I Was On A Game Show....

This is one of my entries in my ongoing "My Life In Music" project:

During the time that I was in law school, the old Nashville Network (now morphed into “Spike TV”) was actually a network more or less devoted to country music and the "country music lifestyle". They had a game show on the network hosted by country singer Bill Anderson called “Fandango” – it was kind of like a country music version of "Jeopardy!", but really dumbed down, for the most part. I didn’t watch the show on any kind of regular basis, but I had seen it from time to time.

One day, I noticed in the newspaper that try-outs for “Fandango” were being held in the University Mall in Little Rock. I lived in Little Rock at the time and thought, “What the hell.” I went to the mall that day with a couple of law school buddies and signed up. We were given a written test first to demonstrate our knowledge of country music. At the time, I had a very good knowledge of “classic” country, but very little knowledge about current country. Nevertheless, I only missed one question out of about 30. My buddies barely got any right at all. This qualified me to proceed to the next round, which was actually playing a “trial” game of "Fandango" at the mall against two other contestants. Instead of Bill Anderson, the emcee was local deejay/icon Bob Robbins. As I recall, I did okay in the game, but I didn’t win. I was thrown by a question about George Strait, with whom I was not all that familiar with at the time. I shrugged it off and left.
A month or so later, in December of 87, I got a call from the a producer of "Fandango" saying they still wanted me to be a contestant.

I DIGRESS, PT. 1: Later, upon meeting me, the producer said, "Oh, yeah, you're the one with Van Halen's "Eruption" on your answering machine."

I DIGRESS, PT. 2: This also reminds me that my roomate (who would now be known as a "player") always made an effort to let everyone know that our telephone number was 224-LUST (cringe).

BACK ON TRACK: The producer made the tantalizing offer that if I could pay all of my expenses and make it to Nashville on a date certain, then I might get on the show. The taping was to be on December 22, 1987, in Nashville. Well.... what the hell, I was a student, finals were over, why not? – ROAD TRIP! Soon after, two law school buddies, my younger brother, and I left for Nashville. We checked out the Country Music Hall of Fame, the Hermitage, the Ryman Auditorium (former home of the Grand Ole Opry), and other Nashville attractions the first day, and then I reported to the television studios the next day at Opryland.
Most game shows tape a week’s worth of shows in a day, “Fandango” included. I didn’t make the first four shows, so it looked like the trip was just a lark. I got picked for the fifth show, though. An “America’s Sweetheart” –type from Dothan, Alabama had won the first four shows and was poised to win a big prize if she won the fifth show. She was really sweet and the audience clearly was in her corner. Woe unto anyone who disrupted her winning streak!
The show started, and during the “meet the contestants” part, Bill tried to make me call the Hogs, even though I said I attended UALR (the Razorbacks are associated with the Fayetteville campus, not Little Rock). I laughingly mumbled “Sooey pigs.”

I DIGRESS, PT. 3 : I had a good laugh recently reading about Ken Jennings, the guy on "Jeopardy!" who continues to win. Apparently, he had run out of things to say during the "Meet the contestants" part of the show, so, when Alex asked him yet again to tell something about himself, he reportedly said, “Well, Alex, I once killed a man down south.”

Anyway, the game started, I did pretty well, and going into that part of the game that is roughly akin to “Final Jeopardy”, I was actually ahead. It looked like I was going to win and wreck America’s Sweetheart’s chance to win a sailboat or a house full of furniture.

I didn’t win and no, I didn’t take a dive.

The question was “What female country artist was known as the Sweetheart of the Opry?” Well, despite years of reading up on country music history, and reading Country Song Roundup religiously (more on CSR in a later post) when I was in elementary school, I didn’t know the answer. I said “Tammy Wynette,” whom I should have known was nobody’s sweetheart. The answer was Connie Smith. She is fairly obscure now but she was a big deal in 1965. She primarily sings gospel now. Her name surfaced a couple of years ago when she married Marty Stuart, who, from an age standpoint, could be her son. Anyway, I jokingly refer to Connie Smith now as “that bitch.”
I came in second. I won two Western shirts and a lot of Liquid Drano. I gave away the shirts and never redeemed the Liquid Drano certificates. We went to a taping of a country variety show that night and I at least got to meet Steve Earle.
I have a videotape of my 1987 appearance on "Fandango"; I recently converted it to DVD and my kids get a kick out of their baby-faced (and considerably lighter) dad on a game show.

Sidenote: On Fandango, their resident “Vanna White” was a person named Blake Pickett. She came across as a perky, wholesome type. I think I still have her autographed photo somewhere. Anyway, imagine my surprise when she turned up in a soft-core porn film on Cinemax a few years later – “Confessions Of A Lap Dancer.” A check of internet film databases shows that she has been in quite a few of these films since her days on Fandango.