There are worse things than being thought a Republican.
I might have become a minor celebrity but royalty checks were a long way off.
Once your name becomes well known, politicians come courting.
Until MTV, television had not been a huge influence on music. To compete with MTV, the country music moguls felt they had to appeal to the same young audience and do it the way MTV did.
Performing is an experience, for me, that is as humbling as it is energizing.
It was unlikely that anyone had ever heard a black person sing country music.