SkiP HappEns Podcast
Skip Clark is a dynamic and captivating podcast host and radio personality who has left an indelible mark on the world of broadcasting. With a voice that can command attention and a personality that oozes charm, Skip has become a beloved figure in the world of entertainment. His passion for storytelling and his ability to connect with his audience shine through in every episode of his podcast and every moment on the airwaves.
Skip’s journey in radio began decades ago, and he has since evolved into a seasoned professional who effortlessly navigates the waves of the media industry. His deep knowledge of music, pop culture, and current events keeps his listeners engaged and coming back for more. Skip Clark's enthusiasm and authenticity make him a trusted voice in the world of podcasting and radio. His dedication to his craft and his commitment to providing quality content continue to make him a standout in the world of broadcasting.
SkiP HappEns Podcast
A Conversation with Country Music Legend Crystal Gayle: From Early Hits to Lifetime Achievement
Ready to journey through the golden eras of country music with a true legend? In this episode, we are thrilled to welcome the incomparable Crystal Gayle to the New York State Fair! Hear firsthand from the dazzling artist about her remarkable career, from winning back-to-back CMA Female Vocalist awards in the late '70s to receiving the prestigious American Eagle Award for Lifetime Achievement in 2017. Crystal reminisces about her early days in Kentucky, her breakout hit "Don't Make My Brown Eyes Blue," and the unforgettable moment her sister, Loretta Lynn, inducted her into the Grand Ole Opry. Discover the personal stories and influences that shaped her unique sound and helped her carve a niche in the music industry.
But that's just the beginning! Crystal also shares exciting details about her current tour, which includes stops in Glens Falls, New York, and Rhode Island, before heading back home and then out west. Reflect on the profound impact her music has had over the decades, touching generations of country music fans with her heartfelt performances and genuine artistry. We celebrate her enduring legacy and express our gratitude for her contributions to the industry. Tune in to experience a heartfelt conversation filled with admiration, inspiration, and lots of applause for the timeless Crystal Gayle.
Thanks for listening! Follow us at youtube.com/c/skiphappens
Hey and welcome to the great New York State Fair. My name is Skip Clark, 92.1, the Wolf in the Inner Harbor Media Group, and if you take a close look at your screen, she's my right, your left, the one and only Crystal Gale is here. Thank you, thank you. So it's so awesome to see you. I do a lot of these interviews and I very seldom get starstruck, but I am right now like in awe. You are absolutely stunning. You're beautiful the hair over the. I mean you still have all that.
Speaker 2:I still have some hair. I'll tell you I don't know how it gets caught on everything.
Speaker 1:This is cool to have you actually come over. You are a legend in a lot of different ways. You were the CMA Female Vocalist winner in 1977 and 78, just a couple of years ago, you had the American Eagle Award for Lifetime Achievement in 2017. Does it seem like it was that long ago?
Speaker 2:It really just feels like you turn around and time is gone. Yeah, because I can remember thinking when I was younger oh, 30 is old, because I hadn't gotten to 30 yet. And then, when I got there, it was younger, oh, 30 is old, because I hadn't gotten to 30 yet. And then when I got there, it was like, oh, it's not that bad. No, it's not.
Speaker 1:We don't worry about age anyway. No, we don't worry.
Speaker 2:I mean, it's, hey, the alternative. So you know we're honored that people have listened to my music through the years and still listening and come out.
Speaker 1:And I love it when I hear some of those old songs. You know the one that you pretty much wrapped up with earlier Don't Make my Brown Eyes Blue. And I told you before we went out with the lights and the cameras and all that that I played that I'm going to show my age here a little bit. When that was given to radio to play and it went flying up the charts, I played that as it was climbing the charts and I had the biggest crush on you. I'm just saying look at, look at this woman. She's absolutely beautiful.
Speaker 2:Well, when that song came out for me, I was out on the road and I was working on Sydney, iowa at a rodeo for a whole week and they would pull us out in the middle of the rink, you know, and we do our show and then it pulls back out, but people started. It was just a different atmosphere. When that song came I was like wow, I realized they must be playing this song. I didn't know what it was doing because you know you're out in the road and just busy and nobody tells you no, no one tells you.
