The Story Behind Mom's Cover Portrait

 Around 1952, Red Sovine gave his collie showdog, Sam, to Jewell, Charles and the boys. Red was very busy and often on the road. He felt Sam would have a better home on 17th Street in Texarkana than Shreveport. Little Rick and cousin Chuck Hancock (pictured above with Sam) played with Sam every minute they could. Sam, an “outside” dog, had a great life until the night he was shot in a drive-by. Texarkana police officers, including Jewell's husband, Charles, had enemies among local crooks. One of them shot Sam late one night when they fired a shotgun blast at the house. We don’t know whether the gunman was ever caught. If not, he was lucky that Charles didn’t catch up with him. But we trust that karma did. 

As a little kid, I rode with Red Sovine and some of his band members from home, where everyone had been jamming with mom in our living room, to a venue in Arkansas for that night's show. It was a high-speed experience I've never forgotten. I couldn't believe how fast Red drove, but that's how many artists traveled from one appearance to another. It's no wonder so many died in auto accidents on the road.

 Johnny Horton was a playful person and loved to cut up with Jewell's  boys. On one visit, he was swinging little Rick out back and swung him higher than Rick had ever been. Terrified, Rick yelled, "Stop, Mr. Horton! Stop!" Horton caught Rick and set him on the ground, laughing as Rick high-tailed it into the house. 

     On another occasion, Mr. Horton was at our house with other artists who were preparing for a show that night. He went into our lone bathroom, left the door open and began to apply his makeup. Mama Minnie (as we called our maternal grandmother) parked her little 5-foot self at the door, watching Mr. Horton apply cosmetics. She was a tough, farmgirl raised on Sand Mountain in Jackson County, Ala., the Yellowhammer State's northeasternmost county. Always wearing a homemade apron, except at church, and one of her homemade bonnets whenever outside, she had reared eight children on her sharecropper husband’s East Texas farm. A hard-shell Baptist, she expected women to be women and men to be men. But she had a great sense of humor when it didn’t quite turn out that way. So she was incredulous as she stood at the bathroom door, watching Johnny Horton apply makeup and laughing so hard she could barely stand. She’d never seen such a thing as a man putting on makeup. Horton didn’t mind. He laughed, too, and talked Mama Minnie through his prepping, explaining that makeup was essential in the glare of stage lights. Without it, he said, he'd look like a singing corpse. 

Once Jewell had finished a song, she would type a copy on her portable Underwood typewriter (like the one  above). to send to an artist or publisher along with a demo tape of the song. Now and then, she would crank a sheet of paper into the machine and let her sons "write." They would bang a key and -- presto! -- a letter would appear on the paper. Even better, the typewriter ribbon was half red, a color more fun than black, expecially when their text consisted of exotic words such as dkbdk apomd.

One afternoon in probably ’53, I heard mother laughing and chattering with some women and went to the living room to see who’d arrived for a visit.

There with mom was Josie Chelette and her three angelic daughters -- Mary Jo, the oldest, Carolyn and the youngest, Judy.

Mother didn’t have to tell me the girls were performers. Their elegant poise and radiant smiles were like those of other women artists I’d met at our home in Texarkana. They were beautiful and, for once, in my age group.

Painfully shy as a child, my knees weakened as mother introduced me, and they responded with smiles, nods and “Hello, David.” They said my name! My knees weakened more in the presence of their blinding auras. I tried to say, “Hi.” I must have been saucer-eyed. Then I fled to solitude in our back yard.

Later, when I was sure they had left, I asked mother, “Who were they?” 

"The Chelette Sisters and their mama," she said. They were from Port Arthur and were performing at the Louisiana Hayride and had come by to get acquainted, mother explained, adding that they were going to be big country music stars. 

Their dad was like my dad, she said. He was a policeman and a pilot. (Josie, I later learned, was the first aviatrix in Port Arthur.)

     That was the only time I met the Chelette Sisters, but I’ve never forgotten them. They had sung for five years on KPAC in Port Arthur, played major venues nationwide alongside the biggest country stars, won on the Ted Mack Amateur Hour, played the Louisiana Hayride and were big during the mid- to late-1950s. Ultimately, they preferred married life and family to entertainment careers.

Here's the Chelette Sisters' 1958 rockabilly recording of "Lovesville"

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RZ6BLHXh8Nc

In 1951, as mother’s songwriting career was taking off, Louisiana Hayride artist Red Sovine gave her a beautiful new Gibson J-45 acoustic guitar in a black case lined with dark-green felt. A long, green braided cord served as a shoulder strap, but that worked fine for mother. The J-45 was the perfect size for her 5’3” frame and small hands.

