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I Had Some Coffee..

From: Ron L.
Email:
Remote Name: 12.233.11.7
Date: 29-Sep-2002
Time: 03:06 PM

Comments

...and talked with an old friend of mine. It's really been only 3 years but he makes everyone feel that way. At 11:15 last Monday morning I walked into Mickey's bedroom. The drapes were drawn and he had just awakened. As you walk into that room, the bed and nightstand are on the left and on the spread next to him are a couple of yellow legal pads. This was my third time there and the pads were always present.

He asked Chris to make us some coffee and Mickey's coffee could fuel a nuclear reactor. My first impression was that he was as strong as I had ever heard or seen him. Although I was over my awe of Mickey, just listening to him made me absoluteley certain I was in the presence of a gifted and rare human being and that the words I was hearing were like the warm wind and would be gone soon and I should try to remember all I could. This was not just this time. This was every time.

Chris was with us and we spoke of the current state of music and how much we all disliked what "country" is today, about Sony and Michael Jackson now owning Acuff-Rose and how there is no Nashville Network.

Mickey talked about how much he loved the writing of Jimmy Webb("Macarthur Park", "Didn't We", "Wichita Lineman", etc) He said he was at Webb's house in the early 80's and Jimmy played "The Highwaymen" for him and was concerned that it was too long for release. You know what Mickey said about that! That, of course, was the big hit for Cash, Waylon, and Kristofferson. Mickey also said that Glen Campbell was a real talent.(He recorded many of Webb's songs.)

He talked of becoming friends with Gene Austin who in the late 20's recorded "My Blue Heaven", one of the most famous songs in American history. They could not write together because one was ASCAP and one was BMI. Gene Austin was in his 80's when they met and Mickey related the following story.

In the late 20's, Gene Austin was setting up a recording session and went to the recording engineer and said:

"Just so you'll know, the trumpet player is behind that screen over there"

The player was Louis Armstrong and he was behind a screen because blacks and whites could not appear together.

Mickey had hundreds of stories like that(many of them true!)and he was totally mesmerizing in his narrations. He talked of Fred Rose writing in Tin Pan Alley in New York and coming to Nashville and going to Roy Acuff:

"I want to go into the music publishing with you"

"How much money do you want?"

"Roy, I wont need any money with you as a partner."

And they didn't...and that was the beginning of Acuff-Rose.

We talked about Internet Radio because HE was thinking about a way for me to be creatively free. He thought Jimmie Mack and KDAV were great.

We talked about a song he wrote about suicide which he said was "one of the most commercial things I ever wrote" but he threw it away "because it made my Mama cry".

Chris made us another cup of coffee and I went over and sat on the bed for awhile and he reached up and briefly put his hand on my shoulder. He talked of the Texas trip and how amazing Susan is and how great his family is.

He talked about how Jerry is "my best friend as well as my brother" and how when Mickey first went on his own, he was worried about him and Jerry gave Mickey his Texaco credit card and told him only to pay him back when some money started rolling in. At this point, Mickey reached down for that gravelly and almost evil laugh and said: "Man, I had that thing up to 5,000 dollars!"

I told him that I once told Mamie about him and said: "You know, I love your son"

She said: "Well, I have 2 sons and I love them both the same!"

"That's my mama"

In 1966, when he got his first royalty check for "Funny, Familiar, Forgotten Feelings, the first thing he did was buy a brand new '66 Cadillac Eldorado and drive straight from Houston to Nashville. When he got there in the middle of the night, he needed to do laundry and fell asleep on a bench in the laundromat. He was awakened by a cop and almost "busted down for vagrancy" but the cop said he ran into a lot of musicians like this and let him go.

He was not afraid of dying and talked freely of death and his only regret was leaving his family.

It was going on three hours and I knew he was tiring so it was time to leave. I truthfully had no premonition that this would be the last I would ever see or talk to him for so many of us had thought this many times in the last few years.

My abiding physical memory of Mickey will be him sitting up in bed in that black silk robe; a wonderful figure of humor, love, and dignity but most of all...love. It is so easy to make people larger in death than in life but there is no need to do that here. Mickey was just a human being, perhaps more human than any of us. His ability of knowing and dealing with pain was probably somewhere between a gift and a cross but oh what a soul cleanser that gift is and will always be.

He was an uncompromising consummate artist and our collective gift to him was an abiding, unselfish appreciation of that art. He helped heal us all at one time or another and I believe we helped heal him and prolonged his time here.

I have thought many times about how all the Newbury family let us into their lives so I thank them again.

Also probably none of this would have happened without Bob Rosemurgy. He would be the last guy to say he is inspirational but he is.

When I left I said: "Thank you for being my friend"

He said: "Thank you for being my friend".

Chris walked me outside while shooing out a black puppy who wanted to be in the house. I thanked him and told him what a wonderful thing he was doing and his eyes were full of unconditonal love.

I wrote before how fortunate I felt on my drive home. There was this enormous spiritual high as the music played... and the trip was out of my hands.

Thank you for letting me share this.

Love, Ron

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