Memories: The Autobiography of Ralph Emery

The host of "Nashville Now" documents his forty years in broadcasting, describing his four marriages, his drug addiction and recovery, and his contact with many of country music's most popular personalities

As well known to music lovers as the singers appearing on his cable TV show Nashville Now, Emery has been a part of the Music City scene for 40 years and a star for 30. His career has included stints as emcee for Opry Almanac on radio station WSM, announcer on the Grand Old Opry program and host of Pop Goes the Country. With freelancer Carter ( Almost Like a Song ), Emery tells of being sustained by loving grandparents through a miserable childhood dominated first by his alcoholic father and then by a stepfather with no interest in him; three failed marriages and drug addiction preceded his successful fourth marriage and current esteem. He also writes of stars and friends such as Johnny Cash and Barbara Mandrell and of the many victims of drugs and alcohol he has known in the field.
Copyright 1991 Reed Business Information, Inc.

Thoroughly engaging and delightfully candid autobiography by a popular southern disk jockey, Grand Old Opry emcee, and host of the cable-TV talk-show Nashville Now. Beginning with his childhood in the dirt South, Emery makes it clear that he is telling about his life rather than serving up a ``famous-entertainers-I-know-intimately'' salute. Raised on his grandparents' 20-acre farm (complete with ``running'' cold water from a pump on the sink) outside of McEwen, Tenn. (pop. 635), Emery--with the very capable assistance of Tom Carter--tells of his childhood entrancement with radio. Ordering picture books of the stars who sang on Grand Old Opry, he sat on the floor studying them as the stars performed over the airwaves. At 19, he landed his first job as a radio announcer, at WTPR, a ``thousand- watt `daytimer' '' in Paris, Tenn. Although he realized he was ``about as important as wall paper,'' Emery enthusiastically played and replayed the station's single 78-rpm copy of 1951's hottest record--``Hey Good Lookin','' by Hank Williams. Emery chooses this juncture to note: ``I wanted to be a broadcaster simply because I wanted to be somebody.'' (His current radio show is aired on 440 stations.) The second half of the book is filled with profiles--done by way of anecdotes and stories--of people Emery has known in the country-music business. He is an insider, and his unvarnished takes on, among others, Patsy Cline, Hank Williams, Jr., Johnny Cash, Dolly Parton, and Keith Whitley (four months before his fatal overdose at age 33) are fresh and interesting. Emery's chapter on Merle Haggard--``the only singer- songwriter in the history of country music whose skills arguably surpass Hank Williams's''--is worth the price of the book. A fine outing for students of American lives and lovers of country music alike. -- Copyright ©1991, Kirkus Associates, LP. All rights reserved.