Foster at CMA Awards in 2016 | Photo: Donn Jones (Group) / Jason Davis (Solo) LC: You started really young, as a songwriter, writing lyrics for a production company? It was in Washington. I left the farm in North Carolina because my dad had died. I kept the farm going for two years by myself; it nearly killed me. I said, "I gotta get out of here." I had a sister in Washington who worked for the government, so I called her and said, "Polly, I need to get out of here." Her husband was a really great guy, and he said, "If I were you, I would go to someplace where you have a lot of freedom. There's a chain of restaurants here called the Hot Shoppes. Curb service, drive-in, and they have good restaurants. You can make money in tips." So I went to apply and got the job; $12 a week, plus tips, in 1949. I got a tip one time for $100, because it was a congressman who wanted to park in a hidden place so he could visit with his "sweetheart." I put him behind the equipment shed and got them cokes. Hot Shoppes kept promoting me. The company was founded by J. Willard Marriott. They kept promoting me until finally they brought me in to run the commissary. The commissary covered one city block, curb to curb. Ground floor was the butcher shop, where they brought all their meat from out in the stockyards. Next one up was a kitchen. Next floor up was a bakery. Top floor was personnel. When they told me they wanted me to take over, I said, "Wait a minute. I don't think I'm qualified to do that." By this time, they had 34 restaurants and catered all the airlines out of Washington. You could go into any one of the Hot Shoppes and get a barbecued hamburger or a cheeseburger; all the meals were done in the commissary, put in insulated cabinets, and shipped out. Now I had to judge how much each one of the restaurants would be using. And the inventory, man... KH: What year was this? 1951. Anyway, they said, "Yes, you can handle it." It was stressful. After a while I told the personnel director, "I need to get out of here for a few days." He said, "Why don't you relieve a couple of curb managers? They're going on vacation." So the second day I'm out at the 14th Street Hot Shoppe on the other side of Washington and I see this Cadillac in the lot at about five in the afternoon. He screeched to a halt, started blinking his lights, and blowing his horn. I go over and tell him I'll have someone with him in just a minute. He said, "We're in a real hurry. Just bring us two barbecues and two chocolate shakes." All the guys were busy, so I did and he tipped me a dollar. The girl who was with him was movie star beautiful. The next afternoon he's in the lot again with a different girl, just as gorgeous. This went on for ten days. Different girls. So he said to me one day, "When's your day off? Why don't you come down to my club?" So I went on my night off. He was a great emcee; the greatest I ever saw. Tennessee Ernie Ford picked up a lot from him. KH: What was his name? Billy Strickland. He played steel guitar, electric guitar, and acoustic guitar really well. He had a persona that was magnetic. So I'm down in the club one time and there were about 1,400 people in there. He said, "Ladies and gentlemen, we're so fortunate tonight to have a dear friend of mine in the house. He's one of the great songwriters of all time. I'll venture to say he said that if you name your three favorite songs, at least one this man will have written. Why don't we give a big Washington famous welcome to Mr. Fred Rose?" I knew of Fred Rose. He'd written one of my favorite pop tunes, "Deed I Do." I was spun when the spotlight hit me in the face. He said, "Now, ladies and gentlemen, Fred and I are such good friends. I don't think it would be unduly opposing upon him to ask him to write a song before your very eyes." Oh, the place went berserk. I thought I was dreaming or something! Can you imagine? He said, "Take Mr. Rose something to write on." Someone ran over with a legal pad. People started hitting the tabletops like rain and were lining up for an autograph. I tried to get out, but I was in a corner booth. I'd written a little bit of stuff in high school, so I wrote a poem. I sent it up to him. He looked at it and said, "Hmm, you all are going to love this." He turned around to his band, called the chord changes, and kicked it off. It didn't sound bad! The place went crazy. Before I could get out, he had sung it about ten times. He made $1,300 in tips singing my song. He said, "We wrote a pretty good song. We need to do more of it!" Long story short, we started doing that. KH: You started writing songs with Billy Strickland? Yeah. One night this guy [Ben Adelman] comes in, goes up to Billy – because he'd just sung one of our songs – and he said, "Who wrote that song?" Billy said, "My friend, Fred Foster, and I." He said, "I want to publish some of these songs." So we agreed he could; we had no publishing. Then one day he announced that he would like to write with me. He said, "I'm an accomplished musician. I was first violinist in the Navy band. We'll get Billy a record deal, but I really want to write with you. I've got a connection in New York who represents me up there, and we'll get big records." Billy said, "Great." I met with him in his office. He pulls out a song and said, "You'll love this. Now this is a country song." He played it for me, and I said, "Really? What's the exact title?" He said, "Grandma's Oak Churn." I said, "Ben, nobody cares about Grandma's oak churn. They don't even know what it is anymore. That's not a country song, but the melody's nice." He said, "Write something to it then." So I wrote "Picking Sweethearts." Just a few days later I wandered into the Covered Wagon bar on Northwest Washington, and there's this band, Jimmy Dean and the Texas Wildcats. I thought, "He has a lot of mystique about him." He was great, but he'd lose ends of phrases at times. He'd lose a whole word or two because he didn't pronounce them properly, or at all. But people loved him. I said, "You know, you and I need to get together and do a little work." We cut a demo. We did a cover of some big song, we did "Picking Sweethearts," something that he had written, and one other. We sent the four songs to the smallest label I could find in the Billboard directory, 4 Star Records in Pasadena, California. It's good to make note of the fact that Ben Adelman, our publisher, was one of the all-time great crooks. Adelman had Eagle Music. The guy that I sent our demo to was Bill McCall, one of the original crooks. They called immediately and said, "We love it. We cannot come to Washington to record him, and we cannot bring him out here. You'll have to produce it. But on one condition; we have to publish half the songs you do. If that's agreeable, we'll send you some songs and you can do a session of four songs. Two will be ours, and two will be yours." They sent me a whole pack of songs. I couldn't even get through them. I called Bill McCall and said, "I can't do any of these. I don't know why you sent these. They're terrible." He blew his top. He said, "Who do you think you are?" I said, "I'm just a fan. None of these songs have any merit." So they sent me another batch. I picked two. One was a song called "Bummin' Around" and another was called "Release Me." We had the first record of "Release Me." The engineer had never done a session and the musicians had never played on a session, because we were using Jimmy's band. I hadn't ever done anything like this! We spent two days and got nothing. Right across the street