With the redoubtable Dolly Parton inhabiting airwaves in a much-discussed ABC-TV show, her Tennessee hometown is now loosing upon the world another inimitable female country act-one just as plainspoken, feisty, ingratiating and off-the-wall as Parton.
This one is also three times as numerous. Meet the McCarters: Jennifer, Lisa and Teresa. And be entertained, whether they`re singing or talking.
”We love country music and making people smile,” declares Jennifer, 23, in an unmistakable East Tennessee drawl. ”And we like our country music traditional. You twang it, and we`ll sang it.”
On Tuesday, Warner Bros. will release the McCarters` first record, a pretty ballad titled ”Timeless and True Love.” It features the striking lead voice of Jennifer backed by the chilling harmony of her 21-year-old twin sisters.
If you`re assuming this is some untried trio still wet behind the ears, don`t.
Jennifer, Lisa and Teresa have been entertaining eastern Tennesseans since they were big enough to dance. They graced a local weekly TV show for four years, then spent three more working locally with Grand Ole Opry stars Archie Campbell and Stu Phillips, then two more after that on the streets of Sevierville, their hometown, playing for tips.
”We did real good,” Jennifer recalls of the tips. ”We drew a lot of people. There was the three of us big chicken girls standing out there with big hairdos; that was probably what flagged `em down. And those twins in dresses with their bony legs . . . . Naw, I`m kiddin`.”
For near-children, the McCarters have been exceptionally singleminded in their dedication to gaining the attention of the world.
They attracted TV by learning how to do the clog, a high-energy Appalachian folk dance that they got so good at that they ended up originating a lot of their steps and routines.
Then they started singing.
”I thought, `Man, you can`t get rich and famous by clogging,`
” Jennifer recalls, with a zany laugh. ”I mean, nobody`s gonna buy clogging records, are they? And even if they did, they couldn`t tell from just listening whether you were using new steps or had on new outfits. We bought these big dancing bloomers that were red and green, see, and I thought,
`Nobody can see my big drawers on a clogging record.` So I thought, `We`ll sing.` We started that when I was 14.”
Most of the decision-making seems to have been done by Jennifer, whom the twins term their ”head honcho”-apparently for good reason. They remember such things as Jennifer`s use of a leather belt to persuade them to practice their clogging steps when they were little.
They also remember it was Jennifer who, last year, started bugging Nashville producer Kyle Lehning.
”We had always wanted to be on Warner Bros. and live in Nashville and make records,” begins Teresa. ”We got tired of sittin` in Sevierville and rottin.` ”
”Yeah, we all got tired together one day,” adds Lisa, ”and Jenny started calling Kyle Lehning. She kept calling him for two weeks.”
”His secretary wouldn`t let her talk to Kyle,” Teresa recalls. ”Then one day, after she had said she didn`t know if she would call anymore or not, she called and got him.”
Jennifer had gotten Lehning`s telephone number from a Nashville singer-songwriter who worked one summer at Silver Dollar City, the East Tennessee theme park that has since become Dolly Parton`s Dollywood.
When Jennifer got Lehning on the telephone, she doesn`t seem to have been overawed.
”He asked me to send him a demo, but I knew that old trick,” she says.
”I knew you can send a demo, and they won`t listen to it. I said, `We don`t have one. Can we come and sing in person? Just 15 minutes in person? I promise I`ll never bother you again.` ”
Lehning told her he was busy recording Randy Travis but that she could call him back in two weeks to set up a time for her and her sisters to sing for him. When she called back two weeks later-on Aug. 14, 1986-he suggested the next day, a Friday.
So they drove down to Nashville and sang for him. The following Monday, he put them in touch with executives at both Warner Bros., for which he produces Travis, and Capitol/EMI, where he works with Dan Seals.
”So a week later we came down and sang for both Capitol and Warner Bros., and about three days later Warner Bros. called and we said we wanted to be on Warner Bros.,” Jennifer recalls. ”That`s how it happened. Wasn`t it easy?”
Sure, if you discount the previous 10 or 15 years. The McCarters, who
(don`t tell anybody) are distantly related to the Partons, are three of seven daughters of a banjo-playing foreman at an electrical-parts factory.
A plant foreman with seven daughters wasn`t Sevier County`s most prosperous citizen.
