FEATURED ARTIST OF THE MONTH

Hailing from Sparkman, Arkansas, The Browns were one of the biggest crossover country groups from the 1960s. Under the tutelage and production of the legendary Chet Atkins, The Browns were known for their breathtaking, inextricable harmonies. As the story goes: Oldest sister Maxine, perhaps unwittingly, launched the family’s career by secretly entering her brother Jim Ed in a contest on Little Rock’s BARNYARD FROLIC radio show. After several years of hits, exhausting tour schedules, and family tragedies, Maxine settled in North Little Rock after The Browns disbanded. She recounts The Browns’ history and personal tales in her required-reading autobiography, LOOKING BACK TO SEE: A COUNTRY MUSIC MEMOIR, published in 2005 by Arkansas University Press. This year, Maxine is re-releasing her only solo album, SUGAR CANE COUNTY, featuring the stellar track “Take It Out In Trade,” recently included on THE OA’s 2009 Music Issue compilation. She sat down with THE OA for a chat about the juicy details not mentioned in her book, her forthcoming reissue, and the real meaning behind the refrain “Take It Out In Trade.”

 
THE OXFORD AMERICAN: I noticed that you mention a few times in your autobiography that “Ground Hog” is your favorite Browns song.

MAXINE BROWN: I love that song because of Chet Atkins.

"Ground Hog" by The Browns

THE OA: His picking is great. Is there another favorite Browns song that reflects your vocal stylings, as far as the group is concerned?

MB: There’s several, but there’s one called “Down on the Old Plantation” that shows off our harmony. And I like that. You know, it’s just sort of an a capella. I like that one. I like “The Bandit,” I think we did a great job on that. And “Shenandoah” is one of my favorite songs, and it didn’t make it to my thirty-six favorites, I think they had trouble getting clearances. But “Shenandoah” shows off the harmony, and anything that’ll show off the harmony is what I like.

"Down on the Old Plantation" by The Browns

THE OA: Is there a Browns song that is your least favorite?

MB: Least favorite? There’s some that are very embarrassing. Especially those old [first record executive] Fabor Robinson things. So I don’t even want anybody to hear them.

THE OA: So you don’t even want to mention them?

MB: No! Well, you know, “Looking Back to See” was Fabor. “Here Today and Gone Tomorrow” was a smash hit—that was Fabor. So I can’t put them down too bad. I still get paid for them, through BMI, that’s all. Fabor stole the rest of them.

I have a lot of least favorites, but I can’t think right now. We’ve got three hundred and forty-six all together. So that’s a bunch.

THE OA: Is there a Browns song in particular that you think should have been another million-seller but was overlooked?

MB: “The Old Master Painter” should have been. “The Old Master Painter” should have followed, was supposed to follow “The Old Lamplighter” and New York wouldn’t let it, they turned it down. And I always felt like it would have been a hit.

"The Old Master Painter" by The Browns

THE OA: So the RCA offices in New York turned it down?

MB: Oh yeah. They seemed to control everything. They tried to control everything in Nashville. They wanted us to do pop, and we didn’t want to do pop. We were country all the way. But we just had some pop hits, and of course made a lot of money, and of course we were foolish not to, but anyway, we were country and wanted to remain country.

THE OA: Was there some backlash from the country community when you had your pop hits?

MB: Oh, yes. Absolutely. They resented that.

THE OA: Other musicians treated you differently?

MB: Artists, they did. We’d go to the disc-jockey conventions, you know. Country-music disc-jockey conventions, and they thought we didn’t belong there. Because we had all of those pop hits and everything. They were very ugly to us, a lot of them were. But look at them—everybody wants a pop hit. And when they crossed over it was all okay. Just like Little Jimmy Dickens. He was very cruel. Then he made “May the Bird of Paradise Fly Up Your Nose,” which was a pop hit. And it was okay, then. It was okay for him, but not for us. And we still get some backlash for all of that, still, to this day. And sometimes I think that’s why we’re not in the Country Music Hall of Fame.

THE OA: So at its heart, you would say that The Browns are a country group?

MB: I hope so.

THE OA: Could you elaborate and describe what you think The Browns’ sound is?

