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Carl enjoys a fall day in the
mountains of East Tennessee. In addition to
re-exploring his own rockabilly and gospel roots, he
plans tributes to musicians who were influential in
his early years. |
Carl Mann is back after a long drought spelled by a decade
of fame with the resurgence of rockabilly music in Europe
during the mid-70s. For the past 15 years, after a bout with
throat cancer in 1990, the Southern gentleman has
concentrated mostly on instrumental, Christian music.
"I couldn't sing for a long time," says Carl, who endured 37
radiation treatments in his successful battle against
cancer. "I believe it's just by the grace of God that I'm
able to-- he took care of me, then healed my throat to where
I could sing again."
In his new gospel CD, Carl Mann Legacy, he celebrates his
reconditioned voice with 11 songs of praise and worship,
including a rollicking tribute to his savior entitled,
"Jesus, Jesus", an adaptation of his million-selling, 1959
single "Mona Lisa".
His mother would be proud.
"I think she kind of wished she hadn't showed me those three
chords," says Carl of the start his God-fearing mother gave
him when she taught him the rudiments of guitar-picking when
he was ten years old. He learned to play piano when he was
13.
By that time, however, the backwoods boy had already made
his mark as a singer, getting his start in church at the age
of nine. It was the days when radio reigned supreme and music
was the mainstay of every gathering, from families winding
down the day on front porches to community-wide singings
held in parks and churches. His earliest influences were
Lefty Frizzell, Hank Williams, and just about everyone who
sang on the Grand Ole Opry.
Carl was born near Huntingdon on August 22, 1942, the middle
of five children born to Iva (Smothers) and Tommy Mann, who
owned a lumber business. The family has dwindled to three
since his mother's death in 1989, followed by his father in
2000, when he was almost 94 years old. Also gone is his
oldest sister, Allie Mae Lifesy, and older brother, Lendell.
His youngest sister, Jean Gulledge, and husband Nathan, live
in Huntingdon, and his oldest brother is Thomas Harold Mann
of Hollow Rock.
Having an older brother who could haul him around was a help
to the ambitious young singer. The mode of transportation
wasn't important. Carl recalls when Tom (or Harold, as Carl
prefers to call him) would drive a flat bed truck to church.
When services were over, Harold and his buddy would ask
ten-year-old Carl to come across the street and sing Lefty
Frizzell songs from the bed of the truck.
He soon began singing on Jackson radio station WDXI's
amateur hour every Saturday morning.
"It was for kids from ten to 16; they had a professional
band to back them up in a theater like a small Opry," Carl
says.
Harold, who played guitar, would take him other places to
sing, including CJ's in Huntingdon, that had a little dance
floor with a juke box.
"It wasn't a night club," Carl says, though he notes most of
the guys he was running with were older than he. He grins,
recalling, "A lot of times there'd be four of us in a pickup
going to the radio station."
Later on, he formed a band that played at radio stations on
Saturdays. First known as the West Tennessee Ramblers and
later as Carl Mann and the Kool Kats, the band started
playing at a Lexington radio station when Carl was 11 years
old.
"We had a 30 minute program," he says. "In those days there
was quite a bit of that; little bands playing on local
stations."
Soon the band added a regular program on WHDM in McKenzie
and then WJPJ in Milan.
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The above photo was on picture post
cards welcoming new members into the National Carl
Mann Fan Club.
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"At one time we did all three programs at once," says Carl.
"We'd tape one show on Thursday and do the other two on
Saturday."
It was DJ Bill Haney in Milan who arranged an audition for
Carl with Jaxon Records' Jimmy Martin, who agreed to record
Carl using his own studio musicians, including himself,
Eddie Bush, and Junior Vestal. Carl was 14 in 1957 when his
first record was released: two rockabilly tunes entitled "Gonna
Rock and Roll Tonight" and "Rockin' Love".
"That was the first time I met Eddie Bush," Carl says,
concerning the beginnings of his partnership with the
flighty musician whose unique style was offset by a tendency
to ramble.
"By the way, the first highlight of my career was when, the
day we were recording, Carl Perkins walked in the studio,"
says Mann. "He'd already had blue suede shoes out and he
pulled up in a big Lincoln Continental and came in there
with those blue suede shoes on... It was really thrilling to
meet Carl."
