Shareware Overload/ShartewareOverload.cdr/wp/readplus.zip/MAGAZINE.TXT

Text File | 1989-01-25 | 10KB | 170 lines

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Family Ties, Laura Fissinger
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     Naomi's the mother, Wynonna's the daughter. Mother is
beautiful, daughter is handsome. Naomi, christened Diana, chose
her new name from the Bible. Wynonna, christened Christina, chose
her new name from a rock tune called "Route 66." Naomi sings
harmony and countermelodies, Wynonna takes the lead. Naomi, 41,
is orderly, pragmatic, iron willed, funny and prone to spats.
Wynonna, 23 is messy, daydreamy, iron willed, funny and prone to
spats. Both women live with emotions naked enough to startle
unsuspecting new acquaintances. Tomorrow is their debut at New
York's tony Lincoln Center, so today part of what's naked is
nervousness. When Naomi gets nervous she reverts to a tradition
of her rural Kentucky roots. She speaks her mind before her mind
has a chance to censor itself.
     "I'm known for my candor," Naomi says, smiling. "We wear our
hearts on our sleeves, and I've said our interviews are governed
by our hormones -"
     "I do not wear my heart on my sleeve," says Wynonna, who
gets serious when nervous. "Speak for yourself."
     "Oceans of emotion over here." Naomi winks and nods toward
Wynonna. "I remember the time this guy started out an interview
by saying, 'So where'd y'all meet:' and I said, 'We met at the
wrestling matches. We were sitting on either side of a little old
lady who kept screaming, "Awww, squeeze their brains out!" ' "
     Wynonna wants to talk business. (Naomi gets a lot of memos
about her candor.)"It's very hard, in a world that's so big
sometimes, for you to feel there's a place for you in it," says
the elder Judd. "I'm starting to feel that country music, even at
the Grammys is becoming bigger and brighter than ever. They're
giving slots to country performers right next to, like, Billy
Idol. To me, that says country music is coming out of the
closet."
     As for the Judds, they're pushing themselves out. Their
third LP, Heartland, takes on a jazz song (Ella Fitzgerald's "Cow
Cow Boogie"), a pot cut cowritten by a favorite Tina Turner
writer Graham Lyle ("Maybe Your Baby's Got the Blues"), a
timeless mountain hymn ("The Sweetest Gift") and Elvis Presley's
"Don't Be Cruel." "Brent [Maher, the Judds' producer] said, 'I
think you girls can get away with this,' " says Wynonna of the
Elvis cover. Maher also arranged for the Jordanaires to sing
background parts, as they did for Elvis. Naomi glances up from
painting her fingernails snow white. "We're Elvis's biggest fans
in the universe," she says. "Anyway, Gordon from the Jordanaires,
he and Wy were talking, and he interrupted and said, 'You know
what just occurred to me, getting to know you two? If Elvis were
still alive the three of you would be fast friends.' I said, 'Oh,
noooo, don't say that!'"
     Wynonna studies her mother's suddenly serious face. "It
would have been great. We could have gone bowling." The two of
them lean against each other and laugh.

     Elvis acquitted himself nicely as a country and rock
crooner; it's when he went pop that he went wrong. When Nashville
went pop in the seventies, country music went wrong. Ironically,
county music is crossing over more now that so many of its young
stars are new traditionalists, like Dwight Yoakam, Steve Earle,
Rosanne Cash, the O'Kanes - and the Judds. In the three years of
professional music making, Wynonna and Naomi have passed by many
of their more experienced peers: two platinum LPs (Why Not Me and
Rockin' with the Rhythm), eight Number One country singles, three
Grammys and umpteen country-music awards. Their records have
started to do some serious charting in Europe. And they're set to
star in an NBC-TV sitcom pilot loosely based on the Judds' own
small-town-girls-meet-big-changes saga (working title: Why Not
Me), to be aired in the fall. Wynonna's younger sister, Ashley,
18, is also a cast member. "Ashley's the number-one reason [for
doing the pilot] in a lot of ways," says Naomi, who's been known
to get tears in her eyes when contemplating all the time she and
Ashley have been apart in the last three years. Finally, they can
have her with them.
     If the pilot becomes a series, the Judds will probably scoop
up new fans for Judd music - not that their demographics could
get any more diverse. The duo's acoustic-based coalescence of
Patsy Cline country, early rock, Forties jazz, bluegrass and folk
pulls admirers from all factions. Wynonna's longtime idol Bonnie
Raitt is now a fan and friend. Sammy Davis Jr. brought his
instamatic to one of the Reno shows. In a Fargo, North Dakota,
hotel, the heavy-metal group Ratt shouted out Judd song titles
every time they spotted a Judd in the hallway. Merle Haggard has
told Wynonna that she's his favorite female singer, that every
line she sings "is like a confession." Steve Winwood and Anita
Baker confessed fanhood backstage at this year's Grammys. Robert
Palmer has sent Naomi a flower ("He's dangerously suave," she
says). Judge William H. Webster, the new director of the CIA,
comes to their shows with his Secret Service men and has asked
the Judds to dinner. The duo recently played a gig with James
Brown, who recited a list of TV shows he'd seen them on. And
something of a mutual-admiration society had developed between U2
and the Judds, and the two groups are planning to meet.
     Naomi looks up from her nails as Elvis, Wynonna's dachshund,
scuttles across the plush carpeting of the Manhattan hotel
penthouse. Her expression is pure rascal. "But is Keokuk, Iowa,
going to understand?"

