It`s RCA Records` Nashville parking lot at 5:30 p.m., the appointed time and place for an interview rendezvous with the Judds.
A shiny-black BMW wheels in from the street, its occupant shrouded by smoked glass. When it glides to a halt, the driver`s window descends to disclose the fiery red head of Wynonna Judd.
”Hi,” she drawls, in pseudo-brazen Juddness. ”Can we talk?”
Country music`s most successful 23-year-old leads the way to RCA`s third-floor conference room. There she is joined by mother Naomi.
The cavernous conference room, whose long table and innumerable chairs usually swallow up intruders, is quickly filled to capacity by Judd Talk. Naomi soon sounds the principal theme, a positivism so encompassing that it makes Norman Vincent Peale sound like Doubting Thomas.
Wynonna, typically, interrupts.
”My mother feels she has to save the world,” she says. ”She also feels she can. She has this attitude of, `World peace? Hey, I`m ready!` ”
This line is given no chance for the laugh it deserves. Naomi is on it like Michael Dukakis on George Bush.
”It`s true,” she agrees. ”I`ve always had this missionary zeal. That`s why I became a nurse. That`s why I left being a top-paid model in Hollywood, Calif., to live on a mountaintop in Kentucky and wear no makeup, have my hair pulled back in a bun and dress in clean white outfits.
”Wynonna and Ashley (her other daughter) get weary of my little homilies, but the other day I was telling Ashley: `Be the best you can be everyday, because you may be the only Bible some folks ever read.`
”I feel if I have inner serenity, then maybe Wynonna and Ashley can witness that in me, maybe get some ideas from me, then maybe their boyfriends and our next-door neighbor will, maybe our road manager. And it continues to spread.
”I don`t think it`s unrealistic to have world peace in our lifetime.”
Naomi`s capacity for limitless dreaming has much to do with the fact that, four years into their career, the statuesque ex-model/ex-nurse and her wisecracking, huge-voiced eldest daughter (who are scheduled to perform at Poplar Creek Music Theatre in Hoffman Estates this evening along with Randy Travis and Tammy Wynette) have, among many other things:
– Two platinum (million-selling) LPs, ”Heart Land” and ”Rockin` With The Rhythm,” in the country hit charts.
– A single, ”Give A Little Love,” in the country Top 10.
– Half ownership of the company that books their lucrative concerts.
– An ambitious CBS-TV special coming up in November.
– A just-issued invitation from President Reagan to entertain next month. They`ve amassed a following that sometimes seems less fan club than spiritual crusade. In their very different ways, each seems dedicated to leaving their changing surroundings better off than they find them.
Save the world? Hey, they`re ready. Much of the fire of their music is understatedly but decidedly spiritual. So is the image they project: love, familial and otherwise, but distinctively leavened by laughter and publicly acknowledged, real-life quarrels and foibles.
Having quickly become perennial country award winners, they aren`t looking to be put on a pedestal, they say; it wouldn`t be any fun up there. But the core of their zany facade is intensely serious.
”We don`t want to be just another country music act,” Wynonna says.
”It`s almost as if there`s a seed we try to plant everywhere. For the first time in my life, I`m realizing that I had been gliding happy-go-luckily along, and I`ve done that long enough. Wynonna Judd is starting to feel very responsible for what`s going on.
”The other day I was asking Don Potter (their studio guitarist and fellow Christian), `What am I supposed to do and say (with the national forum of stardom)?` And he said, `If God had wanted you to be a preacher, he`d have made you a preacher. The best thing you can do is shut up and sing-because the singing is totally honest, totally you. You`re not dressing up in somebody else`s clothing.` ”
A Nashville institution called Christ Church Pentecostal appears to be the center of their lives, but those lives get more and more bizarre.
One Sunday morning not long ago, during filming of the November CBS special, Wynonna and her mother were at Colesburg, Ky., Baptist Church, pastored by Naomi`s brother, Mark, where the previous Sunday`s attendance was 28. By evening, they were in Manhattan to perform the next night at Madison Square Garden with Randy Travis, Alabama and George Strait.
