She Was Taller Than I Thought!

Me and Brenda Lee started out at about the same time. I don’t remember the first time I heard her sing “Jambalaya” but it put a little jump in my life. I was only seven or eight at the time and just beginning to take notice of a world outside the back bedroom. The song was jaunty and cheerful and that voice bounced through each note…… Leon swore she was just twelve years old. But I wasn’t buying that; you know how big brothers exaggerate…..

Still, I fell in love with her. It was impossible not to. Her voice “looked better” than any girl in our fifth grade Blue Bird reading class! Anybody that could sing like that had to be beautiful, up-beat and happy every minute. Now, as a real cool cat just approaching my teenage years, that was exactly what I was looking for.

Shucks, she might have even known Carl Perkins!

We were out at Frank’s Dairy Bar the Christmas Bonnie Clayton told me that she wouldn’t go out with me if I was the last person on earth. “Rockin’ Around the Christmas Tree” was blasting out of that old jukebox as I stood there rather sheepishly in front of Bonnie, wishing the floor could somehow open up and suck me under. I got to pattin’ my foot. Brenda was belting out “Let’s be jolly; Deck the halls with boughs of holly…..” I smiled. Bonnie wasn’t the end of the world. Her eyes were a little too close together. And her pony tail was never exactly centered right. “Everyone’s dancing merrily, In a new old fashioned way…..” I went home that night singing along with “Little Miss Dynamite”. I bet you Brenda didn’t wear a pony tail. And she attacked that song the way folks were suppose to celebrate Christmas……and life!

Leon was several years older than me. And he got to have all the fun. In the fall of 1960 he went to a Brenda Lee concert up in Kentucky. He came back raving about how she could sing, how good she looked, how friendly she was, how he kept asking her to dance…… Sometimes those older brothers blurred that line between exaggeration and down right lying!

Meanwhile I’m wrestling with the growing up wars. Charlotte Melton informed me that I rode horses better than I kissed so she was moving on. I borrowed Leon’s 45 RPM record player and retreated to the bedroom. I listened six hundred times to Brenda’s “Emotions” and fell asleep to “You’ve got me crying, crying again; When will you let this heartache end…..” Life doesn’t rock all the time. 

The girls in McKenzie made it pretty plain that they were not interested in a short guy with a ton of zits. I drove over to Paris and introduced myself to Peggy Roblyer, May Cheek and Theresa Wall. I thought my baseball playing and my quick wit would set’em on fire. They put me down as “Fool # 1” and “Johnny One Time” and rolled me over for Bobby Winchester and Sput Garnet. 

I thought about calling Brenda and telling her life wasn’t exactly working out for me. And how did she make it look so easy…….

Mary Hadley Hayden bumped into me at John Motheral’s Drugstore. I was there for a can of Royal Crown Hair Dressing and she was on an errand for her mother. I bought her a cherry coke and we sat for a while. The coke lasted two years. She was beautiful in her off beat way and she didn’t seem to notice my zits. We played golf and chased cows, wrote silly notes to each other and walked to town with the car keys in my pocket. She liked the St. Louis Cardinals and she would laugh out loud if it was really funny. I shared my hopes and dreams and feelings with her.

It didn’t work out. It wasn’t meant to be. Brenda Lee sang “I’m Sorry” just for us.

It took a few years but I found the right girl. I just didn’t realize that when I married Cathy I got the whole family! One of the “family” was a great aunt’s daughter everyone called Little Jane…. She didn’t actually look that little to me but that is a whole ’nother story.

Little Jane moved to Nashville and life got really busy. Somewhere between working and raising children and football games Jane called. “Kes, Brenda Lee lives across the street. Didn’t you have a crush on her? Come up here and I will introduce you.”

Yeah right, and Leon used to play golf with Faron Young and I once told Loretta Lynn that I loved her…..

“No seriously, I want you to meet her. She is really a great person.”

I didn’t rush right up there. Little Jane came from Jo-Jo’s side of the family.

Jane persisted. I went this past Thanksgiving. I walked into the kitchen and, if I’m lying, I’m dying, Brenda Lee stretched out both hands to greet me!

What was the line from the old Marty Robbins’s song, “Many thoughts raced through my mind as I stood there….” I’ve been in love with this lady since 1957. I couldn’t tell her that! She helped me over the Charlotte Melton debacle. She probably wasn’t interested in that. I didn’t have time to tell her about those Paris girls and Mary Hadley wasn’t any of her business. I wondered if she’d care to know how much I liked her rendition of “I Still Miss Someone” or how much I enjoyed “Big Four Poster Bed”.

Her smile was as wide as Texas and the warmth fairly leaped off of her. Genuine people give themselves away in a heartbeat. “Brenda,” I stammered, “Do you remember a peroxide blond guy asking you to dance with him at a concert you did at Murray State University in the fall of 1960? That was my brother, Leon……”

Respectfully,

Kes