Christmas Special: Brenda Lee on the Unexpected Life of "Rockin' Around the Christmas Tree"

00:00:06
Speaker 1: Because it is Christmas week. When we loaded this, I thought it'd be fun to play the interview with Brenda Lee. Now Brenda Lee has Rocking around the Christmas Tree. That song has been around forever, but what we learn in this podcast, in this interview is that it wasn't a massive hit when it came out. Now, Brenda Lee just turned eighty one on December eleventh. In this interview, she talks about how Home Alone helped launch Well, I don't will spoil it, but rocking around the Christmas Tree, even though it was so many years after we talked about playing the Grand Ole Opry for the first time. We talked about her going to Japan when she was fourteen and meeting Elvis and hanging out with Patsy Klein. Here it is. This is our episode with Brenda Lee. Hello, Miss Brenda Lee.

00:00:49
Speaker 2: Hello, it's really good to see you again and you as well.

00:00:53
Speaker 1: The last time that we talked, we were trying to get that Christmas song up to number one. We were a boy did it go to then?

00:01:00
Speaker 3: And you did it?

00:01:01
Speaker 1: Oh? I didn't do anything.

00:01:02
Speaker 3: Well, you helped with it.

00:01:04
Speaker 1: That Rocking around the Christmas Tree went number one. Yeah, that's really exciting.

00:01:09
Speaker 2: When you think of how old it is, it truly is, and when you think it was written by a Jewish man, it truly was.

00:01:20
Speaker 1: So what's remarkable about that song? And then I definitely want to get onto the greatest hits, But what's remarkable about that song is that it has been around for a long time, it has sustained and also it even sounds like the audio quality sounds like a song that was recorded many years ago. Yet it's so good. It continues to not only just linger around, but again it's always in the top two or three, and it went number one. Finally, like the sustained success of that song is unlike many songs. Ever, at what point did you realize this song is going to just stick around for decades?

00:01:58
Speaker 4: You know?

00:01:59
Speaker 2: I never dream in the world that that would be my signature song. I always thought I'm Sorry would probably be it. And that song was written by the great Johnny Marks, who is Jewish, who wrote all the great Christmas songs. And I said to him one day, I said, Johnny, you don't even believe in Christmas. I said, how are you writing these songs? He said, I don't know. But when I sit down to write that's what comes out.

00:02:33
Speaker 1: When it first came out, was it a hit? Was it a holiday hit? Or did it take a.

00:02:36
Speaker 3: While before it It took a minute. Yes, it did, And.

00:02:39
Speaker 1: That's surprising because usually a song has its biggest when it's released, usually has a shot, and then if it does a hit, it's kind of done.

00:02:47
Speaker 2: Yeah, well, especially back in those days. But no, it wasn't. I mean, it was played, but I'll tell you when it.

00:02:57
Speaker 3: Really took off.

00:02:59
Speaker 2: One of my friends called me one night and said, Brenda, have you seen the movie Home Alone? And I said no. They said, well, your song's all over it. And I said which song? And they said Rockin' And that was really the catalyst that brought it to where it is.

00:03:19
Speaker 1: So that means it had to have been out twenty five or thirty years before the Home Alone? Right?

00:03:24
Speaker 3: Probably?

00:03:25
Speaker 1: Yeah, And you're right, I guess even for me, that was when I and I was a kid. Yeah, that was my introduction to that song.

00:03:31
Speaker 3: I'll we darn.

00:03:32
Speaker 1: So you grew up, You grew up as a young young kid in Atlanta. Correct? Did you ever have roots in Atlanta? Because I felt like you were traveling so much so young.

00:03:42
Speaker 2: I was actually I lived in a little town called Lithonia, which is maybe eighteen miles from Atlanta, and I used to do a show called John Farmer and the TV Ranch Boys, and that was out of Atlanta.

00:03:59
Speaker 1: See were driving in Atlanta. Would your parents take you?

00:04:01
Speaker 2: Uh?

00:04:01
Speaker 3: Huh? My mom would take me. My dad died when I was very young.

