MAX BUTLER

TRANSCRIPT %u2013 MAX BUTLER
[Compiled October 30th, 2010]

Interviewee: MAX BUTLER

Interviewers: Drew Ritchey

Interview Date: August 10th, 2010

Location: Shelby, North Carolina

Length: Approximately 84 minutes

DREW RITCHEY: This is Andrew Ritchey, and it%u2019s August 10th, 2010. I%u2019m here in Shelby, North Carolina with Max Butler in his office, and also, joined by Shannon Blackley here for the interview. Would you just mind introducing yourself?
MAX BUTLER: My name is Max Butler. I was born in Rutherford County, May 21, 1926, and I%u2019ve enjoyed relatively good health ever since, thank goodness, which now makes me eighty-four years old.
DR: And how long have you lived in Cleveland County?
MB: We came to Cleveland County just at the close of World War II, and it became our home. Our children were all born here.
DR: What brought you here?
MB: A job at WOHS. I had a background in country music and wanted to get into commercial radio, into the announcing end, and I attended some schools--Columbia College in Chicago, and came close to staying there and becoming an on-staff announcer because they liked to mix the southern drawl sort of with the Midwestern pronunciation, and they thought they had a combination with a few of us, but I wanted to come back to Rutherford County, Cleveland County, and settled in Cleveland County because I was offered a position at WOHS radio station. I spent some time in the announcing end and moved on over into sales and management.
DR: So where do you consider the place that you grew up to be?
MB: Well, Rutherford County, in rural Rutherford County. I like to tell people in the northern cities: %u201CMid-way between Alexander Mills and Sandy Mush--Harris Station,%u201D and that%u2019s true; it was out in the country. The school I attended, growing up, was Harris School, a little community in Rutherford County off of 221 up there.
DR: What was it like growing up out there?
MB: Oh, I don%u2019t know. I suppose it was just typical country. We had kerosene lamps and of course the outdoor privies. They didn%u2019t get electricity in that part of the county until I was sort of grown and gone. REMC brought it in finally--a lot of petitions and that sort of thing. Duke server--of course, Duke, I%u2019m sure, supplied REMC, but they just wouldn%u2019t bring it in there. That was one of the things that probably REMC was good at in rural areas was bringing electric lines, bringing power into the homes.
DR: So what did your family do?
MB: Well, my father was born into a family with a right well-to-do father, in a way. He had a lot of acreage and had dairy farming and other type farming, and he passed away at a fairly early age, in his fifties, and his family sort of got scattered around. My father remained on the family farm and followed a line of carpentry work as well as farming. There were three of us boys and about three tenant houses, so between all of those and we boys, we farmed the land while he made money to put salt and pepper on the table, so to speak, because the heavy crops came in in the fall of the year, such as cotton, which was a big item, big cash item. Then, during the summer, the melons and cantaloupes and things like that in truck farming. Right big operation, looking back on it.
DR: How many acres? Do you remember?
MB: Oh, my grandfather had close to two hundred acres scattered around up through there. My grandfather, and then his family, started the Flat Rock swimming pool back in its day, and the old walls are still standing up there near that community between Floyd%u2019s Creek and Sandy Mush, the community. There%u2019s a lot of exposed rock; it%u2019s referred to as Flat Rock. Railroad people tried to mine it and use it, but it was a little bit grainy; they couldn%u2019t make it work, so it%u2019s still just standing like it always has.
DR: And you mentioned cotton. Was that the hardest crop to--?
MB: That was the cash crop. Acreage was pretty much determined by the need, but then they came by with some governmental programs of curtailing certain production in farming in order to balance it nationally or worldwide or whatever the case may have been. I can still see that cotton that we plowed under, as the expression might apply, to this day, seeing it producing with just a little bit of it sticking up out of the ground where it had been turned under. That was to bring the size of the crops down to what would necessarily be allocated to you, so to speak, depending on your acreage and maybe the needs.
DR: So how did you go from a farming boy with kerosene lamps and no electricity to deciding to come to--?
MB: Well, I grew up in the Harris community up there, and as a child, there was a Jenkins family--Snuffy Jenkins--they still have an event in Rutherford County under his name. His brother, Verl, played the violin. Snuffy was in Columbia, South Carolina with Fisher Hendley and the Hired Hands, and Skippy Robbins was also a part of that group and he was from that community. I worked hard to try to get a job with them as a country performer and singer and instrumentalist. I even made the trip to Columbia. Skippy met me at the train. We went down on the train, and I met Fisher Hendley on the following afternoon and spent some time with them. It was just always my love and my desire to get into that type of work, that type of profession, so that just was with me. We put together a band that played for square dances mostly, and then I became a member of a band that was on one of the Spartanburg radio stations, and made personal appearances. That%u2019s where I met Arthur Smith and his brothers. They were the big performers on WSPA at the time, and just getting started. Of course, one brother was drafted and Arthur was drafted into the service. Later, when he came back, he resettled in Charlotte and left the Spartanburg crowd, and his brother, Ralph, and Sonny, both; they all moved to the Charlotte area. Of course, they were from down in upper South Carolina anyway, so it was not that far from here to Spartanburg, or here to Charlotte, geographically. That%u2019s where I met Arthur.
DR: So did you have a musical family growing up?
MB: Not really, not really. We were just a typical farm family with two daughters and three sons, and they wanted one of my daughters to learn to play the piano and she did. We had that, and my mother was very active in church work and social work, so it was just a typical background of that nature. School and church was about the two main highlights in your life. Now, if you went to town on Saturday, it was a big deal. %u201CGolly, look at them pretty lights!%u201D [Laughter] DR: So, when you left to try to be a musician, you presumably played an instrument and could sing before that, right?