Speaker 2:I know I was honored, though.
Speaker 1:You kept an eye on it. Yeah, excellent, that went all the way up to the top and then it stayed there for quite a while, which was pretty, pretty cool. Tell us about your induction into the Grand Ole Opry. Your sister helped you out with that right.
Speaker 2:Yes, In October. It might've been. I think it was October or November of the year before 16, 2016. Carrie Underwood came up the Ryman and I was performing and she wanted to sing Brown Eyes with me, so we sang that together and then at the end she asked me if I wanted to be a member of the Opry and then I was so honored when my sister inducted me into the family. I mean that was really special and that was at the Ryman also, and you know that was the first um first place I performed. I I actually was about 17 when um Loretta, she had gotten sick and Mooney talked him into letting me sing in her place and I'll never forget that.
Speaker 1:Oh, I just just talking about. As a matter of fact, you were telling a story up on stage about your sister and all that and we had some people stop by the booth and they said I got to walk the other way, they had tears coming down. I mean, you and your sister just meant so much to so many people, the hearts of so many. It's country, the way country was meant to be, and the coal miner's daughter, I mean let's just you know, Well, we had some special parents and they were good.
Speaker 2:We have four brothers and three sisters, eight in our family, and my mother would have had 20 if she could have.
Speaker 1:Busy lady.
Speaker 2:Yeah, she was, she kept us together.
Speaker 1:How did all this start for you, though? Was it your sister? How did all this start for Crystal Gale?
Speaker 2:Well, I grew up singing. My mother said I could sing before I could walk, so music was part of my life. And you know music was part of my life. And you know, in Kentucky music was a part of everybody's life. You know they'd sit on the porch play the guitar, sing and you could hear them at the next holler. But it was something that I just loved and I know I would have been singing somewhere somehow, maybe just in church. But my sister got my recording contract with Decca Records, owen Bradley. He produced my first session.
Speaker 2:And then it didn't take long for me to realize, for me to make it on my own, I had to find a label that believed in me and I was there because of me and not just being a sister of, and not that anything was wrong with that, but you know, you have to have the people behind you.
Speaker 1:You do you do? Do you ever pull out the old masters and just listen? Or maybe you and your husband get together on a night where you got nothing going and you just kind of say, you know, what Do you remember? When Do you ever do that?
Speaker 2:I have listened to, pulled out some demos that I had done actually for the Wilbur Brothers publishing company. Oh, yeah, okay, and they helped me. You know, go in the studio, learn how to work the mic in the studio, and, and, and. Then that just gave me an extra part of my life of being in the business. You know, being around the greats. I mean the Wilbur brothers are so wonderful, I mean their harmonies was so special.
Speaker 1:Oh, yes, oh yes, oh yes, yes. I want to go back to Donut, Make my Brown Eyes Blue a little bit, because I wrote. I have some notes here. It was recognized by ASCAP as one of the 10 most performed country songs of the 20th century. One the the 10 most performed. How's that make you feel?
Speaker 2:oh, I'll take anything. I love it, all I love it, I love it.
Speaker 1:And what about your uh duet with eddie rabbit? You and I just that was wow just you and I.
Speaker 2:eddie called and said, hey, will you do some harmony on one of my records? And he sent it to me and I said, well, I called him. I said, ed, will you do some harmony on one of my records? And he sent it to me and I said, well, I called him. I said, eddie, I'll do a little bit more than that if you don't mind the answering and the verses, and it just all fell together. Eddie had already recorded the song Normally you would work together, but he had recorded it and then he asked me to be a part of it.
Speaker 1:But you didn't do it together. No, so you did your part. One location, eddie did his part, I went to the same studio that.
Speaker 2:Eddie recorded, but you did it separately and then they mixed it together and they well, you know, they played Eddie's, and then I sang, and actually I only that was really a first take I only redid a couple lines. I had to match them a little bit better. So that only redid a couple lines. They wanted me, I had to match him a little bit better. So that was it, and it was just and those were the days, you know, when you can do that- what do you think of today's country?
Speaker 1:because I mean, you're from this time, you know a place in time. That country was really like country, if I could say that. I know it changes. Everything evolves. We, you know, I mean even with the wolf. We, we play everything. I mean we go back to alabama, we go back to burke's and dunn, of course, and we're still touring, uh, but, and here you are, but still there's a lot of newer artists.
