Some of country's hottest stars will entertain us on This Week in Country Music.
Ronnie Millsap, Ann Murray, and Kenny Rogers.
We'll be at home with Janie Frickie as she talks about her husband and her marriage.
Country Music heartthrob Gary Morris proves he's a real catch.
Not only can he sing, he can cook too.
Johnny Lee blasts the tabloids for rumors about the breakup of his marriage.
And a new duo discovery makes country news.
Look out, here come the judge.
Hello everyone and welcome to This Week in Country Music.
I'm Charlie Chase.
I'm Laurie Ann Crook.
Janie Frickie seems to live a glamorous life.
She's always in glittering costumes, bowing to applause, and accepting awards.
Well this time we thought we'd get a different look at Janie.
We spent a day at home with her and her husband manager, Randy Jackson, who still isn't quite
sure why Janie fell in love with him.
I see why anybody would be attracted to Janie, but I don't know why Janie would be attracted
to me because we are opposites.
My generalist moment is about four times rougher than her roughest moment.
So I ask myself the same question.
And I do have to keep him in line a lot.
He does get a little rough.
Don't make me sound like a wimp Janie.
No, no, no.
I don't keep him in line that much.
But Randy is what I call a rugged, kind of a rough, rugged guy.
You know, I mean he's an outdoorsman.
He loves to hurt.
The evidence of that decorates their home in Lancaster, Texas.
It's a 120-year-old farmhouse that Janie and Randy have recently remodeled.
Soft touches like baskets of bears and a few frills in the bedroom attest to the fact that
these are two distinct individuals who've learned to coexist in their year-old marriage.
He thought he was a confirmed bachelor until I met him.
I was never a confirmed bachelor.
I was just single a long time.
That's right.
But that's before I met you.
He was president of the He-Men Women's Haters Club.
She doesn't have that bit in her mouth.
A lot of things have changed since they met eight years ago.
With Randy's help, Janie has gone from backup singer to superstar, where applause, glitter,
and glamour are a way of life.
But then you come back to Lancaster, Texas, and you know, you go out there and feed your
donkey and clean out the stalls.
You're pretty close to realism there.
So I mean, we don't ride around in limousines and we don't drive Mercedes and we don't try
to propagate that unrealistic life.
We leave it when we get on the plane, I think, pretty much.
And we answer the phone when it rings.
Which, by the way, is quite often.
Even at home, Janie and Randy admit they're workaholics, but they love it that way.
And Randy doesn't seem to mind the fact that all his work is behind the scenes.
A lot of people have problems with egos of your wife is a star, she's in the limelight,
and you know, you're not.
Is that a problem?
It's not a problem with me.
And how well have they combined business and pleasure?
It's been pretty nice.
It's been real nice, Janie.
I cannot think of anything nicer.
Now, what happens when they have a real disagreement, like a professional disagreement, say over
Janie's career?
Well, Randy says that obviously it does carry over into their personal life.
They can't help that.
But they're both very patient and understanding, and they work things out.
And I think, you know the old phrase, love conquers all, that fits them to the T.
That applies there.
Sure does.
Okay, well here's Kenny Rogers to sing about what apparently Janie and Randy have a lot
of, and that is homemade love.
Homemade love, just like mama used to make.
Homemade love, that's what she used to say.
You can satisfy frustration in a single one-night stand.
But there ain't nothing quite as good as homemade love.
Homemade love, on a cold and lonely night, feels so good.
But your woman makes it right.
And she knows just how to please you, in each and every way.
There ain't nothing quite as good as homemade love.
Homemade love, nothing without love.
There's sweet love, and you know it won't be over.
She'll be there every day.
Homemade love, take it with you where you go.
Homemade love, let everybody know.
That your woman needs to please, and she's headed straight for you.
And there ain't nothing quite as good as homemade love.
Homemade love, love, homemade nothing without your love.
There's sweet love, homemade love.
There ain't nothing quite as good as homemade love.
