“And I didn’t spend all that time in music, I had odd jobs, I mean I liked to eat then, just like I like to eat now, and sometimes I had to work. I was doing some landscaping. It must have been somewhere along 58, somewhere like that, I remember sitting in that old tractor, getting a stiff neck from looking behind me, looking to see what I was doing.
I remember going home with a stiff neck, having a stiff neck at the end of the day. I was making a whole dollar and ten cents an hour back then. I’d stick an old wad of chewing tobacco in my mouth and spit all day, and I was still writing the songs, sitting up there on that tractor.
I had two or three that I wrote when I was in that business, and another time during this time I drove a lumber truck, driving all around Texas. I was making 90 cents an hour, driving that old truck. I’d call Pappy Daily (Glad Music Co.), to get back into the music business again.”
Note about Johnny’s Memoirs: Prior to Johnny’s stroke in 1999, he had sat down at his typewriter and began to share stories about his life and music. We are sharing these excerpts in Johnny’s own words… just as he told them.