MB: Well, it was mostly just instrumentation as to playing for square dances. I moved on into work to make a living. My wife and I married at a very young age, age eighteen, and as such, I had to give up the dream of becoming a member of some group or going to Nashville (09:07) in order to make a living, because the first child came down the pike in about the first twelve or thirteen months. I don%u2019t remember just what, so I continued with the bands, of playing for square dances. It was a big item in that era in order to make that extra money. Then I left--that%u2019s when I left that and went back into training and went to Columbia for the training as to the announcing field. Then when I came home after that was over, I had this job offer at WOHS I mentioned earlier, so we moved to Shelby, right up here on South Lafayette where the Wilson Real Estate place is. We rented the upstairs from the Glenn family that lived there. So that%u2019s how I became a little more active in the musical field, was creating a country show, the first one on WOHS-FM at night, and I stayed out there and did that until we signed off. Then I traveled some, got to know Don Gibson. He was a janitor out there, and then he worked for J&K Music Shop. It%u2019s right up here on the corner where this governmental office is, and they distributed the old 78 records around to piccolos--juke boxes--in an area that they could reach from here. That was part of Don%u2019s job with that was to take those records around and change them and put in the new releases as they came out (10:49). Don would pick the guitar and sing sometime, just there by himself, so the program director came to WOHS after it signed on the air from Spartanburg, and his name was Milton Scarboro. His wife was the daughter of the Coca-Cola distributor in Gaffney. I always teased Milton: I said, %u201CYou over-married, didn%u2019t you, boy?%u201D So Milton was a little bit into the musical industry also, and he formed the first group that Don was a member of. I served as their emcee in a lot of cases, and we would play for civic clubs, church functions, and not many personal appearances because there was just not that many places that you could appear unless it would be sponsored by a rural school or something (11:45) money there in their community. I watched Don just mature to some degree. He had a voice a lot like Eddy Arnold and he imitated Eddy with his first effort at singing. He had very much of an Eddy Arnold sound, and he put together--the group that was put together was Howard Sisk--his family lived right upstairs up here across from city hall in that building; and he later became professionally known as Curly Howard, and got into radio announcing and performing. One of his jobs was in Winston-Salem: he climbed a telephone pole and swore to stay there until they raised enough money to do so-and-so in the community. He was quite a character, was a heck of a good musician. Then he had one or two other local musicians, a violin player from over in Boiling Springs--his name slips me right at the time--and a bass player. That position sort of switched from time to time, and that%u2019s how I first got pretty active with Don%u2019s career, was making arrangements for them to appear in different places. I would serve as the stage announcer when they appeared. Don, I felt like, had the potential. We tried to establish a little Saturday night show over at the little grammar school at the time, and the county let us use it--or the town--on Saturday night, and we remoted back to the radio station a live broadcast. And had the Sisk Quartet, local boys here, and a good gospel quartet, and several groups. Had one group that drove down here from up Taylorsville way, north of Hickory, so we had a pretty good package going out on Saturday night. Then we put together a package with Don Gibson and some of the others, sponsored by Lily Thread. Mr. Schenck allowed us to buy the time on WMIT-Mt. Mitchell and WHKY in Hickory. We would transmit with our FM signal and Hickory would pick us up to rebroadcast, then Mt. Mitchell would pick their signal up to rebroadcast, so we had the whole southeast sort of covered. And we did that live from the stage of the old State Theater right up there. Then I think we later moved down to the Rogers because they were owned, I believe, by the same people at the same time. So, I was trying to help Don as much as I could. I was down at the J&K Record Shop where he still worked after he left the station where he was the janitor out there for a while, and I called WNOX in Knoxville. A fellow named Lowell Blanchard had a program called the Mid Day Merry Go Round, and I introduced myself and I said, %u201CLowell, we have a young man here that I think has a lot of potential. His group was recorded by--oh, his name slips me--he was with RCA. A lot of the musicians were being drafted at that time, and there wasn%u2019t a lot of talent out there except those in uniform. He recorded Don with Milton Scarboro playing the accordion. They carried him to Charlotte and they did a song called %u201CThe Color Song.%u201D I still have it at my house on a 78. [Laughter] Pretty good sound to it. I mentioned that, and he said, %u201CYou know, I%u2019ve played that record. I like that tune,%u201D and I said, %u201CWell, I%u2019d like for Don to come to Knoxville and meet you and maybe you interview him on the air. I hear you%u2019re doing that with musicians and this sort of thing.%u201D %u201CYeah, I%u2019d love to. Have him come on up.%u201D So that was the first move for Don to move out of Shelby into a different level, and on a professional level, it was the first interview with a station noted as WNOX was at the time. So, from there, I%u2019m not sure when he wrote the first two songs: %u201CI Can%u2019t Stop Loving You%u201D and %u201COh, Lonesome Me.%u201D They say that he wrote them both on the same day, but if you listen to the words--. Now, Don married--back up a little bit--he married a lady that worked over at the hospital. She was from up here near Lake Lure. I%u2019m not sure whether she was an RN or maybe an assistant of some type. That marriage did not last. She and Don came
by my home some on Saturday night after we had that little show over here at the high school building. If you listen to the words of that song, you%u2019ll know they were prompted exactly from that marriage. His memory that %u201CI Can%u2019t Stop Loving You%u201D and %u201COh, Lonesome Me%u201D; %u201CEverybody%u2019s going out and having fun, I%u2019m just a fool for staying home and having none. I can%u2019t get over how she set me free, oh, lonesome me. I bet she%u2019s not like me; she%u2019s out and fancy-free, flirting with all the boys with all her charm,%u201D you know? And, %u201CBrother, don%u2019t you know I%u2019d welcome her right back here in my arms?%u201D That%u2019s what prompted--a lot of the country music is like that. People that experienced, had some experience and they put it into sort of a poem-like arrangement and then somebody puts it to music somehow. That%u2019s like the singer with the gospel group now that did the %u201CMary, Don%u2019t You Know?%u201D He first wrote that as just a little essay, document type thing--beautiful, beautiful song. So that was picked up by the powers in Nashville because they were hurting for input on things to record, and it clicked. So that was really what gave Don the first big kick into national prominence was that very record that had one on each side. I think %u201COh, Lonesome Me%u201D was to have been the A side and %u201CI Can%u2019t Stop Loving You%u201D the B side, or maybe vice-versa. So that was really what put him in motion, and then he went from good to bad.
DR: Now, this is going back a little bit here. You mentioned a bit earlier that you and your wife married when you were eighteen?
MB: Um-hmm.
DR: How did you meet her?
MB: She was working at Collins Department Store in what was called the three-cent counter. It was a U-shaped counter covered with candy and gums and all this sort of thing, and the candy bars that we pay a dollar for today sold for three cents. [Laughter] She later was promoted from that up to the balcony level to some element of bookkeeping with the manager, Mr. Evans, of the Collins-Evans--. I worked at that store. I left the farm and left home at that point, and somehow, between school and working on the weekends and otherwise--and that%u2019s where we met. She used to tell the story that I walked by the counter and I said, %u201CHiya, honey!%u201D [Laughter] That was the first passing of greetings between the two of us, I suppose, and sort of a typical story from that point on, and we later were married. Slipped off down to Spartanburg, which a lot of people did up in that part of the world at that time. You got your license, and we went back down to the old church--I carried her back down there for our sixtieth wedding anniversary to that church. They looked to see if they had the records, but they couldn%u2019t find anything, and I said, %u201CWell, maybe the preacher just stuck that one in his pocket and didn%u2019t make any notes about it.%u201D [Laughter] I think we saw him out in the front yard of the church and stopped to ask him if he would marry us. So our family started from that.
DR: And what made you leave home? You said you left home and left the farm behind and started working in the store.
MB: Well, I guess it was just sort of typical--a young man wanting to spread his wings a little bit and get out on your own. I didn%u2019t see much future in farming and my father didn%u2019t want us to pursue, I%u2019ll use the term, cotton mill. He had relatives there. A lot of them migrated to Fort Mill-Rock Hill to the chain down there--Springs. It was sort of an element of, I guess, looking back on it, almost a level of class, so to speak, so I was going to try to get out and spread my wings a little bit, but I just saw that I wasn%u2019t doing what I wanted to do. I wasn%u2019t going anywhere and I wasn%u2019t happy with it. That%u2019s when I decided to go back to school even after we were married, and did. Then, the next step was WOHS from there, which was sort of the catalyst to a great degree of my where I am today.
DR: What was school like?
MB: It was a division of Columbia somehow, and it was staffed by, pretty much, professional network announcers that would sit inside the booth and talk with you through the wall, and you were in there with the microphones and the other class members. You did everything from commercial to news, all this sort of thing. They%u2019d say, %u201CGood golly! Where did you come from? Do it this way for us.%u201D I remember one ol%u2019 boy, he said, %u201CStand erect and talk from down here.%u201D He said, %u201CHell, I don%u2019t care if you%u2019re laying on the floor if you%u2019re doing the right job.%u201D [Laughter] I liked him.
DR: That%u2019s great.