Speaker 2:There's a lot of new artists. To me, country music is so popular. That's why it's so many different sounds, that you're hearing so many different. Everybody wants to be a part of country music. I'm from LA to New York. I mean they're all just coming to Nashville recording a song to be country, which is great because they love it and it just makes it a bigger audience, bigger audience. But that means you also have not the straight ahead country as we had before. But as long as they do not forget that Exactly and still play it and be a part of country music, then it's okay.
Speaker 1:I like that you know when Beyonce did what she did, here not all that long ago. There were a lot of different opinions on that, but the way I looked at it, I'll tell you how I felt. Maybe you will agree or disagree, but I looked at it as somebody coming from a different genre of music bringing their fans into the country format which could only make our format bigger definitely and, and I look at that, uh, it was like brown eyes.
Speaker 2:Yeah, if they had not accepted me, my song was brown eyes was number one in the cash box charts, number two, I think, in billboard, and it was like if they had not accepted me, it wouldn't have gone over, and so it's both ways, and so I feel lucky with that.
Speaker 1:I talked a lot about music, but the name Crystal. I want to hear the story about how you got the name Crystal, and I also know that I mean after the fact. When you got the name Crystal, you had a crystal shop. Yes, Can you tell us a little bit about that.
Speaker 2:Well then, crystal came from being on the same label as Brenda Lee. My real name's Brenda, so I had to change it Right. And Loretta saw the name Crystal on a Crystal hamburger chain. She said I love that name. But she also said later in life she said it was a chandelier. It was named after a chandelier. But the Crystal hamburgers they're pretty good hamburgers Really I've never heard of it.
Speaker 1:Maybe it was from back when, wherever, whenever, Well, they might not be here Right right, everything's kind of, but you had a Crystal shop, correct?
Speaker 2:I had. We closed it, I'm not sure how many years ago, but we'd had it for 20-some years and I have so much respect for retail people. I mean, that's not easy. It's hard work and it wasn't hard work on me, but it was hard work on everybody else, my husband especially. I just went and shopped, you know.
Speaker 1:He's not even listening. By the way, I know he's doing what all of us guys do on that phone. He's checking his scores, checking his fantasy football maybe, and all that. Yeah See, he's not listening at all.
Speaker 2:I know he's busy, bill Bill, there he goes.
Speaker 1:Okay.
Speaker 2:Was that business, so anyway, so where?
Speaker 1:do you live now real quick before I let you go crystal, where do you?
Speaker 2:live. Now we live in nashville, tennessee. You live in nashville and we've lived there. Both my children were born in nashville and you know it's. It's a place to go to and be if you wanted to get into the business, and of course you know I have. My sister, peggy was here in Nashville. My brother, jay Lee, and so we had family down there. So it was just the next step in my. We were in Bloomington, indiana, where my husband graduated from IU, and then he went to Vanderbilt University.
Speaker 1:And where'd you guys meet, Like in Nashville?
Speaker 2:No in Wabash, indiana, really Very nice. So in high school it's been love ever since God bless you.
Speaker 1:Thank you, crystal Gale. Thank you for taking time out of your you know busy schedule. I know you've got a lot to do, a lot of places to go. Where are you heading from here? Do you get to go home or do you?
Speaker 2:No, we're going to Glen Falls.
Speaker 1:Glens Falls, glen Falls, new York, oh wow.
Speaker 2:You don't know you got, and then rhode island, and then you're home and then head out west.
Speaker 1:There you go well. Crystal gale, you're a legend, you're a lifesaver, you are just remarkable woman.
Speaker 1:I appreciate everything you've done no, no, because it's people like crystal and you go through all the different generations of country music. It's people like her that really put us in the right direction, and you go through all the different generations of country music, it's people like her that really put us in the right direction. And you know, with the songs that she does, as you saw her do this today on stage and just so heartfelt and just it's the real I'm getting. Look, I got the chicken noodles. Look at chicken noodles girl right there.
Speaker 1:Anyways, everybody give it up for Crystal Gale, Thank you. Well, you asked about generations because
