“Maybe tomorrow” is the mantra for me
Even though I know it’s just a fantasy.
But somethin’ ’bout hopin’ keeps us healthier
Bankin’ on your dreams can make you wealthier I hear.
—“Somewhere Down the Road”
(Thornton/Andrew)
THERE WAS A COUNTRY DUO IN THE FIFTIES AND SIXTIES FROM HOT Springs, Arkansas, called the Wilburn Brothers. I always loved them. Their act used to be the whole Wilburn family, but later it became just Teddy and Doyle. They looked just alike—all the Wilburns looked alike—and they wore these sparkly suits. They had a bunch of big hits, and they even had their own TV show on Saturday afternoons. They gave Loretta Lynn her start, and just like Dolly Parton came to be known as “that girl on The Porter Wagoner Show,” Loretta Lynn came to be known on The Wilburn Brothers Show. There are a few actors from Arkansas like me, Alan Ladd, and Dick Powell, but if you boiled it down, of all the famous people from Arkansas, most of them came from country music. Guys like Jim Ed Brown and the Wilburns.
Everywhere Tom and I ever went, from New York to Mexico, San Diego, L.A., all those places, we never went anywhere we knew anybody or had any money. We didn’t do anything right, ever. We made plans to go to Nashville, get a cheap-ass hotel room, and just start walking up and down Music Row, going into places and announcing, “Hey! We’re songwriters!” It’s like, “Really? You came to Nashville to be songwriters? What an interesting idea, we never heard of that shit before.”
We had a bunch of songs we planned to bring with us—songs like “Crop Dusting Man.” We were trying to make one of those novelty songs kind of like Jim Stafford or someone would do. There was a song by Terry Fell called “Truck Driving Man,” and we thought, What if we just took some stupid-ass profession and did “Something Man”—“Plumbing Man” or whatever? We decided on “Crop Dusting Man.” We thought it was funny anyway.
When I told my mom that we were going to Nashville, she said, “You should look up the Wilburns.” My mother knew the Wilburns from when they would come to Alpine as little kids. They would play at the Presbyterian church, which was right across the road from my grandmother’s house, and they even sort of used my grandmother’s house as a dressing room. My mom had a crush on Teddy Wilburn when he was, like, twelve and she was maybe ten. So there was a connection in Nashville—a loose one, but stronger than we had any other place we went.
We arrived in Nashville and went to have lunch at a place called the Merchant’s Café, which I think is still there. We were in there and we saw a stocky guy, built like Raymond Burr. He had a lot of hair and glasses. We thought he was an old man at the time, but he was probably fifteen years younger than I am now. He looked like a novelist type, and you could tell he was writing a book. He had all his shit spread out all over the table. He would write a little bit, run his fingers through his hair, then write some more. I’ll never forget the image of his baseball mitt–looking hands, fingers running through his greasy hair, flopping it back, shaking his head. This guy was sitting there looking angry, like he wanted to shoot himself, and it’s like, goddamn. We had just gotten there to be writers, and here’s the first guy we see in the Merchant’s Café and he looks like he’s going to hang himself tonight.
We finished up our lunch and went to look for the Wilburns’ publishing company, Surefire Music. We found it over on Music Row West. We walked in, and their secretary was sitting there. I said, “Hey! We’re here to be songwriters, and my mom used to know Teddy Wilburn. They used to change clothes at my grandmother’s house.”
She wasn’t really paying attention, and I thought she was going to give us the bum’s rush, but she said, “Teddy and Doyle, they’re not here. You say you know them?” I said, “Yes, ma’am, yes, ma’am.” She said, “Well, Doyle will be back here in a little while.”
When we learned Doyle Wilburn wasn’t going to be in until after lunch, Tom and I went walking down the street, and Tom said, “Let’s get a hooker.” Tom and I, we were never into hookers. Me, I always loved women, but I never looked at hookers and strippers as people I would hook up with. No judgment, it’s just I was too nervous about it. I couldn’t really even go into strip joints. I’ve been to a handful of strip joints in my lifetime, but I just don’t know where to look—their eyes, their breasts, below their waists, I just don’t know. They’re sad places for me. I never got into them. But there was a time when Tom and I wanted to try out what it was like to get a hooker.
First try at it, I think, might have been in Nashville. It could have been in Dallas, but both attempts took place pretty close together. We walked over to a place that somebody may have told us about, I don’t remember, but it was a brick building in a decent neighborhood by Music Row. It looked like a dentist’s office, and it had a plaque in brass or something on the door that said ATHLETIC CLUB.
We looked at each other like, Huh. That’s supposed to be the deal. So we knocked on the door, and a woman, who was obviously a hooker, opened the door. We stood looking at her for a few seconds, and Tom whispered, “Ask her … say something,” because my buddy Tom, he never talks. He doesn’t talk to anybody. So I had to do the talking. “Uh, yeah, we’d like to lift some weights,” I said.
She looked at us like, The fuck? What planet did you motherfuckers come from? but just goes, “What?” I said, “Yeah, we just wanted to come in and work out on some weights.” And she said, “Who are you? Get the fuck out of here!” and just slammed the door on us.
We walked around for a little bit, then went back to Surefire Music. I think Doyle came out in the midst of this. I said something to Doyle, and I wrote a note to Teddy. Nothing really happened then.
Sometime in 1979, I went back to Nashville, this time by myself. And this time I thought ahead. I had written to them and even talked to Teddy on the phone. I told him the whole story about my grandmother and my mom, and he invited me to come.
By then, I was playing in Nothin’ Doin’, which I mentioned earlier. I had written a few songs that I took with me to Teddy’s studio, where he was working on a record of Don Williams songs. He was a real slick cat, all put together with his hair gassed back and wearing fancy clothes. He was a cool guy. At that point, I’d never been in a studio that had huge walls with big speakers where you could turn the sound up to supersonic levels. He was playing this new record of Don Williams’s songs.
Then we had a nice talk. I told him all about my band and about how I wanted to be a songwriter, and he goes, “Hey, let’s go take a ride in the limo.” I’m like, wow, we’re going to take a ride in the limo. It was an old limousine, probably from the sixties, and I thought he’d have some guy named Jeeves that was going to take us around town, but Teddy got in the driver’s seat and I walked around to the passenger’s seat. He drove me all over Nashville, telling me everything that happened in that town. He told me where Hank Williams did this over here and Ray Price did that over there, and where Hank and Audrey lived.
Anyway, while we were out there cruising, he said, “I got the funniest feeling about you. I meet young guys, they come up here all the time, and I don’t know what it’s gonna be, but you’re going to be a well-known guy. I think there’s something different about you. You’re going to do really well one day.”
A couple of months later, Teddy wrote me a letter on the Wilburn Brothers gold letterhead. He began the letter, “Dear Billy Bob,” and in parentheses, “(which I think you should use instead of just Billy).” He talked to me a little bit about that when I was with him. He said, “You know, people will always remember that name. Nobody will ever have to ask who you are.” I was just Billy to that point in my life. I was never called Billy Bob, because back in Arkansas you don’t call yourself that. You might as well just say Jethro Bodine. Because of Teddy Wilburn, I used my full name, and sure enough, even when I first got to L.A., there wasn’t a fucking soul among the casting directors who didn’t know who I was when I called.
Anyway, he wrote me this letter that said, “If Surefire Music can help you out, that’d be great. We really like your songs, [blah blah blah]. Teddy Wilburn, God’s Love, ’79.” I’m Billy Bob because of Teddy Wilburn. And I still have that letter.