Eddie, who was originally from Brown, Texas, was in Jackson
visiting Army buddy and fellow musician Ramsey Kearney, and
wound up working for Jimmy in his concrete business in the
daytime, while playing music on nights and weekends.
It was Eddie's idea to ask Carl to join their band.
"I hated to disband; we'd been together a pretty good
while," says Carl, who finally agreed to split bands and
form an all-new band. He brought Robert Oatsvall with him
into the arrangement.
"We started playing clubs and Eddie and I became real
close," says Carl. As the two worked together on style, Carl
says, "Eddie had a very unique style himself and I sort of
patterned some of the variations of my voice to the melody
he would play on the guitar... We got so close, we could
just look at each other and pretty well tell what the other
was going to do next."
When Oatsvall moved to Memphis to work for Hart’s Bakery, he
came in one week to report Elvis, with Bill Black and Scotty
Moore, was going to be at Overton Park.
"That was real early in Elvis' career, I think before 'Hound
Dog'," Carl relates. So desperate was he to go to Memphis
that he talked his parents into asking a Pentecostal
preacher, who was holding a revival in Memphis, to let Carl
ride along.
"So he dropped me off, and (seeing Elvis) was the next most
exciting thing to happen in my career," says Carl.
Carl and Eddie broke away from Martin and took another
drummer, Tony Moore.
"Me and Eddie were ready to go further," Carl explains.
"Jimmy had a business and didn't want to go too far out of
town. We started playing clubs, and played a few nicer
clubs."
One of their regular gigs was at the Triple Club in Puryear,
near the Tennessee/Kentucky line, where the audience was
mostly students from the college in nearby Murray, Kentucky.
"Lots of kids came across the line to the club and they
wanted some up-tempo music they could dance to," says Carl.
"So I'd started doing a lot of Elvis songs like "That's
Alright", "Blue Moon of Kentucky", and "Baby Let's Play
House".
When Eddie was in the Army, stationed in Hawaii, Carl
continues, he had been in a band that frequently performed
the old Nat King Cole song, "Mona Lisa".
"He got me to singing it," says Carl. During practice, Eddie
had kicked around the idea of a jumped up version of the
originally mellow tune.
One evening at the Triple Club, the band began performing
the slow version of the song.
"We started off slow, but they wanted to dance," Carl
recalls. "We just stopped and all at once just started fast.
When we did that, that very night we had seven or eight
requests to do it again. I told Eddie I believed that was
the song we needed to play; I thought it was a hit, if we
could get it on a major label."
They produced a demo tape at Jimmy's studio and headed to
Nashville in an old '50 Dodge.
"We parked in a tow-away zone; we thought we'd be right
back," Carl grins.
The two were looking for Faron Young, who was rumored to
have helped a lot of musicians get started. Although they
waited a good long while, they were never able to make
contact with Young. And as one might imagine, when they
returned for their car, it was gone.
"We called around and found the car," Carl relates. "We had
$12 and it cost ten to get it back."
The pair went to Tootsie's Lounge, next door to the Ryman
Auditorium, where they split a bowl of chili.
"We put a lot of ketchup in it," Carl says. They spent the
night in the car, parked near the capitol building where
there was less noise and traffic.
"We never did see Faron, so we left and ran out of gas on
Highway 70," Carl continues, noting I-40 had not yet been
constructed. Later on, he suggested looking under the seats
for change, a chore that netted 60 cents.
"We stopped at a grocery store and got cheese and crackers
and maybe a piece of bologna and a drink," says Carl. They
made it as far as Camden when they ran out of gas at the
Dairy Bar. With his dad and brother both working, they
waiting from early afternoon until 6 p.m. for help to
arrive. Then, Carl says, "I talked my mom into $20 more and
we just kept on going to Memphis. We was sitting at the Sun
studio, sleeping in the car, when they opened the doors the
next morning."
They left the tape with Jack Clement, an engineer at the Sun
studio, who promised they would be hearing from them.
