A Word on Words; 3629; Jeffery Buckner Ford

fb liz from nashville studio way celebrating offers literature and ideas for more than three decades this is word on workers with jobs hello i'm john singing hello once again welcome to word on words our guest today is jeffrey buckner forward to talk about his new book river of no return tennessee ernie ford and the woman he loved welcome jeffrey two word on words like sir you are they you are the son of tennessee ernie ford loesser

one of the to one of two and the other brian i guess it's an interesting and fascinating story revealing story it's not a story i knew i'd dare say many people in the public at any sense of the tragedy that was that they live in tennessee ernie ford and muslim paying for it it was so close and it was very much wanted exorcism in and spent some ways there were a great many facets ended and elements of their lives together as a as a couple that had written inside of me for many many many years and do it facing those incidents those times was very difficult facing them in my memory was one thing placing them on a blank piece of paper was something else altogether because i knew that once they the digital ink

was there and it was printed out that it was out there that was difficult to read it you know he was such a fabulous in ten years and such a natural an opinion on we don't know why we love performers like tennessee ernie ford but it's it is candid for those of us who remember that vivid and smile and that that powerfully melodic voice he was a beloved figure and i speak for myself and decided no japan's world cup comes on a golf course i love the wheel collision from burritos wandering archer are denied lawyers as a man he followed a credo in the

business that had been impressed upon him by his own father many many many times and that that credo was never allow yourself to see yourself as being in a vague or more important than the person buying the ticket to see un and that philosophy allowed him to step off the stage in a grand theater and enjoyed talking with the rigor or a backstage he and or of fear or anger more than he would've enjoyed talking with a director of a show or a choreographer or another actor because he he reviewed what those people were doing the victor conte the blue collar peep those supporting him and because he viewed himself as standing on their shoulders if you will that was the endeared him to people on the

fact that he was possessed of the kind of voice that he was possessed of them have that natural ability to talk and entertain people and sing for people not to the alarm was just gravy you know you talk about them that voice and that voice first was heard decency on radio station and as an announcer yes and i had no idea that he was on the year the day a pro armor and announced they attacked by a job are using this so in this region and in east tennessee original know your will in knoxville on and on he had to sit behind that mike and break the news and it was a you know obviously an event that changed not only his life but it wasn't of many many millions of people and end it this event as you're one of two brothers so is the brother went into the navy was an officer with a girl

suffered as you say another thing they call that shellshock is never really recovered as their relationship was promotion of violence bernie wants to be a flier i want the obama beer first lieutenant and let's move him right on to that they used to have nineteen ninety three and in uniform is that a disparaging him in their aging him near the book on forty years how the debtor beautiful young woman is on the days you get to that i know would share it with our viewers well they can go on your base at the time was was a pre small base it was north of los angeles subpoenaed up in a desert country off of route sixty six in and on that at the time were dead began his duty

there as a as a bombardier could get a mom had started her duties they're just couple months earlier she had graduated from the national youth administration's consensus though she took stock were three courses in sectors of the name of the new deal on came out of the new deal and end up but she took a post as the secretary for the wing commander there and invent and essentially there's a related to get in anyway principal job with respect mr ricketts was too score runs that each could get made on drug running water runs out in the desert and a camp and i was a big important gate because she set the stage she blocked the deal and wonder if someone was going to pass and you know actually make activity so you got to know betty jean him in her in terms of the power that she all over la circa debt

end up getting killed or from are not like about ios he was smitten with her she was your moment on the base and it came in one afternoon and asked if he could borrow a piece of carbon paper in those days and that's surely ever return to carve a neighborhood here he was he wanted to come in and borrowed to you know and really thinking really planning this out so and she always said you know i didn't really have time to tell him about carbon paper i just gave it to him for he came back the next day and he had the score in paper with him what he had brought his mother had sent him an entire applesauce cake and he'd eaten all of the excitement there was lucky ones lots of any rampant slice of imitation paper that she may have been implemented park and walk that the scarf take back on that takeout

mama don't you support for what was this and that was that's how they met in just a couple months later a peppery graduated in and oversee this mission all they were married for forty six years forty six years in and forty six sunday is that were interspersed with great joy and great success and great trauma and great tragedy i guess i guess in writing this book yeah i had to begin at the end and that's where you begin at the end of like desolate but and it's that spring and researcher who ordered that because recently conducted an in interview regularly worthy the post passed began the interview with that