from the studio was a liquor store. Jimmy was as nervous as a cat in a dog show the whole two days, and would just break down and lose his place. He was just a basket case. I went across the street, bought a pint of whiskey, brought it back and poured a water glass about half full, and handed it to him. I said, "Drink this." We got two songs that afternoon. "Bummin' Around" and "Picking Sweethearts." Bill said, "Send me the stuff as you get it." So I fired those two songs off and they said, "Great! We'll release these." That was in August of ‘53. Anyway, I keep looking at Billboard to see if he's making the charts. Well, in August it wasn't there, September it wasn't there, October, November, so we gave up on it. In January I picked up a Billboard and it said, "Houston, Texas, "Bummin' Around," Jimmy Dean, number nine." I thought, that's gotta be a misprint! I didn't say anything to anybody. Next week I picked up a Billboard. "Number four." I called him and said, "Jimmy, you're making some noise in Texas." He said, "Don't play with me man, you know I'm never going to make it." Then it started hitting nationally. Bill McCall decided to cover his own record with Texas Tyler. He didn't know if Jimmy was going to be strong enough to carry it all the way, so he covered him. In the meantime, there were nine different records of "Picking Sweethearts," which was on the flip-side of "Bummin' Around." One was by a new artist on Capitol, Hawkshaw Hawkins. The McGuire Sisters covered it. I buy one, I look, and my name's not on it. He [Ben Adelman] took my name off it and put his wife's name on. I said, "You were supposed to give me a contract. You told me it was in the works." He said, "Well, you've learned a valuable lesson here. You're just really green, buddy. After this goes by, and you get over it, we can really do some good things." I said, "We might, but it won't be together! You'll need me someday, I have a feeling, and I'll give you the answer now. No. Go f… yourself." Sure enough, when Monument Records got rocking, I get a call. He's got all these songs. "I'm going to have half of them, half the publishing, and half the writer's." I said, "Nope!" Jimmy Dean never got paid a penny. By this time I was working for Mercury. D Kilpatrick was running it here. KH: Were you doing sales or promotion at Mercury? Promotion. See, there were no promotion men anywhere. Nobody knew what one was. All the labels knew was, "We've got to get more airplay. We're getting lost with all these records that are coming out." So I was the second man hired as a promotion man. The other one was Tommy Schlesinger in Detroit. He'd been hired one week before me – we were novices together. I decided to establish personal relationships with the DJs and music directors. I went to every guy, called them up, and said, "I'll work with you," because I was covering the territory; Virginia, West Virginia, Maryland, and the District of Columbia. I told Mercury, "If I find something out in the hinterlands that's making noise, I'll tip you off." They thought that was good. After two years of the Washington/Baltimore area, Mercury wanted me to come to Nashville as a country music promotion director. The first week I get this call, "Can you go on tour Monday of the whole South, find out why we're not selling any country records, and give us a full report?" I was gone eight weeks. I'd just married and I left my bride back home. I covered all the states: Georgia, South Carolina, North Carolina, Florida, Alabama, Mississippi, Texas, and Oklahoma. I got into Texas, and there was a record shop called The Record Corral. They had a card system that tracked their inventory. They would list on their cards how many records they ordered, how many they received, and how they were selling. They didn't want to keep more than a five-day supply on hand, but they wanted to keep at least that much. I'm looking at all of this, and at the "number one" record at that time. It was just starting out, had peaked, and it was over the hill. It had sold 52 copies. KH: At The Record Corral? Yeah, and three in stock, with none on order. But "Blue Suede Shoes" by Carl Perkins had sold 1,300 in the first week. They had 5,000 on order. That's all I needed to hear right there. We were doing records with no drums. Banjo and fiddle. To say "traditional" wouldn't even be accurate. It was beyond that – backwards. So I wrote my report, fired it off, and left a copy on D Kilpatrick's desk. Well, I'd taken a couple of days of rest and sleep, and I went back to the office. Here's D Kilpatrick, white around the eyes, and he's so mad. He said, "You're a traitor. You've gone down in there hanging with the Indians, the n——rs, and the Mexicans." It blew me away. I said, "Well, you can criticize my work, but you've gone a little over the line right there. You and I aren't going to be able to work together. If you say one more word, we're going to fight." I just walked out, went back, and told my wife we're going to be going back to Washington. I called a friend of mine at Mercury in New York and said, "I need a job." He said, "Well, Bob Thiele at Coral Records is looking for someone. And there's a new company called ABC-Paramount. Sam Clark is the President. You may know him." I applied to both of them, and they both offered me a job. But with Coral I would have had to move to New York. I said, "No, I'm not ready for that." Sam said he wanted me to cover the East Coast promotion and sales. LC: Were you finding any artists and doing production around then? We're about to jump into it. Anyway, Sam hires me. They had never had a hit. He said, "Your job is to get us a hit. Obviously nobody here knows what a hit looks like." They had artists like Steve Lawrence and Eydie Gormé. You know, legit pop stars. But this is rock ‘n' roll time, man! Or teenybopper, or whatever you wanted to call it. KH: What year would this have been? 1954? KH: So this is before Elvis hit. Yeah. LC: Just about to. Fats Domino had hit. Little Richard had hit. Buddy Deane in Baltimore was the number one DJ on TV; The Buddy Deane Show on an ABC outlet. I kept saying, "Buddy, you've got to find me a hit, man. I'm used to walking in with five or six hits in my back pocket. Now I've got nothing." So he called me one Saturday morning at five o'clock. "You want a hit? You better get your butt over here. I've got one on a little label, I'm sure you could pick it up." I jumped in the car and drove over. Walked in. He put the record on. KH: He was at a radio station? He was on radio and TV, but this was radio. He had the afternoon on Monday through Friday on TV. Anyway, he played it and the phones lit up like a Christmas tree. He had 30 lines at the station and they were all blinking. He said, "Answer one!" "What is that record you're playing? Man, that's fantastic. Can you play it again? We didn't get the first part." Stuff like that. The record was "A Rose and a Baby Ruth" by George Hamilton IV. I thought to myself, "This is not even a good record! What in hell is going on here?" Buddy couldn't have put this many people up to call in. It was a legitimate hit. It was on Colonial Records from Chapel Hill, North Carolina. I called Chapel Hill for the number of Colonial Records. None listed. I said, "Do you have a Colonial anything?" They had Colonial Press. I called Colonial Press and said, "I'm trying to find the manager or owner of Colonial Records. Do you happen to know who that is?" He said, "That would be me. My name's Orville Campbell." We worked out this unbelievable deal. It