00:04:05
Speaker 2: And then there was a big, huge ballroom at that time called the Sports Arena. People would go there and dance and it was just a really fun place. And I used to sing there every Saturday night with the band from the TV station.

00:04:24
Speaker 1: Where did your music passion come from?

00:04:27
Speaker 3: I don't know.

00:04:29
Speaker 2: I've often wondered that myself. My mother could sing, but it wasn't like she sang to me or sang all the time. We had a little radio, and I remember my daddy he loved the Yankees, Mama loved the Dodgers. So they would keep enough battery where they could do that, and then I could listen to my music.

00:04:57
Speaker 3: So I started listening really e.

00:05:01
Speaker 1: And you think hearing your favorite songs and hearing the i'm assuming AM radio, that's what motivated you to start singing. Did you have a bunch of friends, because I feel like I watched a lot of TV because I don't have any friends. Like that's why I think that's kind of why I'm funny now too, is because I don't have a whole lot of friends. But so I had to develop that if you're listening to a lot of music, would you just sit at the radio and listen and memorize songs and sing long? And was that what you would do in the evenings?

00:05:28
Speaker 3: Yeah, I loved it.

00:05:30
Speaker 2: I had friends, you know, I was in regular school and I had friends, but it was it was just, well you probably know, it's something that drew you and you really had no control over it.

00:05:45
Speaker 1: And when you tell your mom you want to sing publicly, is what is her reaction and how does she immediately help you try to?

00:05:55
Speaker 3: Absolutely?

00:05:56
Speaker 2: Yeah, I think they saw the talent, especially my mom. My dad died when I was really young, and I think she saw the talent and she saw the want in me to want to do it. She was not the kind of person or mother that would say, okay, got it, you gotta sing tonight, blah blah blah. She wasn't that at all.

00:06:20
Speaker 1: So she didn't push you to do.

00:06:22
Speaker 3: It, No, not at all.

00:06:24
Speaker 1: But she encouraged you to follow your passion absolutely, And how did she do that? At first?

00:06:29
Speaker 2: Well, radio, she let me listen to what I wanted to listen to on radio. And then there was a place called the Sports Arena in Atlanta. It was, like I said, big old, huge ballroom.

00:06:42
Speaker 1: But how did she get you on stage there? Like what she just asked?

00:06:46
Speaker 2: She was very brazen. She would say, my little girl can really sing? Would you let her sing tonight? And finally the band said yeah, and I did, and I became a regular Saturday nighter.

00:07:00
Speaker 3: I was ten years old.

00:07:02
Speaker 1: Were you ever full of stage fright at that age or did it feel so natural?

00:07:07
Speaker 3: It just felt natural.

00:07:10
Speaker 1: What singers did you like as a young kid that you would emulate.

00:07:15
Speaker 2: I don't know that I emulated anybody, but I loved Hank Williams. I think he was probably my favorite. I loved Judy Garland, Sophie Tucker, Ella Fitzgerald. I loved all the older singers, not that they were old then, but they were older than me and I got to meet all of them and that was a dream come true. And I just liked I never could identify with kitchy songs.

00:07:54
Speaker 3: I liked the good songs.

00:07:56
Speaker 1: You liked the mature adult songs I did, which had to be a little weird for a kid to like.

00:08:00
Speaker 2: The magin Yeah, and everybody wondered, why do you like those? You're ten years old? I said, I don't know, but I do.

00:08:09
Speaker 4: We interrupt this interview to bring you a message from our sponsor.

00:08:21
Speaker 1: This is the Bobby Cast. How long did you perform in Georgia before he started to travel around?

00:08:29
Speaker 3: We moved to Okay.

00:08:33
Speaker 2: We were playing the Fox Theater and Red Foley came to town and somehow or another he let me sing a song on the show. And at that time he was the host of the Ozark Jubilee out of Springfield, Missouri, and he asked if I would like to come and do the show, and of course we said yes. So it wound up we moved there and I became a regular.

00:09:05
Speaker 1: So you moved to Missouri? How'd you like that? Do you remember it?

00:09:08
Speaker 3: I do. I liked Missouri.