MB: And they had sort of a typical type system, as is still out there today. They sent out resumes and recordings. In their case, they sent out recordings; they sent out disks. I was offered several positions, and they offered one in Madison-Mayodan, way up near the Virginia border, but then when Bob Wallace contacted me and said, %u201CCome by, I%u2019d like to talk with you at Shelby,%u201D I said, %u201COh, boy! That%u2019s right down my alley,%u201D so we became Clevelanders.
DR: Do you remember coming to Cleveland County? Do you remember, like, what your first impressions were?
MB: Only that it was a larger town. I tell a lot of people that older fellows like me, you can remember Efird%u2019s Department Store; you know, I can remember the drug store up there on the corner where the bank now is, and where the Chamber office is was a soda-type shop and then it later became a shoe store, and just a number of the changes that have taken place. Down there where Laughlin%u2019s Furniture was the old Auto Inn and Lutz-Yelton Truck and Tractor. Lutz-Yelton were big at that era, and they had the coal and the oil on the railroad. They still, I think, still have that coal up there, I%u2019m not sure, and the oil division and the tractor and truck division down there, and the Auto Inn, one of the Lutz members managed that. Paris Yelton, who was the father of the lawyer Yelton here--who am I talking about, Robert?
SHANNON BLACKLEY: I think so.
MB: He was about my age, and the Roysters were a big local family. Mr. D.W., David%u2019s father, which David passed away, and now, David III, I told him, %u201CHell, if you have a son, I%u2019ve been doing business with your grandfather and your father, and now you and maybe I%u2019ll do business with your son. I don%u2019t know, Mr. D.W. just sort of took a shine to me for some reason, as the expressions goes, and assisted me on several things, and so did Ray Lutz, the elderly Ray Lutz.
DR: How did they help you?
MB: Well, just helped me across some bumps in life. As I was representing WOHS in sales, they had never bought time, for instance, and they bought it from me. I think they felt sorry for me [laughter] as much as anything--this little country boy trying to get going here and make a living. I just respected both of them and just loved them to death. I just really liked them and admired them. I think they just sensed that, and there was just sort of a bond, so to speak. And even, it carried over to David during his lifetime, and myself. Young David, I haven%u2019t had as much dealings with him as I did his father and his grandfather. We%u2019ve probably run into each other more on the political scene as much as anything, because Walter Dalton, our lieutenant governor, is the son of the three Daltons that owned the department store where I worked in Forest City and got my start there, so I%u2019ve been pretty close to Walter down through the years. I%u2019ve done some voice-over for him and assisted him financially on some endeavors, and still, we talk occasionally. Most times, he%u2019ll call me on his way to Raleigh and I say, %u201CUh-oh, you%u2019re needing money, aren%u2019t you?%u201D Campaigning. Just typical association and relations with people like that.
DR: You said that you sold time when you were at WOHS. Does that mean you not only announced everything, but you also were in charge of finding sponsors for the show?
MB: Um-hmm, um-hmm. Just sold just a little advertising space, spot announcements or sponsorship of programs. I had a little route that I would run uptown and up to Fallston to the Stamey Store. The Stameys used radio, and one or two others up in that area and down through Lawndale. I remember Bridges Furniture was an advertiser. Just spot announcements, just advertising their place of business or particular items and/or events from time to time. You know, at that age level, gosh, sleep didn%u2019t matter; you just kept going. That%u2019s why I would do that during the day and do that job and sometime even write commercial copy, and then do that nighttime show like I%u2019m talking about--I%u2019ve forgotten what we called it. I remember I used the %u201CSteel Guitar Rag%u201D as the theme song, and had a lot of listeners to call and mention listening to it. (27:30) See, back in that day, FM was not that popular. It was not that well-known. We had a distributor in Charlotte. I%u2019ve forgotten the name of that place, but they would furnish us all the FM radios we could get people to use and buy, and they worked through Pendleton Furniture, which was located across from the First Baptist Church up there, a lot of it in order to get people to buy FM, buy the radios. FM was just, as the expression goes, the redheaded stepchild, and the AM was the deal. Of course, that gradually changed as we felt that it would. Of course, WOHS had an ideal spot on the dial, right dead center almost. Just on the AM, the lower you get, the greater your signal. Like at 730, as Bob Wallace was able to get that, well, if you doubled that to 1460, your signal would be about half as good as it is over here at 730. He had a good setup out there. It was just that daytime was the backbreaker. He just didn%u2019t get the frequency that allowed him to stay on at night because 730 was taken by some of the big-city stations.
DR: You had an evening show, and you said that you went on until the station stopped broadcasting for the day.
MB: I think we signed off, I%u2019m going to say it was either nine or ten o%u2019 clock we signed the FM off. I mean, you%u2019re in a rural town, you may as well sign off at bedtime, you know. [Laughter] DR: You played records, and did you also have live--?
MB: Had live interviews and records. We would break and we carried a lot of the baseball live. Kays Gary--does that name mean anything to y%u2019all? Kays was a sportswriter for the Star (local newspaper) and moved on in to the Charlotte Observer and became a feature writer. Kays%u2019 father was the principal up at Fallston School, and Kays was a good play-by-play announcer. We were a member of the D classification here in baseball, and Kays would do the play-by-play, and I would do the commercial announcing on it. We would go to, like, Lenoir, that team up there, and Hendersonville, Gastonia; they were all part of that league. We carried things like that on FM at night. I don%u2019t remember us at that particular time carrying the local school%u2019s football. I don%u2019t remember it if we did. I know we carried some things for Gardner-Webb because I can still see that boy getting hurt that night in football over there.
DR: When you were doing your show, do you have favorite shows that you did, any favorite interviews that you did, or any nights that were particularly fun that just kind of stick with you?
MB: Oh, I don%u2019t know that I do. I know I did a remote from the courthouse steps that was part of the United Fund effort, and the tall star--oh, gosh, his name slips me--and I still have that picture%u2026
SB: Tommy Burleson?
MB: No, no, it was a movie star. I still have the picture of he and I standing together with the microphone between us. A few things like that sort of stand out.
DR: I know you just met Don at the station then?
MB: Um-hmm. Just like I say, he was a janitor over at WOHS when I came to work there.
DR: How did you find out that he also played? Was he really up front with it?
MB: Looking back on it, I believe he kept a guitar at the station. Then Milton Scarboro, as I mentioned, the program director, saw this potential in him and put together this little group, and they would play on the radio station with Don and Howard Sisk and Milton--he played an accordion. It gave Milton an opportunity to express his musical ability as a working announcer-program director of the station, just as a hobby, sort of, with him. That%u2019s really where I think all of that started.
DR: When did you realize how good he was, Don Gibson?
MB: I don%u2019t know that I ever did realize it. It was just being a part of the scene, and %u201Cthis guy sounds a lot like Eddy Arnold,%u201D and he sounds a lot like--oh, gee, what was his name? Anyway, one of the Nashville stars. Looking back on it, we should have realized it was not an issue so it was not brought up; no one cared; but you%u2019re not going to get anywhere sounding like somebody else, you know. You%u2019ve got to be original, and that%u2019s what Don was discovered as in his writing, was his voice with those two tunes that I just mentioned earlier. That%u2019s really what set him in motion, because the guys that manage, they recognize that here%u2019s a young man with potential. %u201CGood golly! Listen at this! It%u2019s a real tear-jerker,%u201D so they realized it was a real good commercial put together. That%u2019s what sent him sailing. Other than that, he was not that good, or that good of a musician. It was his writing I think really catapulted him into stardom.
