Hello my friends, my name is Stan Hitchcock, an old Nashville Hillbilly Singer, Recording Artist, Songwriter, Road Gypsy and Cable Television Network founder. I was responsible for the start-up of Country Music Television (CMT), and The Americana Television Network (ATN), but mostly I'm just an old beat up, worn out Guitar picking balladeer with a lot of memories of where this thing called Country Music came from... it came from the hearts and souls of a group of people that lived for the music.
One of the true treasures of my life in Country Music has been the personal relationships, friendships and music shared with special people. A song can have such significance to a pickers life, and can then go on to touch the lives of so many others. As I go to the memory bank where I have stored so many special moments in music... I remember. I have lots of stories of the old days... 50's, 60's, 70's 80's and into the 90's as I have been a part of this music. I would like to share some with you, my brothers and sisters from the world of Classic Country Music.
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back to Stories |
Will the Circle Be Unbroken...
by and by, Lord, by and by... Old traditional hymn.
I first met Keith Whitley in the early years when he came in to do the Opry with Ralph Stanley. Keith and Ricky Skaggs were both young bucks working with the old master bluegrasser, and they had a great sound. Like Ricky, Keith had gone on to his own career, and signed with RCA Records in the early 80's and sung his ever-lovin butt off on everything he did. Keith took to coming over and visiting me at CMT and I just loved him like a brother. His first video was "Miami, My Amy" and we played the fire out of it on the channel.
One day he called and said, "Hey, I want to do Heart to Heart with you." A couple of days later his manager, Jack McFadden called up and said, "Keith says you 'all gonna do Heart to Heart... when you gonna do it?" We were not in production for the show then, but I planned on doing it soon as we got back. Meanwhile, his popularity just blossomed, and he put out a string of great records and videos. He was definitely a video boomer, just a natural for the tube, and I got so much mail for his videos that it was unbelievable.
By 1987 I had started a weekly Video Chart and Play list that we sent to all the Record Labels and reprinted in Billboard Magazine. It was the first Video Chart in existence and it brought a lot of attention to Country Music Videos. I also started a weekly countdown show, of the top ten videos of the week that would play on Saturday night in prime time. In 1987 I become the very first Music Video Programmer to list the Songwriter, Publisher, and Video Producer at the end of each Video. I believe in celebrating the creators, and I'm proud that today that listing is still being done. We now had 7 million 500 thousand subscribers, and it was late into 1987.
In October of 1987 I called Keith Whitley and said, "Hey, let's go down to the Ryman Auditorium and do a Heart to Heart." We set the date and I called Opryland and got permission to go into the old Opry House. The Ryman had not been reconditioned then and had been closed up for a while, but they let us come in. The camera caught Keith and myself walking down the street outside the Ryman and followed us inside. We leaned against one of the old wooden church pews and just re-lived a lot of the good times we both remembered from that old building. Keith was still shining from his wedding to Lori Morgan and they had had a son born, which he was mighty proud of.
It was a wonderful Heart to Heart, one of the favorite times I have ever spent with one of my friends on the tube. At the end of the show he told me about a new album he was working on. He said that looking at that old Ryman stage reminded him of all his heroes that had stood on that stage, Hank, Bill Monroe, Lefty. He said, "Lefty was always my hero and I always wanted to cut one of his songs, but I never had until this new album.. Mary Martin, at RCA, called me and said she liked the old Lefty Frizzell song, I Never Go Around Mirrors, but she wished it had another verse, 'cause it only had one verse and a chorus.
Well, of course Lefty is dead, but he co-wrote the song with Whitey Shafer, so I thought it was worth a shot. I called Whitey up and he agreed to write another verse. When he called me back a couple of days later and read me the new verse, well, I just cried on the phone it was so pretty. The day of the recording session, and I know this is going to sound strange to some people, I went out to the cemetery where Lefty is buried, I found his tombstone and I stood beside it and recited the new verse. A couple of hours later I recorded it in the studio and Lefty's brother Allen Frizzell sang harmony on it and sounded just like Lefty, man I've got chill bumps now just talking about it." As Keith was telling his story, my mind was going back in time, and I remembered another time, and another group of friends, and the same song...
It was a special night, in the early 70's, there had been a big package show at the Auditorium and after the show a bunch of the folks gathered in my Motel Room to come down after the performance high... I was sitting on the lumpy bed in the corner, watching and listening as Lefty Frizzell picked my guitar and sang a song he had just written with Whitey Shafer called "I Never Go Around Mirrors".
Over in the other corner of the room Bobby Bare was sitting, deep in thought, staring through the cigarette smoke that filled the room in lazy layers, like clouds on a dark summer sky. Leaning against the wall, over by the door Jack Greene was deeply lost in the song and stretched out on the other bed, Jeannie Sealy was listening, with her eyes closed, scarcely breathing. It was a special moment, and I thought, "Hitchcock, this is good, ain't it?" Indeed it was good...taking the music the way it was intended...straight from the source... raw... uncut... Real. Just a short time later Lefty died in Nashville, wrung out, used up, burnt down...with nothing left to give... he had sung it all up, and gone. The song "I Never Go Around Mirrors" was one of his last recordings. Little did I know it would also be one of Keith's last recordings.
They were my friends, and I miss them.
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