00:09:10
Speaker 2: It was fun and I was doing absolutely what I loved to do. Going to school too. Mama always made me go to school. It wasn't like, oh she sings, she you know, No, that wasn't the case.

00:09:24
Speaker 1: Your mom moved for you.

00:09:26
Speaker 3: Yeah, wow, yeah she really did.

00:09:29
Speaker 1: Like looking back now, is there a gratefulness? Is something old sacrifice?

00:09:36
Speaker 3: I couldn't.

00:09:39
Speaker 2: Of course, I couldn't be here without her, But I couldn't be who I am without her either, because she was my best publicity person, my best Okay, you can do this. She was my everything in my singing.

00:09:56
Speaker 1: When did you start to come to Nashville.

00:09:58
Speaker 2: I came to Nashville and I was I think I was eleven.

00:10:05
Speaker 1: Or twelve, So that's pretty quick then.

00:10:07
Speaker 3: Yeah.

00:10:07
Speaker 1: Yeah, so you're singing in Georgia at ten. Yeah, you're in Missouri at eleven. Yeah, and about a year later you're in Nashville.

00:10:15
Speaker 3: Yeah.

00:10:15
Speaker 1: Do you move here or do you come here at first just to kind of see what it's about.

00:10:19
Speaker 3: We came, but we moved really quick. Why Well, because there was.

00:10:24
Speaker 2: More opportunity, There was more interest. People weren't afraid to record a child thinking their voice might change, and you put all that energy and finance into it, and then it turns out their voice changes and they're not good anymore.

00:10:42
Speaker 1: You know. I never thought about that, but I can tell that was actually a thing by how you're describing it. So there must have been reluctance then to invest in you as a kid, because they thought as you grew your voice would change and maybe you would not be able to sing. Yeah, that's what they would say. So who believe in you? Then? To invest in you and go? I still believe that even if there is a voice change, she'll be great.

00:11:05
Speaker 3: Readfully, so the same, red fully, same redfully.

00:11:09
Speaker 1: What do you think you saw on you?

00:11:12
Speaker 2: Goodness, nobody's ever asked me that question. I think the thing he really saw me in me was the need, the need to be able to help my family financially, and the need to be able to sing.

00:11:29
Speaker 3: I love to sing.

00:11:31
Speaker 1: Did you start to feel a pressure at eleven, twelve, thirteen years old to support your family? No, you never felt the pressure was never put on you. No, did you feel like you needed to do even if there wasn't a pressure. Do you feel like that's something you wanted to do?

00:11:44
Speaker 3: Yes? Always?

00:11:46
Speaker 1: Why?

00:11:46
Speaker 2: I mean, I don't know. I would have sang for nothing, you know, the money was just good, too bad. I just love to sing always. And where that came from, I have no clue.

00:12:01
Speaker 1: When you moved to Nashville and recorded, did you soon start touring regionally or nationally.

00:12:07
Speaker 3: All over the world, all over the world.

00:12:09
Speaker 1: I don't like flying now.

00:12:11
Speaker 3: I don't either.

00:12:11
Speaker 1: I can imagine flying over the ocean.

00:12:14
Speaker 2: Well you know when you're twelve. Yeah, that's true, you know, and you don't think about that. I don't like it now, So I don't go as much as I used to.

00:12:24
Speaker 1: So you go all over the world, all over the world. Did you feel safe as a kid singer?

00:12:29
Speaker 3: Yeah.

00:12:30
Speaker 2: My mom was with me, my manager, so yeah, and the band guys would protect me. I was like their little sister. Sometimes they protected me too much like a sister. Yeah, like I couldn't get in any trouble.

00:12:47
Speaker 1: When did you play the opry for the first time.

00:12:51
Speaker 3: I was ten years old, so that would have been.

00:13:00
Speaker 2: Fifty four or fifty five when we moved to Nashville.

00:13:06
Speaker 3: I just went to the opera.

00:13:08
Speaker 1: It seamlessly slid in at the Ryman any other performers that you listened to or liked in that first year so that you're playing the opera, that they would play the opera and you think it was cool to be able to see them.