MB: It’s tempered harmony, and there’s nothing like it.

THE OA: Have you encountered any vocal groups—either contemporary with The Browns or since—that you feel had a comparable close harmony?

MB: Well, The Fleetwoods had a good harmony. I don’t know, you might not remember them. “Mr. Blue,” but I can’t remember now what their other songs were. No, I don’t think anyone could ever come close to The Browns with their harmony, ever. No one has ever had that close harmony that we did. I don’t think they ever will. I don’t mean to be bragging—it’s just different, something that can’t be imitated. I know after we left the business, Jim Ed tried to hire singers to replace us, and tried everything in the world to teach them how to harmonize and sing like we did, and you can’t do that. Nobody can do that. It’s family. It’s tempered harmony. Tempered harmony is when it can’t be matched by instruments. Chet Atkins would have to teach all the musicians how to tune so they could play with us on sessions, because it’s not true harmony at all.

When we did THE ED SULLIVAN SHOW, for instance, they wanted us to come in and practice so they could get our parts. The conductor just threw up his hands. He said, “You’ve got great harmony, but I can’t write your parts.” So he just sustained the chords.

THE OA: How do you feel the music of The Browns has held up, and do you think that there’s anything you would change about it?

MB: Well, you know what’s changed—I don’t like all this rock & roll stuff they call country. It’s not country. I don’t like it, so I don’t listen to it.

THE OA: If you could boil it down to just one aspect of your personal life or your career, and change one thing, do you know one thing that you would change?

MB: I never would get married. I don’t think marriage and music business mix very well. Of course, I got three kids, you know, and I’m proud of them. That’s one thing—I think that I would change that.

THE OA: How do you think being a woman impacted your career?

MB: You know back when I made the SUGAR CANE COUNTY album, women were not accepted. You know, they just weren’t. Disc jockeys very seldom would play a woman—maybe Rose Maddox back then, you know, or Kitty Wells. But very seldom did a woman “make it” back then, in show business, by herself. It was hard. It was very hard.

THE OA: Do you think a lot of that was stacked against you as well?

MB: I think so. It had to be.

THE OA: Do you have any advice for young women looking to get into the music business?

MB: Well, don’t get married! I don’t know. If you’re determined to make it in your career, you have to be committed. There’s a lot of ups and downs in the music business now—always have been. But you have to be committed, dedicated to it, stay with it, rehearse a lot, push yourself, and I mean push yourself. Impose on people if you have to, but stay in there. It’s a dog-eat-dog business, still.

THE OA: The way that show business worked back then involved, at some point in your career, possibly experiencing inappropriate pressure from a male executive, or a man in a more powerful executive role. Do you feel like you were ever put in a situation where you were compromised like that?

MB: They tried, they tried, a lot of times. But, you know, we had our brother to protect us, that helped a lot. But you would get put in those positions.

THE OA: And who would it be, record people, managers?

MB: Record people, mostly. Oh, yeah. Especially when I started trying to make it solo. Oh, and it was very difficult then. Downright outrageous. I think I wrote something about that in my book, about one of those dates that I played, and those guys got fresh with me. And I had to get out of the car. And I was walking, and I didn’t know where I was going. I left my purse and guitar and everything else in their car, but boy, I got out of the way. Scared me to death. But then, I had to get back in the car with them—I didn’t have any choice, and go on to the next date. But boy, when I got there, I said, “No more.” I got the booking agent and talked to him. And he said, “Well, your brother’s playing about ten miles from here.” And he said, “Do you want me to call him?” And I said, “My God, yes! Call him! Let him know where I am, and to come pick me up.” So they did. And I canceled all the rest of my dates, I came home and said, “That’s it. To hell with it. If I have to go through this, I’m not going to do any more shows by myself.” And I didn’t. It was awful, I was scared within an inch of my life of being raped.

THE OA: Elvis and your sister Bonnie had a pretty serious thing going on for a few years. Do you think Bonnie should have married him?

MB: No. Bonnie’s got the most wonderful husband that ever lived. I love him. She couldn’t have. Uh-uh. She couldn’t have lived that kind of life.

THE OA: Tell us a bit more about Johnny Cash.

