ND: You and Red Lane have known each other for a long time.
HC: [laughs] Red was working for Justin Tubb, and I had a little 28-foot boat that I had just bought and I tied it up down at the end of Broadway. This was in the 1960s. And talked him into staying down there with me, rollin’ and yahooin’ at Tootsie’s, that next morning we’d get up early and take the boat up to Justin’s, in Hendersonville. He said, “We’ve got to get up and get up there, because Justin’s got a plane chartered.” They were working some out of the way somewhere, and it was Justin and Red, y’know, Red was playing guitar.
We didn’t get halfway to the locks until both engines quit on the boat. We throwed out our anchor and it hooked, and we sat there. And that was about 10, 11 in the morning. And we sit there, and we got cold. We had one quart of Scotch, and he tied a string around it and fixed to where it wouldn’t come lose, without me seeing it. And he said, “I’m going to show you what I think about you causing me to lose my job,” and he throwed it overboard.
I didn’t know that he had it on a string, and I almost dove in after that…Then he just laughed like everything when he pulled it out, but we just kept it in there ’cause it kept it cold until it was gone. And there we were in the boat.
Somebody just happened to come by in a small boat, we said PLEASE get word, and we gave ’em Justin’s phone number so he probably called. So Justin fired him, you know. [laughs] But I think he hired him and fired him about four, five times during the course of our…[laughs] Phew.
III. I HAD A PRETTY GOOD IDEA I WASN’T GOIN’ BE NO STAR
ND: You started out to be a performer, not a songwriter, right?
HC: I couldn’t be a performer. I was with Eddie Cochran in a duet called Cochran Brothers, for a long time, and I couldn’t stand the crowd. We used to open for Lefty Frizzell, and we would go out, with a jacket or something, and do a little rock ‘n’ roll or stuff like that, and then go back, take our jacket off, and Eddie’d play lead guitar and I’d play what you call that sock guitar, rhythm. But then I’d push Eddie out there to all them crowds and everything. That just kinda got to me.
So I had a pretty good idea I wasn’t goin’ be no star. [laughs] I couldn’t handle the crowds, you know, cuz they was screamin’ and hollerin’, and way back then Lefty was just tearin’ it up, but they would be screaming “Cochran Brothers” way into Lefty’s show, sometimes. Man. I couldn’t get used to that part of the artist thing.
I love to record, you know, I’ve cut a buncha stuff, but you’ve got to work on it. And it gets too many people, and I just…I must have some kinda phobia or something. When they get to pullin’ on ya and holdin’ ya, you know…it’s both ways: If you drink and it’s a sober person, they irritate the hell out of you. And if you don’t drink, and it’s a drunk, it’s twice as bad. So there ain’t no way you can win. [laughs]
ND: Do you regret that your recording career didn’t take you a little further?
HC: No, not really. Not when I see some others that was pretty big, and then the drop on the other side. I’ve seen a bunch of them that couldn’t handle it, and didn’t handle it. If you’re a real strong writer, and stay in there, and work, and do it as a job, the way you should, you’re going to have something. I’m making probably more money now than I ever made. But I’m still working. I haven’t had any hit singles in the last few years, but I’ve had a lot of play. I bet you can’t drive from here to California without hearing one of my songs.
IV. USUALLY IT EITHER COMES TO ME, OR IT DON’T
ND: What’s the connection between where alcohol takes you and where the words come from?
HC: When Dean Dillon and I would write, we were doin’ a bunch of drinking, and we wrote a buncha hits like that. But the majority of the first things that I wrote, like the “I Fall To Pieces” and the “Little Bitty Tear” and “Make The World Go Away”, and all those things, I wasn’t drinking at all. “She’s Got You” was written so fast, usually those big hits were written so fast…
