This is the story of a simple man from very humble beginnings, who overcame many tragedies in his life to become, as his plaque at the Country Music Hall of Fame states: "The man who started it all”. It is the story of a man with a very unstable childhood pursuing a dream of being an entertainer, and eventually singing on the radio the top-selling artist in the late 1920'. It is a story of broken hearts and dreams, including the twin tragedies of death and sickness. Ultimately it is the story of being in the right place at the right time to take advantage of the emerging technologies of the day to achieve and surpass childhood dreams and success. It is a story of a man who picked up his craft almost accidentally as he was struggling to make ends meet. A man whose influences are still relevant in the music today.
With the backdrop of the turn of a century, then the great drought leading to the Dust Bowl, on top of the terrible TB pandemic and the 1929 Great Depression. During the hard times we are seeing the early days of recording technology, the talking machine, the wireless, the flickers and the talkies, medicine shows, rag-operas and tent-show, minstrel shows and vaudeville, actors and hucksters, snake doctors and hobos and the great iron horse riding the rails laying the foundation for a new era. Jazz, black-face singers and race music and hillbilly music evolving and setting the stage for country and western music to Rock and Roll... the great music trail cut by Jimmie Rodgers “The man who started it all”.
From the beginning our goal was filming some video of Merle’s life on the road, his performances and personal stories that he wanted told on film so we could create a good trailer. It was for me to write the treatment that he wanted to get to either Clint Eastwood, Robert Duval or Ron Howard along with Ron’s dad Rance. We already had the door open with Eastwood’s lawyer Bruce Ricker and Joel Cox who managed the company and was Clint’s editor for decades. Merle was fed up with film makers, writers, photographers, directors, journalists, producers, studios, agents, lawyers, record label executives and the entertainment business itself by the time we teamed up. I knew the hard and heavy rule on all Haggard shows and/or tours there would be NO FUCKING CAMERAS, NO DAMN INTERVIEWS PERIOD! Frank Mull told me that had been the rule some 15+ years, and that it was amazing what I was doing with and for Merle. I asked Frank after Merle passed away, “Why Me?” Frank just said, “He trusted you.”
Like a locomotive, Jimmie Rodgers came into this world with a force that is still strong over one hundred years later. And like the trains that crisscrossed the country, Jimmie Rodgers’ legacy crosses over every aspect of the American music scene. His music echoes in tunes we hear today as his memory is enshrined in the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame and the Country Music Hall of Fame, where on his plaque it states, “The Man That Started It All.” Known as “The Father of Country Music”, he has garnished the W.C. Handy Blues Award and is in the Grammy Hall of Fame and the Songwriter Hall of Fame. No other entertainer in history can list these accomplishments.
Click Pic for a sample eBook online
“I have been knowing Benford about 10 to 12 years. When I ran into him I realized that he was in a search for all the music history information he could find. Seems like every time we get together, we end up in the same area, something about country music history. He is a history buff (…) and I guess I am too.”
Merle Haggard
“Don’t expect the puppets of your mind to become the people of your story. If they are not realities in your own mind, there is no mysterious alchemy in ink and paper that will turn wooden figures into flesh and blood.” Leslie Gordon Barnard.
Willie, Benford, Ramblin Jack Elliott
Lisa and Kris Kristofferson backstage
WAITING FOR A TRAIN
ME and MERLE
A cut from interview with Willie
WAITING FOR A TRAIN
A Virtual Streaming Franchise Treatment ... after The Pitch
A three act chronicle memoir trilogy told by
Buffalo Benford
CUT TO: Haggard is interviewed about his partner Buffalo Benford
While working with Merle at his ranch studio with a production team headed by a friend and partner Chuck Banner. I have known Chuck and his brother Baird Banner, and their very famous dad TV Mogul Bob Banner. They were shooting a show using his studio and I got Merle a train load of money to do the shoot for a Jimmie Dean retrospective look at the sausage king and start of his own network television show The Jimmie Dean Show. On one of the final days, we had a crew working with Merle and I while we were doing a few hours interviews with Merle on Jimmie, Lefty and his life with Benford at the sound board with him shooting some Jimmie Rodgers interviews. Later I was asked to leave the room and Banner and crew did a 3-camera shoot resulting the very kind things Merle had to say about me. THIS IS ON VIDEO FOLKS...
