Did you ever learn to play an instrument?
When I was a kid I thought as soon as Roy Rogers stepped off Trigger they would pick me, just like every other kid in America hoped. I went to a guitar school in Dallas and took lessons for three years. Finally they told my mother, "Mrs. Garrett, we know you're a single mother and we don't want to take your money. We want to tell you that Tommy has no musical talent whatsoever. None." Years later I got a call from them saying, "Sorry. We were wrong." I didn't know one piano note from another. When I had my first four hits I hired a piano player to come over and teach me piano. Three weeks later he said, "While I've been trying to teach you to play 'Blue Hawaii' - which you haven't learned yet - you've made a fortune. You don't need to know music."
In your teens you were hanging out at a radio station in Dallas?
The instigating station of Top Forty radio - KLIF. Gordon McLendon was my boss. I later married his secretary. [laughter]
How did you end up in a radio station as a teenager?
Because I wanted to be a disc jockey.
Did you get to be a disc jockey there?
No. You have to realize how important the major disc jockeys were in those days. Those guys were the highest paid in the country. I did odd jobs and made a few dollars a week as music librarian. I listened to thousands and thousands of fucking records working at KLIF. They told me to get rid of all the 78s. I said, "Can I have them?" I was riding the bus and I'd carry them. I'd listen to both sides of all of them. I realized what I liked and didn't like. Later I ended up in Lubbock - they got me a job. When those guys said, "Hey, you've got to hire him", I got hired! I went up to Lubbock, got to be friends with Buddy Holly, and Waylon Jennings did a country radio show there. I was on the pop station. I moved from there to a little town called Wichita Falls, Texas. I used to sit in the window at KSYD – it had a bullet hole in the corner of the window – in the downtown area.
You were DJ'ing in the window?
Yeah. George Carlin replaced me as the DJ when I left town. Then I had a dance place in town. I got records from the distributors in Dallas to sell - it was called Snuff's Hop Stop & Record Shop. [laughter] Everybody would come down. I had a TV show three days a week. Buddy Holly was gonna bring me to New York with him - we were gonna do a record company called Taupe Records. That was the idea. I knew Trini Lopez there and I'd tell him, "Boy, I'm gonna be in the record business. I'm gonna make records!" Years later I brought Trini to L.A. [laughter]
How the heck did you get from being a DJ in Wichita Falls and doing sock hops to heading out to Hollywood and joining Liberty Records?
I'd already been there. I left home at 15 1/2. My daddy died and I left home. I lived with the disc jockeys [in Dallas]. They all lived in beautiful apartments with women everywhere. I loved that life! [laughter] They were like older brothers to me. I would keep their houses and apartments clean. One of the jocks, Bill Jenkins, got fired. He said he was moving to California, and I asked if I could go with him. I quit school and I went to L.A. Bill got a job at KPAL in Palm Springs, so here I was, stuck in fucking Palm Springs. He had a little apartment - I slept on the floor there. Then I caught a Greyhound bus and went up to Hollywood. I'll never forget coming into that station. I slept in Plummer Park in Hollywood and looked for work in records. I got a job at [Wallach's] Music City, behind the counter, at Sunset and Vine.
The record store.
Right. I wouldn't let you back in your fucking car if you didn't buy something. I was a selling son-of-a-bitch.
You moved there and then moved back?
I went back to Texas and disc jockeyed for about two years. After Buddy Holly died in 1959, I quit radio. I thought, "I'm never gonna be able to be in the music business in Wichita Falls, Texas. So fuck it. I'm going to New York or L.A." L.A. was much warmer, and I'd already been there for a year. I just went out. I didn't have a job or anything. I called Al Bennett [formerly of Dot Records], who I knew from when I was at Big State Record Distributors in Dallas. Al was president of a label called Liberty Records. I said, "Al, I want to quit my job." I lived in a room in a house on Orange Street so that I could walk to work. My car didn't work. In fact, when I had my first four hits, Liberty said, "You gotta be at the office at 10 a.m. on Monday morning for a shift." They took me out to the parking lot and guys were driving brand new Cadillacs around me. They said, "Pick out your gift!" They put my name on it in gold. It was my first new car - a white Cadillac convertible. But then I learned about the music business. After they got through with the press of telling everyone about giving me the car for having all these hits, they deducted it from my royalty statement. I learned the music business quickly!
What were those first hits?