DR: You mentioned you had known his wife too. Did you spend much time with Don outside of the station?
MB: Not really, because I was a young man, a young married man with children, and working to make a living, and he was just a young fellow coming along, doing what he could to make a living and later married the young lady over there that worked at the hospital.
DR: How many kids did you have again?
MB: Two. I have two daughters.
DR: So how did you then get into--I guess, get in with Don and start emceeing events for him and the band that he was in?
MB: Well, it was just part of the radio put-together. We have a group here that%u2019s on the radio station either so many days a week or recorded and played at a certain time. Of course, at that time, radio did not have the recording devices you have now. You had this old, scratchy disc-type player that you recorded, and then wire came by, wire recorders. That was the screechiest sound you could possibly hear, and then tape came into being. Had a big ol%u2019 tape disk about this big around, about a half-inch size tape, and we%u2019d take them around on remotes and turn it on, [Laughter and mimicking sound of old tape recorder] and then come back and you%u2019d play that back on the station. Bob Wallace and his engineer out there, they knew how to program it in. Then later, it just got into what you have today. My gosh, how it has advanced. It%u2019s amazing.
DR: So, compared to the radio work, did you enjoy emceeing?
MB: I did, yes, very much.
DR: Do you remember a particular show or anything like that, that stands out to you?
MB: I remember one very embarrassing one. [Laughter] DR: I%u2019d love to hear that.
MB: I was handling the remote for a big event at Gardner-Webb College, and I set the equipment up and the telephone had made the jack over here to connect the lines to, and then it came in on the telephone line to the station--you patched it in, into the broadcast mode. I had to sort of set the stage for this thing, and here were all these dignitaries of Gardner-Webb College and probably some out-of-town or out-of-state dignitaries on this stage. You looked out there and here%u2019s this multitude of people, and I%u2019m having to go up here to this microphone and say, %u201CHello.%u201D I was really quaking in my boots. I just remember that as being a very embarrassing situation because you weren%u2019t capable of having two microphones, one up here for the speaker and one back here to do commentary on or otherwise. You just had the one going into that recording machine I%u2019m talking about. [Laughter] They%u2019re very primitive, looking back on it, but it was advanced for it%u2019s day.
DR: How did you start managing Don Gibson?
MB: I thought that Don had--again, to not repeat the repetition--but Don had the potential, but I knew that he needed some management, someone to sort of run interference, so to speak, and someone to make the call to WNOX and to book him at places to get exposure. So he and I had a contract, and I probably still have a copy of it somewhere, I%u2019m not sure, but then when he scored pretty big in Nashville, I think probably RCA got a little antsy about it and they had Don to call me about the contract. I said, %u201CDon, I have no interest in interfering with anything here. Just do the best you can. Make the best of it.%u201D I%u2019m surprised that RCA didn%u2019t have some lawyer fly in here and try to work it out. But I probably still have a copy of it somewhere. He owes me a lot of money. [Laughter] I%u2019ll tell Bobbi next time I see her. %u201CBobbi, I never did get paid, by the way.%u201D
DR: So what else? You booked gigs--what else did you do as manager? What other responsibilities did you have?
MB: As I say, just introduced him and trying to get him in a few places for exposure, and doing all we could. That%u2019s why I sat up there at the J&K Record Shop where he worked and made that call to Lowell Blanchard at WNOX in Knoxville, and to see if that would be a big step. Really, I guess that was sort of the point that Don sort of went his way and I just let him alone. I don%u2019t remember doing too much beyond that. He consulted with me a time or two and he called me a time or two. He came back to Shelby after he scored it pretty big and he was already on some substance.
DR: When he was still around, do you remember the Southeast Saturday Night Network at all?
MB: That was us.
DR: That was you?
MB: Yeah.
DR: Can you tell me a little bit about it?
MB: That was the one I was telling you about earlier that we put together. We broadcast from the stage of the Rogers Theater, sponsored by Lily Thread. The Hickory station, WHKY, picked up WOHS-FM, and then WMIT up on the mountain was managed then out of Winston-Salem at WSJS, and then they had that powerful signal all over the southeast. That%u2019s why they called it the Southeast Network. I%u2019m not sure whether we had some other stations on that hookup or not. I just don%u2019t remember. We maybe did have, further south, picking up the MIT signal.
DR: What was it like to be there for a performance?
MB: Oh, I don%u2019t know. I was just the announcer and I was the lead guy putting it all together. They pulled the curtains back and had the theme song rolling--%u201CGood evening, ladies and gentlemen! From the stage of the Rogers Theater, it%u2019s the Don Gibson Show, brought to you by Lily Thread.%u201D I used to get a kick out of announcing for the Carolina Maids sponsored by Eagle Roller Mill Company. One of the members of that--well, see, Juanita Burns headed that. Do you know the name, Juanita Burns? I think she was in school work. One of the ladies was a young lady that married Anthony--Anthony and Anthony Real Estate. [The following is spoken with radio announcer%u2019s voice] %u201CThis is the Carolina Maids, brought to you by Eagle Roller Mill Company. Good morning, ladies and gentlemen. And now, you%u2019re tuned to--.%u201D [Laughter] DR: You%u2019ve still got the voice. Did you have any favorite shows that you enjoyed any time when the band was playing and you were excited and things were going well, and everything seemed right with the world?
MB: I guess being sort of on the management commercial side of the scene, probably my biggest thrill was to see a full house. [Laughter] That meant we made some money that night and shared it around with the members of the band.
DR: How often did you get a full house?
MB: I don%u2019t recall. I don%u2019t recall. No, we didn%u2019t make a--I don%u2019t think we charged an admission for that Saturday night show we used to have over here at the grammar school, or the junior high, whichever building that was.
DR: That%u2019s the Tar Heel Jamboree?
MB: Um-hmm. That%u2019s right, you knew about that. I had forgotten that. Yeah, that%u2019s what it was called, the Tar Heel Jamboree. Yeah, we had a little plaque on the front of the microphone stand--%u201CTar Heel Jamboree.%u201D I had forgotten that. We tried to--I think I remember back on this--we would have a fifteen minute performance, or performing by a particular group, and all the others would sort of hang around on the stage. Then, when that fifteen minutes was up, this group would come up and be the feature for fifteen minutes, and they would have a guest from one of the groups on then, was the way we formatted it, looking back on it at that time. And I think we had sponsors for all of those fifteen minute segments; I believe we did. I just don%u2019t remember.
DR: Was it ever stressful trying to fit everything in the time limit?
MB: It probably was, but I was too young to realize it. [Laughter] And too caught up into that life.
SB: Who came to the Tar Heel Jamborees? Were they local people or did they come from all over?
MB: Mostly local, but I mentioned we had a group or two that came from out of town. The one group that comes to mind was, like I mentioned earlier from up near Taylorsville somewhere up north of Hickory up there, and they drove down every Saturday. You%u2019d have, sometime, people like relatives of theirs or fans of theirs that would come to this. I don%u2019t think we ever did have a house running over with a crowd; it just didn%u2019t go over that well for some reason, but I was trying to establish those type of programs in this market. It was new because radio was new to the market, local radio. It%u2019s sort of like so many things when you%u2019re building from scratch, you just take the bumps and do the best you can with it and try to get a good sound out there. It%u2019s just like performers that perform in less-than-full houses this day. They go ahead and do their best.