00:13:23
Speaker 2: I loved Patsy Kline, loved her, loved her heart, loved her talent, loved her generosity.

00:13:34
Speaker 3: She was.

00:13:36
Speaker 2: Not affected at all by the industry. I loved that about her, and she just kind of took me under a wing, as did Dottie West, and we were friends forever.

00:13:54
Speaker 1: Did you ever get to see Hank Senior at the opera? Because I know he got some try they were like, hey, don't come back around here no more. But did you ever get to see Hank Senior or the operation?

00:14:05
Speaker 3: I did one time?

00:14:06
Speaker 1: And how was that experience.

00:14:10
Speaker 3: A dream?

00:14:11
Speaker 1: Really?

00:14:12
Speaker 2: Because you know, I sang all his songs and had hits with a lot of them, and to meet the guy that wrote him, it's surreal almost.

00:14:23
Speaker 1: And he had to be in his early twenties, right young at that point.

00:14:26
Speaker 3: Very young.

00:14:28
Speaker 1: What about Elvis?

00:14:29
Speaker 2: Oh, Elvis was a trip. I loved Elvis, but he was he was almost like a pretend person because he was so good you couldn't believe he was real. He was sweet, but he was firm, He knew what he wanted.

00:14:50
Speaker 3: Knew what he liked.

00:14:52
Speaker 2: He wouldn't really if he really truly believed in it, don't try to convince him of something else, because that's what he was going to do.

00:15:02
Speaker 1: Did you see him in town much in Nashville.

00:15:04
Speaker 2: Not a whole lot went to his sessions and watched. And that's that's back, gosh, late fifties. That's back when we didn't have all the knobs to turn to make you sound so good.

00:15:22
Speaker 1: See, you had to sound good.

00:15:24
Speaker 2: You either sounded good or you were asked to leave.

00:15:29
Speaker 1: He was really good, really good, pure voice, pure voice.

00:15:33
Speaker 3: No knob turning, no nothing. That was him.

00:15:39
Speaker 1: Who else lived here that you're like you were excited to see or run into it because I had those people when I moved here, did you Yeah? For sure, I moved here and it was you know, for me, it was all the guys like the Chestnuts and all those not late eighties and nineties got oh yeah, and so you know, listen to the radio my whole life growing up and listen to the stay down at Little Rock, Arkansas on Hot Springs are so on. When I moved here that Joe Diffy. I got to spend a lot of time with Joe. Yeah, And I got to know him pretty well before he died. Like we would spend time together because we'd perform. I think before we got to know each other. The best was performing together at the Opry, not not at the same time, but we'd be on the same night multiple times.

00:16:15
Speaker 3: Wow.

00:16:15
Speaker 1: And so you know, how do is it the Opry? Yeah, doors are just open, they are and you just spend time with the people that are there. Yeah. And so for me that was exciting to get to see, like the diffies. Kicks Brooks my first time ever playing the Opry came into the room and was like, this is what we do here. I'm Kicks and I'm like, you're Brooks are done. This is crazy. So I wonder like those those stories for you because I had my version of that. It sounds like you did too, Oh I did.

00:16:42
Speaker 2: It was like I was like the little sister, you know and Dotty West, and.

00:16:48
Speaker 1: We're the youngest by far? Were you the young youngies kid?

00:16:51
Speaker 2: But Dotty West, Tammy Patsy, all the greats. They just took me under their wing and I just loved them.

00:17:01
Speaker 1: When you were twelve and you signed a record deal, how much did you understand what was happening with the business And how much do you think your mom understood with the business.

00:17:10
Speaker 2: My mom was pretty savvy. All I knew was I want to sing and I want to be heard. And if this is my avenue to do it and they'll let me do it, I'm all in.

00:17:30
Speaker 1: Did you ever sign one of those deals that maybe wasn't the best deal and you learned later that what you had signed.

00:17:37
Speaker 2: I had Really I was lucky because I I had people around me, not that many, but I did have people that truly cared and loved me, which wasn't always the case with artists.

00:17:55
Speaker 1: Yeah, it seems like with young artists as well, like, oh yeah, they're pretty vulnerable, they are business, they are personal. But it seems like you have a pretty good experience because you had good people around you.