MB: Oh my gosh, well, I knew you would ask that, everybody does. Well, what do you want to know? [Country DJ] Bill Mack called me when he read the book and said, “Just one question: Did you or didn’t you?”

THE OA: What did you say?

MB: I said, “Read Marshall Grant’s book.” Marshall Grant’s Johnny Cash’s bass player. He talks about it.

THE OA: But you and Johnny Cash maintained a friendship after your fling?

MB: Yeah, and he’s another one, you know? I couldn’t have married him, either. I couldn’t have stood the drinking, and the binges he would go on, stuff like that. But I really cared for him. I have a real special place in my heart for him, rest of my life. Always did. Because we were very close, at one time. June Carter beat my time. I think it’s because she had big boobs, though.

THE OA: Could you tell the story of how your mother discovered Conway Twitty?

MB: Well, Conway was a poor musician. He was working for peanuts. He had a little group, I think he had a three-piece band. And they were going out all over the country, just playing at nightclubs—honkytonks, then, anything that they could find. So they auditioned at the [Brown-family-owned] Trio Club for Mom, and she hired him on the spot. So they started playing there, and they had been there probably six weeks before we got home. She said, “You’ve got to hear this band,” and it was Harold Jenkins—he wasn’t Conway Twitty. We just loved him. Anyway, we wrote some songs together, he and I. And we’d talk to him about show business, what we went through, and some of the things we had experienced. We begged him not to get in it—we said, “Get out of it while you can!” But anyway, we had a lot of fun. He went on to become a big star, had a big hit, and we remained friends for a long time, I guess until he died. And it was so sad when we lost him.

THE OA: The Browns were more or less taken under the wing of Arkansas country performer Wayne Raney, right?

MB: Well, he shopped us around. He took us to Dallas to meet with Don Law. He took us to Cincinnati to meet with Syd Nathan, who was, at the time, his A&R man and producer. And then he brought us back to the GRAND OLE OPRY, and got us on Ernest Tubbs Record Shop [MIDNITE JAMBOREE radio show], and we performed there. And so he was just instrumental in helping us get started.

THE OA: Was that a pretty common thing, for Arkansas musicians? Was there an Arkansas musician community where you helped each other out?

MB: I think back then, we were a family. I mean, musicians and artists were a family. The GRAND OLE OPRY was a family. It’s not like that anymore. It’s just not close to like it was back then. Everybody helped each other then, and nobody was jealous of each other, and everyone was the proudest when anyone achieved something. But this day and time, it seems like there’s just so much jealousy. And nobody cares. That’s the way I feel. I might be wrong.

THE OA: You mention some of the backlash from the DJs in Arkansas. Did you ever formulate an explanation for that?

MB: No, I’d just like to know. You’re a stranger in your own land, like the Bible says. And they still—to this day—they don’t play The Browns. You don’t ever hear The Browns here. I sent [the Little Rock DJ] The Wolf one of my CDs, I never hear it. My granddaughter says every once in a while she’ll hear them play “The Three Bells” but that’s it. They just don’t, never have.

We just quit appearing here. Now, last year, we did an appearance for a hospice benefit. It was a huge crowd, it was sold out. It was the first time we appeared in Arkansas in forty years. They just didn’t have any use for us, they just didn’t have any use for The Browns. So we didn’t have any use for them.

THE OA: Do you feel like Nashville has changed since you lived there?

MB: Oh yeah. I do. Well, most everybody’s dead. Most of my friends are not there anymore. But I’m not there enough to be able to tell you how I think it’s changed. I just know what I hear. What I hear out of Nashville is just not good. But I can’t be truthful about that because I just don’t know.

THE OA: You mentioned a lot of tour nightmares in your book. Do you have one particular moment, the most embarrassing thing that happened to you when you were onstage?