SB: Were they just like concerts, or was there any dancing?
MB: No, no dancing, just all music--singing and music. Like we would have this group from, say, the Number Three Ramblers, mostly a fiddle and banjo, and those two boys went on to Nashville, the Davis Brothers. [Pause] Nashville--the banjo player with Arthur--. Oh, good gosh [pause]--. Reno, Don Reno. I was out at Nashville at the showboat, and I was talking to the three musicians that were giving us entertainment before you marched off and got on the boat to make the trip up to uptown Nashville and go down and see the stage show and have lunch. So we started talking and I started giving a little bit of information of being from here, and Earl Scruggs, you know, grew up in the county where I%u2019m from--the banjo player, because he played the banjo in this little trio group. We started talking and he said, %u201CWell, you knew Arthur.%u201D I said, %u201CWell, yes, Arthur and I used to go fishing together down at Santee, among other things.%u201D He said, %u201CWell, you know he didn%u2019t write %u201CDueling Banjos.%u201D %u201CWhat?%u201D He said, %u201CDon Reno wrote that when he worked for him, and Arthur gave him a hundred dollars for it.%u201D I thought oh, my goodness! Where did you pick up this kind of thing? [Laughter] And of course, %u201CDueling Banjos%u201D has been a major worldwide hit--the movie. So, it%u2019s just what you run into like that, and Don Reno did work for Arthur. As a matter of fact, Don Reno is from Buffalo, South Carolina, and I worked just a short period of time in Union, and I was going from Union to Buffalo because I had a sweetheart over in Buffalo, and picked up Don Reno on the side of the road, thumbing. That was back before any of us knew what a dollar felt like. So Don Reno, Reno and Smiley, they were a big act in Nashville, and even now, Don Reno%u2019s son has bluegrass music out there. I see him occasionally on some of the shows.
DR: With your shows in town here that you broadcast, did your wife and kids come to any of your shows?
MB: My wife was with me every Saturday night, yes. She was in the audience.
DR: So you would hire a babysitter for the kids, or let the kids--?
MB: I don%u2019t know how we handled that. [Laughter] I%u2019m sure we did, either some relatives or something. I guess we just had the one daughter. I don%u2019t remember.
DR: But she was also a fan of the music?
MB: No.
DR: But she came to the shows?
MB: I don%u2019t remember her coming to the show, no.
DR: I%u2019m sorry, I%u2019m talking about your wife.
MB: Oh, my wife. No, my wife loved what I call %u201Clong-hair,%u201D and she couldn%u2019t stand country music. [Laughter] So, today, when we ride in the car, she has to listen to it. [Laughter] It%u2019s the only thing I have on discs, generally speaking. She was just a little young lady from there in Forest City that liked to listen to that radio on Sunday afternoon when you had the philharmonics on it, and this sort of thing. This, she understood and got to learn more about it. Something like Snuffy Smith and the Hired Hands was, %u201CWhat?%u201D
DR: You mentioned that you made the phone call over to Knoxville that got Don out there, and gave him the leg up and helped him really get his career going. Do you remember the last time you saw him before leaving for Knoxville?
MB: I don%u2019t. No, I really don%u2019t.
DR: Did you continue managing bands and continuing the shows and everything like that after he left?
MB: No, I don%u2019t think so, because I moved on into sales and management, so it was like he sort of went his way and I went my way, so to speak, as I mentioned earlier, somewhere right in there. I left WOHS and moved the family to Greenville, South Carolina, where I became station manager of the CBS affiliate in that town. I had reached that level in my career. And Lloyd Bost, Floyd Bost, of Bost Bakery had a warehouse down on White Horse Road. I became pretty active with the radio station, and I knew one of the advertising executives with Dixie Home. Not Winn-Dixie, but Dixie Home. He grew up in Rutherford County--was a friend of my wife%u2019s father. I went to meet him and introduce myself, and so we became sort of friends because he brought back some of his past when--%u201COh, you married (50:07) daughter.%u201D He allowed me to create a little advertising program within the Winn-Dixie stores--I mean, the Dixie Home stores--and to improve the Bost Bakery space a little bit. So, Lloyd and I--I said, %u201CLloyd, I can introduce you to the production manager or the sales manager of the Colonial chain in Columbia.%u201D He said, %u201CWell, I%u2019ll come and pick you up and we%u2019ll go down there if you%u2019ll do it for me.%u201D I said, %u201CI%u2019ll be glad to,%u201D because I was promoting all I could for my radio station to get advertisers, and I made all these contacts. So we did, and we got started talking on the way back from Columbia about Walter Cline Advertising Agency in Charlotte that was handling the Bost Bread, [speaking in radio announcer voice] %u201Csponsor of the Cisco Kid.%u201D That%u2019s when television was in its infancy. One thing led to another, and I came back to Shelby and established a house agency for Bost Bakery, which was called the Cleveland Advertising Agency, and set up offices across the street from their main office building over there and started handling all of the advertising and marketing work for Bost Bread. I still have remnants here. When we were doing this building here, one of the last times we were decorating, one of the ladies that worked for me at that time used to work at Bost. She said, %u201CWhy don%u2019t you put something in your office from Bost days?%u201D I said, %u201CWell, that%u2019s a page of history that%u2019s gone.%u201D %u201CI don%u2019t care! You had such--.%u201D So I got to looking around and came up with those four. Hugh Morton sent me that picture of Grandfather and we supered the wheat field in front and supered the loaf into it as one of the first color ads in the Charlotte Observer. That slogan, %u201CThe grains that make it good for you make it taste good too%u201D--that was introducing the product in the edge of Virginia and Tennessee over there, and this lady actually worked in the cake department at Bost. I used her as my model, and the slogan was, %u201CSome people say we%u2019re old-fashioned, but we still think icing cakes by hand, that serves our--.%u201D This was when we were fighting Sunbeam when they first brought out %u201Cbatter whipped.%u201D Sawdust--we claimed their bread was made out of sawdust. [Laughter] Or %u201CNature%u2019s own natural grains--Country Grain gets its bulk from nine natural grains, and the one-pound thin-sliced toast contains just fifty calories. No cholesterol, no (53:02).%u201D I enjoyed that part of my career. We were the first that had a little one-sixth-page strip on the front page of the color comics in all of the major newspapers. We had Charlotte Observer, Asheville, Greenville-Spartanburg, Winston (Salem), Greensboro, and maybe some of the others, as we moved into those markets at Bost. I still have all those copies. Eddie (53:32), who was a representative with the Charlotte Observer--he used to be the male secretary to the editor of the London Times--and he was their regional food man down at the Charlotte Observer. I got to know Eddie real well, and he%u2019d come up about every three months and we%u2019d schedule the insertion of these. He%u2019d handle that end of it for me. Back in those days, you made four negatives in order to get a color print like this. You made the process yellow, and the cyan and the magenta, and then the black. Well, now they go to a computer and it%u2019s just %u201CHow many colors do you want? What do you want?%u201D and they push a button. I%u2019ve still got, I think, some of those negatives and plates from making those things.
DR: So Don went off to Knoxville, and you went down to South Carolina shortly thereafter to get a radio job?
MB: I did.
DR: And then, how long were you in South Carolina before you got the job with Bost in advertising and came back to Cleveland County?
