ON MY MIND

February has always been a significant month in Pam Gadd’s life. She moved to Nashville from northern Kentucky on February 4 in 1987, the day before her birthday, to seek a career with her banjo and guitar, her songs and that distinctive lead voice—one of the most soulful in any musical genre today. On the same day in 2004, she played her first show with country music legend Porter Wagoner.

Pam is still getting over the shock of losing her singing partner and dear friend, who died October 28, 2007 from lung cancer. Mingled with her grief are feelings of anticipation about the February release of her new album—Pam’s first solo effort in eight years—which will include duets with Dolly Parton and Marty Raybon, along with harmony vocals from Dale Ann Bradley and Steve Gulley. Along with Pam on the five-string, the band includes Bryan Sutton, Aubrey Haynie, Andy Leftwich, Mark Burchfield, and Wanda Vick.

Pam shares production duties with Nancy Gardner on this new, as-yet-untitled CD, which she describes as “a combination of straight-ahead traditional bluegrass, [and] songs I’ve written. Some are bluegrass, [and some are] that country folk thing blended with bluegrass.” She especially enjoyed recording the Osborne Brothers tune, “Tennessee Hound Dog” for the new project. “It was such a blast,” she relates. “I remember seeing Bobby and Sonny doing that up in Chautauqua Park in Cincinnati in 1971, when I was little.”

Another tune on the project, “The Only Thing Left Between Us Is What I Never Said” is a sad, retrospective ballad that begins with a girl waking from a dream about the man she loves. She rushes to call him, then realizes it’s been years since they broke up. “Blackwater Rock,” Pam says, is a “real bluegrassy song I wrote years ago with Jim Rushing about a championship coon dog my dad had.” There’s a swing song, “Wrong, Wrong, Wrong,” covered but never released by Wild Rose, the all-female country ‘grass band Pam worked with in the late 80s-early 90s.

Pam co-wrote “The Longer We Live, The More We Say Goodbye” with Wanda Vick and Vip Vipperman, and “Just Love Me” is a refreshingly positive love song with a clever melody. “Benefit of Doubt” may be the project’s title cut by the time you read this article, and “Until She Makes it Home” is another sad song that will tear your heart out in trademark Pam Gadd vocal style. Marty Raybon, whom Pam has known since his days with Shenandoah, joins her on the classic Conway Twitty/Loretta Lynn number, “After the Fire is Gone.” And she absolutely nails the Jimmy Martin vocal/J.D. Crowe banjo groove on the bluegrass standard, “Hold What You Got.”

Pam plays clawhammer banjo against Aubrey Haynie’s fiddle on “Apple Jack,” a song that will likely be getting a lot of airplay. She sings the tune with Dolly Parton, who wrote it. When Pam first heard the song, about an old man who picks both apples and the banjo, she imagined that he probably played the banjo in the old-time clawhammer style. Parton confirmed this was true when she came to the studio to record the tune.

“Dolly was so open to being produced, and very honest,” Pam says. “She was such a joy to work with.” In addition to devising a cool counter-harmony echo for the chorus, Dolly brought brunch for everyone—Eggs Benedict with a delectable Hollandaise sauce, and an assortment of fresh fruit—and stuck around to enjoy it with the musicians.

Dolly, in turn, became a fan of Pam’s singing after hearing a Pam & Porter duet from one of his recent recordings. The legendary entertainer and producer was once Parton’s own duet partner, and he gave her career a jumpstart on his nationally syndicated television show, which ran from 1960-81.

There are a few things Pam wishes folks knew about the real Porter Wagoner. Although the onstage monitor volume at the Opry sometimes made it difficult for Wagoner to hear himself in recent years, “there wasn’t a better singer than Porter in an acoustic setting,” Pam affirms. “And anything you did, he could follow the harmony. He’d come right in. He grew up singing with sisters, so he was used to singing with a woman from early on.”

And Wagoner had a better memory, though he was twice her age, Pam says. “He was so amazing. He could tell you who was in the band and who was on a record 50 years ago, and he could sing the words to any song he’d ever recorded. I’ve never known anyone with a memory like that. And he was funny! He’d tell all these fishing stories and stories from the road. Porter told me once about how he threw (fiddler) Mack Magaha’s red boots off the bus because he’d tripped over them one too many times in the hallway in the middle of the night. Porter said he’d warned him!”

