Bill Fitzhugh - Fender Benders (28 page)

Jimmy put one set of the Oak Pharm documents into his file
labeled ‘Serial Killer Book Proposal.’
 
He then pulled out the file labeled, ‘Eddie Long Biography.’
 
He picked up a black pen and angrily modified
the label with the word ‘Unauthorized’.
 
He put the second copy of the Oak Pharm documents in the ‘Unauthorized
Biography’ file then reviewed the autopsy report on Tammy.
 
He’d glanced at it once or twice since Quitman
County but this time he read it in
more detail.
 
Among the other contents of
her stomach was MSG, monosodium glutamate.
 
Hmmm
.
 
MSG triggered two associations in Jimmy’s
mind.
 
The first was Chinese food.
 
The second was headache, which in turn triggered
an association with Dr. Porter’s Headache Powder.
 
Hmmm, again
.
 
Jimmy
remembered the skinny guy at the County
Clerk’s office saying he wondered
where the Chinese food had come from.
 
It
seemed like a good question, the answer to which was probably
back
up in Quitman
County.
 
Jimmy closed the file, grudgingly accepting
the fact that he had to drive back up to the Delta the next morning.

He sat at his desk for a moment, making notes about the
things he still needed to find out.
 
Where did the Chinese food come from?
 
How come no food containers mentioned in
police reports?
 
Was Tammy allergic to
MSG?
 
What is sodium fluoroacetate?
 
As he sat there trying to think of other
questions, he heard his neighbors giggling in the bedroom.
 
“Trust me,” he heard the man say, “
it
only seems kinky the first time you do it.”
 
It suddenly occurred to Jimmy that he had all
the questions he needed so he doused the light and went to his bedroom.

38.

Big Bill was in such a high and palmy state after the recording
session that he took everybody out to Estella’s.
 
He was hunched over his plate biting a shrimp
off at the tail secure in the knowledge that this time next year he wouldn’t
have to put up with industry people constantly assaulting him with Barbara
Feldon jokes.
 
He looked over toward the
jukebox where Eddie was standing with Megan and he smiled.
 
Big Bill Herron wasn’t going to be 99 next
year, that
was for damn sure.

Estella’s was crowded with its usual late-night
congregation.
 
The Staple Singers were on
the jukebox endorsing self-respect.
 
A
table of hip-hoppers was feeding in one corner while a sloth of legislators was
drinking in another.
 
Franklin, Whitney,
Big Bill, Porky Vic, and all the session players had pushed a couple of tables
together not far from the kitchen.
 
It
wasn’t long before Franklin was
again arguing the merits of ProTools over Big Bill’s archaic methods.
 
“Now you have to admit, most sessions aren’t
as perfect as Eddie’s, right?
 
All I’m
saying is the computer saves a lot of time and lets you assemble a perfect take
even if you don’t get one in the studio.”

Big Bill was in too good a mood to let Franklin
bother him.
 
“That’s true,” Big Bill
said, “and if you don’t mind putting out records of performances that never
happened and can never be reproduced live, then it’s the way to go.
 
But I like the idea of something more
authentic, that’s all.
 
Call me old
fashioned.”

Franklin didn’t
want to push the ProTools issue too far and spoil the festive mood, but lately
he’d taken a couple of weekend seminars on modern recording techniques.
 
Franklin
was enamored of the technology and, like anyone
else,
he liked to talk about things he’d learned.

Just then, Otis slid two shrimp plates across the ledge of
the service window and rang the little bell.
 
Estella picked up the plates and shambled over to Big Bill’s table.
 
“Here we go.”
 
She set one plate in front of the pedal steel player and one in front of
the fiddler.
 
She pulled a bottle of hot
sauce from one apron pocket and a pint of scotch from the other.
 
“Here you are, Mr. Peavy.
 
You need more ice?”

“No.
 
Thank you,
Estella,” he said, “I’m fine.”
 
He
unscrewed the cap and tipped the bottle over his glass.

“All right, then.
 
Ya’ll enjoy.”
 
Estella turned her
attention to Big Bill who was busy with his fingers, herding the remainders of
his potato salad onto his fork before stuffing it into his roly-poly face.
 