MB: Gosh, I don%u2019t remember. Radio was--I think there were about four stations in Greenville, very competitive. WESC, we were in the same building with them. We were the CBS affiliate, and then NBC was getting their television station off the ground, WFBC-Channel 4, and there was one or two daytimers, I believe. It was tough; it was tough selling; it was a tough life. That%u2019s why I got as active as I did, and as effective as I tried to become with those bigger advertisers that could spend the money.
DR: How was it, coming back to Cleveland County?
MB: Well, it was not hard at all because Cleveland County was just our home. Shortly after (55:33) and I were married and I came back from Columbia, we moved into Cleveland County. As I say, our first home was upstairs in the Glenn home right here on South Lafayette right behind us. I don%u2019t know, we just had ties in Cleveland County. It was more like home to us, and even where we were from. Our children were born here, and we go back to Rutherford County now or go to a restaurant, we don%u2019t know a single soul [laughter] from corner to corner. I%u2019m going up Thursday night to Isothermal to the Charlie Daniels concert, and I%u2019ll lay you odds I won%u2019t know anybody. I can stand around that lobby and watch them come and go.
DR: So are there places at all in Cleveland County that you see and feel at home? Are there any landmarks or--?
MB: Just the whole deal. [Laughter] See, my real estate division, we have about thirty or thirty-five to forty sort of upscale residential properties, and then some commercial properties, so I%u2019m just--you know, it%u2019s just home. Everything I do is right in Shelby, Cleveland County.
DR: I think you mentioned that Don contacted you a couple of times after he left. Do you remember that at all?
MB: No more than it was just sort of idle chit-chat. You know, %u201CHow%u2019re you doing? Well, where are you staying? Are you eating? [Laughter] Are you making enough to eat on?%u201D and this sort of thing. %u201CHave they put you on the Mid-day Merry-Go-Round?%u201D or %u201CAre they using you any up there on Saturday night?%u201D Just sort of general conversation. Then, after Nashville got ahold of those two songs when they saw the potential in it, the commercial side of it, the only contact was there was they were concerned about this contract that I had with him. Then they just went his way and I went my way.
DR: Either from the first time you came here or the second time when you came back, to now, how has Cleveland County changed over the years?
MB: Well, it%u2019s so gradual. You look back on it and you realize just how radical and dramatic it was, to some degree. Like I mentioned, some of the retail stores uptown. McNeilly%u2019s, do you remember McNeilly%u2019s?
SB: Um-hmm.
MB: It was a fixture. Loy%u2019s Men%u2019s Shop there on the corner was a fixture. Lily Mill was operating at full blast, and the Dover chain was going good. Let%u2019s see, the Esther Mill. I mean, Esther is part of that, but what%u2019s the other mill right down here where Second Baptist Church used to be? Diane has her sew center in the little office building there. Well, the mill building is still there, as a matter of fact. See, 74 wasn%u2019t here at that time. Kays Gary lived over here on Gold Street, and it was sort of dirt and rock down at that end of Gold Street. Just so many memories like that, and the first thing that happened over here on the road that was built as 74 Bypass, I remember Mr. Ike Stone, who was the Exxon dealer, the Stone family, married into the Royal Crown%u2019s [pause] daughter, married the Stone young man. And his father, he was the Exxon dealer, and he said, %u201COh, this will kill downtown Shelby when they open this. It will just kill it, all of our service stations,%u201D all this and that and another, just things like that. As I say, it%u2019s just, almost, looking back on it, it was just evolving, and sort of a typical movement forward and changes of, I guess, of so many places around the world. Then the widening of 74, and I remember being out at WOHS--it was such a muddy road trying to get in and out, out there, and get from uptown back to the station when they were working on it.
DR: Do you have any favorite restaurants that aren%u2019t here any more?
MB: I%u2019m sort of typical Clevelander. I%u2019m big on barbecue and seafood--fish camps. I used to tell people, %u201CIf you come to Shelby, you won%u2019t starve. If you%u2019ve got a dollar, it%u2019ll either be barbecue or a fish camp.%u201D
DR: Fish camp?
MB: Called them fish camps at that time. They still call it a fish camp, the Shelby Fish Camp, right over here; that%u2019s what we refer to it. My golfing group, we play golf every Wednesday--Dr. Bob Jones, Speed Williams, and several others, and we say, %u201CSee you at the fish camp. Pick up your wife, and meet you over there at seven o%u2019clock.%u201D They know exactly where you%u2019re talking about. Seafood was--it%u2019s a little fancy, isn%u2019t it? I remember my sister and her husband, he worked for (1:01:12) and did this re-appraising, shipped him around to different counties. He was down in Dekalb County in Atlanta, and we went down to visit him, and he said, %u201CNow, you%u2019ve got to go with us to this fish camp.%u201D That was sort of one of my first big exposures. %u201CFish camp, what the heck is that? They got the tents and things around?%u201D A bunch of catfish and hushpuppies.
DR: So, catfish, hushpuppies, barbecue, that%u2019s--?
MB: Yeah, yeah, yeah.
DR: That%u2019s Cleveland County for you?
MB: That%u2019s Cleveland County for me. Gus is a pretty close friend of mine down at the Gondola, and I enjoy eating at Gus%u2019 place at times. (1:01:56) go over to Boiling Springs to the Italian Garden, and usually, well, we used to just almost go every Tuesday night but we didn%u2019t go this week. As a matter of fact, that%u2019s tonight, isn%u2019t it? So we didn%u2019t go. We have a housekeeper that--my wife is afflicted now with dementia and Parkinson%u2019s, so we have a housekeeper that%u2019s--. Her husband is Robert Roseboro; he%u2019s been with me for about forty years, between Bost and here. When Bost shut down, he got a full-time job with the school system, so he takes his off time and looks after my place down here for me. His wife has had some training, and she just does an excellent job. She fixes us a super lunch, so I really don%u2019t need a lot more beyond that lunch that she fixes.
DR: You%u2019d mentioned Earl Scruggs a little bit earlier, saying that you sort of--.
MB: I never did have an association with Earl. Hugh Dover, who was the early morning man at WOHS, he knew the Scruggses pretty well, and Bobby Jones, that plays the mandolin now, plays with Earl%u2019s brother in his bluegrass band, is Bob%u2019s son--Bobby, Dr. Bobby. But Earl%u2019s path and my path just never did cross that much. I just knew him as a banjo player that was trying to get going, and all of a sudden he wound up in Nashville, and he and Lester formed that group. They both played for Bill Monroe, I think in that band, and started out and formed their own group and went pretty much big-time as history would denote. I remember seeing Earl a time or two, but I just never did have any connection with him other than through Hugh.
DR: Okay.
MB: Dan Jones, who was a brother to Dr. Bob Jones, he was pretty close to the Scruggses. Dan died with a heart attack, a fairly young man in his fifties, Bob%u2019s brother. He%u2019d talk about Earl and he%u2019d talk about David Thompson. He said, %u201CMax, you%u2019ve got to come over here and go with me to one of these high school basketball games.%u201D He said, %u201CWe%u2019ve got this player over here; David Thompson is his name. He can jump, flat-footed, about five feet in the air. You ain%u2019t never seen nothing like this.%u201D [Laughter] I kid the banker up at First National; his name is David Thompson. [Laughter] DR: So where do you see Shelby and Cleveland County being in five, ten, fifteen years? You said it changes gradually, but where do you think it%u2019s heading towards?