00:18:08
Speaker 2: Yes, that truly cared about me, that weren't just in it for the book and whatever. They really cared about me. Starting with Red Foley.

00:18:19
Speaker 1: When you would sing I'm sorry with the whole crowd singing back, was that among sometimes that the coolest thing.

00:18:24
Speaker 3: Yeah, that was cool. What was cool.

00:18:30
Speaker 4: To me.

00:18:32
Speaker 2: Was if you started a song and they started it was like, oh lord, this really was a good song because you don't expect it. You know, you want it, but you at least I never did. I never expected it.

00:18:49
Speaker 1: Growing up in a small town in the South and then living in the Midwest to bed in Nashville, that type of person. It's pretty similar. But when you're traveling the continental you know, States, and you're in a Boston, you're in a California and you're going wow, they or you're in Japan and you're going, I can this is so weird They know my songs. Yeah, I mean that had to happen to you pretty young. There are people that you're not like at all that love you and know your music.

00:19:17
Speaker 3: Yeah.

00:19:17
Speaker 1: I had to feel strange but yet amazing.

00:19:20
Speaker 2: It was like surreal. I remember the first time I went to Japan.

00:19:26
Speaker 3: I was.

00:19:28
Speaker 2: Maybe fourteen maybe, and we landed at the airport and all these young kids were standing out there and they had these little hats on and it said b LFC and I thought, oh lord, somebody's coming in because I'm just such I love all.

00:19:50
Speaker 3: That, and I thought so when I got off the.

00:19:56
Speaker 2: Plane, it meant Brenda Lee Fanclub and I was like, oh, because I never dreamed I was known over there.

00:20:03
Speaker 1: How do you think you became so well known in Japan? Specifically?

00:20:08
Speaker 2: Well, I sang in their language, plus I spoke in their language, but I sang in English too, And I went every year to let them know I appreciated their support, and.

00:20:30
Speaker 1: That's they reciprocated it.

00:20:31
Speaker 3: Yeah, big way, in a big way.

00:20:34
Speaker 1: When did you start to learn Japanese?

00:20:37
Speaker 3: M when?

00:20:39
Speaker 2: Let's see, I well, I went over there the first time because I had a big hit in Japan. My first big year was one rainy night in Tokyo so oh, and Bradley, my producer, he said, you know what would be good if you sing half in English and half in Japanese. And that's what I did and it They loved it, and all of a sudden, I'm invited to tour and I went, gosh, I bet I went forty times.

00:21:15
Speaker 1: Wow, yeah, you've been to Japan at least I've been once and I was blown away.

00:21:21
Speaker 3: Isn't it great?

00:21:21
Speaker 1: It's great, It's so great. It's clean. Oh, it's safe. Yes, people are kind. There are no trash cans because there's no litter, and if you have trash, you just keep it until you get to it. It's unbelievable.

00:21:34
Speaker 2: And if you go into a department store or a drug store each store for that matter, and you're lost, they'll take you to where you're supposed to go. They'll say in their language, they'll take your hand. Now, I don't know if they still do that, but that's what they did when I was going every year.

00:21:54
Speaker 1: I also felt like I was seven feet tall and that was awesome.

00:21:56
Speaker 3: Oh yeah, I felt right at home.

00:22:00
Speaker 1: So you put out the Friendaly Greatest Hits. It's digital, people can stream it. It's also on vinyl. Why are the greatest Hits? Why? Now?

00:22:11
Speaker 3: I don't know.

00:22:12
Speaker 2: The label thought it was a good thing to do, and I was proud that they thought enough to do it.

00:22:18
Speaker 1: A couple of things that I would think. One is the song obviously Rocker around the Christmas Tree went number one again, but also I'm Sorry went completely viral. Yeah, TikTok. What is old as new, as old as new, as old as new again? Yeah, and so that song was getting millions and millions of stream Yeah.

00:22:35
Speaker 4: Let's take a quick pause for a message from our sponsor, and we're back on the Bobby Cast.