"We never heard more, so we made another tape and went back
again a few weeks later," says Carl. "We got in and got him
to play it and he said, 'It sounds pretty good, work on it a
little bit and come back.'"
Meanwhile, Carl met drummer W.S. "Fluke" Holland while
playing at the Cotton Bowl one evening where W.S. and his
wife, Joyce, were with another couple.
W.S. was able to arrange an audition for Carl at Sun with
owner Sam Phillips. After doing three takes on "Mona Lisa",
with W.S. as drummer, Eddie playing guitar, and Carl doing
vocals and playing the piano, the band recorded "Foolish
One" for the flip side, a song Carl and Eddie had written
together.
"That day when we did 'Mona Lisa' Conway (Twitty) walked in
with a blonde-headed girl; her parents ran the old Carroll
Hotel," Carl says. "He'd heard 'Mona Lisa' so he came over
and shook my hand and said, "I think you've got a hit song;
you've got a hit."
"He'd already had out several hits," he continues. "The
first one I remember was 'Only Make Believe'. So Jack said,
'I'll play this for Sam and see what he thinks and get back
with you.' About three weeks later, I still hadn't heard
from them or signed a contract."
In the meantime, W.S. was playing with Carl Perkins in
Canada. He ran into another performer, Ronnie Hawkins, who
was a friend of Conway Twitty.
"Guess what his next recording is going to be?" Hawkins
asked W.S. "You'll never guess--it's that old Nat King Cole
song, 'Mona Lisa'."
Immediately, W.S. got on the phone with Mann, who called Sam
Phillips. The question at Sun Studios, Carl says, was, "How
soon can you get here to sign?"
"I went down and signed the contract and he said he would
get it out as soon as possible," Carl continues. "I always
look on the good side of it: If Conway hadn't recorded it, I
might never have got on Sun because Sam thought it was O.K.
but he didn't really think it was a hit."
The song had begun to die down in West Tennessee when Carl
received a phone call from Sun promoter Barbara Barnes.
"How does it feel to have a hit record?" she asked.
"I don't know; I didn't know I had one," Carl replied. The
song had broken the record at an all-night, 50,000 watt
radio station in Buffalo, New York.
Carl was immediately thrust into the limelight. He headed to
Memphis for a promotional photo shoot, accompanied by W.S.
"We bought clothes at Lansky Brothers on Beale Street where
Elvis bought his," says Carl. "Sun hooked me up with a group
out of New York, GAC (General Artists Corporation) booking
agency, which at the time was one of the country's largest
booking agencies."
The bus tour took Carl to major cities where he appeared on
television shows, radio stations and was interviewed by
newspapers.
He was flown out mid-tour to New York for Dick Clark's dance
party, then flown back to Chicago, before taking another
plane to Madison, Wisconsin. There, he caught up with the
tour, which closely followed the 1959 tour of Buddy Holly,
who was killed in a plane crash following a February 2
performance at the Surf Ballroom in Clear Lake, Iowa.
"It was really kind of an eerie feeling playing behind Buddy
Holly--it was the same company with the same road manager,"
says Carl. "He had autographed the wall of the dressing
room."
During a subsequent tour, in New York, Carl discovered the
promoter had set him and Conway up to do "Mona Lisa"
together.
"I didn't hold anything against him," says Carl, who
pondered a moment before adding, good naturedly, "If it
hadn't been the way it was, I might have gotten upset."
Carl recorded seven more singles at Sun, on the Phillips
International label: Pretend /Rockin' Love; Some Enchanted
Evening/Can't Forget You; South Of The Border/I'm Coming
Home; Wayward Wind/Born To Be Bad; If I Could Change You/I
Ain't Got No Home; and When I Grow Too Old To Dream/Mountain
Dew. Also released was the LP, "Like, Mann".
In 1963, with records sales slowing, Perkins asked Mann to
accompany him to Tulsa, Oklahoma and play piano for him
during a gig at the Cimaron Ballroom.
"I wound up going and played for him during most of 1963,"
says Carl. "We played Las Vegas four times, at the Golden
Nugget, and Carson City at the Nugget, and played in Reno at
Harrah's Club. When I got back from there, I got my draft
notice."
