A Phone Call with Larry Gatlin
by Terrell Lester
Larry Gatlin was on the other end of the telephone line.
The voice and the energy and the enthusiasm that had come together in one wondrous package and had vaulted him to stardom in the 1970s were still there.
But there was more, much more, in the Larry Gatlin package the other day when he called from his home in Austin, Texas.
The Larry Gatlin on the line was friendly and funny, sincere and courteous, downright down-to-earth.
Absent were the notorious levels of arrogance and insolence that had become synonymous with the name Larry Gatlin in the early 1980s when drugs and alcohol threatened to destroy a career, and a man.
One month short of his 51st birthday, Larry was relaxed and laughing, exuberant as a child as he talked about his climb back up the entertainment mountain.
Will Rogers, he said, proved to be the moral compass that had pointed him in the right direction.
Five years after he starred as Claremore's favorite son in The Will Rogers Follies on Broadway and in the national touring company, Larry has plans to take another turn as Will Rogers, this time in a new, one-man show.
Larry said that he will visit Claremore and the Will Rogers Memorial May 3-4 for a little submersion and research, and "hope that the ghost of Will Rogers engulfs us and tells us what to do."
It was Mac Pirkle, a Nashville producer-writer-director, who approached Larry last year with the idea of a one-man show.
"I told Mac that I think we could take a lot of the wonderful things that this gentleman said so many years ago and not update the material, but just bring it up to right now," Larry said.
"His most famous saying is my guideline. He said, 'I've poked fun at every famous man of my time, but I never met a man I didn't like.' So, I think what he would do if were alive today, he would take on Bill Clinton, he would take on Newt Gingrich. I think he would be poking fun at the whole political spectrum, at religion, at TV preachers.
"I think he would be fair about it, and I think he would be self-deprecating to the extent that he would pick on himself a little bit, too.
"So, we're going to visit with [former Will Rogers Memorial director] Joe Carter, who I regard as the world's leading authority on Will Rogers, and look at the old films, and see if we can put together some kind of show that would be pertinent today, and it would be funny and it would be entertaining."
Larry, who earned a football scholarship to attend the University of Houston when he left his home in Seminole, Texas, reached the musical pinnacle with his 1970s recording of "All the Gold in California."
With brothers Rudy and Steve, the Gatlin Brothers trio won Grammy Awards, sold millions of records and played the most prestigious venues. Their recordings were on the charts, and they were on top.
But Larry's well-documented battles with drugs and alcohol knocked him off that perch. He recounted those dark days, and the good days, in his biography, All the Gold in California: The Man, His Music, and the Faith That Saved His Life.
"I wasn't the nice young man that my mom and dad raised out in West Texas," he was saying the other day.
"I got off track. There was a point in time that I was just not a very nice guy."
He offered an anecdote to illustrate that point.
A publishing house in Nashville where he wrote many songs had a blackboard where many notes and ideas and messages were scribbled in chalk.
One day, these words appeared: "Will Rogers never met Larry Gatlin."
It was a body blow to the cocky young singer who really thought that all the gold in California carried his personal imprint. Instead, it was more like fool's gold.
However, rather than unleashing his infamous ill temper, Larry began to tighten his own reins.
With the help of friends and family, and his God, Larry slowly but steadily pulled himself out of what he refers to as "the pit."
"I got clean and sober from drugs and alcohol almost fifteen years ago," he said. "I began a process and a program of trying to re-discover that little boy who was raised out in West Texas, whose mom and day taught him right from wrong, and whose grandparents taught him right from wrong, and whose grandmother, by the way, was half Cherokee Indian from Oklahoma.
"I made a vow about ten years ago to try to become the nicest person anybody has ever met. That's the goal to which I aspire. Playing Will Rogers helps me along that path. I guarantee it. Playing Will Rogers cleared my way back to realizing that old self that I want to be.
"I believe in my heart that I am a better person from having played that role. I know that I am."
Seven months on Broadway, followed by a two-month tour on the road with the Follies, Larry said, "was a wonderful time. I enjoyed it so much."
"When it cancelled, it was one of the really dark days of my life. I just enjoyed doing it so much I wanted to stay there and do it for another five years."
Calling Will Rogers "one of the great communicators of all time," Larry said that he "would have been huge on TV."
"He would have had a weekly television show, like Ed Sullivan, or the Ted Mack Hour, or whatever. He might have been the Johnny Carson of the thirties, forties and fifties.
"I guarantee you, he would be on my top ten list of people that I'd like to have at a dinner party."
These days, Will Rogers, surely, would be happy to meet this new and improved Larry Gatlin.