still beats everything. I said, "What do you want?" He said, "I want $2,500 and a 5 percent royalty." Okay! I called Sam Clark and said, "I got us a hit! The owner of the label and I will be flying into New York." He said, "Who is he?" I said, "He's the guy who discovered Andy Griffith, for one." KH: Oh, really? That was Colonial Records? We flew to New York. [National Sales Manager] Larry Newton said, "I'm not signing off on this deal until we hear the record." I said, "You can't hear it. We don't have a copy. That's how hot it is!" We brought the master tape and they had to go and make acetates. Sam went ahead and signed a deal, and gave Orville his check. Larry heard the record. When he got mad, he always said everything twice. "You're a sick man, Foster. You're a sick man. It's the worst record I've ever heard. The worst record I've ever heard. The bass is out of tune! The bass is out of tune!" I said, "Yes, it is, and the kids out there in radioland really couldn't care less." He said, "You've just stiffed us." I said, "I tell you what. If this does not make the Top-10 in Billboard and Cashbox, fire me. If it does, I want a raise." He said, "You've got a deal. You've got a deal." Sam said, "Well, I think you'd be entitled to a raise anyway, if it hits." He was a man of honor. Then I got my raise. Sam said, "Find us some more hits!" I said, "Well, okay Sam, but you know I can't wave a magic wand." There was a record I heard about called "Cradle of Love" by Johnny Preston. I started tracking it down. I flew to El Paso and had worked a deal out. I called Sam, "How far does the East Coast go West?" "Oh, I'd say... where are you now?" "I'm in El Paso." "That's about right." So I said, "I've got this master for you. It's going to be a monster." He said, "Okay." I didn't go back to New York with this guy; he flew to New York on his own to meet with Sam. Larry was there, of course. Larry said, "What's on the B-side?" Who gives a flip, right? He said, "Well, we don't have a B-side right now, so we thought we'd just do a little instrumental of some kind." I said, "No, no, no. We've got to have a B-side." Larry was turning it down. It sold about two million. Anyway. I get a call one night from Sam Clark. It was like nine o'clock. He said, "You know that record you sent us that we should pick up?" I said, "Lloyd Price?" He said, "Yeah. We were trying to pick it up, but Larry just ruined the whole deal. You need to go find those people and re-open the negotiations." Lloyd had made this little record called "Just Because." I got that one re-opened and got it successfully done. But I said, "You've got to keep Larry Newton completely away, because if Lloyd's manager sees him, he's liable to shoot him. That's how mad he is." So they picked up Lloyd. His second record was "Stagger Lee." As Buddy used to say on his show, "The hits just kept on coming." Then Lloyd went over to Monument Records afterwards. LC: You started Monument Records around that time, right? You and Buddy, initially? Yeah. I had $900 that I could spare. That was enough. Over lunch one day I said, "Buddy, I think I can cut a hit record." He said, "You're out of your mind." I said, "Let's start with who I am. I'm just a weird guy, maybe, but there are a lot of weird guys out there. At least a million! If I really love something, a million other people love it just like I do. I'll just get it to where I love it, and we'll have a hit record." He said, "That makes too much sense to be real." I said, "I'm asking you to buy into the company for $300." "Well, what will I get for my $300?" I said, "30 percent." So he wrote me a check. That was in March of 1958. I had gone from ABC-Paramount; I couldn't put up with Larry Newton any longer. He was sabotaging me. I'd walk into a distributorship and there would be a whole new album release and I had no idea of anything about it. I just couldn't do that any longer. I started Monument Records and the Combine Music Group [publishing]. I had met Chet Atkins and gotten along pretty well with him, so I called him and said, "I want to come to Nashville and make a record in your studio. Is that possible?" "Yeah. You can do that. We rent it out to folks. You want me to hire the musicians for you? What do you want?" I gave him the instrumentation. I said, "Would you play electric on it?" He said, "Yeah, I guess I could." I told him I'd get back to him when I knew I was coming. "I don't have a song yet." He laughed. The apartment above me was a guy named John, his wife, and their little girl. He had a little tape recorder, and he would go out in the field. Bluegrass people, particularly, in folk music would go out and have a hootenanny. He'd be out a hundred yards away holding his little mic in hand. You couldn't understand anything. He was always playing this stuff for me, hoping I could help him do something with it. One day my wife said, "You've got to go upstairs and listen to John's latest project." I went up and he started playing and oh, god; it was horrible. All of a sudden this voice comes on and sounds good. I can actually understand the words. It's a catchy tune. I said, "Who is this?" He said, "Paul Clayton Worthington. But he goes by the name of Paul Clayton." I asked, "Who wrote that song?" He said, "It's public domain." I said, "I'll take a copy of that and see if I can do something with it." He was thrilled. I took it downstairs and started playing it. It was boring as a turtle race when you got into it. It was called "Done Laying Around." It had two nonsensical verses. I said, "First of all, I've got to rewrite this chorus." So I changed it to "I've laid around, and played around, this old town too long" [titled "Gotta Travel On"]. I called Billy Grammer, who had been Jimmy Dean's guitarist when they were doing the CBS show out of Washington. He not only was a great guitar player, but he could sing. Jimmy was being moved to New York by CBS, and he was not taking his band with him, which was a terrible mistake. Billy was going blind, which I knew. So I called him and said, "Would you like to be the first Monument artist? I've got a tune here you might need to come over to listen to." He came over, listened to it, and said, "I love it." We came to Nashville to do the record. Chet said to me – oh, he knew how to hurt you – he said, "I need to talk to you a minute." I go over and he said, "What do you want me to play?" I said, "Excuse me? You're asking me what to play on your guitar? Are you crazy? I don't play guitar." He said, "No, I know how to play the guitar. What do you want me to do? What kind of a deal?" I said, "Okay, I want it to be like a Bo Diddley influence, but not exactly." He turned two knobs and started playing. I said, "That's it." I didn't know he had quit playing outside sessions at that time – his secretary finally told me. We got back to Washington after we'd done this, and I had $80 left of my initial $1,200. Now what are you going to do with $80? You can't distribute anything. So I called Walt Maguire at London Records and said, "I cut a record in Nashville." He was there in about two hours. He said, "Oh, I think it's a smash. We can put it out ourselves." I said, "Nope, you can't do that. It's on Monument." He said, "What is that?" I said, "That's my label." He goes back to New York. Leon Hartstone was his immediate superior. Lee is the guy who started The Wherehouse, the music stores on the west coast, and he told him, "No." Well, Sir Edward Lewis [founder of Decca/London] was a genius. He wasn't about to turn a bunch of