same question aquarium why would begin the story at the end and i think that that doesn't work when i made the decision to do that the decision was made to do that because it sets the stage why me literally having to ask and answer my own questions for a family get to this point where i'm sitting in a church surrounded by people i don't know at a service for my father that i had to arm covertly the location of listening to people that didn't know and eulogize him how in the world could it have ended up here and it became clear to me that for me to address that question honestly i had to begin the story at the end if that makes sense in greece and given what follows a retrospective look

at their lives and just love you follow and then he died two years earlier for chancellor the gurney married at his second wife is who wanted nothing to do with you and nothing to do with brian and doesn't want you at the funeral and additional information about this you know terrorism and an end and i must say as you read the book it's clear that for good reason disappointment and that bitterness still is part of what the book is about and it i sought the way you handle that then and the way you move through indigenous is reduced to your mother's alcoholism and then to her suicide a muslim painful to write it it was art recall

distinctly walking from one office to our bedroom or my wife morsi was and she was involved in some project right there and i remember beginning to be beginning to feel tears course you know my face when i had written that particular passage and then at the end as well of the story in realizing that what had happened with mom was not something that i had simply presumed to work it was an actual event him to relive that moment was extremely painful as i said earlier to try and prevent the structure really and to say magically

but accurate and correct in retelling that as a writer doubled in that pain because i needed to place an extremely painful part of my life on a blank page and have it be rebuilt and be able to come back months later they look at it and realized that writing you know writing as it is is very good i get something moving in the there is a description love your maternal grandparents theater and ran for their attorneys really touching the first time i really got to sell the rye you can be an affectionate and emerges again abandon the book and eight perhaps being written in pain

makes it more powerful but let's talk about him and his power that he had power over institutions over ford motor company in his hand for joe friday at a lot of johnson and his ten years you know and to know when you think back about a man and you think about sixteen tons and you think about the title of the river of no return and when you think about new train i mean i can sit here today and hear echoes of that a litany of the new nato quality of those eerily voice well and you know where we're so fortunate because it through art through our website we are able to really get a very clear idea of how many people across the globe are still aware of

and still fans of him as a singer as a television personality we get so we get emails from bahrain rip sumatra people to win a stroke and is this going to come out as i look at this on the cd and you know when i was ten though we are we are reaching hundreds of thousands of people around the world every single month and to know that there are still all generations cut the sides are that remember him is a thrilling end and gratifying say i thank god for nostalgia tv there are there were kids right now eight and nine years old who because of nostalgia tv know as much about the record lows and that merck says and cause an attorney as we do when we were the jury an end to that kind of longevity for a

performer is that it deeply grateful for you know and there's so many anecdotes that everybody knows a gun bob hope we go on with the king in his time bob hope was thinking yes and there came a time when bob hope was an excellent yes in the book is chock full of anecdotes about uram membership and have an oath in the celebrity family have done that is that people in awe and in that anecdote about about dolores hope walking the grounds and the movie gives an effort they're genetically and you've got the assignment and you go through and a new face to face with new face to face no one receives

there are many antidotes like that song on don't have focus has been a punchline but but there is great pesos in in the book too and it turns out it is painful to read about the relationship between your parents which despite the success simply on one largely because it uses love on one in years and goodies are only others he was and in the end to them she was an alcoholic yes purely along yes n and that was a trait that almost certainly carried through and threaded from her her grandfather's your through to her and an end and had to that depression she draws suicide earlier us allies that this long and then finally and

very late the interesting thing is that his success sustained itself i mean you know he it's an interesting point nine eight and i think that's because he comes from a generation of entertainers were darker our continuity of what you did as an entertainer isn't actually going to quit that didn't exist when entertainers anymore to note a recycling industry recycles old every two years you can guarantee them look at some insight into your mind what's new is cool what she came from that era that set the standards hope lucille ball jack benny jerry ford jerry lewis came on late but they cannot be great anecdote about lewis common on obama on the morning show you know only german living in his own a tennessee you're going through all of those

