Jones: The Glory Road”) and song publishing and now there’s a book (“The Glory Road: A Gospel Gypsy Life” from University of Alabama Press, available wherever you buy books) which shares stories and photos from her archives, all because she was a faithful and detailed keeper of things.

The photo up top is of two small things I choose to keep nearby, representing both the happy and sad. The pink bowl is from her 1950s collection. I kept only this one piece. The little brass apple is a bell – a very loud one. In her home in Palm Springs, when ALS confined her to a bedroom down a long hall, for a while she was still able to ring for us. She often rang to get one of us to put pictures of Daddy on a chest within her view. She liked to rotate her favorite pictures of him.

My daughter, Cathleen Fern, has the piano her grandmother played. Fern was crazy for pink and Cath had the piano painted. This is an old spinet, the kind that isn’t appreciating in value but provides plenty of memories at home. We also keep her guitar in view. It’s not the best guitar Mother and Daddy owned but it’s the one she played late at night while writing her songs or to comfort herself when she couldn’t sleep. When my brother and I were very young and her playing woke us in the night, she’d let us stay up if we’d sing her favorite ballads.

My latest decision is to take no position about what’s left, letting my daughter choose the next disposition of Jones memorabilia after I’m gone. There’s still a box filled with Daddy’s Bibles. His briefcase, which was his preacher’s traveling chapel, is here with sermon notes still inside. We have old photos and souvenirs from years of touring the Deep South and some of Mother’s correspondence in her fancy handwriting that I’ve read but then couldn’t throw away. Her songs-in-progress are noted in old composition books. Who could get rid of those?

I rationalize this pause in downsizing based on the fact that I have only one child and she’s an organizer and thus potentially better equipped, a generation removed from the Reverend Ray and Sister Fern Jones show.

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.

******

Anita Garner’s Website

Zooming The Hard Way

By Anita Garner

My new book released a few months ago and at the same time a series of personal events happened alongside the universal one, the pandemic. For a while appearances that were meant to be in person looked fine until cancellations began again for the second time. I’ll be talking about “The Glory Road: A Gospel Gypsy Life” from the corner where my computer resides.

It’s time to revive still-workable parts of the plan. Zoom it is. I’m a Baby Zoomer (sorry) but even I know what needs to be done before the connection is made. I do it but then I change it.

My friend, Karin is the opposite. She also knows what needs to be done, knows what time to do it, has her routine down and is always butt-in-the-chair on time, smiling and looking great. She’s a heavyweight in her field who never leaves things to chance. Preparing for a discussion with a board of directors about a new contract, you can bet she’s done her research on the organization before all the faces click into place on her screen. Then there’s her personal ritual she describes this way:

“Hair fluffed up. Makeup on. Outfit of the day in favorite colors, spritz of Chanel. Go!”

Here’s me getting ready: Change out of plaid flannel shirt or a faded tee shirt from long ago into something that looks like a grown-up might wear it, something with buttons. Spritz water on the cowlick that recently arrived to change what was meant to be a new hairstyle but now must be adjusted because of that piece that sticks up in front. Move the monitor. Move it back. Become fixated on the background that’s showing. Get up and move the chotchkes on the bookshelves. Now engrossed in re-arranging the entire shelf. Back to the chair by the desk by the window. The light has changed. Change position again.

The call is delayed, leaving time to look at the background again, not so much for the sake of the people on the other side of Zoomland but because it’s the first time I’ve seen the room like this. Some of it I like but most things would look better on a different shelf. Mental notes about putting this over there and that over here.

Back in my seat just before the new start time. Lessons have been learned about Zoom backgrounds but now my family is moving into a new home where I’ll assess and re-assess the view I wish to present on the next call. Admit I will never be as good at this as Karin.

******

Great BIG Birthday

By Anita Garner

As of June, 2021, I’ve lived longer than anyone else in three generations of my family, longer than grandparents, longer than Mother and Daddy, longer than my sisters and brothers. None of them got to be 80, the number I’m now celebrating. Getting to be 80 years old doesn’t feel like a random event. It feels momentous.

I’m not the only one among my kinfolk with hopes and dreams and plans and I’m mindful of many opportunities the people who came before didn’t have. I was present at the end of the lives of some of them and heard first-hand what they wished they could have stayed around to accomplish.

One of the last things Mother said to me was, “You’re lucky you were born when you were. You have choices I never had.” Both those things are true. I remain in awe of all she accomplished during her time, in places and ways no one could have predicted. I hope somehow she knows how it all turned out.