Now you may have guessed we went back a few years for that one.
1976 to be exact, Kenny Rogers and Homemade Love.
Of course, the two platinum albums last year.
Everything he sings turns to gold and eventually platinum.
Really?
Coming up next on This Week in Country Music,
Ann Murray sings one of her biggest hit records.
And Gary Morris makes a hit in the kitchen with his Mexican cooking.
Nope.
Hank Williams Jr. filmed his first television special this week
with an all-star cast that included Alabama, Waylon Jennings, Sylvia, Gus Harden, and Mel McDaniel.
The show is an all-American salute filmed onboard the aircraft carrier USS Constellation in the San Diego Harbor.
No air date has been set for the television special,
but it sure was a nice way for 5,000 crew members and their guests to spend Valentine's Day, courtesy of Hank Jr.
Well, there's another country star who's been spending her time clowning around before the television cameras.
Believe it or not, this is Barbara Mandrell,
all decked out to host the annual Ringling Brothers-Barnum & Bailey Circus television special,
set to air late next month.
Barbara will also try her hand at her first serious acting role soon.
She'll play a geologist trying to save a town from an underground fire
in the made-for-TV movie, Cold Fire, which begins filming this month.
Ever since his first big hit, The Love She Found in Me,
Gary Morris has been called country music's newest heartthrob.
He's also pretty good in the kitchen.
One of his favorite concoctions is elk chili.
Well, Gary invited Lori Ann over to help him make a big pot of it,
but she didn't turn out to be much help at all.
When I come home after I've been on the road, and it's not very often that I get home,
I want to be left alone for the most part, so I learned how to cook.
It's one of the few things I can do and forget about music totally.
This looks like hamburger, it's not?
No, it's elk.
Elk, mate? Did you, somebody told me that you actually shot the elk yourself?
Mm-hmm.
No kidding.
I have people, both men and women, who say, you know,
I can't believe you go out and kill an animal.
I have very little time for those who criticize my hunting.
I got tomatoes in there.
You want to do the onion?
Been handling a knife long?
No.
Gary, I told you the truth, I never cook.
Do I peel it first?
No.
This is going to be some spicy, spicy chili today.
See, there's a little flower in here.
Watch my mother.
Is that pretty decent right there?
Yeah.
That looks great.
Is it the best thing you've ever eaten?
Mm-mm-mm.
It was alright, didn't we?
Now be truthful, was that chili really as good as it looked?
Well, I'm going to let you decide for yourself, Bob.
Can we have the ball of chili?
I'll bring this down there.
And I say, ooh, it has a bite out of it.
Now who made what?
Well, I made the...
You made this.
Yes, I did.
Here, you break this up.
I just take a bite?
Well, here, you do it like this and take a bite of it.
There you go.
Mm.
Honest reaction.
Are you sick?
It's good.
It's not really spicy.
Well, I think it's pretty good.
Listen, while you're picking out...
I'm getting hot.
For you.
While he is picking out, let's watch Ann Murray sing
Shadows in the Moonlight.
There it is good.
There will be shadows in the moonlight
Darling, I'll meet you at midnight
Hand in hand we'll go dancing through the Milky Way
And we'll find a little highway
Where we can love the whole night away
There'll be shadows in the moonlight
Right up till the light of day
Ooh, the night is young
Baby, so are we
Laugh, I'm gonna make you glad you came
Ooh, you won't be the thing
Bring your love for me
Darling, I will do the same
There'll be shadows in the moonlight
Darling, I'll meet you at midnight
Hand in hand we'll go dancing through the Milky Way
Ooh, you won't be the thing
Bring your love for me
You'll be glad you came
Just wait and see
There'll be shadows in the moonlight
Shadows in the moonlight
Darling, I'll meet you at midnight
Hand in hand we'll go dancing through the Milky Way
And we'll find a little highway
Where we can love the whole night away
There'll be shadows in the moonlight
Right up till the light of day
That was Ann Murray and Shadows in the Moonlight.