MB: I remember an incident that happened while we were on the way to the stage, one time. We were playing an outdoor park. And I had on my wig, and we had to go under a barbed wire fence to get to the stage, after we got dressed. Someone would hold the barbed wire up and you’d go under. Well, everybody had gone, and I was on my own getting through that barbed wire fence, and somehow the barbed wire caught my wig and pulled it off, and I didn’t know it. I ran onstage without a wig, and everybody started dying laughing. Jim Ed looked at me and said, “Oh my God! Where’s your hair?” And shit, it was dangling on that damn wire. I had to go back and get it. We had to make a joke out of it, because good God that was embarrassing. At the end of the show, people loved it, just loved it. Anyway, that was embarrassing, but I’m sure I’ve had a lot of embarrassing moments onstage.

THE OA: When The Browns were on the television circuit, were you ever asked to lip-synch your songs?

MB: Oh honey, that’s all you do on the Dick Clark show. You did lip-synching.

THE OA: How did that make you feel when you’re a vocal group?

MB: We loved it.

THE OA: You didn’t mind?

MB: We didn’t mind a bit. You didn’t have to rehearse or anything. With a band or an orchestra or whatever. But Dick Clark was only lip-synching.

THE OA: For every other show you performed?

MB: I don’t think we did lip-synching on too many more. It was all live. I’m sure we did, though. I think we did on THE JERRY LEWIS TELETHON, on his show. A lot of them you had to. It worked out fine.

THE OA: When The Browns were recording in the studio, was there a song that took a really long time to get down?

MB: Yeah, “Born to Be With You” took a long time. I think probably thirty-five, forty takes. Can’t remember. The head guy from New York had walked in and that spooked me. So it took a long time.

THE OA: Was there a song that didn’t take any time at all to perfect?

MB: Most all of them. Well, really, it didn’t take us very long on most of them to get it down. Chet Atkins made it so easy. We didn’t get to rehearse a lot. What you’d do, you go in and you run through it three or four times with the musicians. They write down the notes. That’s the way it was back then. You run through it with them after they get their notes written down, and by that time you’re just almost ready. And when they learn their part, you’ve already got yours. So it doesn’t take too long. Takes maybe two or three takes, and that’s it. Unless you’re doing overdubbing, which we did quite a bit.

THE OA: Now I know that you mention you dabbled in songwriting, you did write several of The Browns’ songs, and for your solo album. You did eventually start a publishing company.

MB: Yes, Bonnie and I started a publishing company.

THE OA: Is that something that you wish you’d gotten into earlier? Do you feel like you have a strength as a songwriter?

MB: Let me tell you something—I quit. I never got paid for anything I wrote. I got so disgusted. I wrote “Take It Out In Trade.” I wrote “Sugar Cane County,” “My Biggest Mistake,” the song that’s on the CD.

"My Biggest Mistake" by Maxine Brown

Anyway, not long ago, my publishing company that has “Take It Out In Trade” sent me an e-mail saying, “Do you have any more material that we could listen to?” I said, “I’ve got some thirty years old if you’d like to listen to them, I’ve got a trunk full.” So they said they wanted me to send them, and I did. I sent them about twenty, and they’ve already accepted about sixteen of them. And some I didn’t dream about them wanting, or ever being published at all. They’ve taken them, they’ve taken all of them, and they like some of them real well.

THE OA: So you think you might get another release?

MB: Yep, that’s what they’re doing—trying to find an artist now to record them. So, I thought maybe one of these days I’ll get paid for some of my work.

THE OA: You kind of pushed Jim Ed into performing. Did he always want to be a musician, or was it something that you wanted for him?

MB: He liked singing real well. He liked to sing, and he was good. You got to be asked first. But I entered him in that contest, and he came in second. They hired him anyway. He’s got a great voice. He’s still the best singer on the GRAND OLE OPRY. He’s got a great voice at his age.

THE OA: Jim Ed relocated to Nashville and had a very prolific career. You were still in Nashville at the time you did SUGAR CANE COUNTY. Why do you think that he had an easier time than you as far as getting a hit out there?

MB: Honey, because I was married, I had three kids. I spent several weeks in the hospital in Nashville and they told me I’d never walk again. I had to move back home to be with my parents, so they could help me with my children. I was getting a divorce. I had to make a living, but still, I had back surgery and I’d like to have never got over it. So I think that had a lot to do with it.

I never remarried or anything, I just had to take care of my children. I just didn’t have any choice. So, that makes a big difference. He had to make a living, too, but he had a wife that was home taking care of the family and all that. That has a lot to do with it. So that’s why I say don’t get married.

