(continued from 'MAKING IT BIG IN COUNTRY MUSIC' Well, I looked at the contract and tho' I knew I might do better...even so, I signed it. That was back in 1983, and as they say in the biz, "the rest is musical history". My 'zoo song' went on to be #1 on the charts for quite some time. It has the record for being on the most stations (Radio)at one time(3003 stations in the U.S.A. on 5/10/1984 (between 11:08 a.m. and 11:15 a.m.). There are many stories about the song, but the one I like best is that when then twelve year old Garth Brooks heard it back in Oklahoma he was moved then and there to become an entertainer. Pretty impressive anecdote, no? But let me tell you folks, fame is not all that you might think it is. I became quite famous and I'll add quite wealthy from my 'zootune', but with it came alot of heartaches. How many nights have I woke up with 'zoomares' ? Those wild dreams of caged animals and staring people. Feeding time and no one's around. Rainy days with angry attendants looking to make sense of what in reality can't make sense. I once read of a zoo in the K.C. area that had prepared a tall cylindrical cement cage for some poor leopard that they had purchased from India. It was a huge leopard. The entire region was all excited from the hype the local papers had pushed on them. The cage was deep, and one would be able to stare down at the beast by leaning over the single metal railing that circled the top. It would have been so cool, but on day one of its arrival, the leopard figured out that by a series of 'off the wall jumps,' continuing upwards, freedom could be had. And it was! No one saw the escape, but "that was the only way it could have happened," said the embarassed cage designers. They had to have a curfew at night for the three days and nights they searched. The National Guard was called in, to no avail. This was back in the fifties, and the whole thing was hushed up, as they could do that sort of thing back then. The people just learned to live with it, becoming more cautious at night. No one ever collected the huge reward money offered for its capture. I don't know how long leopards live these days.
(to be continued)
