ND: What were your first impressions of Nashville? I guess I’m thinking of your first visit, the time you sang on Ernest Tubb’s Midnight Jamboree.
CS: I was scared to death. It was my first plane ride, for one thing. I remember it was $80 to come from Wood Country Airport in Parkersburg, West Virginia, to Nashville. It was a pretty bumpy ride.
Bill Anderson took me to his home to meet his wife. He lived off Franklin Road. I remember thinking that it must be the biggest road in the world because it was four-lane. I stayed at a little hotel on Franklin Road called the Biltmore and I wouldn’t go outside. I was afraid somebody would get me, so I’d sit there all day and not eat. One day Bill’s band found out so they started coming to get me for meals. But it was just the dream of a lifetime.
I remember the one time I stayed at the Sam Davis Hotel downtown. Bill Anderson said he’d take me to the Opry before I sang on the [Ernest Tubb] Record Shop. I was afraid that I’d be late so I went downstairs and waited outside for Bill to come pick me up. I saw this convertible pull up with this really handsome guy in it. This guy got out and ran into the barber shop. While he was inside, a traffic cop came by and put a ticket on his car. Soon the guy came running back out and saw the ticket before the policeman left and started talking to him, just kinda charming him. The next thing you know the officer had torn up the ticket. I didn’t have any idea they were watching me. I was just standing there leaning against the wall, but when the guy got in his car he winked at me and drove off. That was my first meeting with Marty Robbins.
ND: Your ’60s and early ’70s albums are as good — and as country — as any made in Nashville during that era. They’re also among the least compromised by the excesses of the Nashville Sound. How much of that had to do with the fact that you were a creative partner in the studio alongside Bob Ferguson and Weldon Myrick?
CS: Bob Ferguson was a wonderful, wonderful man to work with. We had a great relationship. We worked together for nine years and we always picked songs together. Bob would listen, and he had a way of getting the best out of you without you really knowing he was bringing it out.
But sometimes it was a fight. The record company really thought that I could go middle-of-the-road or pop. “Once A Day” went into the Hot 100 and they thought, the more pop I went, the more records they could sell. But I just wasn’t comfortable with that.
I remember doing The Lawrence Welk Show. That was before Lynn Anderson went out there. Lawrence Welk had asked me to be a regular on the show during the ’60s, but I turned him down because I didn’t think they were country enough. They were wonderful to me. But I just really loved pure country music. Even if I did go pop it would still turn out country. So what good would that do?
ND: How important was the input and playing of steel guitarist Weldon Myrick on your records?
CS: I think Weldon created the “Connie Smith sound.” Matter of fact, I’m excited, because my steel player is not able to go with me three days this month and Weldon’s gonna go out on the road with me. I’ll have him playing with me on my birthday this year. I’m just tickled about that.
Weldon is just so fresh and creative. His playing is so strong. I think that’s where I got most of my fans. Of course the steel guitar players bought my records to hear Weldon. He was a very, very integral part of my music. I love the steel guitar. I mean, if I wanna hear something, I’ll hum a steel lick. And if you’re listening to one of my records, more than likely I’ll point out what the steel guitar player did, or the guitar player.
ND: You’ve said that you weren’t ready for the pressures of the music business, including the way men in the business treated women. Can you talk about what that was like, especially at a time when there were relatively few women in country music?
CS: I was pretty much scared of everybody at first. It didn’t make any difference whether it was a man or woman, it was very hard for me to say what I thought. But some of the club owners, when they booked you, they thought they owned you. I didn’t handle that very well. Usually I just didn’t go back there again. I never went along with the crowd. I just walked off from pressures like that.
ND: At the height of your success at RCA, you bottomed out emotionally. What turned things around for you?
CS: I think everybody gets to the end of themselves at some point — hopefully. Because when you find that you’re not your own God, or the God of the universe, that’s good. And you can go either direction. You can go through life thinking you’re the best and be very fooled, or you can think you’re the worst, and be very fooled. Because either way, it’s ego. It’s just that one’s in reverse. And mine was in reverse. It came from being a child of an alcoholic father. And then, when my mother remarried, when there were 14 kids altogether, it came from not being able to dress like the other kids and from being laughed at and talked about.