     One of the Judds' biggest hits to date is a requiem to the
world's lost innocence called "Grandpa (Tell Me 'bout the Good
Old Days)." Naomi's paternal grandfather was the illegitimate
farmer son of a Kentucky circuit doctor; he died while reading
his Bible. Her maternal grandfather "excused himself from the
dinner table when Mama was twelve, walked in the back and blew
his brains out. Every generation on my mother's side has a
suicide....But I lived a Walton-type existence."
     "I don't see your world as being Walton at all, Mom,"
Wynonna says.
     Little brother Brian was Naomi's best pal. One day when the
family was coming in from swimming, somebody noticed a lump on
Brian's shoulder. They wrote it off to the heavy bag he lugged
around on his paper route. It turned out to be cancer.
     Glen and Polly Judd spent a couple of years taking Brian
around to specialists, looking for a commutation of the death
sentence. Naomi went from being an honor student and Sunday-
school teacher to being the pinch-hitting head of the household.
     Following Brian's death, the family splintered. No one
talked about Brian. Glen Judd became an alcoholic and left his
wife for a woman in her early thirties. Naomi impulsively married
a longtime suitor and became pregnant right away. Wynonna was
born during Naomi's high-school-graduation week. The family moved
to Los Angeles. Naomi doesn't talk about what soured the
marriage. Wynonna was eight and Ashley four when the divorce
became final.
     For a while, Naomi did secretarial and modeling jobs to
support the family. The poverty was a grind, but the lack of
Kentucky values in Hollyweird bothered Naomi even more. She
relocated them to a mountaintop house in Morrill, Kentucky, with
no phone and no electricity. A cheap plastic guitar given by a
friend was co-opted by Wynonna. At first, making music was just
something to do. When it became virtually all she wanted to do.
     "I left Morrill the night before I was supposed to testify
against my father in their divorce trial," Naomi says. "Mom
needed all of us kids to take sides with her against Daddy,
because the kids were the only investment she'd made in her
life."
     Another mother-daughter war escalated in California. Ashley
was even-tempered, easygoing; Naomi and Wynonna were not, and
they fought with gloves off. Some days their only communication
was singing together while Wy played the guitar. A nursing degree
in hand, Naomi moved the gang again, this time to an exurb of
Nashville called Franklin. Wynonna wouldn't help around the
house, her grades were iffy, her attitude lousy. Music was the
only thing she gave herself to. Naomi figured a shot at a music
     career might help her grow up.
     The first few years in Franklin weren't much easier than the
ones that preceded them. Naomi and her mother were still on the
outs; she and her musician boyfriend Larry Strickland (who used
to sing with Presley) broke up and reunited on a too-regular
basis. Money was in extremely short supply. At one of the lowest
points, Naomi contemplated killing herself. But she didn't.
":Because I had kids," she says. "Because until my dying breath
I"m going to be around to aggravate them." Naomi's grin is
rueful.
     Wynonna thought about ending it all after a fight so serious
that her mother had said, "Don't even bother coming
home....You're no longer my daughter." For two months Wy lived
with her father in Florida. Larry brought Wynonna her things when
his band was in the area. "Larry said, 'Your mother loves you.
You guys are meant to be.'...I knew if I went home, it would be
on her terms." Soon after, Wynonna drank a little and went
driving and looking for an accident to get into. Her speed kept
increasing. "I was driving real fast....I literally came this
close to doing it. And I didn't....I put on the brakes real fast
and did a 360 spin."
     Back in Franklin, an uneasy peace was maintained as Naomi
took their homemade demo tapes around to Nashville producers.
Brent Maher's daughter was one of Naomi's nursing patients. When
the girl was released from the hospital, Naomi gave a tape to
Maher.