00:22:49
Speaker 1: The Beatles open for you. I read that. Yeah, must have been you know, it had to be the fifties.

00:22:56
Speaker 3: Right, late fifties, early sixties.

00:22:59
Speaker 1: Yeah, how did that come together? It's your man at your mom or No, it was.

00:23:05
Speaker 3: A big tour. There was Dusty Springfield me.

00:23:10
Speaker 1: The Beatles, what were they at the time, at this time we're talking about specifically, I'm assuming they're very young and.

00:23:18
Speaker 2: Not very young, yeah, and really kind of like, I don't know, not polished, not just raw. But I saw the greatness in them, and you would have too.

00:23:37
Speaker 1: And this is pre ed sulovon.

00:23:39
Speaker 3: Oh yeah. So I go back to New York.

00:23:44
Speaker 2: And I go to my label, which was Decca, which is now mc c A, which I'm still.

00:23:48
Speaker 1: On same contract, And I said.

00:23:55
Speaker 2: I took a picture of them, and they looked like your normal teddy boy would look and I took a little.

00:24:02
Speaker 3: Tape and I'll never forget.

00:24:05
Speaker 2: They walked in rank and file like they do, and it got through playing and it was very quiet, and I thought this could be bad, could be good.

00:24:18
Speaker 3: And I said, okay, what do you think?

00:24:22
Speaker 2: And the president stood up and said, Brenda, we're very proud that you brought this in, but this look will never happen and this sound won't either either. Next year they were playing the ballpark stadium, filling.

00:24:43
Speaker 1: It up like stadium wow. And when you saw them the first time, was Ringo with them or was it still pea best.

00:24:51
Speaker 2: Pete was with them, but then Ringo came right along, so I've I've worked with them.

00:24:57
Speaker 1: You've been there through all of it. Yeah, that's exciting. Do you ever listen back to any year old music, like every once in a while, put something on you haven't thought about in a long time.

00:25:05
Speaker 3: I do.

00:25:06
Speaker 2: I listened back to like when I started at ten, and I sound like Mickey Mouse on steroids, And I thought, oh my lord, but I was ten.

00:25:20
Speaker 1: What would you tell that kid?

00:25:21
Speaker 2: Now, I would tell them, if that's what you want to do, you don't give up. People might give up on you, but don't you give up on you.

00:25:32
Speaker 1: And you would tell that to yourself as well. That's the advice you'd give to yourself.

00:25:36
Speaker 2: Because and I didn't know if I was good or not. I just knew I loved it and that's what I wanted to do.

00:25:44
Speaker 1: So were you able to be a support for any other artists like Patsy and you know you listed all those wonderful women in the history of country music?

00:25:55
Speaker 3: Yeah?

00:25:55
Speaker 1: Be able to do that with any artists?

00:25:57
Speaker 2: Yeah?

00:25:57
Speaker 1: Kind of repay that?

00:25:59
Speaker 3: Yeah? And it was fun.

00:26:03
Speaker 2: And I don't know how to put this, but today, with all the mechanical stuff they have to use.

00:26:17
Speaker 3: You don't know if they're singing or not.

00:26:19
Speaker 1: You're absolutely right.

00:26:20
Speaker 2: Even I don't, and I can usually tell. So if somebody asked me an opinion on somebody new, I just have to say, I don't know.

00:26:31
Speaker 1: There's We're lucky that we can take live performances off of like somebody's phone or YouTube, because there'll be people that want to come up and do my show and perform and we've not checked if they can. We've just listened to the like that the studio version they come in and then maybe they're not as good. So what we do now is we'll do like super research and try to go find some like natural yeah, just to hear if they can really sing, because when you get in the studio, obviously, like you said, you can make anybody sound pretty good. You can't write a good song make them sound pretty good. There you go, Hey, that's how it's does what I need to wish they do that to me make me sound good. When you listen back to the songs from like the fifties sixties, can you kind of hear the person you were like? If you hear a song, for example, losing you early sixties. Little. You're not old by any means, but you're a little older.

00:27:23
Speaker 3: Yeah, I'm a little older.

