Posts Tagged ‘The Literary Guild’

Do Be a Do-Bee; Don’t Be a Don’t-Bee

Posted: November 8, 2016 in Uncategorized
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I was not a rebellious child. I minded my parents and my teachers, and if they told me to do something—or not to do something—I would typically obey. This was reinforced by my favorite pre-elementary, black-and-white, mid-‘50s Nashville TV show, “Romper Room,” when Miss Norma would encourage us to “do be a Do-Bee, and don’t be a Don’t-Bee.” None of us wanted to be a disgusting and despicable don’t-bee.

My parents were both hard-scrabble representatives of the “Greatest Generation”—my mother was a “Rosie the Riveter” during WWII, and my father was a tail gunner on a B24 in the South Pacific—and neither had a high tolerance for unruly children. My father had fought off incoming fighter planes over the Pacific; by comparison, a smart-mouthed nine- or ten-year-old really wasn’t too hard to handle. Also, my school teachers—as well as my Sunday School teachers—would not have hesitated to provide my parents with an incriminating report had I “acted out” in those respective institutions (please refer to the parental-lack-of-tolerance-for-unruly-children reference above for a clue as to the consequences for my bad behavior).

Notice, I was careful to say that I was not a rebellious child; I didn’t say that I was not a rebellious kid. Or youth. Or even thirty-something. That’s because something snapped in my head when I was at my Southern Baptist college. Maybe it was because they told me I couldn’t dance. The crazy thing is I didn’t even like to dance—I just hated being told that I couldn’t. Or, maybe it was because I had spent my entire life trying to please the status quo. At any rate, I was to become the lead singer for the band (“Uncle Duck”) that played at the “Street Dance in the Middle of the No-Dancing-Allowed Campus,” but that’s another story for another blog.

When I was first offered a job in far-away New York City, I was told that I was out of my ever-lovin’ mind for packing up my old Volkswagen bus (“Van Go”) and heading north. My then-boss told me that in six months I’d be back in Nashville—or dead. There were times in those first few months that I was afraid he was going to be right. However, with the help of my old and new New York friends, I managed to tough it out and stay put (and alive!) in the city. That particular position was working in the art department of Record World magazine, and I came to love the job, the people and the city.

After three or four years at the magazine, I had an office on the 41st floor of the 1700 Broadway Building, overlooking the “Ed Sullivan Theater,” but this was in the years between “The Ed Sullivan Show” and “Late Night With David Letterman,” both of which were broadcast from the venue. It was a free-wheeling time, and the dress code was blue jeans, sneakers (or sandals) and rock t-shirts. I even created some of the t-shirts (for Stiff Records and later, for MCA and Elton John). But, then it all came to a screeching halt when Record World went belly-up in early 1982.

After looking for another art director job throughout that summer, I finally found a head hunter who promised me she could help. And, true to her word, before I knew it, I was sitting in a coat-and-tie cubicle at Doubleday’s Garden City headquarters as Art Director of their Literary Guild magazine. My job was to take the summaries of books being offered by the Guild and create marketing concepts for them. However, here is where the “don’ts” started…don’t do your own illustrations; don’t wear your sneakers; don’t skip the “Importance of Making Your Deadlines” Seminar…even if it means missing a deadline to attend.

The “Don’t Do Your Own Illustrations” rule was a little perplexing to me. The word on the Doubleday street was that some past art director had paid himself a tidy sum to create the illustrations for his publication. I was willing to do mine for free, but I was still told “no.” The up-side to all of this was that I had the budget and opportunity to work with the very best illustrators in the country. My favorite was air brush artist extraordinaire Mick McGinty; Mick had worked with Willardson and White in L.A. before becoming the original “Joe Camel” artist and creating numerous album covers, movie and Super Bowl posters and billboard campaigns. Mick was always the one I went to first when I had a crazy concept that only an airbrush illustration could capture.

And that was the case when we were asked to create the marketing look and feel for Bob Woodward’s soon-to-released bio, “Wired: The Short Life and Fast Times of John Belushi.” This was in early 1984, and the loss of the comic genius just two years earlier was still a lingering hurt. Like the promising stars before him that had died the same way and much too young—Jimi Hendrix, Janis Joplin, and Jim Morrison—Belushi had been so much larger than life. He was our generation’s Abbott and Costello, Jackie Gleason, and Jerry Lewis all rolled up in one big package.  I had been a fan of his since we sat around our off-campus apartment back in 1974, listening to his work on National Lampoon’s “Lemmings” album, which parodied (okay…lampooned) Woodstock. After “Saturday Night Live” and then, “Animal House,” we thought Belushi was destined to become one of the all-time comic greats. After reading the synopsis of the Woodward book, however, it appeared as if the Hollywood lifestyle had been as much to blame as the actual drug overdose.

The “don’ts” regarding the marketing direction of Woodward’s book started at the preliminary editorial meeting.

“We’re walking a fine line here,” the editor said.

“A ‘Wire’,” I said. She didn’t laugh.

“Don’t even think about any sort of drug reference in the marketing or illustration,” she said.