Estella watched him chew for a moment.
 
She halfway wished he would choke and die
face down on one of her plates but he just swallowed and looked at her,
smiling, like he knew what she was thinking.
 
Estella didn’t bat an eye.
 
She
just pointed at his plate which held little more than crumbs and shrimp
tails.
 
“Mr. Herrons, you gonna eat them
scribbles or you done?”

“I’m all topped off,” he said, leaning back with his mouth
full.
 
“You can take that.”

Estella took the plate and headed for the kitchen.
 
As she crossed the room with the plate in her
hand, Estella’s eyes landed on Eddie and everything but her thoughts suddenly
seemed to decelerate, as if life had slipped into slow motion.
 
She recognized Eddie from the night he had
signed with Herron and Peavy, right over there at that table.
 
The handsome young man was with a pretty
redheaded girl tonight.
 
They were standing
by the jukebox.
 
Estella looked to her
right and saw Otis through the service window.
 
His face still and peaceful as he watched the angry
oil cook another batch of shrimp.
 
She could hear him saying, “Just let it go,” and she wondered where they
might be if things had been different.
 
If Herron hadn’t given up so
quick
.
 
If Otis had had another hit.
 
If he hadn’t drunk too
much.
 
If she
hadn’t gone out in that alley.

And then the switch flipped again and everything was full
speed ahead and she smelled the shrimp frying and she heard booze splashing on
ice and she felt the plate in her hand and she was standing right next to Eddie
all the sudden.
 
He looked at her and she
looked right back and she said, “Mr. Herrons says you finished makin’ your
record.”
 
She sort of pointed at Eddie
with the plate in her hand.
 
“That’s real
good,” she said.
 
“You should be proud.”

“Yes ma’am, thank you.”

Estella glanced over her shoulder at Big Bill’s table, then
back at Eddie.
 
“Don’t tell him I said
it, but you
be
careful with that man.”

Eddie smiled, almost chuckling.
 
“Yes, ma’am.
 
I sure will.”

She wagged a stern finger at him.
 
“Don’t you be they
fool.
”

“No, ma’am, I won’t.”

Sensing she wasn’t going to be included in this
conversation, Megan cleared her throat.
 
“Excuse me,” she said.
 
“Ladies room?”

Estella pointed the way and waited until Megan was gone
before turning back to Eddie.
 
“You not
careful, you might end up where you don’t want.
 
You gotta take care of your own bidness.”

Eddie flashed a knowing smile.
 
“That’s the truth.”
 
He sensed this woman knew what she was
talking about.
 
They thought along the
same lines.

Estella seemed to relax as she measured Eddie’s handsome
young face.
 
“I got a good feelin’ about
you,” she said.
 
“You’ll be all right.”
 
She nodded several times like a little hammer
driving a nail.
 
“You’ll be fine.”
 
Her eyes drifted away and, a moment later,
she stepped over to the service window to set the plate down.

Eddie looked back at the jukebox.
 
He didn’t notice Estella come back.
 
“You want my advice?”
 
She didn’t wait for his reply.
 
She just pointed.
 
“C-19 and 20.”

Eddie looked at the titles, then back at Estella.
 
“They good?”

Estella ducked her head to one side.
 
“Chiiild yes they good.”
 
Eddie squeezed a hand into his tight jeans
and pulled out two quarters.
 
He dropped
them in the coin slot, punched in the numbers, and waited as the machine
whirred and clanked.
 
He heard the needle
drop into the groove and a few scratchy seconds later ‘Lookin’ for Ruby’ jumped
into the room with a scream that could’ve split James Brown’s pants.
 
Otis’s head jerked sideways to see who was
playing his song.
 
“Even if you’re
country,” Estella said, “you
needs
your soul.”

“Yes, ma’am,” Eddie said with a nod.
 
“That’s the truth too.”

“Lemme axe you somethin’.”
 
Estella folded her arms and leaned forward from the waist up.
 
“You know what the secret to the music
bidness is?”

Eddie turned sincere, nodding modestly.
 
“You gotta write your songs from your heart.”

Estella shrugged as if she took that for granted.
 
Then she shook her head and looked Eddie in
the eyes.
 