00:27:24
Speaker 1: Can you kind of hear that song and put yourself back to where you work?

00:27:27
Speaker 2: I can, because as a teenager in those years, I wasn't allowed to date and or anything like that. So all I had was my music, and that was my heart beat, and I don't I never had the thought, oh, I'm doing this because I'm going to be a big success. I was doing it because I loved it and it was my company. It was something that I could always turn to that I knew would be there and it wouldn't change, and that's why.

00:28:16
Speaker 3: I loved it.

00:28:17
Speaker 1: What's your favorite song you've ever recorded? Oh?

00:28:19
Speaker 3: Gosh.

00:28:21
Speaker 2: Owen Bradley was such a genius, and I had such wonderful songwriters.

00:28:28
Speaker 3: I mean, they're.

00:28:29
Speaker 2: Writing great songs today too, don't get me wrong, but they're not writing great ballads. And you know, when you and I had a lot of foreign ballads like I Want to Be Wanted and Losing You and those kind of songs were overseas songs.

00:28:49
Speaker 3: So I it was the a team of musicians.

00:28:54
Speaker 2: It was Owen, it was Selby, Kaffeen, the engineer, it was the Anita Kerr singers, it was Britain Banks and its strings. It was a family, which doesn't happen today, And that's why I stopped.

00:29:12
Speaker 1: Recording, because it felt more like a business or a machine in a family.

00:29:17
Speaker 2: Yeah, I mean, if you can't. I've been in the studio and I'm just thinking it's going great and I'm singing good and all, and one of the musicians may say, hey, everybody stop because they heard a clunker that I didn't hear. And that's how it was back then. If you did that today, you wouldn't be working that session anymore.

00:29:47
Speaker 3: But it was.

00:29:49
Speaker 2: A cohesive thing between everybody. Everybody wanted to be good, wanted it to be good. And I think that's the difference in today and.

00:30:02
Speaker 3: Sixties.

00:30:04
Speaker 1: Today, maybe mercenaries have brought in just to go and do the job and get out, get to the next session. More than you got it invest themselves into the arts.

00:30:15
Speaker 3: Yeah, that's true.

00:30:18
Speaker 1: You still like music, You're still like just listening to music. I love being Do you get to like just pick whatever you want to listen to? What do you pick now?

00:30:25
Speaker 2: Oh?

00:30:25
Speaker 4: Lord?

00:30:27
Speaker 2: Well, my scope of musicians is is a.

00:30:30
Speaker 3: Little bit weird.

00:30:33
Speaker 2: I like everybody from Ozzie to the Frank Sinaultra.

00:30:37
Speaker 3: You knows.

00:30:38
Speaker 2: I'm all out there because I hear different things with different people, and I try to figure out two, Okay, why was that a hit?

00:30:48
Speaker 3: Why was that a success?

00:30:51
Speaker 2: And of course it all boils back to y'all too. Artists can't do anything unless you play it. I mean they can, but it's probably going to lay on a table or lay somewhere. So it's to me, we're all family. We're all like, I want you to do good, you want me to do good. It behooves you, it behooves me, and it's not thought of that way today in the industry, and it saddens me.

00:31:25
Speaker 1: I have two final questions. Not your song, but what's your favorite song of all time? If you had to pick a favorite song, it can't be.

00:31:33
Speaker 3: That's too hard.

00:31:34
Speaker 1: It's too hard. You can give me a couple and I'll vamp for you, meaning I'll give you a couple of mind way you thinking about yours? Blue Eyes Crying in the Rain is one of my favorites.

00:31:42
Speaker 3: Oh that's a great song.

00:31:44
Speaker 1: It's perpant so and I love ballads. I'm big Valley. I am too because the baperience, Yeah, I feel like I can really experience them.

00:31:53
Speaker 3: But I'm one of those girls too.

00:31:56
Speaker 2: When I was in France, of course I didn't speak French when I'm went over.

00:32:01
Speaker 3: But I heard this song and it was love.

00:32:06
Speaker 2: Be loveabouho said, this was I, you know, And I thought, I don't really like that. And I'd go up and down the sidewalk singing that song. And finally somebody tapped me on the shoulder because I'm like thirteen.