Wagoner was extremely quick-witted with a live audience, she says, and always seemed to crack the band up onstage. “He and I teased a lot and he always laughed; he always got it.” The two shared the same sarcastic, dry sense of humor, she says. “I just loved that about him.”

Although she appreciates the creative aspect of leading her own band, Pam, as a sideman, also enjoys throwing her complete support behind an artist she believes in. Wagoner hired her after hearing her sing scratch vocals on an album of duets he released a few years ago (he ended up keeping Pam’s tracks and dispensing with the idea of singing with other vocalists), and he came to appreciate her solid rhythm guitar onstage at the Opry.

“I always tried with him and took pride in every performance,” she recalls. “I can remember, every show, just standing there and knowing it wasn’t about me. I grew up watching his show on TV, so I think there’s an emotional attachment I had—along with seeing him in his twilight years. On the Tuesday night Opry Shows he would do ‘Green Green Grass of Home.’ There was nobody who could do a recitation better than Porter. Every night, it was like he was doing it for the first time.”

She remembers one night not long before their last show together. “His hair was just perfect, and he looked so handsome that night,” she smiles. “I turned to him and said, ‘You look great tonight. You look like the old Porter Wagoner”—like the one I grew up with.’ He said, ‘Well, thank you.’ And he kissed me on the check just as the curtain was going up and he leaned over and said, ‘How about the young Porter Wagoner?’ And I said, ‘Well, that’s who I mean.’”

A week before Porter died, his daughter, Debra Jean, put out the call to all the Wagon Masters to come visit. Pam arrived at Baptist Hospital in the morning; nobody was around, and Porter was awake. “I will always be thankful I got there early, because I had this private time with him,” she says. “We visited for an hour and a half before Steve Buchanan came in with a card from all the Opry members.”

At the time, Pam didn’t really understand how sick Porter was. “I didn’t think he was dying,” she says. “I just couldn’t believe he was, because we had such a nice talk. I said something like, ‘How are you?’ And he said, ‘I’m just lying here trying to figure out what to make of all this.’”

During her visit, she told Porter about recording “Apple Jack” with Dolly. “I sat there and sang her harmony part because I was afraid he was never going to hear the record,” Pam says. “We laughed about stuff and I rambled on about things like I always did.” Porter asked Pam how things were going in her life. “At one point, I said, ‘Come here,’ and I leaned over and put my arms around him and laid my head on his chest and just held him. I was about to cry, and it just busted out—I said, ‘Thank you. Thank you so much.’ I said, ‘I love you,’ and he said, ‘I love you, too.’

“You know, it’s so important to tell people how you feel—to cross that uncomfortable line sometimes and just say the words. I told him, ‘I would never have gotten to do this without you. I would never have gotten to be a part of the Opry.’”

Porter talked some about the old days. Pam asked him if he really did go see Bill Monroe and his Blue Grass Boys at tent shows as a boy, when the band toured through West Plains, MO. In later years, Monroe remembered the tall, thin boy standing at the edge of the crowd who came to hear the Blue Grass Boys every time they played in the area. Wagoner remembered, too. “He didn’t hesitate,” Pam said. “He was aware of everything, and that’s why I thought, ‘He’s not going to die. Not now. I think they’re wrong’ because he was not in pain. It was the most precious visit.”

Her tenure as a Wagon Master has taken Pam to the stage of the Grand Ole Opry on a regular basis over the past four years. When she was 12 years old, Pam and her family often attended square dances at an old high school in Verona, Ky. For the most part, the kids ran around and played while the adults danced. Every chance she got, Pam would duck off by herself, behind the heavy stage curtains, thinking and dreaming about the future.

“There was something about being back there,” she recalls. “I always enjoyed being backstage at the Ryman, looking at the ropes that held up the curtain and the wood on the floor that was so old you could see the layers of paint. Being backstage takes me back to when I was young, so I felt like I belong on the Opry stage.” A favorite memory is the night she stepped out onto the Opry stage, into that hallowed circle, as a solo artist in Porter’s act. “We did ‘Virginia Man,’ a song I wrote. And you know, it’s strange. I think that was the last song we did with the band. We ended up having a little extra time that last night, and Porter asked me to do it.”

Pam has a number of favorite backstage Opry memories. “Watching Eddie Stubbs stand and do what he does the best of anyone I’ve ever heard,” she says. “Getting to know Keith Bilbrey, standing and talking to Jean Shepherd, getting to know Jim Ed Brown—who is such a gentleman to me always, just as Porter was. I remember walking down that hallway and thinking, ‘How can it be that I have a spot here, that I have a part?’”