That day`s dichotomy illustrates the Judds` consciousness of their half-hip, half-hillbilly essence. When CBS informed them that a limited budget would prevent filming at Colesburg, the duo gave up the fee they were to have been paid and used it to get the cameras to Kentucky.
”I was afraid they would just see us at Madison Square Garden, and the whole thrust of the show might be `On The Road With The Judds` in full warpaint and designer outfits,” Naomi says.
”That`s all very applicable, but I was determined they would get us in the real world, too. Sure, we shop; I was at (prominent New York dress designer) Norma Kamali`s salon the next day”-she grasps the lapel of her jacket and nods-”and that`s typical for us.
”But that`s not where we come from.”
Where Naomi does come from, Ashland, Ky., is a long way from most of the places in which she and Wynonna now find themselves.
Each recently bought a farm five miles from the other in rural Tennessee- they aren`t saying where-but their home, in Naomi`s words, is ”that Silver Eagle bus out back.” Followed by two tractor-trailers of equipment, two other buses of personnel and a truck full of concessions, it crosses a different state border almost every 24 hours.
During the next couple of years, perhaps, they will strike the zenith of their popularity. In a narrow career sense, the only goals still left for them are such supreme industry titles as Entertainer of the Year.
Naomi wants to attain those pinnacles. Wynonna, by contrast, is fearful.
”I`m afraid people will think, `They`re the Entertainers of the Year, so we expect to see pyrotechnics, and women dancing in cages onstage.`
Entertainer of the Year is the kind of thing that scares me to death.”
Wynonna also senses that attaining the pinnacles can mean having to face future valleys.
”Our manager, Ken Stilts, keeps telling us that once you`re No. 1, it`s pretty dang terrifying, and I`m beginning to feel the opposite of the way I used to. I don`t want too much free time anymore. Doing this gives me a reason to get up in the morning. I don`t ever want it to get to be like, `Well, wonder what I`m going to do today?` ”
Naomi agrees, saying success ”can break you as well as make you,” but she quickly minimizes these notes of negativism by initiating a bit of Judd Repartee.
”Well, you`re my little entertainer,” she purrs to Wynonna in mock sweetness. ”You`ve been entertaining me for 23 years.”
”Yeah,” Wynonna responds in kind. ”I`m thoroughly entertained by you, too.”
The much-publicized warring of mother and daughter can be overplayed. Naomi recalls that their last visit to Chicago featured another side of their relationship.
They performed Mother`s Day evening at the Horizon in Rosement. All day, Naomi anxiously awaited appropriate cards, flowers or phone messages from the University of Kentucky, where Ashley is an undergraduate.
Eventually, she began calling Ashley`s dormitory, but all she could learn from residents there was that Ashley was probably at the library. By evening, Naomi recalls, she was feeling ”very pitiful.”
”Then that night, about 8 or 9 o`clock, onstage right in the middle of
`Mama He`s Crazy,` the audience starts going nuts, and they`re not looking at Wynonna and me,” she remembers.
”I feel somebody onstage and think a fan has jumped up there, which can be scary. I look around and here comes a bunch of guys with this big cake that says `Happy Mother`s Day` on it, and Ashley is with them.
”Wynonna, bless her heart, had set it all up, flown Ashley in and given my Mother`s Day a happy ending.”
Well, as happy as Naomi`s incessant maternal worries will allow.
”Ashley came out with her hair unbrushed,” she continues with a blushing laugh, as if unable to stop herself-as Wynonna flops backward in her chair, shakes her head and grins knowingly at the ceiling.
”That`s the first thing I think,” Naomi adds. ” `It`s a sold-out coliseum and you didn`t even bother to brush your hair?` But I`m so thrilled, and I`m hugging her. Then suddenly I think: `She`s not wearing a bra, either.` ”
