In country music circles, they call Michael Gray "The Veep." At least in my country music circle, which mostly includes Bobby Bare, Kris Kristofferson, Jon Byrd and Thomm Jutz. But that's extraneous and you don't care, although they are nice men.
Now, back to our story: A long, damn time ago, when I was features/entertainment editor at the still-lamented Nashville Banner newspaper, I was in search of a No. 2 music journalist after Cowboy Cal Gilbert went to cash in his chips on Music City Row.
I love Calvin, but it really worked out amazingly well for me (and him, as he got wealthy and wise and spends his free time playing volleyball with his grandson on his acreage in Bellevue).
You see, it was 30 years ago or so when Cowboy Cal turned in his notice, and I looked to my lonesome No. 1 music writer Jay "Bird" Orr and said: "All right, what the fuck we gonna do now?" I'd been at work since 4:15 a.m. and Jay came in at 10, so I suppose that was a gruff greeting. Fuck it. It's history, which is what this tiny treatise is focused upon.
Once he got hold of himself, Jay told me he had a young friend who worked in a used records store while polishing up some sort of high-level degree at Middle Tennessee State University, aka "Little Cambridge" down in Murfreesboro.
I told Jay to bring me the head of this Michael Gray fellow, so I could interview him.I hired him immediately, after getting proper clearance from Banner Editor Eddie Jones (who is late and lamented now, but was one of my liveliest of friends and my mentor back then -- I'll tell you about our drunken night in D.C. sometime. Bill Clinton was never the same after that.) Eddie and I went out into the parking lot in front of the historic newspaper building at 1100 Broadway (recently nuked by progress or by North Korean grifters) and fired up two or three cigarettes apiece while consulting on this new hire, aka "The Michael Matter." I wasn't going to ask the publisher, because he wouldn't really care who I hired or take time to learn their names.
In fact, when he and his partner sold all of us out and closed the Banner, the publisher looked from me to Michael and asked: "Who is the side-burned kid, and what is he doing in here?" I bummed one of Michael's clove cigarettes, fired it up and laughed until I farted.
Anyway, the end result of that interview with Michael to fill the Cowboy Cal vacancy is that I had made the acquaintance of a guy who needed his first job and who also smoked clove cigarettes, I also made a friend for life. Hell, he'd have even thanked me if I told him he didn't get the job.
Course he did, and I've come to realize lately just what a gift I gave to Nashville by hiring him so he didn't go to his hometown of Detroit where he had aspirations to be a backup dancer for Smokey Robinson and the Miracles.
We don't run in the same circles (I have been known to go round in circles and fly high like the bird up in the sky), as Michael is sort of an academic sort. And my circle of friends really is sitting in this office right now, cheering me on.
Joking about that. My friends know I ain't got no melody, so they mostly don't bother calling or perhaps they are ill or institutionalized or have their own lives.
But I've really got to brag on Michael, something he won't do for himself.
A few years ago, he bought me lunch at the Country Music Hall of Fame and Museum. Now, he got up in the middle of lunch because some alcoholic R&B artist needed some sort of handout, so I finished my lunch with Jay "Bird" Orr and Peter "Mr. Baseball" Cooper and the notorious Chicago folksinger Robbie Fulks (a fine fellow who told me his discs don't belong on the same shelf as Dylan's. I had to explain that my shelves are based on the alphabet not on Isis or anybody's 115th dream, so he needed to butt out and make more fine music so the "Fs" didn't end up on the "E" and "D" shelf.)
I don't see Michael much anymore, as he no longer works at Phonoluxe, the used record store in Little Mexico (It's one of my favorite neighborhoods, especially since the ladder store moved.)
I still remain friends with Cowboy Cal (he called me three years ago to offer condolences after my Dad died, and he told me he was fine, but not to expect a lot of phone calls). And a treasured friend is Jay "Bird" Orr (I called him yesterday at his palatial Oak Hill Retreat). I may make a little fun of Jay in this tale, but truth is, he is one of the three men I admire most, though he's not the father, son nor holy ghost nor did he take the last train to the coast. He's smart and he's tough.
But this tale isn't about them. It's about the kid with the vertically-greased hair (here come old flattop) and the clove smokes, one of the nicest guys you'll ever meet, if you are lucky.
When the Banner folded.... well, shit, this is getting too complicated..... Suffice it to say that Michael eventually ended up as a fast-moving, hard-working cog in the artsy and musical mechanism that is the Country Music Hall of Fame and Museum.
