Mel Tillis Quotes

But Patsy, she was a great, great girl. And Brenda Lee is a wonderful person, and her mama Grace. I've known those folks for years and years and years.

And my daddy could play a harmonica and also the guitar, so I guess I got a little bit from both of 'em, but I think mostly from my mother's side of the family.

You know, being an entertainer is partly being on the road, and a lot of your songs come from the road.

I'm not retiring.

And then, when I started to school, I found out I couldn't talk.

And I got to know Red Foley well. And I got to know Lefty really well, he was a great guy.

No, my son's a songwriter and he does that.

I'm gonna do between 75 and 100 dates. A lot of it will be in Laughlin, Nevada; I'll be there for two weeks. And I'll work some casinos here and there, and the fair dates.

You have to insulate yourself - I'm talking about from everything, people can be talking to you and you won't hear 'em - that's how you write a song. And I haven't been able to do that over here 'cause I'm so busy and then, when I am off, I want to get away from music.

But now I've been in the arena for 47 years and I stutter less today than I did in those days.

But in those days - in the mid-'50s, early '60s - there was less than 300 radio stations that were playing country music and a lot of that wasn't full time.

I remember li'l ol' Hank Jr. - he was just a baby back in them days, you know - but he used to hang around. His mama would bring him around. He was just a natural.

Well, you know, back then there wasn't many albums, it was the singles. You sold singles.

And you know, we'd go to church. We were Baptists. And every now and then there'd be a tent would set up, and it was the Holiness folks. And we liked their music.

Or in the early days we didn't have the bus, we had a station wagon.

You know, it comes from my mother's side of the family. She had seven sisters and one brother, and all of them could play instruments. I suppose I picked it up from that.