She loved standing around talking to Little Jimmy Dickens and Pee Wee, his steel player, and she enjoyed encounters with talk show host Larry King and singer/songwriter John Anderson. She often joked around with Riders in the Sky, and had a big time sitting on a bench by the soundboard, just offstage, laughing with Rosie White of The Whites. Pam would often perch on that bench with her guitar for most of the show after coming offstage. “I would sit there and play with all the bands and I’d get my chops up,” she smiles. “Nobody heard me. They didn’t know it, but I played my guitar with everybody. I really learned the neck.”

She enjoyed the fancy footwork of the Opry square dancers, and watching Mike Snider crack the audience up and being mesmerized by his clawhammer playing. She listened as Mel Tillis reminisced with Porter in the dressing room. She met Buck Trent and played his banjo with all the gadgets on it; he even took it apart to show her its innards. She describes Roy Clark as engaging and warm and classy, and says that Jeanie Seeley was the first woman who walked across the Opry stage to welcome her. “I’ll always appreciate that,” Pam says. “Another neat thing was getting to tell Connie Smith how great she was every time she walked off the stage, telling Helen Cornelius how much I loved her voice, getting to talk to Jan Howard, and hearing Hank Locklin nail the high note at the end of ‘Danny Boy’—just getting to know these people.”

One unforgettable night, Ralph Stanley joined Porter onstage to sing “White Dove.” “I couldn’t sit still so I just walked over and joined them,” Pam says. “I sang the high part and Jack Cooke backed out, but I put my arm around him and pulled him back in. I just love the sound he created with that high baritone in the ‘70s, when I used to listen to the Clinch Mountain Boys with Keith Whitley.”

Another memory is indelible. “I’ll never forget seeing Dolly and Porter rehearse ‘Last Thing on My Mind’ in the dressing room, and watching her care so dearly about getting it right. She tuned everything else out and just watched him, and they stood face-to-face. And again, in an acoustic setting, even at 80 years old, there wasn’t a better singer than Porter Wagoner.”

Sometimes Pam would sing bluegrass standards in the dressing room with Wagoner. Once she talked him into going to a CD release party for bluegrass band David Peterson & 1946 at the Belcourt Theater in Nashville. ‘We sat there, crouched down in the seats, whispering and talking,” she says. “It was a great show, and Porter loved David’s music.”

Pam’s most precious memories of Porter are of just standing in the wings and laughing with her former bandleader. “I loved to hear him laugh,” she says simply.

It’s no secret that Wagoner was fond of women, particularly in his younger days. “It may not be a compliment that he never hit on me, but I took it as a sign of total respect!” Pam says frankly, laughing. Instead, Pam remembers things like Porter showing up backstage with a Papa John’s pizza with pineapples on it for everybody. “He was also more than fair in how he paid us, and good to work for,” Pam says. “Every man in that band would tell you that. He had pride, and sometimes didn’t always know how to express what he felt, but that day I hugged him in the hospital, I never doubted for a minute that I had a friend who loved me.”

Pam recorded several albums with Porter over the course of their musical affiliation. The last one, The Best of Porter Wagoner & Pamela Rose Gadd: 22 Country & Gospel Duets, includes all the duets she recorded with Porter and was released last fall on the Gusto TeeVee label. And of course, she’s looking forward to the release of her new solo project this month. “It’s so thrilling to have another CD out to share with bluegrass radio DJs, who I believe still have complete control of what they choose to play,” Pam says. “Sometimes I can’t find the words to say what’s in my heart, but this is the most important thing in my life—to share these songs I’ve written. What a wonderful opportunity, to be able to combine traditional bluegrass with songs I write, to create a style that’s maybe something somebody will like. It’s just the greatest gift I can give.”

Pam’s first solo album, The Long Road, was released on Vanguard in 1997. Some might say her four years recording for Gusto Records with the Wagon Master and playing stone-cold traditional country music onstage at the Grand Ole Opry almost every week, were detours in her bluegrass career. But in reality, it’s made her a more seasoned instrumentalist and entertainer, and strengthened her traditional music roots.

They say you can’t really sing country music until your heart’s been broken. “I’ll always remember Porter, and I’ll miss my singing buddy,” Pam says sadly. “What an honor to play with him. I’m not into the whole ‘star’ thing, because I think we’re all mortal, but it was an honor to play with a legend.”

This article can be found in the February 8, 2008 issue of Bluegrass Now

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