At the end of Daddy’s life, he exhibited no restlessness about his closing chapters. He spoke only of gratitude. “I have had me some beautiful morning walks.” I wish he could have had many more.

During my 80th year I have the privilege of holding in my hand a book just published. My family lived it but I was the one who lived long enough to write about it.

I’m a person of faith so none of this feels accidental or coincidental. Wherever the stories come from, in whatever form they want to take, written or spoken, I’ll keep putting them together, though perhaps not as driven as Mother and a bit more grateful like Daddy.

******

Planes, Trains And Automobiles

By Anita Garner

New book. New tour. We’ll get there.

We just clicked “live” on the new website built to introduce my book, “The Glory Road: A Gospel Gypsy Life.” It’s less than three weeks til release date. I hope you’ll check out anitagarner.com and let me know what you think. If you read this blog regularly you already know bits of the story, but there’s more over there now and we’ll keep adding. Thanks to Steve Bradford and Authors Guild for their help.

I’m vaccinated and ready to travel if the good Lord’s willing and the crick don’t rise. I’ve been planning a trip from California to the east coast this fall to combine book appearances and visits with friends in New England. Rent a car in Boston and ramble around for a few days. I had in mind taking the train one way and then flying home. I pictured me in a little roomette on Amtrak with lots of magazines and coffee and snacks and waving out the window at places I used to live and working when I feel like it. It could be a leisurely and productive and celebratory kind of journey all in one.

Then I learned from Amtrak that wifi isn’t consistent on the train. They make that clear. I like my work and with all the connections I need to pursue, wifi is necessary.

My relatives were all train people. Gramma K migrated from the Deep South to Southern California making several trips by train before enlisting all her Southern relatives to drive cars and trucks in caravans to move her belongings. She never hired a moving van. We were the van. Every fall, she trained back from Glendale, CA to Arkansas to be with her kinfolks during leaf season. Arkansas trees are spectacular and worth the trip. She came off the train at Union Station in L.A. every time with a list of names and addresses and phone numbers from people she met onboard.

Mother never flew either, even when it would have been expeditious to do so. We moved to California when she signed a recording contract, then the record company sent her back to Nashville to record with the backup singers and musicians they’d selected. They said get here as soon as you can. She said, sure, I’ll be right there – on the train. Later she went out on a tour but got homesick for Daddy, quit part of the way through and cried all the way home – on the train.

Here I sit with my hopes for making this book launch/friend visiting trip, but no set plan for travel yet. No sense buying a super-saver airline ticket months in advance if the savings will disappear due to travel insurance and change fees.

I’ll get there in person one way or the other. Meanwhile there are virtual appearances to plan, which is how most books have been launched recently. Mother was an early adopter of innovation (except for airline travel.) She’d have been the first to understand my wifi dilemma.

******

Is that really the way you say it?

By Anita Garner

The audio book is now in production. Thank you for asking. It’ll release the same day as the hardcover and e-book, April 13th. I’m not narrating. I never planned to. I’m eager to hear another voice tell this story.

Jesse, the production company’s (Blackstone) audio proofreader went through every page plucking out things that need to be spelled phonetically for the narrator and sent a word list to me to double check. In the 1940s and 50s, there was the way country people said a word, then the way some others said it, and then there were places where southern accents varied so much they felt like different languages. Our narrator, Pamela, is earning her keep on this one.

I was in the 7th grade in Louisiana when a teacher commented, “The king was not named Louise.” Sliding over “Louis” turned into “Looz” and there are more ways to say New Orleans than there are Mardi Gras beads in the street after the parade. We never said anything but Noo-OR-luns.

When we landed in bayou country, our Arkansas drawls absorbed Cajun and Creole pronunciations with dollops of French stirred in. French and Southern together create melodious conversations and going over it all to write this book, then reading the proofreader’s suggested phonetics pinged the senses all over again.

It’s lovely that 50-60 years later the audio book will replicate the quite specific language in my stories. Today I listen to people saying Louise-e-anna and maybe that’s considered correct, but when we were there, it was Looz-e-anna in our house. I’ve asked our narrator to say it the way we did. The narrator’s mother is Georgia born and this daughter of hers with the lovely alto voice knows to ask which of many ways I’d like to hear the word. When I asked her if she’d just slide over a few middle syllables in specific words, but not eliminate them altogether, she knew exactly what I meant.

