After Reggie and I finished chatting, Jenny and Diane joined us. We enjoyed visiting together a little longer, and then one of them asked if they could play a little something for us. Yes! Please! I was rarely privilege to watching Uncle Chip play, so this was a rare treat.
Reggie and Jenny are just the cutest together, you can see how much they adore each other in the ordinary day to day things of life and in the way they play their instruments together. Jenny is a classically trained cellist, traveled with Waylon and has been a part of other projects as wel . (Hope you don’t mind guys, I lifted Jenny’s Facebook profile picture, ’cause y’all are just so stinking adorable and I had to show you off)
I wonder if anyone ever thought Reggie and Uncle Chip were related. Reggie said that would happen from time to time, and Chip would try to pass Reggie off as his daddy. Now y’all, they were only a few years apart in age.
Reggie spent a lot of time in Murfreesboro. He loved going out there because it was so much more laid back, there wasn’t the urgency of a music row studio session. Often, during breaks they’d sit on the porch or out by the pool and shoot the breeze, probably with a Budweiser in hand. Or they might find a baseball, or football and head toward the field for a few minutes. Unlike music row, it was never hurried or rushed. It was casual, laid back and homey.
It was easier to become friends in Murfreesboro
I knew my dad had received a a special thanks on the I Can Help album because during on of the sessions, he had watched Billy hit his head on a low door entry a few times, found a saw and took care of it. Reggie told me that Chip’s little puppy Bowser also got credit as “britches leg.” That was Uncle Chip’s little puppy that tugged on Billy’s pants leg as he stood up playing that little organ and singing.
I discovered that Reggie had been a part of the Bill Jack Band when they were asked to tour with the Beatles on their 1st U.S. tour. In an interview I watched, Reggie’s telling the audience about one particular evening before the group took the stage. A local disc jockey was in the crowd hyping everyone up:
You here to see The Beatles?
He mentioned each of them by name, Paul? John?Ringo? After each name, the crowd went wild.
The Bill Black Band.
Crickets.
Whoops! I wonder if there were any young men in the audience trying to get a glimpse of Reggie in the same way Jerry Kennedy had been with Scotty Moore?
Reggie and Jenny came out to Diane’s later that week for Bruno’s tour. After the party was over (and I’ll tell you about it later this month), I ask Reggie for one of his 8×10 glossy’s and teased him about going fangirl on him.
I’ll let you in on a little secret. Now that I’ve done some more research., now that I really know who I was sitting with in a beautiful little home studio in a little town in middle Tennessee, now that I’ve heard Reggie play it all from Hillbilly, to R & B. Rockabilly and real country. He’s played with everybody from The Beatles and Chuck Berry to Johnny Mathis. He played on so many tunes of my growing up years in the 1970’s. Now that I know how far his talent reaches and I’ve realized that I was probably listening to more of Reggie Young than Chip Young in my early formative years, I’ll not tease him about being a fangirl again. I’m an honest to goodness fangirl now.
What did I do with that glossy? I need to hang it on my bedroom wall!
Thumbin' Around Nashville 