It was an important tool to have, Sovine told her, because she needed to be making the best possible demo tapes of her songs accompanied with a guitar better than her old Martin. She loved that guitar and played it well. When it needed a new string or a set of strings, dad would take care of that and the tuning.

Mother’s guitar fascinated me and my brother. We would play with it, slowly strumming the strings to create ghostly, transcendent sounds. We were gentle with it, per our parents' orders.

When we heard her playing that Gibson, we knew she was working on a song.

Jewell's beautiful penmanship always impressed me. She took pride in her cursive style and helped my brother, Rick, and me work on our penmanship, especially on boring rainy days. She would assign us to write things like  numbers, the names of months, etc. An example is shown above in a sheet from one of her Big Chief tablets. Of course, Rick and I developed our own styles, but we never matched mom's exquisite "hand."

Whenever an artist, or an artist with band members in tow, would visit mother at our house, on 17th Street, a spirited jam session was inevitable. Amplifiers would be plugged in (and volume turned down a bit), guitars tuned and then the songs and joy flowed. Neighbors never complained, as far as I know. They got a free concert after all.

My brother and I were small, but we made a good audience. We’d applaud after each song, “Sing that again,” we’d shout. Our ears were ringing, but we didn’t care. I remember one jam session in particular. Red Sovine and his band were at the house. As they played, I noticed how his fair-skinned steel guitarist Shot Jackson would smile and blush deeply when Red would call on him for a solo. That was the first time I’d noticed someone blushing. I was fascinated with how a person’s facial color could change so fast.

After that, whenever we were at a Red Sovine show and Red would introduce Shot's solos, I’d watch to see whether he blushed. He always did, with a big smile.

Female Country artists visited mother at our home, but not as often, it seemed anyway, as the men. Perhaps that’s because they came at times when my brother and I were at school or, when we happened to be at home when they visited, we thought of them as engaging, if not mesmerizing, aunts. I remember mother introducing me to them before asking me to “run out back and play.”

I remember how I thought they were so beautiful, loving and fun. They were like mom, meaning spirited with big smiles, big laughter, loving dispositions and blazing eyes.

The one I remember best was named “Skeeter.” I liked that name. It sounded colorful, like a cousin’s nickname, and it matched the energy I felt in Skeeter Davis' presence. 

Another I remember was a heck of a knockout – long, straight dark hair, piercing dark eyes like mom's -- an absolutely magical person. She may have been Hannah Faye, a young singer marked for potential stardom but who ultimately quit singing to marry and settle down.

I often heard mother talking about “Kitty Wells.” I don’t recall ever meeting her, but mother spoke of working on songs with her at the Louisiana Hayride.

Once, when I’d taken a break from newspapering in the late ’70s and was working briefly out of Nashville for David VanCronkhite and Randy Gurley, a gifted new ABC Dot artist, the Bradley brothers gave me Kitty Wells’ office number. I called several times to say hello but never got past her secretary. I wanted to ask Kitty whether mom indeed had worked with her on "It Wasn't God Who Made Honky Tonk Angels," as mom had told me. I never found out for sure and have no proof, but I'll take mother's word for it and let it go at that.

Marketing new country releases in the '50s was a far cry from today's sophisticated work. We get a sense of how it was done back then in a Dec, 6, 1956, letter to Jewell from Tom Kelly, who was Jean Shepard's manager. He was letting Jewell know that Shepard had recorded Jewell's "Tomorrow I'll be Gone" (Nashville DJ Eddy Hill  was given co-author credit). Here's Kelly's letter just as he wrote it: 

"Dear Miss House:

This is just a belated letter to let you know that JEAN SHEPARD has recorded one of your songs, and it is to my understanding that yours will be either the first release of 1957 or it will be the second record to be released. I am planing a all out publicity campaine for Jean and her next two releases, as it has been quite a while since she has really had a shot in the arm as far as publicity is concerned. I have had a comitment from Cedarwood Publishing Co. as to how far they will go along with the promotion, and am still awaiting a reply from the other publisher of the flip side as to what extent they will go. Jean is going to match (in money and D.J. copies), the same amount and probably more. I want to send out 3000 personal letters to all the dj's and then send each of them a copy of the record. If you would be interested in taking part in the pushing of your song, I can assure you that it would be appreciated and of course you know that it would make the record just that much more stronger. Thanking you and with kindest personal regards, I am, Yours very truly,

Tom Kelly, Exclusive Mgr."

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"Tomorrow I'll be Gone" was one of four songs Shepard recorded on Nov. 6, 1956, at Capitol Recording Studios on North Vine Street in Hollywood. Among the studio musicians was Buck Owens.