THE OA: Why do you think SUGAR CANE COUNTY was your last release?

MB: Well, The Browns had disbanded and I tried to make it on my own, and I was banking on that to help me get personal appearances and things. But it never got released, never got played or anything.

THE OA: And you feel it just wasn’t marketed properly?

MB: Never was. Never was at all. It never got turned in or played or anything. None of them, none of those songs on there.

THE OA: What do you think is your best song from your solo work?

MB: I think “Take It Out In Trade” is pretty damn good. It’s well-written.

THE OA: Do you think that SUGAR CANE COUNTY has a very different sound from The Browns?

MB: Oh, well, it’s just me. I don’t know.

The producer was Felton Jarvis, he was Elvis Presley’s producer. So that makes a difference. He believed in me. He really did. He and Bill Williams from BILLBOARD. He wrote the liner notes on my album. They were two of my biggest supporters and they both died around the same time. It hurt me real bad.

THE OA: You think that affected how things proceeded after that?

MB: I think so. Felton was so young. But he was a great producer. He would’ve helped me—had all this not happened, with RCA and Chart. I was just left dangling. I didn’t know what to do.

THE OA: You seem perhaps a little more reserved than what we would think “Take It Out In Trade” would reflect.

MB: I know it! Everybody wants to know that! You’re not the first one. Bill Mack said, “Now tell me the truth, why did you write that, how did you write ‘Take It Out In Trade?’”

I don’t know how I wrote that. I wrote a song about a horse one time called “Sky Princess” that The Browns recorded. I don’t know, horse races have always been fascinating to me, and I used to go all the time until I lost my eyesight and I couldn’t see around the track, so I quit going.

And I’ve never been to Chicago, to a racetrack, to Arlington Park, but it was a dream—I always wanted to go, because my mother always wanted to go, and we never did get to. But I just wrote that song about—more or less—dreaming. Just trying to come up with a novel song like “Looking Back to See" or something that would appeal to the people. Something that would sell.

THE OA: You have to have known that it had this kind of saucy implication, though.

MB: I guess so, yeah. Of course, back then, honey, it never would have flown. It might today, might catch on today,  but back then they’d put me down, they would have called me the biggest whore in Arkansas to write a song like that. But it’s just a little novelty thing that I wanted to write.

THE OA: So you can reveal what the real meaning is?

MB: It really doesn’t have any. It was just made up. You just make them up. Well, I didn’t have a juicy love affair going so I could write a love song, so I had to come up with something. I wrote a lot of songs for the album and [Chart Records owner] Slim Williamson wouldn’t let me record them. He didn’t like them, and I thought they were pretty good songs.

I tried to write all ten of them. And I wrote about six or eight, and he threw them out. Slim Williamson threw them out. He didn’t like them, and they were pretty good. After thirty years, forty years, fifty years.

There’s no story there. You’ll have to take my word for that. I get asked that all the time.

THE OA: But you knew people would be asking.

MB: Sure. And I have no answer for them. I don’t know! I don’t know how I wrote that.

THE OA: When the female protagonist in the song is saying, “Well, I guess I’ll take it out in trade,” does she mean what we think she means?

MB: Honey, that used to be a popular phrase. That used to be so popular. Like, “I can’t afford this!” Well, just take it out in trade. Everybody was saying that at one time. I always remembered that. I always put back money, so that I could go to the horse races and still eat. And I remember, one time, them saying, “Well, just go take it out in trade.” A lot of times I’d come home so broke, I’d take my money, spend it on a horse, not have enough money to eat when I left there. But I don’t know, it was just a popular phrase, something we used all the time. I thought nothing of it. And I never forgot it.

Writing songs, my gosh, you just make them up. I don’t know how I wrote “My Biggest Mistake,” I never experienced anything like that. Or “Sugar Cane County”—I had a disc-jockey friend one time mention the fact that “Somebody needs to write a song about the Delta, the land of sugar cane.” He just planted an idea in my head and I just wrote that. That’s just how songs are born.

"Sugar Cane County" by Maxine Brown

"Take It Out In Trade" by Maxine Brown