Americans loose to run free. He put an Englishman in house to be the executive in charge; D. H. Taller-Bond. Walt took a chance and went over Leon Hartstone's head with Mr. Taller-Bond. He said, "You've got a lot of nerve, young man. I think you might have done the right thing in this case, but I have no authority to grant you your wish." At that point it had to come from the chairman, which was Sir Edward Lewis. Walt went home, called him, and told him the whole story. Sir Edward said, "You think it's a hit?" Walt said, "No, I know it's a hit." He said, "Give the man his label." When I left them, they had 40-some labels they were distributing. The song spawned a new dance called "the shag." Buddy called one day and said, "You've got to come up with another shag record. That's what the kids are dancing to." Dick Flood, who had also been on the [CBS Morning] Jimmy Dean Show, and I had written [and recorded] "The Three Bells," which The Browns covered. We both had hits. I felt I needed to write this song with Dick, so we wrote "The Shag (Is Totally Cool)." He said, "I'd like to do this." I said, "Use your singing partner." Billy Graves had a great voice. I called him; he came in and we did "The Shag (Is Totally Cool)." It was Top 20 in the nation. Baltimore and Washington were really ahead of the curve, then it became huge – "beach music" it became known as. LC: How did you end up in Nashville? I came here for my first session in 1958 [Billy Grammer's "Gotta Travel On"]. It was a hit. I thought, "Well, this is easy!" I moved here in 1960. KH: What prompted you to move out to Hendersonville, Tennessee? It was very simple. I couldn't find any office space in Nashville. We looked everywhere. The only thing that I could find was in the Stahlman Building downtown. I said, "No, no. Oh, man." You'd have to park in a parking garage and walk. Boots Randolph was driving me around. He and I became great friends. He wanted me to move to Hendersonville. I said, "Okay. Let's find a place." There was one little space, shaped like a slice of pie, that had been occupied by a veterinarian. I moved into it with one employee, a secretary, and her desk was over the plumbing that came up from where they washed the dogs. Later we moved into a three story building. BW: You knew Boots before you moved here? Yeah. He was a great man. I bought a house out there near him and near the office. Sold it to Boots Randolph when I built this house. Those were good old days. LC: When you first moved here I assume you were working out of other peoples' studios doing sessions initially, right? Yeah. When I first came here I worked mainly at RCA Studio B. Occasionally I worked in the Quonset Hut. There were a couple of other smaller places I'd use once in a while, but B was the main thing. Bill Porter was the chief engineer at RCA. When I bought the studio from Sam Phillips [Sam Phillips Recording Service of Nashville], the first thing I did was hire Bill Porter. KH: Sam still had the studio downtown? Yeah. Everything about that studio was wrong, but it was magic. No audio man could ever have planned it as good. KH: Was that the former Masonic Lodge? Yeah. Fred Foster Sound Studio. I don't know why, but when I bought the studio it was quite a splash in the local media. It was on all the news shows and the papers. Roy Orbison was getting ready to go to Europe for a tour, and he needed to do a session. I'd had the studio about ten days, and Bill had been saying to me, "You gotta do some demo sessions in here, or something." I didn't know the first thing about that place. It all looked wrong. When I knew we had to do a session, I called Bill. I said, "We got a session Thursday." He said, "Great. How many pieces?" I said, "Uh, forty-two, including the voices." He replied, "I can't do it! It's impossible. I don't have enough microphones or anything. I know I don't." I said, "Go buy them. Go rent them. Go do whatever you've got to do. Do you think I'm going to go back to RCA, after all this publicity? How would that look for my studio?" You know it was one of the best records sonically we ever did; it was [Roy Orbison's] "It's Over." Sweat was pouring all over that poor man. I thought he was going to have a stroke or something. But I said, "Bill, you can do it. You just don't know how great you are." And he did it. Roy Orbison w/ Fred Foster | Photo courtesy of Micki Foster-Koenig LC: Obviously great. Those tracks sound so good. The thing that always puzzled me about that room was it had a box built, and turned upside down on a floor that's not reinforced, not deadened in any way. They put the drums on it. KH: It was a hollow box, right? Hollow box. You put the drums on it. You thought it would have gone into every mic there was, but you could stand right by the drums and sing, and never have any leakage or anything. I never have understood it. Neither did Bill or anybody else. It was a great room. KH: That was the studio my high school rock ‘n' roll band recorded in, in the summer of 1967. Ray Butts brought us in there. I remember the box. I think it was Tommy Strong who engineered the tracks that we cut. Tommy was of the old school. He did a lot of gospel. Did that well. Boudleaux Bryant, Roy Orbison and Fred Foster | Photo courtesy of Micki Foster-Koenig LC: You had to move out of there when they were tearing it down, right? Yeah, they tore it down. They also tore down the old Clarkston Hotel next door to build their tower. KH: Bergen, did you ever work in that studio?BW: On Seventh, wasn't it? Yeah. [Publisher] Bob Beckham used to do demos down there. You did a bunch of songs, and if you made a mistake... Tree Music was in that building, initially. Buddy Killen was running it. KH: Jerry Crutchfield was in there. Across the hall from Tree was Roger Miller. I was wondering if you know who the engineer was when Sam owned it. KH: I could make a guess. Billy Sherrill, the producer. Before he left, he engineered a hit for us, "(Down at) Papa Joe's" by The Dixiebelles. There are two Billy Sherrill's. One's the engineer and one was a producer. He could do everything, Billy could. LC: You bought a space at the end of Music Row after that? I bought an old church at Seventeenth and McGavock [in 1968]. It had been a Presbyterian church. After that it became a funeral home. After that, a BMW lot. The walls were two feet thick, at least, of brick made on the premises. In many ways, it was great. I'll tell you, you couldn't hear anything from outside. I was always having some electrical things going on. I thought man, "What if lightning comes in and hits the machine at night when it's storming?" I had triple lightning arresters put in. Lightning struck a pole outside; it hit the lightning arresters and started the power supply on the 16-track ablaze. Tommy Strong was drinking a great big paper cup of water. So he grabbed it and I got it just in time. I said, "Do you not know you don't throw water on an electrical fire? It'll electrocute you!" He said, "Oh, I didn't know that." I got it unplugged and we got it out. In those days, everybody was working together happily. So I called over to RCA, and nobody was there. I called Quonset Hut, and somebody answered. I said, "Do you all happen to have an extra power supply for a 16-track, because lightning just wiped this one out in the middle of the session." They said, "No, but we have an extra 16-track machine. We'll just bring it over." LC: Nice. Storming outside, raining cats and dogs, and they brought it over. We hooked it up, aligned it, and we were back in