As mentioned in the beginning of this
Treatment for the book my quest to find Merle Haggard began with
a talk with Willie Nelson,
and telling Willie about the Jimmie Rodgers
documentary that I was producing, and Willie told me, "If you
want to know something
about Jimmie Rodgers, you need to talk to
Merle Haggard." Years later I got to Merle, and the
friendship began...
The thread of my story hangin' and rollin'
with Haggard was music history from Emmett Miller to Jimmie
Rodgers to Earnest Tubb
to Bob Willis to Lefty Frizzell to Ray Price,
Les Paul, Johnny Cash, Waylon, Kristofferson, and back to his
story. Merle on the drop
of a dime, would rather talk about the old
boys he knew and were influenced about than himself.
A main line in his story will be the Merle
Haggard, Jimmie Rodgers and me... a continues track in the dozen
years with the Hag
was based on Jimmie Rodgers. I had been
researching county music history since 1970-something.
Named the research
Kickin' Up Dust and twas to be a tale
about music history going down the tracks of Blues, Folk,
Western, Country and Rock
and Roll and where they crossed tracks each
began to mainline on their own steam.
Fate and Destiny had given me this Saga to
create by connecting the dots and/or tracks along the evolution
of music in America.
Then I started noticing that this Jimmie
Rodgers dot kept showing up on the track. So I started to
dig into the Singing Brakeman,
and found a relative unknown story by the
masses at large, especially the guys in Hollywood. For in
Hollywood if a big shot or if
two people in the room do not know what you
are talking about...you are the stupid one. For the fast
moving young demographic
that most of Hollywood was trying to target
it had to be off the hook, sex, girls and guns and violence.
Meanwhile I was discovering this incredible
man who, was so influential that he showed up when going across
names like Gene
Autry, Earnest Tubb, Bob Wills, Hank Snow,
Lefty Frizzell, Les Paul, Willie Nelson and Merle Haggard,
then from Kenneth
Threadgil to Janis Joplin, Dylan to Kacey
Musgraves. and and on and own down the track that Jimmie Rodgers
had laid.
Thomas Hoyt Bryant was born December 7, 1908,
and died May 29, 2010, known as Slim he died at 102 years
old. Through my
research I had found Slim and got him on the
phone. He was 96 at the time, and was sharp as a tack,
funny as hell and very
humble man. Slim came across my radar
in that he was the only man living who had played and/or
recorded with Jimmie. Soon
as I told Merle that I had found him he said,
"Get me too him..." It took Frank and I a year or so
to put all the logistics together to
get these two legends together. At
Slim's age we could not take a chance putting him on a jet, and
Haggard does not like to fly on
commercial jets so we waited till he was
touring near where Slim lived in Pennsylvania.
I would call Slim from time to time to just
tell him we were working on getting them together. Both
men were as excited to each
meet each other. Then one day Frank
called telling me that Merle was booked for a show in the old
Capitol Theater in Wheeling
West Virginia. It was only 4 hours from
Slim. After the call from Frank I called Slim and
told him that the meeting with him and
Haggard was coming together. I told him
the show was going to be at the ole Capitol Theater in Wheeling
West Virginia where
the WWVA Jamboree radio show was produced,
and Slim said to me, "I played there before Radio.