Chuck: Have you learned much from Benford? He has been chasing the stories, and his life sounds a lot like Jimmie Rodgers’ life himself. Merle: “I've learned a lot from Benford. He knows stories about Jimmie Rodgers that lead to other people like Hank Snow and Ernest Tubb, Lefty Frizzell. I don't know why my passion level is as a child. I am still interested in finding out something about my heroes, and he is in the same business (laughs). When I see him coming, I know what we are going to be talking about. I know he is a history buff and an interesting person, and he has worked awful hard to prepare this chunk of history.” Chuck: Merle, you don't let a lot of people just come on the bus, or go on tours with you? Merle: “No, that's right.” Chuck: How come Benford made it into the mix? Merle: Well, I could tell immediately that he was (pause) “Knowledgeable” about what he talked about, and that was interesting to me. I didn't know if he was there to tell me something or find out something, but it is always interesting to talk to Benford.”
In the Dylan liner notes of THE SONGS OF JIMMIE RODGERS: A TRIBUTE, he says, “Jimmie Rodgers of course is one of the guiding lights of the 20th Century whose way with song has always been an inspiration to those of us who have followed the path. A blazing star whose sound was and remains the raw essence of individuality in a sea of conformity, par excellence with no equal”.
ACT 1 - CHRONICLE # 1
JIMMIE RODGERS SAGA TRAILER
Following the Documentary Saga is the Biopic Movie
Jimmie Rodgers
The Man Who Started It All
WITH AN ALL-STAR LIST OF CAMEOS MANY FROM THE DOCUMENTARY
A powerful music saga evolving from the growth of a new nation and the human conditions interacting with advancements in technology that was the coal in the fire box of the iron horse locomotive creating the steam to move the trends down the main line and the various musical sidetracks. From Rodgers running off with a medicine show at 13 years old with the antagonist pain of losing his mother as a six year old boy to Merle Haggard picking up influences passed to him from Rodgers who also influenced Lefty Frizzell and Bob Wills, to Haggard’s influence then on Gram Parsons, the Eagles, Lynard Skynyrd to Keith and Mick and the Rolling Stones in rock music and on to an endless list of country acts. Merle would hop a freight train running away from home at 11 years old after losing his fiddle playing dad as a boy of nine.
1994, I was a judge at the Women’s State Chili Cookoff outside of Austin, Texas and backstage hanging with Dale Warren from Roy Rogers’ famous Sons of the Pioneers, and with my friend Al Strickland and Johnny Gimble from Bob Wills’ Texas Playboys. Hearing them talk about Jimmie Rodgers led me to wanting to know more about him in that I was researching to write a book on the singing cowboys and western music titled KICKIN’ UP DUST. Hearing about how Rodgers influenced these ole legends and the great Gene Autry, I started digging up more on the Rodgers.
Down the track in 1997, I was producing a live webcast online with Willie Nelson at an annual Jimmie Rodgers Festival in Kerrville, Texas. With Jimmie’s birth in 1897 it made this the 100-year anniversary. A bit of six degree of serendipity Bob Dylan was releasing a special album, Songs of Jimmie Rodgers: A Tribute and I was working with Sony Online due to the fact that Bob and Sony owned the URL JimmieRodgers.com, and I was needing tech support his manager Jeff Rosen hooked me up with Sony because the Kerrville phone company did not know what the Internet was in those early day of the Super Informational Highway.
On Willie’s bus after the successful Yahoo.com covered webcast, I told Willie that I wanted to do a documentary on Jimmie Rodgers. Kinky Friedman, who opened the show had passed Willie a joint, after Willie took a hit and passed the joint to me Willie said, “Benford if you want to know something about Jimmie Rodgers you need to talk to Merle Haggard.” Being highly stoned out of my mind I thought to myself, “That is easy for you to say Willie.”
Synergy lined up and some years down the road I’m on Merle’s Santa Fe Super Chief tour bus after a show with Bob Dylan in Seattle that was the beginning of a 55-day 39 show tour with Dylan, and after showing Merle a DVD with some of the video I had shot for the Rodgers doc, when Merle passes me a joint and says “Hey Benford…do you want to help me with my biopic movie, and I will help you on your Jimmie Rodgers Saga.” I take a long hit on the Hag rolled spliff and am and hear Thunderstruck deep in my brain with the pounding lyrics: “Thunder, thunder, thunder…I was caught in the middle of a railroad track (thunder!) I looked 'round And I knew there was no turning back (thunder) My mind raced And I thought, what could I do? (Thunder!) And I knew…” (Thunder!) AC/DC
I take a hit passing the joint back to Merle still struck by the thunder in my brain … “Sure Merle we can do that.” So, without a handshake, no contracts no lawyers or money involved in the deal we do what we just agreed to do for what would be the last decade of Merle Haggard’s life while he spilled his gut and heart out to me. Later he got us a lock box at his bank and one at my bank to keep our film and hard drives, and he wanted us to keep everything secret, and not to tell his wife or anybody what we were doing.
Merle and Willie play for the last time
forever on the Django & Jimmie tour