business. Now what are the chances of doing that today? LC: Some people help each other out. Some. But I mean, by and large the number-crunchers ruined it. I cannot believe they're destroying Music Row. Why? That wasn't historical? LC: It's important. You always operated independently, with your own finances. You'd use distribution with some of the majors, but you were running your own show. Yeah. LC: Were other labels and studio owners working in Nashville at the same kind of level as you? I don't think so. Clockwise from upper left: Wesley Rose, Roy Orbison, Fred Foster, and Boudleaux Bryant | Photo courtesy of Micki Foster-Koenig LC: I find that really unique, and kind of inspiring to see. Well, I got accused of everything. Wesley Rose [President of Acuff-Rose Music] called a meeting for lunch one day. I go out and there's everybody that was anybody of an established country music background. There was Jack Stapp, Wesley, Hubert Long, and Buddy Lee – a whole bunch of them. Wesley takes a spoon, bangs on his iced tea glass, and says, "Attention!" I thought, "Wow, must be something big." He said, "We called this meeting, Fred, because you're trying to destroy Nashville." I said, "What are you talking about, man?" He said, "You know; you're cutting all that n——r music." I said, "I see. Well, I'm just trying to make good music, and I don't care what it is. I certainly don't have an appetite. Thank you, but no thank you." I got up and left. Two days later I get a call from Owen Bradley. I thought, "Oh god, they're going to run me out of town." Owen says, "I'd like to have lunch with you, Fred." He sounded hurt, almost. I met him for lunch, we sat down, and he said, "I hear you met the old guard. You met all the tenured bastards in town. Don't pay any attention to them. They don't know anything. I love what you're doing. As a matter of fact, whenever you want to use my studio, it's yours for no charge. You keep making that good music." I never forgot that. It meant a lot to me, at that time. LC: That's nice to hear. But I could not do four sides in three hours. I couldn't do it. I never could do that. That's one of the main complaints they had, also. Messing them up because they were doing four songs a session, and here I come doing two a session. Then I got down to one, and hoped I could do that. If I couldn't, we'd just keep doing it until we got it. Whatever it took. I did [Roy Orbison's] "Crying" three different times. Wesley said to me before the third session, "You might as well throw that song out. It's obviously no good." I said, "It's okay, Wes; it's my money. Don't worry about it." Roy Orbison and Fred Foster | Photos courtesy of Micki Foster-Koenig KH: He published that.LC: They made their money back. A walking contradiction, most of the time. LC: You know, it's real interesting with Roy Orbison's career. He'd been dropped by RCA before you started working with him, right? Yeah. You want to hear something else? RCA dropped another artist I signed, Boots Randolph. He was the biggest selling artist we ever had on Monument. KH: Boots outsold Roy Orbison? Yes, sir. KH: I'll be darned. I didn't know that. The Yakety Sax! album sold about two million. Boots with Strings went over three. Probably closer to four. Everything he put out was in the hundreds of thousands. Amazing! Clive Davis called me one day. He said, "You need to come to New York," because they were distributing us. I flew up, and I walk into his office. He said, "I have a plan. I want to do a major campaign on Boots Randolph. I cannot believe the market penetration he has. On his own." What he had done was he'd created a series called "The World of…" with Barbra Streisand, Andy Williams, and other Columbia artists. He'd chosen Boots. We were outselling all the Columbia artists. It had been out three weeks, and we were at 95,000. The closest thing to it was around 50,000, which was Andy Williams and Barbra Streisand. He said, "This is going to be amazing. I want to do a major TV campaign. Print campaign. I want to set up a tour for him to really go promote him. We've got to come up with a really great new album. Can you do that?" I said, "Probably. I'll just tell Boots we need to do a new album, and it'll be good." Then I get a call about two weeks later from somebody I didn't know at CBS who said, "Can you come in tomorrow? We want you to meet the new President." "Oh," I thought. "Clive got the whole group deal. Perfect." So I flew up, and here's this redheaded guy I'd never seen before [Irwin Segelstein]. He'd come over from CBS Television. He introduced himself and said, "I'm calling you in first because you're a really profitable company for us, and you're the only one that we're distributing who's really making money. The first thing I want you to know is I don't know anything at all about music, and I don't even own a record player." I said, "For god's sakes man, do not say that to anybody else. You're just going to destroy everything!" I leave there, and about two or three weeks later I get a call from him. He said, "I've been thinking. I'd like to change things." Epic Records handled the distribution of other labels. He said, "Because Monument is so big, I'd like to move it over to Columbia." I said, "Wait a minute, why would you want to do that?" He said, "For prestige." I said, "No, no, no. Why would you fix something that isn't broke? That Columbia field force thinks of themselves as the purveyors of the big red [ed: note the red labels on Columbia LPs]. They don't want to see another label. Are you kidding me? You're about to do me in." So I then get a report that he's taken to drinking pretty heavy. He had moved me, and it was a disaster. I had to go back to independent [distribution]. I flew to New York, went to Columbia, and said, "Where's Irwin?" They said, "He's down in the Ground Floor, where he stays these days." The Ground Floor's a bar. I go down, and he's sitting there with a glass in his hand, shaking. I said, "Irwin, I flew up here, not because I had to, but because I wanted to. I think you're a pretty nice fellow, in many ways. You're an idiot in others. You nearly ruined my company by transferring me to Columbia, which I asked you not to do. But if you don't quit this job, you're going to die. You are not cut out for this. You're drinking yourself to death." He looked at me for at least five minutes and didn't say a word. I didn't either. He said, "You know what? You're right. And I thank you." He quit his job and went back to daytime TV programming out of L.A. for NBC. He called me, and he was sober. He went through rehab and everything. He said, "I just want you to know I feel like I owe you." I said, "No, you don't owe me." LC: It's pretty telling if somebody doesn't even have a record player at home. "Not only do I not know anything about music," he said, "I don't even own a record player. I don't particularly like music!" I went, "Oh, my god. How can you be in the music business?" If you didn't have music to like, you sure as hell can't like the music business! LC: When you were doing sessions and producing these sessions, how did you see your role? Kyle says you have the right input, at the right time. How do you do it? I don't know. I'm just a farm boy from North Carolina. What do I know? Seriously, I just know what I like. And I know some secrets that are obvious to the world, if they would only listen. If an artist is readily identifiable, he's got a leg up, right? If he can write really good songs, that gets him the other leg up, doesn't it? Like Willie