Ronda Rich

Syndicated Columnist

A Texas newspaper story began with “Faded country music star, Johnny Rodriguez…” Faded. That hurt my heart. It sounded so brutal.

From the age of 12 to the edge of 15, Johnny Rodriguez was my girlhood crush. I was absolutely convinced that one day I would marry him and my name would be Ronda Rodriguez. I sat in class, writing that name in my composition book and even took Spanish, which was a miserable failure.

A Scotch-Irish Appalachian ear cannot hear and pronounce words outside of our language.

Tink tries to correct me, then I attempt to mimic it. One day, he admitted, “You really can’t hear words that are different from your Appalachian language.”

As a sidebar, historians have told me that there is a conclave deep in the Appalachians where only the King’s English is spoken. It really is a gorgeous, lyrical language if you listen close enough.

Johnny Rodriguez. He was a star from the moment he hit Nashville, having been discovered by two of country music’s biggest stars, Tom T. Hall and Bobby Bare, while singing at the Alamo – the full set that was built by John Wayne, who financed the movie about the famous battle – and were completely wooed by the sweet, soft tenor of his voice.

Tom T. took him to Nashville as his lead guitar player, then introduced him to the folks at Mercury, his record label. In Roy Dea’s office, Johnny sang two songs. When he finished, Dea signed him immediately, then turned him over to legendary producer Jerry Kennedy. He had two number one songs as well as his first album that was number one across all the charts.

All in the same year. He co-wrote with Tom T. Hall, his signature song: “Riding My Thumb to Mexico.”

My classmates had posters of David Cassidy, Donnie Osmond or Leif Garrett. Not me. I was a country music fan since I got my first Loretta Lynn album for my sixth birthday. It is said that Johnny was country music’s first sex symbol.

But I say he was country music’s ONLY sex symbol.

I had every album from the beginning. Mama, sweetly, would give me four hard earned dollars to buy his newest album. It’s not an understatement to say that I was crazy about him.

My oldest sister was an entertainment journalist in Nashville, initially covering country music for the Nashville Banner and The Tennessean. She had been assigned to do a story on Johnny and the two developed a casual relationship. She regularly ran into him on Music Row.

I was, what was known then, as a late-in-life child. She was 18 years old when I arrived and the first person on either side of our mountain families to go to college.

Mama used to say, “We had one in college and one in diapers.”

My sister told Johnny, “I have a baby sister who is crazy about you.

You can’t have a bigger fan.”

He sweetly replied, “I wanna meet her. The next time she’s in Nashville, let’s work it out.”

And so it happened that a plump girl with a terrible haircut met the handsome Johnny Rodriguez. I have an 8x10 of that meeting with him hugging me. I shudder at how downright unattractive I was. No wonder that he married a beautiful flight attendant from Rockdale County, a suburb of Atlanta, and not me.

Johnny had been dead for four months before I knew it. I was terribly sad. Another piece of my yesterday had broken away.

He died at 73 but looked 103 in the photos I found. Addiction had haunted him since his early days in Nashville. Folks tried to help him because he was a tremendous talent and such an appeal to a young audience.

Finally, despite numerous number ones and more top 10s, Nashville shut the door on him, so home to Texas he went.

Faded. Absolutely heartbreaking.

Ronda Rich is the best-selling author of the Stella Bankwell series.

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