Book ordering update: Again, thanks for asking. You can now order from your favorite bookstore. It’s available all over the U.S. and in other countries. Since there’s not much in-store browsing happening right now, go to your bookstore’s website or call them and ask for “The Glory Road: A Gospel Gypsy Life” and they’ll find it in the publisher’s catalog. (University of Alabama Press) Amazon also has it available for pre-order now.

******

Spring’s arriving a little early.

By Anita Garner

It’s pure joy to see the listing for my memoir, “The Glory Road: A Gospel Gypsy Life” along with the editorial reviews on Amazon. That means it’s really happening. Spring will arrive if Amazon says so. You can order right now for April delivery.

Everything accomplished this year feels like a miracle and I’m celebrating each step. The Kindle version and audio books are coming soon and when that happens, I’ll probably have another piece of pie. By the time we hold this book in our hands I’m going to be one round little writer.

Here ‘s the publisher’s (University of Alabama Press) description, followed by reviews.

“Stories and songs from a childhood spent in a vanished world of revivals and road shows

Anita Faye Garner grew up in the South—just about every corner of it. She and her musical family lived in Texarkana, Bossier City, Hot Springs, Jackson, Vicksburg, Hattiesburg, Pascagoula, Bogalusa, Biloxi, Gulfport, New Orleans, and points between, picking up sticks every time her father, a Pentecostal preacher known as “Brother Ray,” took over a new congregation.

In between jump-starting churches, Brother Ray took his wife and kids out on the gospel revival circuit as the Jones Family Singers. Ray could sing and play, and “Sister Fern” (Mama) was a celebrated singer and songwriter, possessed of both talent and beauty. Rounding out the band were the young Garner (known as Nita Faye then) and her big brother Leslie Ray. At all-day singings and tent revivals across the South, the Joneses made a joyful noise for the faithful and loaded into the car for the next stage of their tour.

But growing up gospel wasn’t always joyous. The kids practically raised and fended for themselves, bonding over a shared dislike of their rootless life and strict religious upbringing. Sister Fern dreamed of crossing over from gospel to popular music and recording a hit record. An unlikely combination of preacher’s wife and glamorous performer, she had the talent and presence to make a splash, and her remarkable voice brought Saturday night rock and roll to Sunday morning music. Always singing, performing, and recording at the margins of commercial success, Sister Fern shared a backing band with Elvis Presley and wrote songs recorded by Johnny Cash and many other artists.

In her touching memoir The Glory Road, Anita Faye Garner re-creates her remarkable upbringing. The story begins with Ray’s attempts to settle down and the family’s inevitable return to the gospel circuit and concludes with Sister Fern’s brushes with stardom and the family’s journey west to California where they finally landed—with some unexpected detours along the way. The Glory Road carries readers back to the 1950s South and the intersections of faith and family at the very roots of American popular music.”

Editorial Reviews

Review

“This is a story so central to the origins of country music: the marriage of Saturday night and Sunday morning, and the literal marriage of two musicians, sometimes at odds with each other creatively and personally. The song written by Fern Jones ‘I Was There When It Happened’ was performed around the world by my dad and the Tennessee Three, became the title of the memoir of Marshall Grant (the bass player in the Tennessee Three), and was revived yet again when I performed it every night on a recent tour I did with Ry Cooder. Anita Garner was ‘there when it happened,’ and her book tells us what we ought to know.”
—Rosanne Cash“

The Glory Road takes us to an important cultural crossroad of America––where gospel met rockabilly, and Saturday night collided with Sunday morning in the late 1950s in the Deep South. It’s also a very personal family story of a deeply religious preacher, Raymond Jones, whose wife, Fern, had a big voice and even bigger musical ambitions. Anita Garner’s recounting of her parents’ lives––their tensions and travails on the ‘gypsy road’ of tent revivals and recording studios––echoes one of her mother’s most famous songs: ‘I Was There When It Happened.’”
—Dayton Duncan, writer/producer of Ken Burns’ Country Music

“The Glory Road touches several bases: southern culture, family life, the evangelical ethos, commercial music, migration, and spousal relations. It will appeal to both a general and specialized audience.”
—Michael T. Bertrand, author of Race, Rock, and Elvis

“I’ll admit I didn’t know the music of Sister Fern and The Joneses until now. So, The Glory Road has introduced me to some exciting and important music. But, even more than that, the story itself will stick with me. I don’t expect to forget these characters.”
—Burgin Mathews, coauthor of Doc: The Story of a Birmingham Jazz Man

******

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.

******