After a while, every headliner develops a patter, a routine, a whole arsenal of set paragraphs and stock answers to all those expected, unoriginal, unthreatening questions. Press this button, that answer pops out. Here’s what you got when you pressed Ray Jones’s various autobiography buttons:
“Well, I was born a bunch of years ago in a little town in Georgia you’ve never heard of, Lynn — I can pretty well guarantee you that. Oh, try you? [Chuckle] Sure, Lynn. It’s called Troutman, not that far from Hazlehurst, on the road toward Albany. Oh, it’s a little town, Lynn, a bump in the road. I believe a travelin preacher got a flat tire there once and that’s how the place got started. No, I mean it. By the time the poor man raised enough money for a new tire, he had a congregation. They were as dirt-poor as he was, of course, as I was, as we all were.
“I grew up there in Troutman, fishin, goin to school when I remembered, runnin with my pals. My daddy worked for the electric company, when there was work to do — outside, stringin lines mostly. Anytime a big storm come up from the Gulf, there’d be Daddy, putt in on those big boots and that yellow slicker and yellow rain hat, in the pickup, on the way to the trouble. When I was just a little one, I wished I could go along with him, nights like that, and I thought that’s what I’d do when I grew up. If it hadn’t been for the music, I suppose that’s where I’d be right now, up some power-company pole in south-central Georgia, whistlin along with the birds.
“The music? Well, Lynn, this may sound weird, but it’s the Lord’s honest truth. I first started to sing on hayrides, ’cause I was afraid of girls. No, that’s true, Lynn, in those growin-up years, I was truly afraid of girls. [Chuckle] I don’t suppose I ever entirely got over it.
“But that was the singin side. On the musical instrument side, that came earlier. I was introduced to the guitar when I was, I dunno, six or seven, over to school. Nobody in my family was musical, unless you count beatin time along with the jukebox on the bar, but when I started goin to school, there was this guitar. We were in a real poor school district, and that guitar was the entire music department, some beat-up old box hadn’t been in tune since the rebs come home. Well, I fell on it; I took to it; I wrestled with that guitar from when it was bigger than I was. I figured out how to tune it, too, and that’s how I found out I had this natural ear. By the time I finished grammar school, I was pretty good at that old guitar. Didn’t know anything else, but I sure did know the guitar.
“And you know, Lynn, I was so grateful to that school for lettin me at that musical instrument and for givin me time to learn it and get to know it that I was really proud, some years back, to be able to repay those people just a little bit. I give them some musical instruments, a piano and such, and some money to help keep them up. So maybe some other little fella like me, dirt-poor and ignorant, might go in there the first day of school and find out music is his life, too. I purely wouldn’t have wanted to miss it, Lynn. Music has been very good to me.
“I admit I dropped out of high school, which I don’t recommend to any kids out there that might see this, but my excuse is, I didn’t do it until I had a place to go. Me and my best friend, Cal Denny, and I’m proud to say he’s still my best friend to this day, we put together a tape — you know, the old reel-to-reel tape; I’m talkin years ago here — we put together a tape of me on guitar and Cal on drums, except we didn’t have drums, just had Cal with some sticks, hittin everything in sight, and the two of us singin, and we did our own versions of Eddy Arnold songs and Hank Williams songs and sent the tape off to a record company in Florida, and they wrote us and said if we’d come down sometime they’d audition us, no promises. So we quit school right then and there, the both of us, and hitchhiked on down to Tallahassee, and that was how it all got started.
“Of course, I still got kin in and around Troutman, and I get back there as often as I can, which isn’t often enough, but when I can. Because, you know, Lynn, the one thing for sure for all of us in this business, in this show business, is, you got to remember where you come from. You got to remember who you are, or you’ll go nuts. You got to keep in touch with your roots.”
A lot of that bushwah was true, more or less, but it wasn’t anywhere near what you could call the whole truth. What it left out, mostly, was Ray Jones himself and how he learned to deal with the world.
Ray started as the runt of the litter, fourth of nine kids, not late enough to be the baby, not cute enough to be the pet, not big enough or strong enough to fight his own battles. A scrawny, undernourished little weed, he learned early on that his choice in life was a simple one: Be smart or be tromped. He was never going to get what he wanted just by reaching for it, like the big guys, so he had to find some other way to satisfy himself. Or else stop wanting things.
Never. Born hungry, Ray was hungry his entire life, but he’d never let the hunger show. He was hungry for food, for love, for success, for ease, for safety, for money, for women. He was born hungry for everything. Fortunately, he’d also been born smart.
Indirection. Guile. Use your brains. Use the other guy’s strength. Get what you want without anybody noticing you wanted it, or they’ll take it away from you.
He perfected his survival techniques in that grammar school with the famous old guitar, which really did exist, in a janitor’s closet, though nobody connected with the school gave a damn about it or him or ever encouraged him toward music or any other damn thing except to show up every day and keep his mouth shut unless asked a direct question. He’d borrow that guitar when nobody was looking, practice where nobody could hear, and slip it back when nobody was around. He was his own encouragement.
The main thing Ray learned in school was how to use his brains as an asset rather than a liability. If he did homework for the big dumb guys, they’d be on his side in case of trouble. At the same time, his own homework was sloppy and uncaring, and usually got a lower mark than the same assignment he’d done for somebody else. That way, he never got a reputation as a brain, which in a poor hick school is the worst thing that can happen. Only the big dumb guys he was helping could have known he was actually sharp as a winter wind; but the whole point about them was that they couldn’t put two and two together, wasn’t it?
Later, in the consolidated central high school, there was always somebody else he could convince to lead the way, whenever there was a chance somebody might get burnt. Most people like to lead, or to think they’re leading, and Ray was happy to encourage this leadership belief in those he was putting into danger. Sometimes it was Cal Denny who opened the door or stole the bottle or whatever it might be, but usually somebody else; from early on, Ray had a warm spot for Cal, who was big and dumb without being mean, and so Ray wouldn’t use him as a foil or a battering ram unless there just wasn’t anybody else available.