Nelson, Dolly Parton, Roy Orbison, and Kris Kristofferson. LC: Yeah, certainly. I just finished producing the Willie Nelson album [For the Good Times: A Tribute to Ray Price]. I think I've come up with a solution to something, Kyle. You know how great Willie is about his guitar, and you can never have enough of it for him? I'm calling him sometime today or tomorrow. I've got a great idea; "Willie. Your next album should be an instrumental. You and Trigger can have the spotlight." It'll work! I always had great luck with instrumentals: Jerry Byrd, Boots [Randolph], and Al Hirt. You've got so many more doors you can go through with an instrumental. Movie people buy them up by the dozens to have music behind their films. It'll work. KH: When we were doing the Ray Price record [<em>Beauty Is... The Final Sessions</em>], Bergen had done the arrangements. I was engineering in the control room and Fred was with me. We were doing a take, and I was sitting there thinking to myself, "This sounds like it's too slow." Fred said, "Does it feel too fast to you?" I said to Fred, "Well, I don't know, but there's only one way to find out." I'm thinking to myself, "God, I don't know if I could stand it any slower than this." You stopped and took it down. Two clicks. KH: We started it and I thought, "I'll be damned. This feels a lot better." I think I'm a pretty smart guy. I've made a few records. I have a few hits. I'm a musician. But over those few days we did that, there would be four or five times when I was thinking one thing, and Fred would say something that was just totally the opposite of what I was thinking. Every single time it was better! Bergen, you've worked with Fred a ton in the studio.BW: Since I first started.KH: Some musicians didn't get Fred in the studio, because he's not the guy who's going to tell you, "Put a G below that E-flat chord before it goes to..." He's not going to do that. But he is going to say, "It feels too fast. Let's slow it down." BW: We did the same thing on Willie Nelson. When I was out there with the orchestra, I'd be hearing the same thing about tempos. Also keys. I remember on "Faded Love," we started to do it, and I went, "God almighty, this thing's too slow!" We were doing it too fast. I slowed it down. BW: Well, you did. And when you said what you said, Willie said, "Yeah, that's it." What I'd said was totally wrong. Before I ever left Washington I got a call one day from the Arthur Murray Dance Studio. "We would like to get a catalog of your product." I only had three records. I asked why they wanted that. They said, "We have found that your records are exactly perfect tempos for our instructions." I said, "Well, I don't have a catalog. But I'll be glad to send you one when I get one." KH: Roy Orbison's "Oh, Pretty Woman" was a good tempo. When they brought it in, how it was structured was the same exact beat and rhythm pattern as "Only the Lonely." I said, "Roy, I don't know about that. I'd like to see a little more excitement." I told him [beats on the table]. He said, "Okay." KH: Was that Buddy Harman on that? Buddy Harman and Paul Garrison – two drummers. Paul Garrison was his road drummer. This almost turned into a disaster. We were running it down, and Paul Garrison was playing every lick he'd ever heard or dreamed of. I mean, he was just going crazy. I went out and said, "Uh, you're a little busy there, Paul. Can you just play this for us?" He said, "I can play more than that." I said, "I have no doubt, but that's what I want you to play." He was backing up on me. Roy hated confrontation, and I knew if we got into a big hoo-haw here Roy's mood would be gone, and he'd just back off. So I went over and said, "Roy, you need to go over to the Clarkston Hotel and get you a Coke." He said, "I do?" I said, "Yeah. Real bad." He asked, "How long do I need to be gone?" I said, "Ten minutes." To his credit, he didn't ask me why, he just left. Then I went over to Paul and said, "Listen to me carefully here. You're going to have to play what I want you to play, or you're not going to be on this session. I'm going to pay you, because you were hired. No hard feelings. But I don't work for you. You're working for me. You're not producing this record, I am. Are we clear?" He said, "I can play more." I said, "Don't even go there! I know you can. Buddy Harmon's going to play the fills, and both of you are going to play that driving four." Just based on what little I'd heard, I said, "The day will come when you'll be proud to say, ‘Yeah, that's me!'" He said, "Okay, I'll do it." KH: You recorded that at Fred Foster Sound? Yeah, the old one that was torn down. Magic room. KH: There's something on that record. It's part of what makes the guitar sound so good. Yeah. Everyone thought I was crazy. Roy said, "You're going to do what?" I said, "Yeah, man. It's going to be good. Believe me." I'll just tell the Steve Buckingham story; that'll explain it all. I got a call from Steve Buckingham one day, and he said, "I'm getting ready to cut "Oh, Pretty Woman" with Ricky Van Shelton." I asked, "Why?" That must have ticked him off. He said, "Well, because!" I said, "I don't see how you're going to beat Roy Orbison." He said, "Well, I know; but I think we'll make a great record. The reason I'm calling is that you did the original. I need to pick your brain a little." I said, "Come on over." He said, "I was hoping you'd come over here, because I'm pretty busy." I went by and sat down. He said, "All right. How many electric guitars on the session?" I told him, "Three." He said, "It sounds like more." I said, "Yeah, they would, because I've got two saxophones buried in with the guitar, so it gives them more weight." He said, "There're no saxophones on that record." I said, "Yeah, you're right. What the hell do I know?" I got up and walked out. Roy Orbison at RCA Studio B | Photo courtesy of Micki Foster-Koenig KH: Was it Boots? Boots and Charlie McCoy. Charlie plays everything. I sat down with Charlie one day and said, "Okay, Charlie; I need to know, and I know you'll be truthful. How many instruments can you play that you feel comfortable enough to do a session on?" He said, "I don't know." I said, "Well, write them down." It was 52. LC: What? Are there 52 instruments?BW: I'm thinking that myself. Even more than that. He can play anything. KH: I didn't know Charlie was on saxophone. He was playing baritone. KH: You had a tenor and a baritone? A tenor and a baritone. LC: I'm going to go back and listen to it with headphones. You'll hear it. KH: It sounded like fuzz guitars. That's what that reedy thing was.BW: It was Jerry Kennedy, Wayne Moss, and Sanford? Billy Sanford? There was one more guitar on it. 12-string. Roy was playing. KH: Did he play the lick too? Yeah. BW: There's a whole lot of guitar players who say they play on that. It finally got so bad that I had to call Nashville and get a copy of the contract to show to people. LC: That's ridiculous.KH: Who played piano on it? Floyd Cramer. KH: Great piano part in the bridge. Also that one lick he played; that one chord he played. That made the record for me. LC: How did you end up working with Roy Orbison? I ran into Wesley Rose on the streets of Baltimore one day. I had met him somewhere in passing before. I said, "Wesley, what are you doing in Baltimore?" He said, "My wife Margaret has a horrible heart condition, and we're up here at Johns Hopkins for some tests. I'm worried to death. I don't know what I'll do if I lose her." He also said, "Congratulations on your big hit on Billy Grammer. We