He entered the Army in 1964 and spent two years in service,
during which time his contract with Sun expired. In 1966, he
signed with Monument in Nashville, releasing one single,
Serenade Of The Bells/ Down To My Last "I Forgive You".
Carl married Cathy Williams in 1968 and returned to the family
sawmill business as well, while still pursuing musical
interests on his own time.
He has a son,
Richard, who lives in Germany, from an earlier marriage to
Carroll County girl Virginia Traywick, to whom he was
married almost a year in 1960.
In the late sixties and early 70s, Carl and McKenzie
songwriter Larry Kee collaborated on several songs that were
released on the ABC label thanks to the efforts of Tom Boyd,
an executive with the Bank of Huntingdon, who arranged a
meeting between Carl and Bob Robinson, who negotiated the
contract with ABC records.
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Carl performs at the Rockabilly Hall
of Fame Festival in August, 2005. |
"Bob had met people from Holland during Fanfare and he
wanted to book me there," says Carl, who toured Europe in
1978 and 1980, covering some five countries each time. In
Paris, France, he and Perkins performed together, though
neither had known the other was booked for the same show.
"It was just like going back in time," says Carl of his
renewed success. "It was like a time warp."
Rockhouse Records of Holland released two albums, "Gonna
Rock 'n' Roll Tonight" and "Rockabilly Country". The Carl
Mann "Mona Lisa" box set, a Bear Family production, contains
four CDs of Mann's work that comprises all his official
recordings as well as 14 unreleased demos from 1969-70, plus
a 20-page written and pictoral history of his career.
Carl says Eddie would drop by or call every year or so until
1989, which was the last time he'd heard from him. Several
years ago, he discovered he had died in a VA hospital near
Oklahoma City, Oklahoma in 1990, after being found on the
street.
It's an end Carl might have met himself had his story played
out differently.
"Even before 'Mona Lisa' I was hanging with the older kids,"
he says. "They were drinking some and would offer me some. I
drank some beer and then drank a little whiskey one time."
During practice after hours at Tate's School, someone
brought whiskey with 7-Up as a chaser. Unknown to Carl, the
7-Up was also laced with whiskey as a practical joke.
"That's the first time I got very drunk," he says.
Success only intensified his habit.
"There was a lot of pressure involved and I was kind of shy
in those days. I expect I thought it would help me relax
more and meet people better."
It was 1962 before he realized his drinking was affecting
his performance. Playing with Perkins in 1963 didn't help;
Perkins had his own drinking problem. Nor did his stint in
the Army help curb the habit. It was only after he met Cathy
that he began striving in earnest to control his drinking.
"By 1970 I had done got past it pretty much," he says. "The
only time I had a drink since then was 1978 on my first tour
to Europe, but not enough to pull me back into it, because I
knew if I kept on going like I was going, I wouldn't be here
today."
These days the stage on which Carl sings is most often the
dais of Emmanuel Church of Jesus Christ in Camden or other
churches, accompanied by Jim Snider on the steel guitar, and
occasionally W.S. on drums.
In the works is another gospel CD as well as a CD tribute to
some of Carl's early influences, including Lefty, Elvis,
Jerry Lee, and Hank Williams.
For the past year and a half, he has performed with James
and Brenda Love on the television program, "Love for a
Reason", which airs on Dish Network Angel 1 at 2 p.m.
Saturday evenings. His cousin, Al Mann (previously known as
Johnny Eagle), also performs on the telecast.
Increasing demand for Carl's special brand of rockabilly and
gospel music has him performing in increasingly wider forums
from churches and festivals to the Rockabilly Hall of Fame
Festival in August this year.
He'll be a regular at the every third Saturday Huntingdon
Hayride at the Dixie PAC in Huntingdon beginning November
17. The family oriented evening starts early with an
optional dinner on the grounds before the Hayride starts at
2 p.m.
"I'm really excited about that and I think it will be fun to
work with Dixie and Mr. Holbrook," says Carl. "I really
believe this will put Huntingdon on the map."
It's almost like going back in time to that exciting era
when he was a boy and the music was fresh and new and just
waiting to be spilled onto an expectant audience.
"It's fun again," smiles Carl.
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