There had never before been anyone in Jimmy Gill's life like Cleo Michaels. He was nervous as a schoolboy driving out Franklin Road to the massive iron gate that blocked intruders and curious fans from entering her estate. The long, snaking driveway gave him a quick glimpse or two of her low-slung mansion, of acres of ponds and shrubs and towering trees.
He had spoken to her briefly on the phone on Monday. Then again over the speaker that was mounted on a pole at the entrance gate. Her voice had left him numb and stunned both times. Now she was coming out the front door of the mansion to greet him, wearing faded jeans and a sloppy plaid shirt. She was all smiles as she hugged him like a long, lost friend, grabbed his hand and led him back inside into her huge living room.
She sat down on the couch next to him, turning to face him, all smiles, welcoming. Her beauty left him breathless. Her natural manner disarmed him of his usual aloofness.
"Thank you for coming! Do I call you 'Brother' or 'James' or what?"
"Well, do I call you Hester or Miss Cudsworth?"
She just grinned, amazed that somehow he had found out something she had always tried to keep secret: her real name.
"Cleo, for God's sake," she said. "Don't tell anybody what my momma did to me at birth or I’ll have to have you killed! How'd you know that name? I’ve spent more money than I care to think of to try to keep it buried."
But Jimmy was not revealing his sources.
"And I'm Jimmy, please,” he told her and admitted, “A very nervous Jimmy, I might add."
“But why?” She seemed genuinely surprised.
“Meeting you. Being here.”
She laughed softly and blushed embarrassedly.
“I was afraid to admit that I was nervous meeting you,” she said. “I meant what I said the other night. I really am a fan of the station and especially your show.”
“Me, too. Of yours. Oh, God! Don’t let me do that number again.”
This time they both laughed.
"Coffee? Iced tea? A beer?"
He declined and surveyed the auditorium-sized room, massive furniture, and the paintings under spotlights on the fabric-covered walls. She excused herself and darted into another room, then returned with her own cup of something hot and smoking. She shoved a shiny-wood guitar aside and curled her legs under her as she again sank into the sofa next to where he sat. The plushness almost swallowed her up.
"Jimmy, I really appreciate your time," she started after one sip. He was a bit disappointed that she was getting right to business, again holding his eyes with hers with the most direct gaze he had ever seen. And especially from a woman. “I can only imagine how busy you must be, but I really don’t know of anyone else to ask about this sort of thing.”
She blew on the coffee to cool it, shifted slightly, dropped her eyes, and talked on as he leaned forward to pretend that he was actually interested.
"I'm almost thirty years old. The last two albums sold half as many units as the couple before them did. We're already getting booked into the second-tier of halls and clubs. They’re starting to talk about us as an opening act again. And to top it off, I haven't had a cut on any of the songs I’ve written...at least by a major artist...in almost a year, mostly because I have not had time to pitch them but partly because there are newer, hotter writers sleeping in offices all over Music Row, cranking them out like widgets on an assembly line."
Cleo paused for another sip of the coffee. Jimmy was surprised that the harsh realities she was ticking off so matter-of-factly did not really seem bother her.
"The ultimate signal came last week. My manager's negotiating to put together a 'greatest hits' cheapie collection for marketing on television. That's the sure sign that the sun's setting, Jimmy!"
"God, Cleo, you're the freshest thing going in country music. Any kind of music for that matter. You're the only one doing straight-ahead stuff without all the strings and syrup they're putting out now. And your lyrics are phenomenal"
He meant exactly what he was saying.
"That's what they want now, you know. Big production, lots of violins, adult-contemporary sound, smarmy ballads. Words aren’t what they are looking for at all. You don’t want the audience to have to think, for God sakes. Nothing acoustic or traditional-sounding is selling now either. Country stations say country music is too country for them to play, if you can imagine that. Tammy Wynette, Barbara Fairchild, Loretta Lynn...they can't get a song on the radio anymore. And I can't sing at all when they lay all that orchestral stuff on so thick. It’s like it chokes me."
Cleo broke eye-contact, looking off into the distance through a crimson-draped, floor-to-ceiling window. Beyond the glass, he could see a corner of a swimming pool, and beyond that, a fenced tennis court.
"It'll come back around someday. It always does. But I’m realistic enough to know that I'll be way too old to ride that horse by then. That's why I wanted to talk with you, Jimmy."
She shifted her legs and leaned closer, setting the coffee cup on the table and using her hands for emphasis as she talked. Her every movement looked as if it was choreographed for effect, as if for a stage show, but still her performance seemed natural. Either way, Jimmy Gill was enjoying watching her dance.