By the way, I wrote more about the CMHOF&M than any journalist ever, even getting in trouble with my former newspaper's long-vanished editors and sub-eds and dickheads. I never could get a job there, because I wasn't "part of the culture" I was told long ago. I really could have used the work. Water over the DAMN,
That's OK. All the culture I need is in my head and hand. And, truth is, I really wasn't part of the culture. They were right. I may fancy myself some sort of archivist, but really all I am is a junk collector. And to me, the most important moment in music history began in a bedroom at 251 Menlove Avenue. I do love the Bristol Sessions, but I love "Love Me Do" much more.
Michael, however, had all the qualifications, interest, degrees and just the right hairstyle and clove cigarettes to qualify for a job there. I don't think he told the boss, a nice fellow named Kyle Young, that he'd rather listen to Thelonious Monk than Hank Snow, however. And I'm sure not going to tell anyone.
All of this is jokingly spirited but very true, right down to the greased coif (since turned into a neat, corporate pompadour). "Corporate" because, unlike this old fool, Michael likes to look the part of a successful archivist, programmer, finger-snapper, jazzman and R&B-crazed advocate of country music to the whole world. He'll give you an hour's-worth of wise words about every member of The Foggy Mountain Boys, including why they could whip The Smoky Mountain Boys in games of beer pong and penicillin.
He also is just about the nicest guy you'll meet and one of his kids went to school in New York on a trombone scholarship. If you are in Brooklyn and you hear the long, midnight wail of a jazzy trombone, it is Alex (named for Alexander the Great and Alex Van Halen and that cat who inspired "Hamilton.") But that's another story, and it perhaps isn't true, as I'm one of the few who didn't become enamored of the Constitution in hip-hop. The last great musical I saw was "Hair," because I was a 17-year-old boy and sitting in the front row. Down to where it stops by itself, indeed.
I wrote a little note last week congratulating Michael (only the R&B guys can call him "Mike" without getting clove smoke blown in their faces, or, worse still, a lecture about Waylon Jennings' ties to Beethoven. Mike's the only one who knows that story.)
All of this is to say that Michael, who really is a wonderful human being and who does not cuss (he did say "darnnit" to me once in a fit of rage when I told him his story made no sense) has been promoted to a very important position at the CMHOF&M.
Michael was promoted to vice president of museum services. The VEEP.
According to press reports, Michael will be responsible for the care and and feeding (or actually management) of the museum’s diverse artifact and archival collections, which include stage wear, instruments, films, photographs, recordings, a reference library and more. (I'm hoping he'll loan me Hank's suit to wear if I ever go to church again).
Michael will also oversee all planning, design and installation of exhibitions in the museum’s gallery spaces, as well as the museum’s online exhibits and digital archive.
All of this is to say that if I ever gave you your first job, there still is a chance that you may rebound from that curse and become successful.
By the way, much of the museum's important staff, Michael, Jay (I'll not call him Jay "Bird" again or he'll box me in the ears with his pink eight-ounce gloves; Jay's tough, brilliant, determined, kind and, like I said, one of the men I admire most) and Peter Cooper (currently taking a much-needed breather) have been on my staff over the years.
And I also worked with Michael "Call me 'Michael', too" McCall. OK, Mike.
And, to think, I still have to pay my way in at the Hall of Fame and literally beg for favors over there.
That's a smart attitude, by the way. I'm just a friend and while my pockets may be deep, they are mighty empty. I do love the folks at that Hall, apparently more than they love me, again, something I can fully understand.
When the Hall of Fame moved from its Music Row location down to become part of Nashville's tourism and commercial confab, I told then-honcho Liz Thiels that I would happily drive Webb Pierce's Nudie-designed 1962 Bonneville down that short stretch of Demonbreun from the old joint to the new one. Not realizing I was serious, she just had to laugh, she feared the photograph, I'm sure.
Been joking around with fables and half-truths or less above, but I'm completely serious here, I'm really, really proud of Michael. He more than deserves this role. He is among the most ethical, hardest-working, humble and kindest people I've ever known (though as a journalist, man, it took him days to turn a story, something he learned from Jay. I do exaggerate here. They both offered the roles of academicians to country music coverage here in this city. Brains are horrible things to waste, but then so were deadlines, in the real newspaper days. Still, to me, Jay always will be The Professor. And Michael, well, he was his "Little Buddy.") I suppose Kyle's the Skipper and Peter is either Mr. Howell or Ginger.
Sometimes, perhaps too seldom, great things happen to great people.
I love this guy, so this is my way of letting him smell the verbal roses, which he is more able to do in the years since he gave up the clove cigarettes.
As R&B bandleader and great man Jimmy Church would say: "Shit, we love Mike."
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