MB: Well, you know the diversification of any community, in its makeup pretty much dictates, I think, what its future is going to be. When we got to easing out away from the cotton mills, right here next to us and all around, and going into--Pittsburgh was the first big step, and then Fiber down in the east. I remember Mr. Black, when he came here when it started, and building Fiber, I had him as our guest speaker at one of the Jaycee nights when I was president of the Junior Chamber, and that%u2019s when he made his announcement that they were building this place. I%u2019m leading up to say, in the new industry that%u2019s coming up here on Washburn Switch now, in that field, and of course the computer field has become just a totally new world than what we knew back in those days, and where is it going from here? How much further can it go? Heaven knows, it%u2019s just like that. I don%u2019t know, unless we can create jobs, I don%u2019t see that much growth in Cleveland County or any other community like us. You%u2019re going to have to have jobs to attract people to come to this area, and you%u2019re going to have to have jobs to keep the youngsters here that can make a living and enjoy what they%u2019re doing, as opposed to having to go to Charlotte or some other city. I don%u2019t see the rural communities--which we fall into that category to a degree--we%u2019re sort of on the borderline in the Shelby market. Unless we can produce enough opportunities for people to make a living, it%u2019s just that simple. That%u2019s what I tell them nationally. You boys can talk about all you want to in Washington, D.C. %u201COh, we had an increase. We%u2019ve got this and we%u2019ve got that. Things are looking better.%u201D The hell they are. Unless you can replace all these jobs that we%u2019ve lost overseas. Go through Morganton; look at those big furniture plants, just shut down, big-box buildings up there. Used to drive by, you know, and Henredon and all these brands, and the Drexel chain. Aw, man, it was just the lifeline of that community. And look right here in Cleveland County: the cotton mills were our lifeline back in that era, Pittsburgh being the first big departure from it. To me, unless we can create jobs, don%u2019t tell me it%u2019s going to be that much better. Tell that to some poor family down here that there was one mill in their community that was the lifeline of that community, and now it%u2019s shut down and gone overseas, and there%u2019s nothing for them to do except go on the bread line. That%u2019s sad. We merged our billboard division here about seven years ago with a larger company that has pretty good distribution in some other states, and only on one condition: that they not touch a thing here. We%u2019re not selling assets; we%u2019re not merging our assets; we%u2019re just merging with you to create a larger organization. He was the one guy that promised to do it and he%u2019s kept his word. I used to have people to call here--%u201CWe want to buy your assets up there in that market. We want to buy your assets.%u201D %u201CI don%u2019t have assets for sale. If you%u2019re interested in merging into a larger operation, we might take a look at that.%u201D One guy came up here from Atlanta that was with a--who was he with? Some chain, and I said, %u201CNow, listen, I told you on the phone, unless you%u2019re interested in something other than buying our assets, all I can tell you is enjoy your lunch and have a nice flight home.%u201D So we was eating, and he looked at me and he said, %u201CI%u2019ve enjoyed my meal. I hope I have a nice flight home.%u201D [Laughter] I was about not to sell out this company. I had too many people depending on us to make the right decisions. I%u2019ve got people still here that were with us then, and they%u2019ve been promoted on up the line. My point is, create employment and build upon it, if possible. This business of establishing something like some of the banks, and you sell out to a larger firm and that%u2019s the only reason you established the darn thing to begin with--I just don%u2019t buy it. Selling out your employee structure and all of a sudden out of jobs, and you go your merry way because you got a million or two dollars out of the deal; I%u2019m just not in that area. I haven%u2019t been and don%u2019t plan to get there. I still hang around here and no salary. [Laughter] Just reaping my interest.
DR: Do you have any questions along the way?
SB: No, it%u2019s sounding good to me.
MB: You%u2019re probably sitting there thinking good god, I didn%u2019t know it was going to get into all this with this guy.
SB: Oh no, I%u2019ve enjoyed it. You have a phenomenal memory. You know, I%u2019m sitting here thinking I can%u2019t even remember what I had for breakfast this morning, and you%u2019re talking all this time.
MB: That%u2019s really one of my short suits. I just have better days than others, you know.
SB: I did wonder, when you were talking about Don Gibson, when you knew him, did you know him as a songwriter or did you just primarily know him as a performer?
MB: I just knew him as a young kid that played a guitar and tried to sing like Eddy Arnold.
SB: Okay, so you didn%u2019t know he was going to be a songwriter? None of that was on the horizon yet when you knew him?
MB: None of that was--none of that. And it was simply because--you know, what prompts a writer to do something? His case was this sadness from his wife kicking him out, as the case may have been, because in that song he says, %u201CI can%u2019t get over how she set me free, oh, lonesome me.%u201D That%u2019s just out of your mind and your emotions; that%u2019s your life; that%u2019s everything.
SB: He really found his niche, though, because the rest of his songs--didn%u2019t they call him the %u201Csad poet%u201D or something?
MB: Um-hmm. They all were pretty much around that theme. You listen to them; listen to the words.
SB: So he wasn%u2019t that kind of personality, though? He was not a sad, melancholy sort of person?
MB: No, he was just sort of a happy-go-lucky, out here sweeping floors, out here changing records on the piccolos--or on the jukeboxes--I still call them piccolos--and just struggling along making a living and all of a sudden he gets married. I carried a group to Gaffney; there was a station down there that had a good recording machine, and we sent that disk to Mutual. WOHS was a member of the Mutual Network, and I tried to get those folks up there interested in us producing a show in this part of the country to go on the network, and no, they didn%u2019t buy it. They just said it was too hillbilly: %u201CWe just don%u2019t think it%u2019s going to go.%u201D Like they told Tennessee Ernie when he said, %u201CI%u2019m going to start putting a hymn%u201D on that NBC show he had. %u201COh, no, no, Eddie. No, Tennessee, you can%u2019t do that.%u201D %u201CI%u2019m going to do it anyway.%u201D It prompted the most mail that they had ever received. [Laughter] %u201CDo more of it.%u201D
DR: You said you recorded a record?
MB: Of the group, yes.
DR: Do you remember what that was like?
MB: What do you mean? We just went down and recorded several tunes, and I announced and said, %u201CThis is Don Gibson, this is Howard,%u201D and so on and so forth, %u201Cand now we%u2019re going to perform an instrumental,%u201D so you get the feel of the group as to how they do here, sort of a resume on the record, as it might have been.
DR: What was the setup like?
MB: What do you mean?
DR: How did it look? How did the room look?
MB: Oh, it was just a typical studio with microphones and a control room outside the glass wall there, just like it is--I guess it%u2019s pretty much like that--no, I don%u2019t what they look like today, I haven%u2019t been in one in so long. I taught a short class over at Cleveland Tech, and I carried the guys down to WBTV as part of the course, and I carried them down to the Charlotte Observer and saw the things. I did all of my production at WSOC. I used to do my production at Jefferson Productions, which was a leg of WBTV and the Jefferson Standard organization. Arthur moved over to channel 9, and I knew both the sales reps from these places. Guys would come up here and they always wanted to eat barbecue and play golf and mess around a little bit, and I switched and started doing all of my recording over at channel 9, WSOC-TV. The ol%u2019 boy down there from Spartanburg, got to know him. He remembered the days, and one of the production men used to be a news announcer on WSPA. I remembered my father listened to him every day at noon. He%u2019d say, %u201CThank you, and thirty.%u201D [Laughter] DR: Are there memories or stories from your time here in Cleveland County that you either were hoping to talk about and haven%u2019t got the chance to talk about yet? Or you thought about then and said, %u201COh, I%u2019ll mention that later,%u201D and haven%u2019t gotten back to it yet?