“What do you mean?” I asked.

“I mean, don’t try to sneak in something like a…doobie,” she said. From the way she crinkled her face when she said it, I could tell she had probably never in her life uttered the word, “doobie.”

“But that’s what the whole book is about, according to the summary,” was my puzzled response, “Drugs…and how they destroyed the promising life of Belushi.”

“That’s beside the point, so again, don’t even think about any sort of drug reference in the marketing or illustration,” she repeated, this time a little more loudly.

“What about a Hollywood reference?” I asked. As I mentioned, it seemed like Belushi’s Hollywood life-in-the-fast-lane had been as big of a factor in his death as the drugs that actually ended his life.

“The Hollywood reference is fine,” she said, rolling her eyes, “but again, don’t even think about any sort of drug reference.” (“If you want to keep your job,” was the innuendo).

And so, I arrived at the concept of Belushi standing in front of a “Hollywood Sign” movie poster on his wall, but with a sunrise over the hill, illuminating him from behind. As before, Mick McGinty hit it out of the park. However, by the time it printed, I had moved back South, this time to Atlanta to help create a print-and-design company with two partners called Indelible Inc.

That was thirty years ago, and looking back, I realized how frustrating it was to always have to hand off my ideas and concepts to other (albeit, very, very talented) illustrators. Especially, after being constantly told that I couldn’t do it myself.

Over the past year or so, I’ve gone back and resurrected projects from my past that I wanted to digitally illustrate (or re-illustrate) using Adobe Illustrator and Photoshop; the “Hollywood Belushi” picture was the most recent one to fall into this category. So, with one fell swoop, I’ve gotten to “do” what I was told “don’t do”—I’ve done my own illustration and I’ve included a drug reference in the same illustration. Actually, the original “Hollywood Belushi” art that Mick did all those years ago included the same subtle drug reference—right over Belushi’s left shoulder and right under the editor’s nose. Even back then, I felt like it was only right to spell out the two things that helped end the life of one of our generation’s most brilliant comics. All it took was to use the deceptively-welcoming iconic sign in the background. And, besides, “OD” spelled backwards is, of course, DO.

Phantom of the Opry

Posted: September 25, 2014 in Uncategorized
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I grew up in Nashville listening to the Grand Ole Opry on crackly car radios and later on, we were able to even watch it on our old black and white, three-channel, Motorola cabinet television. My father loved the Opry; he had grown up as a farmboy on the Tennessee-Kentucky border in a house with no electricity, and on Saturday nights, his family and neighbors would gather ’round the farmhouse’s living room radio—hooked up to their old truck’s battery—to hear Roy Acuff, Minnie Pearl, and Dad’s favorite group, the Carter Family. He even learned to play some Carter Family songs on an old hand-me-down guitar that borrowed strings plucked from the farmhouse’s front porch screen door.

Dad met Mom after they both returned from the war—he, as a tail gunner in the Pacific, and she, as a “Rosie the Riveter” in Detroit. After they were married, he found a job as a printing plate electrotyper in downtown Nashville, a block away from the Grand Ole Opry’s Ryman Auditorium, country music’s own Mecca.

Mom loved to sing, and though she did like my dad’s country music, I really think she preferred more of the big band type of music, especially Frank Sinatra and Dinah Shore. When my sister and I came along, my parents found a house in a modest Nashville suburb and set out to live the post-war American dream. At any rate, we always considered it a treat when Dinah Shore popped up on the old Motorola. Our parents would remind us that, having attended Hume-Fogg High School in downtown Nashville and then Vanderbilt University, Dinah was “a little ol’ Tennessee gal who did real good.” Mom would smile when Dinah sang her hit from the ’40s, “Shoo Fly Pie and Apple Pan Dowdy.” Dad would listen politely, but we all knew his heart was with the Opry. As for my sister and me, we weren’t so sure that any kind of pie made with flies sounded very tasty, whether they were wearing shoes or not.

I had the good fortune to meet Dinah Shore at a Doubleday Literary Guild party in Midtown Manhattan in the early ’80s. I was the Literary Guild Magazine’s art director at the time, and I had worked with her publisher in the marketing of one of her cookbooks. I spotted her as soon as I entered the ballroom, and I brushed past several other Literary Guild writers to talk to her. I told her I was a fellow Tennessean and she said, “We might be kin!” in a familiar accent, albeit so far from home. I also told her how we had grown up listening to her, especially, “Shoo Fly Pie.”

“Shoo Fly Pie!” she repeated, laughing as if she really was kin. “Did any of that Nashville guitar pickin’ wear off on you?” she asked.

“’Fraid so,” I told her, “The first song my dad taught me was the Carter Family’s ‘Wildwood Flower.’”

“The ‘Nashville Anthem’,” she said, wistfully.

“Yes ma’am,” I replied.

That evening I also talked to other Literary Guild writers, including Andrew Greeley about his “Cardinal Sins” and Peter Maas about “Serpico” and “Marie: A True Story,” his book about the downfall of a Tennessee governor, but it was the Dinah dialog that has hung in my memory all these years like a bright Christmas candle. And I was totally truthful about learning “Wildwood Flower.” My dad had played it all my life (and probably, most of his), and the fact that I learned it and mastered it sort of made up for all of the mechanical skills that I didn’t inherit or learn from him. I do know that it pleased him greatly when I added the guitar harmony alongside him as he played it.