“You keep control of all the
publishin’ you can.”

39.

Born tired and raised lazy, the typical country music fan
was a backwards, tobacco chewing, snaggle toothed, inbred, beer swilling boob
who couldn’t pour piss from a boot with directions printed on the heel.
 
This crude portrayal, probably a creation of
the liberal East Coast media elite, might once have contained a grain of
truth.
 
However, thanks to the reams of
research compiled by country radio programming consultants, we now know
better.
 
Today we know the typical
country music fan is a home-owning, college educated, city-dwelling,
constantly-on-the-cell-phone, Suburban driver, earning between $40,000 and $100,000
a year.
 

In the not-too-distant past, country music was the exclusive
domain of those with a genuine rural heritage.
 
It was made by and for — and was about — Americans who had suffered
the exacting nature of rural life, whether it
be
in a Kentucky
coal mine or an Oklahoma corn
field.
 
The songs were about hardship and
heartbreak, black lung and drought, desperation and doing time.
 
But as the nation moved from an agricultural
and industrial-based economy to an information-based economy, the audience
changed and the original artists and their fans lost their death grip on the
music.
 
It was fair to say that most of
today’s country music fans were all hat and no cattle in terms of their rural
heritage.
 
Oh, sure, they might own a
pick up truck, ride a horse on the odd weekend, or speak with a drawl or a
twang, but for the majority of them, that’s as far as it went.
 
As such, it had become a generally accepted
fact in the country music industry that even the catchiest tune about black lung
disease would have a hard time getting radio play.

The programming consultants who tracked changes in market
demographics identified dozens of trivial differences between fans of country
music and fans of pop and rock.
 
But for
Eddie Long, there were three differences that weren’t trivial at all.
 
The first of those was ‘level of
education.’
 
Contrary to the stereotyped
perception, country fans were more educated than fans of pop or rock (with 14%
more holding post graduate degrees).
 
The
second difference followed from the first.
 
On average, country fans had a higher per-capita income than fans of
other forms of popular music.
 
The third
difference related to ‘computer literacy.’
 
Research showed that the more education and money a group had, the more
they used computers.
 
And the more they
used computers, the more familiar they were with the Internet.

In other words, the demographic profile of the modern
country music fan correlated neatly with the demographic profile of the typical
Internet-savvy computer owner.
 
So it was
no surprise, really, that Eddie’s marketing strategy was causing such a stir.

As it turned out, a decade or so after America
went country, country went
America
.
. .On Line.
 
Of
course Eddie’s band of web surfers was taking full advantage of this fact.
 
They had sent a steady stream of
hyperventilating ‘listener’ e-mails to more than half of the nation’s
twenty-six hundred country radio stations, sometimes pleading for a complete
version of the song, other times pretending to be local musicians offering to
record an ending for it.
 
They visited
hundreds of country-music-related chat rooms and bulletin boards where they
posted a variety of theories on the real identity of this ‘Eddie Long’
character, (“It’s probably Garth trying another Chris Gaines stunt”).
 
At other sites they carried on scripted
discussions about the song’s meaning and whether it was the best country song
ever written.
 
They also started a dozen
fan sites, a mailing list, a Web ring, and a Usenet group.

The result of all this was nothing short of remarkable.
 
The extent of Internet penetration in the
country radio industry was illustrated by the fact that seventy-five percent of
the country stations in the US
had downloaded the MP3 file based on ‘listener’ queries.
 
One third of those stations had played the
half-song at least once, and two dozen stations were actually playing it in
light rotation by the end of week three of the campaign.
 
Nearly 20 million people in America
had heard the song — or had at least heard of it — by that point.
 
The major radio and music industry trade
papers,
Billboard
and
Radio &
Records
 
had
all either mentioned it in passing or had devoted an article to the mystery
songwriter.
 
Even
Country Weekly
was running a weekly update about ‘the search for
Eddie Long’ on its ‘Cyber Country’ page.

By the end of week four, no fewer than thirty-five radio
station music directors were under orders from management to get the entire
song on the air or find a new job.
 
It
was an idiotic demand, of course, but it was a well established fact that radio
station managers didn’t have as much sense as you could slap in a gnat’s ass
with a butter paddle.