and i was watching that quote years ago today on iran nobody expected jerry lewis to be there at that hour in the morning because as dental and the night before they were the party conductor david rosen cells and you know jerry lewis said it it wrong why our any surgery you can't do my show you don't never been up the night we're out at night he said romney there are even with the up and walked on that song boom ended ayotte the royal gelatin commercial in college are low like twice yearly blue the account sat in with the band did shtick and stayed the entire show it was hilarious and they were friends forever we were very close friends we were in honolulu i think are two years later and dad and pat boone want to be a royal hawaiian word jury was really stand a day dress themselves up and it carried all its bottles luggage out and disappeared with all of his luggage it was like thirty months later they're showing up during the

pop star and vermin and he didn't recognize he had no clue for a minute and effect but the eight bit and he didn't tip heated debt until it really was going to happen or the island's he would just get blank here and that year is he would just any would he would go on and fix umbrellas for people on the beat in interviews that never know and yet on the shades on and the uniform and owns a challenge an old uniform a total i'm lewis felton and to get a couple of angst ridden you know its clerics that was just one story of a man what was aware and it is one story elements on it for the two of you at her harpo wasn't put a strain on the whole family and done as your father and his brother or strange so you're in bryan fischer as time moved on

the fuel brought you together ernie's fuel brought you together but his new wife made as unpleasant as possible so you can imagine you walk in your father's funeral and there's an officious personality at the dough are delivering to you or does that she is in charge of the state florida or worse but that's probably those memorable moment in my life as any to step into a vestibule of a church and be met by a legal representative who chooses that moment to sorority with papers denying our legacy well you are coming into the church for the service of your late father what kind of a person directs an action like that i am i am

conscious as a father and as a husband that there is simply a person or a bad people in the work period and i fear or no bitterness at all any longer in my life because those chapters are passed they are gone she was gone i have a task of raising my own family now in such a way that having chronicles what did happen my hope is that our family will remain strong enough so that no kind of the incident like that will ever drive away in my family my wife my children again ever you know maybe i'm interested in the frenzy head and the friends you met and trying to get people a national local legends and his family had a close loving day but i feel people stand out in my mind

in the time we have left both deserve mention because you describe them and i am really innocent pay tribute to him for their loyalty to rain was for the stone and certainly other insurgent looks yes we did you know that stone instances i discovered him in but he never was overbearing about it and in and they would go about finding a date and the stone well as fears that many people may not know was literally one of the one of the handful of driving forces in hollywood in in the end the mid forties to early fifties he was one of the most successful bandleaders music publishers entrepreneurs record executives radio personalities and up cliff lee was also the host of a hometown jam brewery which was the first network televised the rate country or pop or write the show ever come out of

a southern california and during that period of time one hometown every was placentia auditorium in southern california and they were doing it we didn't know the radio show or the television show and then they would open up a whole to build the fourteen saturday night dance isn't there were literally to three thousand people that would attendees of coordination bit of dad's career as he began to work to grow as an artist and to become more successful became a critical he imagined the bookie stop being ready for the big entertainment and became ernie ford the enterprise and laboring in the wingspan under cliff lee was a young man by the name of jim lentz who had been a young entertainer court may reinstate handed him when we went to europe where he worked for the us oh show's over there brought the von trapp family back to america jim up

essentially took over for cliff lee there's personal manager for dad in the very late nineteen forties early fifties and jim are made that post for forty six ships and joe and jim lopes is part of that greed of people called the personnel manager port of that the group that you love colonel tom parker and within an end albert grossman in and people like that she is one of the greatest man i've ever known in my life and for all practical purposes my my second to my second father my big brother two of them really made a difference in in the life of ernie ford or they get you know about to run out of time there's a high i just want to take that idea and you gave me an insight into

the life of a great man not just a great entertainer but through all your do you and he was a caring loving human being loved his family and he loved that larger family without their across the camera now they've finished as painful book you know i know if this has more effect on love finishing a novel right now it's a it's a fictionalized account of a celebrated murder case in middle tennessee in nineteen twenty and hopefully up hopefully i'll have this so wrapped up and move forward as a writer well i'm going to be here when you published i'm telling a job i'm planning on be in here and i'm planning on you coming back this episode of the session thank you so much thank you so much everything was just today thank all of evil watching and johnson had gone forward on words keep reading