MB: I don%u2019t think so. I think my life is just sort of typical of so many people--nothing special. I%u2019ve just tried to be a good citizen. I%u2019ve worked in several community drives: I was chairman of the March of Dimes, chairman of the United Fund, chairman of this, that and the other. I served as a member of the Zoning Board of Adjustment and served as its chairman for two or three terms until the mayor and one of the council ladies decided they didn%u2019t like me and wanted to get me off. You know how politics are, so I said to hell with this. I%u2019ve got other things in my life I can be doing. But they paid for it. [Laughter] Is this being recorded? I had forgotten it was. It was just a little bump in life; that%u2019s what it amounts to. It could happen to anybody, and that%u2019s typical of politics.
DR: Do you mind going into it at all?
MB: [Laughter] Well, there%u2019s really not much more than I just said. I enjoyed serving on the Board of Adjustment as its chairman. I think I was one of the first that would go out in the community and visit with these cases that we were going to be hearing, because your Board of Adjustment is the only body that can break the law. The council can%u2019t even break the law. They can make it, and the Planning and Zoning Commission can only recommend something to the council about things taking place, but the Board of Adjustment is when I come in, I want to build my house but the law says I%u2019ve got to setback thirty feet, but I can only setback twenty because of so and so and so. I enjoyed just going out and meeting people in the community and talking, looking at their cases. Then, when they appeared before the group, I knew exactly what we were talking about and I could explain it to the group because we had five members from the City of Shelby and five members from Cleveland County on the Board of Adjustment committee. I enjoyed that; I really did. I just got a kick out of serving in that. Serving as president of the United Fund, I think it was my tenure was when we started the payroll deduction because I remember they had to go to Winston-Salem, and this Anthony I mentioned in real estate, Anthony & Anthony, his father was active in the United Fund. He made the trip over there for us and got a lot of information about it, and then we sold the idea to Pittsburgh and a lot of other places that were just getting started in this county. I can%u2019t say that I really enjoyed those because it was a lot of work. I remember I called on Frank Mabry a couple of times. He was chairman of one of the sub-committees. He said, %u201CMax, don%u2019t aggravate me now. I%u2019m going to do the best I can; don%u2019t be calling me.%u201D %u201COkay.%u201D And church work has not been a big thing in my life, but I certainly am a believer with a tremendous amount of faith and belief in the hereafter. I%u2019m more concerned right now with the %u201Chere now.%u201D [Laughter] I do a lot, sort of behind the scenes and things like that I%u2019m right proud of, very proud of, such as steeples on a particular church, an addition to a particular church, a retreat for a particular church. I%u2019m just real proud of it. I%u2019ve just been blessed, been blessed. I%u2019ve been furnished with the know-how, the talent, and the means. I%u2019ve got some awfully good men that are working for me now in my housing and other things, just extremely talented.
SB: Do you still enjoy music? Have you been to performances at Don Gibson yet? The Don Gibson Theater?
MB: No, I haven%u2019t. They tried to loop me into the thing when it was forming, and one thing and another. I just told them, %u201CLook, I%u2019m eighty-something years old, and I think I%u2019ve pretty much served my term.%u201D
SB: But there%u2019s some great music. Some great bluegrass has been there.
MB: I know, just y%u2019all go ahead and do the best you can with it, and I%u2019ll support you any way I can and wish you well. I%u2019ve got a tremendous library of recordings, from 78s right down to the new stuff. I just recently bought a little ol%u2019 new unit right over there. I can transfer stuff to a CD and I can play that in the car too.
SB: Is there anybody new that you like? Anybody who%u2019s kind of come on the scene lately that you are interested in as far as their music goes?
MB: I like them all. I don%u2019t like this new racket-in-your-face deal. I just can%u2019t buy it. It%u2019s just not country to me. I think one of the newer faces on the scene has been this young fellow from down in Georgia that wrote that %u201CBlack Train,%u201D his type of voice. And Randy Travis, from down near Charlotte, that went to Nashville, had sort of a country approach to it that was like the old ones there. But all of this fuss and all of this noise, I just turn it off. I just don%u2019t like it. I guess that%u2019s just an old man%u2026 [Recorder is turned off and then back on] %u2026that%u2019s set in his ways. [Laughter] SB: No, you like what you like.
MB: I know. I got to like big band music. Somewhere between what my wife liked and what I like was big band. We listen to Lawrence Welk every Saturday night. I just think it%u2019s great music--tremendously talented people. My gosh, they%u2019re talented and knowledgeable. And the Glenn Miller, I have some of the Glenn Miller albums--got some 45s and some 33 1/3s. I think I gave my two daughters those. One got the 33 1/3s and the other got the 45s of the complete Glenn Miller index. I like that type of music. I like it with a beat, though, as opposed to some of the sad stuff or the slow-moving stuff. I love the Lawrence Welk Show because he moves from theme to theme every week. Those shows that they%u2019re playing back from--gosh, you look at some of them and say, %u201CGood golly, that was thirty years ago; that was forty-one years ago,%u201D and %u201Cwonder what these people are doing now if they%u2019re still alive?%u201D But they were very talented. There%u2019s a lot of talented people in all fields, of course.
DR: Do you have granddaughters or grandsons?
MB: No, I don%u2019t. I wish I did, but I don%u2019t. I wish I had a ball team. [Laughter] I don%u2019t guess I%u2019ll ever have any grandchildren. I just adopt the employees%u2019 children as my grandchildren. Debbie, over there, she commutes daily from Lyman, South Carolina. Her husband is the pastor of the church down there, and he pastored a church over here just south of Boiling Springs when she came to work here, so when they moved, she just elected to keep her job. She talked about working three or four days, and I said, %u201CLove to have you if you can do that,%u201D and she turned it into a five-day week. Her son, I call him Ace, Chandler, he%u2019s going to start his second year at Gardner-Webb, so I call him my adopted grandson. He can knock a golf ball two hundred and fifty, three hundred yards. %u201CLimber backs%u201D, us old men call them. Good gracious alive! Then, little Cindy that worked up at the front, she brings her two little ones down to see me occasionally, and they sit up in my lap and pull my desk drawers open [laughter] and scramble around in it, so those are my grandchildren.
SB: Are you interested in sports at all? You said you did some commentating on the radio. Are you going to go to any of the Legion games when they come here?
MB: Not really. I used to be so involved in it, you know, that as I guess age caught up with me and I started drifting away. I%u2019m to the point now that I don%u2019t even watch a full football game on Sunday afternoon. I just figure if I hear the score later, that%u2019s all I need to know.
SB: I know how you feel.
MB: [Laughter] To me, it%u2019s like watching grass grow to watch a sporting event sometime. Are you like that too?
SB: Yes, I%u2019m afraid I am.
MB: I just grew in that direction. When I was active in it, it was different, but now just sitting there watching--%u201CWell, here%u2019s the windup. No, wait a minute; he%u2019s got to check that guy on second.%u201D Well, who gives a damn? Get on with it. [Laughter] Throw the thing and see if he can hit it. That%u2019s a lot of age speaking.
SB: Like I say, I can relate to your sports point of view.
DR: Anything else either of you want to talk about? All right. Well, thanks so much for your time today.
MB: Well, I appreciate you coming by.

END OF INTERVIEW
Mike Hamrick, October 30th, 2010