“I’m listening, Cleo.”
She smiled. The morning sunlight streaming through the window dimmed in comparison.
"I've made some money and I’ve had the good sense to carefully plant it where it could grow. I don't ever want to be as poor as I was growing up in Jasper, Texas. So hungry that a mess of poke salat was a banquet for us. And I think I see a way to make sure I don't ever have to chop another row of cotton to live, no matter what happens with this music thing.
"About the only good thing I remember growing up was listening to our old Crosley table-model radio. When the electricity hadn’t been turned off, that is. We could get the Grand Ole Opry from Nashville, the 'Barn Dance' from Chicago on WLS and another ‘Barn Dance’ from Knoxville on WNOX, and all the country music and big band shows from Dallas and Houston and San Antonio. Daddy bought me a Sears and Roebuck guitar when he was working at the sugar cane mill, and I learned to chord listening every night to an old guy named Boots Crockett on WGOJ in Jasper. He'd pick and sing on his show and call out the chords when he forgot the words. Which was regularly, because old Boots apparently did love to drink."
Her eyes were now moist with the remembering, and Jimmy was afraid he was about to tear up a bit himself. Of all things, he had found a kindred spirit here in the living room of a mansion on Franklin Road in Nashville. Cleo Michaels was another soul raised on the magic of radio!
When she paused for another swallow of coffee, he launched into his own story, telling of his hours spent on the cold linoleum floor dragging in any signal he could find, surfing the tide of radio waves that floated in and out on the ether.
"Somehow, I knew you would understand," she told him. "I can hear the love for the music, the passion you have for radio when you talk into that microphone at The River. It's not just a job for you, Jimmy. Certainly not just another investment like a hamburger stand or a filling station or some kind of dull old franchise would be. They’ve tried to sell me on ‘Cleo’s Chicken Shack’ and a dozen other ideas just as stupid."
Then she told him about her dream. He was struck by how similar it was to the one he was in the midst of realizing. Of how she wanted to put country music on the emerging FM band, where its clean melodies and from-the-heart picking could shine through without all the static and nighttime fades.
"You know for yourself how great our music sounds on a good record player, Jimmy. You wouldn’t believe how great it is in the studio," she said and he nodded. "Folks need to hear it without the noise and in stereo. The producers here in Nashville are all old rock and roll guys and the production values are as good as anything ever put on disk, no matter the kind of music. Country music desperately needs a medium that can do it some justice. I think FM will do it just fine, and when people really hear it, when there’s something there worth listening to, they’ll come over to it in droves."
Conventional wisdom had it that no one would listen to anything as hokey as country music on FM. They had said the same thing about the brashness of rock and roll. That the FM band was only good for classical music and easy listening, like Percy Faith and Lawrence Welk.
"A disk jockey I got to know in Dallas told me about an AM and FM station that is up for sale out there, and I sort of got excited about it for a minute and a half. My manager, Gene Cooper, threw a bucket of cold water on the whole thing, though. He thinks I'm off my rocker. Says I don't know doodly-squat about broadcasting and he's right, of course. He usually is. But you do, Jimmy. You want to be partners?"
“Uh...well...”
Cleo Michaels could be as straight and abrupt as her gaze, it appeared.
“You don’t have to answer me now. I’ll give you...oh...twelve minutes.”
She mimicked looking at a watch on her bare arm and they laughed again. Then Jimmy told her he would appreciate a cup of that coffee after all. It smelled wonderful.
A woman so direct put him totally off balance. He had caught himself nodding positively with nothing more than her enthusiasm to base it on. Sure, he agreed with her about country music's possibilities on the new band. And when she told him the legendary call letters of the AM station she was talking about, he filled her in about his own ideas for the Atlanta AM station on which he and Dee had just reached the agreement. She listened to him intently, as if he was singing the world's most beautiful song.
For the next hour, they were like a couple of drunks pouring each other shots of rye whiskey. She sang him a few of the songs she was working on for the next album. He told her of his dreams for The River and the new stations in Atlanta.
He finally had to stand and tell her point blank that he had to go. Bankers, clients, the sales staff, and a lobby full of record promoters awaited him back at The River. She saw him to the door and kissed him ‘bye on the cheek. It was a totally natural act, completely lacking in pretense.
As he steered back down the twisting drive away from her, he knew, somewhere deep inside, that he was completely, undeniably, irretrievably in love with this woman with the direct eyes and the enchanting voice and the love for radio that came so damned close to matching his own.