00:32:21
Speaker 3: And they said, don't sing that, and I said, why I like it? They said, you're singing about a toilet.

00:32:31
Speaker 1: What was this?

00:32:32
Speaker 3: Oh song?

00:32:34
Speaker 1: What was this that? Do you even know what the toy?

00:32:36
Speaker 2: I don't know, but they said, you're singing about the toilet on the corner.

00:32:41
Speaker 3: I said, oh, well.

00:32:42
Speaker 1: The melody must have been good.

00:32:44
Speaker 3: Yeah it was. I loved it.

00:32:46
Speaker 1: Okay, last favorite song of all time? What is it? That's not yours?

00:32:49
Speaker 3: You, that's not mine?

00:32:51
Speaker 1: Not yours?

00:32:52
Speaker 3: Oh Lord, that's due now.

00:32:54
Speaker 1: It's really hard. You don't have to commit to it. You can just say one now.

00:33:00
Speaker 3: Okay, Oh gosh over the rainbow.

00:33:05
Speaker 1: Judy Garland.

00:33:08
Speaker 3: Yeah, would I finally got to meet her.

00:33:11
Speaker 1: How old were you?

00:33:13
Speaker 3: Thirteen?

00:33:14
Speaker 1: And what was the experience? Give me walk me through it.

00:33:16
Speaker 2: I followed her to the Sahara Hotel in Las Vegas.

00:33:20
Speaker 1: What do you mean you followed her?

00:33:21
Speaker 3: I mean I was next to perform.

00:33:24
Speaker 2: She was laying out by the pool, and I thought, okay, this is my chance.

00:33:31
Speaker 1: How old was she at the time, Judy.

00:33:33
Speaker 2: Was probably early late twenties, early thirties. I thought, if I don't go now, I'll probably never see her again in my life.

00:33:43
Speaker 3: So I just brazenly walk.

00:33:44
Speaker 2: Up and I said, miss Garland, my name is Brenda Lee, and I am a huge, huge fan. You cannot believe how you have influenced what I do. If you had one piece of advice to give me, what would that be? And she didn't skip a beat, and she said, don't let them take away your.

00:34:15
Speaker 1: Childhood, probably because a lot of hers was, yeah, taken away.

00:34:21
Speaker 2: Yeah, so that's a memory I'll never forget.

00:34:26
Speaker 1: It's really kind of her to not just brush you off and actually give you give.

00:34:31
Speaker 3: Me a kernel of wonderful advice.

00:34:35
Speaker 1: Brenday's greatest tits it's you can stream it. You get the vinyl, the vinyl is always really cool to have. It has I'm sorry it has sweet nothings. It has I want to be wanted. Eleven of the tracks on the album we're in the top ten of the Billboard Hot one hundred. You are a joy to be Thank you my friend and I Brett who lives over he's an artist too, he says Brett Aldritch. She sings Christmas song Okay, making sure we would always see a drive around and we would be like we.

00:35:03
Speaker 3: Just saw Brin run all.

00:35:04
Speaker 1: That was kind of our way of like checking in each other. Can we just driving around so we' always see a driving around.

00:35:09
Speaker 3: I love that. Tell m A, I definitely will now you know I'm southern.

00:35:14
Speaker 1: Hey, that's right. Thank you so much. Congratulations on all your very recent success too, well, thank you. It's really it's it's really amazing rushing to see that you went viral again and you had a number one song. Yeah, and that is that's who knew, who knew.

00:35:32
Speaker 3: After all these years after.

00:35:33
Speaker 2: That, that's what you That's what gets you in this business because you don't know what's coming. That's true, and it's the it's it's the wanting to know that just keeps you there.

00:35:43
Speaker 1: Yeah, I'm a big fan. Thank you so much.

00:35:46
Speaker 3: Thank you.

00:35:46
Speaker 1: Love this thirty forty minutes we've just been together.

00:35:49
Speaker 3: Thank you, and I love it too. Thank you.

00:35:52
Speaker 4: Thanks for listening to a Bobby Cast production