might have some songs we can show you for a follow up." I said, "We're already considering one of your songs as a follow up." He said, "Really? Which one?" I said, "‘Bonaparte's Retreat'." We did it, and it was a successful record. He called me one day and said, "Do you know who Roy Orbison is?" I said, "Didn't he have a song called ‘Rock House'? Didn't he do something called ‘Ooby Dooby'?" He said, "That's him. Would you like to have him? I'm pulling him off RCA. They've dropped him." I was a new company, and I needed some artists. I didn't realize that Roy was as timid-sounding as he really was. I said, "Yeah, I'd like to have him." He said, "On one condition, you have to duplicate the two songs that RCA turned down." Fred Foster and Roy Orbison at RCA Studio B | Photo courtesy of Micki Foster-Koenig LC: I was reading something about the early sessions you did with Roy too where they were trying to find a string section. Well, Wesley Rose wanted me to duplicate those songs that RCA turned down, because he thought they were great. I said, "What about after that?" He said, "After that, you can do whatever you all want. I don't care." We did the two songs that were turned down. It was nothing. We just called the same band in that had done it for RCA. The songs were "Paperboy" and "With the Bug." I think we may have lost about $30,000. I said, "Roy, we have got to get together for a longer period of time and prepare ourselves for the next session." It was 2-track, and I couldn't get him above the band, really. I had Gordon Stoker [of The Jordanaires] singing unison with him. I had to. Roy was so tender and wispy-sounding. I came from Maryland, and him from Texas. We spent a week together before we went to the studio. We went through every song you could ever think about, everything he'd ever written, and every piece of everything. He had one song that I liked called "Uptown." I said, "Okay, Roy. We've got to do ‘Uptown.' I'm going to put some strings on it to be the cushion for Boots Randolph and his fills." He said, "Oh man, you mean I can have strings?" So I called Anita Kerr, because she had done this commercial for Cain-Sloan department stores. It had the most beautiful strings on it. I knew she'd done that. So I called her and said, "Anita, I need you to get me a string section together and arrange a couple of things for me." She laughed. I said, "What's funny?" She said, "Well, the string section is no more. The symphony is on such hard times that all the good players have left town." LC: Oh, no. I said, "I don't need any Philharmonic strings. I just need pads." She said, "Let me see what I can find." She called me in about an hour and said, "I'm not guaranteeing, but I've found four violins that can play reasonably in tune." I said, "Okay. Would you voice them as wide apart as you can so it'll sound like more?" So that's what we did. Boots played those beautiful, colorful fills. It made the middle of the charts. The DJs were starting to like him. I said, "The next record's going to be a key record." Once again we scheduled more time together. About ten days I believe. We were both staying at the old Anchor Motel. He would sleep late. I would always get up and go to breakfast, being a farmer. We'd gone over everything, and I'd listened to every song in town. I'd called L.A. and New York publishers, Muscle Shoals, and Memphis; everywhere I knew to call, and we hadn't found anything. I called Cindy Walker to write me something. She hadn't been able to write anything. Roy had a song called "Only the Lonely." It had a 32-bar rubato verse. Strum a chord, and sing a line. Totally out of tempo, just lying there. It took two and a half minutes to get through the verse. I said, "Roy, nobody in the world's going to sit through that verse. It's not that interesting anyway, to be honest." Then he had a song called "Come Back to Me," about his teenage sweetheart dying on the way to the birthday party he was giving her. It was really well written and a good song. But I said to Roy, "We can't do this." It was too soon after [Mark Dinning's] "Teen Angel." I said, "You'll never get away with another death song this quick. But you've got a vocal here that I really like." That's sort of where we were, not getting anywhere. I got up to go to breakfast. This was going to be the last day before I was going to cancel, go back home, and start over. So I'm humming this background vocal to myself. BW: Was it that intro? Instead of going into "Come back to me, my love" I went, "Only the lonely." I stood out in the parking lot in the freezing cold and sang it to myself. I ran to his room, knocked on the door, and said, "We've got it!" He said, "I don't know if it'll work." I said, "Yes, it'll work." I just stood out there in the cold and sang it. He grabbed his guitar, did just a few bars, and he goes, "Mercy. Yeah!" I called Anita. This time we had six violins. KH: Did you do that at RCA B? Yeah. KH: Was Bill Porter the engineer on that record? Yeah. KH: I wish I could be a fly on the wall and go back to the room to watch that.LC: These were all live strings going down, with the rest of the band and the vocal?BW: Oh, yeah.KH: Is that the one where you surrounded him with the coats? Well, after that first session, where I had to have Gordon sing with him, I said, "We've got to do something. We've got to isolate him somehow." The band was eating him alive. BW: How many tracks was that then? Two. There was no such thing as putting him on a track by himself. You couldn't do it. So I'm sitting there in desperation one night and I said to Bill, "What if we put Roy in the corner, put that coat rack in front of him, and cover it up with coats?" He said, "Yeah! There're blankets in the maintenance room I can get." We covered that sucker, totally. To show you how talented Roy was, there were no headphones. He had to figure it out. He overcame it. KH: I don't know how you do that. I don't know either, but he did. KH: So nobody was listening to headphones on that session? No. KH: So singers were standing by the piano? No. They were singing clear away from it. BW: Who were the singers on the "Only the Lonely" session? The Anita Kerr Quartet and Joe Melson. I put him in with them, because I wanted them to sound younger than they were. Joe had this whispery little voice, like a teenager, so I featured him. I said, "Roy, this is going to be your first big record." He said, "Really? Are you sure?" I said, "Yep. I don't have power to see completely in the future, but it's going to be a hit. It's going to be a big one, in my opinion. I feel very comfortable saying that." This went on for a few minutes. Finally I said, "Okay, hold it. If you want me to, I will call the office, and we'll have them bring you a check for a million sales. You can never question it. You can never see my books. You can do no auditing. And as your friend, I'm advising you not to take it. But if you want it, you got it. That's how sure I am. Is that good enough for you?" He said, "And you don't think I should take it?" I said, "That's my advice, but you're welcome to it, if you want it." He said, "I better not take it." I said, "Good thinking." BW: What year was this? 1960. It sold several million worldwide, of course. BW: What year did "Oh, Pretty Woman" come out? 1964. It spilled on over into ‘65. "Oh, Pretty Woman" was the last thing I did with him. If Roy only had a real manager, god only knows what he would have accomplished. How many great things he could have done for movie soundtracks, the venues he