”We weren`t dirt-poor-I`m not going to lay a pity story on you-but we just never had a whole lot,” Jennifer recalls.
”Mama always stayed home with us, never let us play in the snow because she was afraid we`d catch pneumonia and die, never let us stay all night with friends because she always wanted us with her, and just always felt like we were all she had and loved us more than anything.”
Their mother was a local gospel singer (”her voice was stronger than all of ours put together, but she got polyps on her vocal chords and had to quit”), and the McCarters grew up in the Baptist church, where they did some of their first singing.
Like such stars as the Judds, their Christianity influences their choice of material. They recall that they took Jennifer`s guitar and sang for major Nashville song-publishing firms the same way they auditioned for Lehning, Capitol and Warner Bros., to let the companies know the sort of songs they were looking for.
”We won`t sing about cheatin` and drinkin`,” Jennifer explains.
”Yeah, we wasn`t raised like that,” adds Teresa.
”We were raised in a Christian home, and we`re too young for that, anyway, we think,” Lisa says.
”We`ve sung in a lot of churches, and I get up and testify for the Lord,” Jennifer says, ”and I think it would hurt a lot of people if they heard us on the radio singing `You Can Eat Crackers In My Bed Anytime`-
although just because you sing something don`t necessarily mean you`re doing it.
”We`re just simple people, and we want to sing fairly positive songs-although I like depressing songs, too. They can be sad, depressing songs, just not dirty. We like songs about love and caring and hope. I hope that don`t sound corny, but it`s the truth.”
The McCarters` Christianity, like that of the Judds, is of the uncloying variety that is mixed with a lot of humor, resourcefulness, energy and guts.
For instance, they do not display discernible affection in describing the stars of the East Tennessee TV show on which they danced for four years. They recall that for four years these stars, whom they prefer not to name, resisted their pleas to sing on the show, refusing even to audition them.
One night, however, they finally gave in and permitted the teenaged McCarters to sing one song. It was on a local auditorium show in front of a crowd Jennifer estimates at 700.
”We had never sung in front of that big an audience before-just our relatives and in church,” Jennifer says. ”We walked out there, and I thought, `Man, the band`s gonna kick in and we`re gonna blow `em away.` And I looked around and the band was walking off one side of the stage while (the stars) was walkin` off the other side.
”So we`re out there with nothing but my hot guitar-picking”-she laughs-”and I`d only been playing about a year and a half.”
”Talk about being afraid: Our knees was knockin`,” Teresa recalls.
”So I said, `Well, uh, we`re gonna do a song.` Up to then we hadn`t ever had to say anything, and when you have to walk out there in front of a microphone, it makes you louder than what you really are.
”And the twins aren`t about to say anything onstage-you get these chickens behind closed doors and they`re meaner`n a striped snake-naw, not really-but onstage they`re real quiet. So I told the people, `We`re gonna do a song, and I hope you like it. This is the first time we`ve ever sung on a stage before.`
”We sang the George Jones song, `She Thinks I Still Care`-except we stuck a `he` in there. When we walked offstage, I was about in tears, just dying. I was hurt that they`d left us out there by ourselves. Mama says I`m like an octopus, and all my arms are just waving around waiting for somebody to hurt my feelings.
”The audience kept applauding, and we had to go back out there. But I thought, `This just ain`t worth it,` and we took it on out of there.”
They immediately left that show to find local work with Grand Ole Opry stars Campbell and Phillips for three years, then did their own shows on Sevierville`s streets for a couple more.
They worked at other jobs-Jennifer in a Gatlinburg dentist`s office and the twins as condominium maids-to save money for their move to Nashville. Since becoming residents of Tennessee`s capital last January, Jennifer has done some part-time clerking in a record shop, and the three of them have sung a lot of demos together.
And now, having ”hardly ever been out of Sevierville,” they`re beginning to get out on the road, opening shows for Randy Travis in such places as South Dakota and, shortly, Europe.
”We`re going to Frankfurt and Mannheim, Germany; Rome, Italy; Sicily;
and we`ll be on an aircraft carrier with the 6th Fleet for three days,” says Lisa, a little wonderingly.
”We`re gonna blow those men off that ship,” Jennifer forecasts with what seems to be characteristic bravado.
”I just hope,” Teresa adds, ”that the ship don`t blow up.”