As for the Grand Ole Opry, I knew that if I ever got to sing and play on its stage, it would have been a high point of both of our lives. We both knew it was a lofty aspiration, and my dad never would have pushed it on me as a career goal. However, in the back of my mind, I always dreamed that somehow I could slip in a side door at Opry.

And though Dad wasn’t around to see it, that side door was opened for me a few years ago. Dad had passed away in ’97, and though I didn’t think I could actually speak, much less sing, I was able to play “Wildwood Flower” on his old guitar at his funeral in the little country church where he and my stepmother were members. Dad’s pallbearers were his friends and church leaders from that same church, including Charlie Haywood, Charlie Daniels’ bass player since 1975.

The next time I would see Charlie would be backstage at the Opry, but I’m getting ahead of myself.

My journey to the side door of the Opry began with a phone call from Jerry Barr, a former co-worker of mine. He was handling the online sales for Carriage House; their signature products are King Syrup and Chicken ’n’ Ribs barbecue sauce. “Have you ever heard of Gaylord Entertainment?” he asked.

Nashville boy that I was, of course I knew. “They own the Grand Ole Opry and what used to be Opryland,” I told him.

“Carriage House wants to run a jingle on the Opry. Can you do that for us?” Jerry asked.

“What kind of a jingle?” I asked, “Something about syrup?”

“Yeah,” Jerry said, “Syrup. King Syrup is the main ingredient in something called ‘Shoo Fly Pie.’”

Somewhere up in Nashville, a side door creaked open. And, “Shoo Fly Pie,” the jingle, was written, recorded and shipped up to the Opry folks (http://www.bridgital.com/ShooFlyPie.mp3). That first Saturday night, I streamed the Opry on my Mac, and I could hardly believe my ears when I heard myself singing between the sets of some of the Opry stars.

“Shoo Fly Pie!” said Jim Ed Brown, the segment host after the jingle ran, “Y’all remember that?” Then he hummed a few bars from Dinah’s version.

When I spoke to the young Opry apprentice the following Monday, I worked up the courage to ask her if I could perform the jingle live on the Opry stage.

“Oh, I’m so sorry,” she said, “We don’t do that anymore…if we let you do it, we’d have to let everyone play their ads and jingles, and there would be way too much commotion up on the stage. However, we could get you in and let you sit at the back of the stage while it’s playing.”

“That would work,” I said.

“In fact, this week’s Opry would be a great one…Charlie Daniels will be here.”

And so, that’s how my sister, Jann, her husband, Lance, and I got to sit at the back of the stage while my voice, guitar and piano wafted over the airwaves and into the audience. I silently mouthed the words as the jingle played.

“What are you doing?” Jann asked.

“I’m Hillbilly Vanilli,” I told her. It was as close as I could get to performing on the Opry stage.

Then, Charlie Daniels took the stage, and his incredible a cappella rendition of “How Great Thou Art” stunned the crowd—and then brought them to their feet. After his set, Jann, Lance and I got to spend a few minutes backstage talking to Charlie Hayward, mostly about Dad. A few minutes later, Charlie Daniels joined us.

I had brought a couple of print-outs of cartoons I had drawn back in the early ’80s for Record World magazine, both of which featured Charlie Daniels. One of them, which I had drawn to highlight the 1980 CMA Awards, showed the finalists for that year’s Entertainer of the Year, and they were all dressed in swimwear. In the cartoon Charlie was saying, “Seriously, y’all…I’m a little nervous about this swimsuit competition…”

“I woulda been nervous about that!” Charlie remarked after I gave him the print-outs.

The following Monday morning, the young apprentice followed up with me.

“How did you enjoy the Opry?” she asked.

“It was incredible,” I said, “It kinda made me feel like Moses.”

“Why Moses?” she asked.

“Moses got to see the Promised Land,” I told her, “But he didn’t get to set foot in it.”

“Oh. That’s beautiful,” she said.

“Also, Moses played banjo,” I added.

“I did not know that,” she said.

“Yeah, he had a bluegrass band called ‘The Burning Bush Boys.’”

“Oh, I see,” she said, finally catching on. She did not sound amused.

And though Jann and I would go on to record yet another jingle (with the same tune) for Carriage House called “Chicken ‘n’ Ribs” (http://www.bridgital.com/ChickenNRibs.mp3), that golden night at the Opry would be our last visit there.

It was still a thrill to hear the new jingle twang through my Mac’s speakers for the next few Saturday nights, but it definitely wasn’t the same as being on the stage of the “Mother Church of Country Music,” or, since it was the new Opryhouse, maybe I should say, the “Daughter Church of Country Music.”  As I listened from the warm confines of my suburban Atlanta home, in my mind I could almost see one Opry stagehand saying to another, “Hey, shut that side door over there…you’re letting flies in!”