You'll be happy to know that I polished off my chili.
This was really good.
What happened to the tortilla?
It's right back over there.
Thanks a lot.
Next, Johnny Lee says the tabloids are wrong.
A mother-daughter duo goes from the backwoods to the big time.
And Ronnie Millsap on stage in Vegas.
It wasn't long ago that Johnny Lee was making headlines with his marriage to actress Charlene Tilton and the birth of their daughter Cherish.
Recently though, in the tabloids, headlines are reading separation, divorce, and child custody.
In this interview, Johnny set the record straight.
They blow it out of proportion to sell papers.
It's like a living soap opera.
I got to where it doesn't bother me anymore.
I mean, I've never been a husband.
She's never been a wife.
We're working things out.
We don't have any more problems than anybody else.
It'll either work or it won't.
I want it to, so does she.
So we'll see what happens.
I love my wife.
I love my baby.
I think she's the most precious thing that's ever happened to me in my life.
And we'll just see.
It's easy to walk away from things, but I think as you go along, you have to learn things about each other and experience and whatever.
I don't know.
I'm still going through all that.
Looking at the glamorous cover on their first album, you'd never suspect that just a few years ago, the Judds were living in the backwoods of Kentucky singing just to entertain themselves.
They had no telephones, no TV, but they did have talent and they knew it.
How are you?
I'm fine.
Nowadays, when Naomi Judd and her 19-year-old daughter, Wynona, walk into RCA in Nashville, everyone knows them as a hot new act.
Things were a lot different a year ago when they first auditioned.
We didn't know anything about the business.
Had we known that particular Wednesday at 6 o'clock when we came down, just the impact and the importance of that audition, we wouldn't have been able to open our mouths.
We had them come in here.
We had it prearranged.
They came in and we had all our people here, all the promotion and salespeople and even the A&R department.
They just absolutely caught us with their performance and the songs.
Do you have a gut feeling as to how far they can go in the business?
I think that the proverbial term big time is what we're talking about.
Three questions remain.
First, how do the Judds describe themselves?
Right now you're looking at a secretary and an RN who are getting more and more into music.
Having been influenced by bluegrass, western swing and the blues, how do they describe their music?
I've taken all those and we've kind of mixed them together.
It comes out via the Judds.
We call it Judd music.
And finally, how do they describe their relationship?
As long as she does what I tell her to do, everything's fine.
The Judds' first single, Had A Dream About You Baby, is number 30 with a bullet on the charts.
They've been told when they make it into the top 20, it's safe to quit their day jobs and become full-time artists.
Oh, that's the way it works.
Here's a man who hasn't had a day job in a long time, but he sure packs in the crowds at night.
From his Las Vegas show, here's Ronnie Milsap.
Ladies and gentlemen, Ronnie Milsap.
Well, you can walk out on me tonight If you think that it ain't feeling right
But darling, there ain't no getting over me
Well, you can say that you need to be free But there ain't no place that I won't be
Sweet darling, there ain't no getting over me
I'll be the pill you forgot to take I'll be the dream that keeps you awake
I'll be the song on the radio I'll be the reason that you tell the boys no
Don't you know you can tell everyone that we're through And you might even believe it too
But darling, there ain't no getting over me
Sweet darling, there ain't no getting over me
I'll be the face that you see in a cloud I'll be the times that you cry out loud
I'll be the smile when there's no one around I'll be the book that you just can't put down
So you can walk out on me tonight If you think that it ain't feeling right
But darling, there ain't no getting over me You'll see, sweet darling, there ain't no getting over me
No, no, no, no, no, no, no, darling There ain't no getting over me
There ain't no getting over me
Only women make good lovers
Oh, Elizabeth, I'm sure missing you
Would you believe I'm thinking about a two-comer on
Why, lady, why
Do you tell me that you will if you will
Stay young, keep your wheels in motion
If you're gonna cheat on me, don't cheat in our hometown