could have played, and the artists he could have played with. Wesley Rose was his manager. BW: After "Oh, Pretty Woman," how could you not produce him anymore? Well, that's really easy to explain. We did "Oh, Pretty Woman" and I told Roy that was going to be the biggest record of his career, which it was. Wesley came to me and said, "I've checked Roy's contract. He owes you four more songs." I said, "I know." He said, "You can't do any more than four. You're not going to stockpile any." I said, "I wasn't intending to. I'm giving him a new contract." Wesley said, "Well, here's what it must include. Twenty prime time television appearances, guaranteed for the life of the contract. A guaranteed motion picture deal. Plus a million dollar guarantee." I said, "Okay. Let's take it one by one. Prime time television appearances: my youngest kid can get on the phone and book 20 of those. Any man in here worth a grain of salt wouldn't have to ask for that from anybody. Motion picture contract? I do not own a motion picture studio, so there's no way I can guarantee that. A million dollars? That's okay. I can do that." He said, "You can submit your offer. We're going to have a meeting around a conference table and open all the offers at one sitting." I said, "Well, you won't be opening mine, because I'm not submitting one. Number one: after five years on these great successes, if I'm not entitled to any more consideration than being lumped in with everybody else, you can go to hell. Secondly, I am not prepared to offer you part of a contract. You told me what it had to include, and I told you I couldn't do that." So Wesley said, "Well then, I'll just tell you what you can record, when you can record, and what you can release on the four songs we have." I said, "No, you'll produce them. Nobody's dictating to me what I'm going to do." I had to call Wesley's lawyer and tell him that if his promotion people went out in the field one more time and told all the DJs that Wesley was producing the records and not Fred that we're going to own Acuff-Rose. It's just that simple. That stopped that. "Oh, Pretty Woman" sold somewhere around seven million. The follow-up that Wesley produced, I shipped 100,000 initially and got 50,000 back. I hit 50,000 on the next release, and got over half back. I mean, I worked those records honest and serious. Particularly that first one, I worked as hard as I could. Although I didn't think they were near "Oh, Pretty Woman." BW: Did Roy not have the clout at that time after "Oh, Pretty Woman"? Wesley was pulling him off of Monument and putting him on MGM. Roy came to my office, sat down, and cried like a baby. He said, "I hate this. I want to stay here so bad, but it's easier to leave you than it is to fight with Wesley." I said, "Well, that's your decision." KH: I've always been curious about how you signed Ray Stevens. Ray was on Mercury and had these huge hits. Then, whatever happened, they parted ways. I had always told Ray, "Ray, you're limited if you stick only with the comedy. You're capable of more. If you're ever loose and free, and want to talk, come see me." He did, and I signed him. Our first record was "Mr. Businessman," which was his first legitimate big hit. KH: I love that record. Did he do "Everything Is Beautiful" with you too? No. Dolly Parton wrote a song called "Everything Is Beautiful," and Ray produced it for her on Monument. It had the same identical imagery and everything. When Ray's record came out, Dolly called me and said, "Have you heard Ray Stevens' ‘Everything Is Beautiful'?" I said, "No." She said, "Go listen for me, and call me back." I listened, called her back, and said, "We've got a lawsuit. That's what we've gotta do." She said, "No, I don't want that. What I want them to know is that I know they stole my song." I called Ray and said, "I need to have a cup of coffee with you." I said, "Ray, you know what you've done to Dolly is not right. Why don't you make it right? Call her up, give her half the publishing, half the writers." He said, "No. I never heard that song!" I said, "Ray. I've got it in writing that you signed off on it when you did it in the studio. You signed the leaders contract. And it says on the label, ‘produced by Ray Stevens.' You didn't object. That just isn't right. That makes me think a little bit less of you." He said, "Yeah, it probably wasn't right." I said, "Well, won't you acknowledge that to her, at least?" I think he did, but I'm not positive. KH: Did he record other hits for you besides "Mr. Businessman," or was that the only one? No, we had "Along Came Jones." We had a lot. BW: "Sunday Mornin' Comin' Down." Yep. We had a bunch of songs. Then Andy Williams' company wanted him to come to Barnaby Records, and they asked if I would sell them the catalog I had on him. They wanted to give him the TV show, and all this. I said, "Yeah, okay. I don't want to, but if it benefits Ray, I'll do it." So we worked on a deal and I sold the masters over to them. KL: Did he record those songs at your studio, at Monument? Did he produce himself? Jim Lloyd and I co-produced a couple of things. I produced some things on my own. "Mr. Businessman" was Ray and me, I think. LC: What's one of your personal favorite productions? Want me to tell you about one of my favorite records? You know the story of "The Christmas Guest?" Did you ever hear it? Grandpa Jones was a great human being of all time. He loved poetry, better than any man I've ever met. He had a wall at his house with shelves full of poetry. Floor to ceiling. He could recite Robert Frost verbatim, just about everything he'd ever written; which surprised a lot of people, but Grandpa was a surprising kind of a guy. He loved to go out when he was on tour, poke around old bookstores, and antique shops. He got back from Germany. He'd been on tour over there. He called me and said, "I've got something I picked up over there. I'd like to come and show it to you." He came in with this book that's been in a fire. About the bottom 20 or 25 percent of it was burned off, but it was hand-bound leather. Gorgeous. On the left side was a German version of whatever the poem was, and on the right side was the English translation. It was so old that the English translation was in archaic English. He said, "I don't know how it ends. It's burned off." It really upset him. I said, "You need to write the ending." "No," he said, "I can't do that. You write it." So I wrote the end. I called Bill Walker; I hadn't seen him in forever. He came over, and he loved it. I said, "You need to write something." Grandpa showed up at the studio. There was a string section and all the players. He said, "Oh, I'm at the wrong place, ain't I?" I said, "No." He said, "Well, I'm late then." I said, "No." He said, "Well, who are all these people?" I said, "That's your band." He said, "I ain't ever been this outnumbered before! I don't know if I can do this. I don't know where to come in, and where to go out." I said, "It's real simple. You can do it." He said, "If it's easy, you'd better show me." So I read it through. He said, "I'll try it." One take. He nailed it. It became a really big record. I gave Grandpa what I had written. I said, "You publish this. It's public domain. It's a new arrangement, and all new material. It's yours. This'll be my Christmas present to you." That was a wonderful record. He's a great human being. Fred in 2016 | Photo by Larry Crane Many thanks to Kyle Lehning for setting up and encouraging this interview, and Bergen White for being as patient as can be!
