City View – The Man Who lived on Tootsie’s Roof Top

Drawing by Stan Hitchcock

In memory, it’s the good things that you remember most….
In Ancient Times, before some of you were born, this is kinda how it was in the 50’s and 60’s, in a Town now being called “Music City, USA”. The Opry was still at the Ryman, Gaylord was not even a figment of Roy Acuff’s imagination, Owen Bradleys Quonset Hut Studio was still making magic records (you remember, don’t you, the big round black things that music used to live on?). Elvis was coming in to Nashville to record at RCA B studio, 16th, 17th and 18th Avenue South was a city within a city for the Hillbillies to headquarter and make music.
The Old Family neighborhood Houses were being taken over by the Music people, divided up into offices for Publishing Companies, Booking Agencies, Artist Management, and some of the bigger Artists, like Faron Young, building
his own office building.

Artists like Patsy Cline and Jim Reeves were starting to use Airplanes to travel to concerts some, but, later when we all went to their Plane Crash Memorial Services, we were not too sure about traveling that way, and to make matters worse, Jack Anglin, of the duo, Johnny and Jack, had a wreck coming to Patsy Clines Memorial Service and was killed. The Louvin Brothers were still together and making records that will always stand the test of time, same thing with the Wilburn Brothers and the Glasers. Marty Robbins would always close the Saturday Night Opry and run the Show past the cut-off time every time, and drive the Radio Engineers crazy. All the great musicians and Artists were recording around the clock and then coming to the Ryman on Friday and Saturday nights to work for almost nothing ($8.00 a spot whenever I worked it in the 60’s and early 70’s). Mom Upchurch still ran a Boarding House for Wayward Musicians and charged the same $8.00 a week for my bed with occasional pieces of her Apple Pie.  Linebaugh’s Restaurant and Tootsie’s Orchid Lounge were the two downtown hangouts for all things musical and much foolishness. At Linebaugh’s you could find Carl and Pearl Butler, Ernest Tubb and his Troubadours, and maybe George Morgan grabbing a quick bite before the Midnight Jamboree next door. Marty Robbins and his Trio, Bill Monroe and his Bluegrass Boys (they went everywhere as a group) would always be found after the Opry, having breakfast at Midnight, as a musician will do. Tompall Glaser would be holding on to the Pin Ball lMachine, banging and shaking it to make a point, while Captain Midnight, erstwhile Nashville DJ and certified Character, was looking over Tompall’s shoulder and driving him nuts. Drinking coffee, having breakfast at Midnight, or the homemade Chili and Ketchup with crackers at any time of the day or night, was our “starving artists diet”.

Meanwhile, Over at Tootsie’s, the Homeless Man his name was City View, that Tootsie Bess let live on the flat roof of her club in a tent, and the good hearted pickers kept him in drinks and food, would be surveying downtown Nashville from his high perch, watching as the wild ones would be holding on to the night…Faron, Willie, Hank Cochran, Del Reeves, Cash, Roger Miller, Newbury, Cowboy Jack Clement and assorted bad boys and even badder girls who swarmed around the Ryman like Moths to a flame. The Music Groupies followed the Star pickers and pluckers, high lonesome bawlers and low down crooners, writers and bar room brawlers, stars and slugs, legends and germs, hangerups and hangerons, dopers and drinkers, genius and also rans….mixed together in a creative soup that will never be seen again…that once was and never again shall be. I loved it all and I was somewhere in the aforementioned mix.         stan