My good, good buddy Skeets Yaney:
View: https://music.youtube.com/watch?v=bQOjb2HEVoA
I think Skeets was 120 years old when I worked at the same radio station as a young'n. We used to get so irritated answering the phone and transferring calls to him and, on the air, he'd say, "Just got off the phone with my good, good buddy Chet Atkins (or Johnny Cash or Merle Haggard or name your favorite country star here)". "We go way back!" he'd say.
"Yeah, yeah, Skeets," we'd yell at the double paned glass. "You're good friends with all those guys you old fart!"
Late one night I was working the audio board with Skeets and bored to tears when the front door buzzed. "Ah, Jeez," I thought. "Now what?" Some guy announced himself. "I'm here to see Skeets."
Buzz I buzzed him in. A slow clump, clump up the stairs. As I saw a reflection in the glass and a "Hi, Skeets" behind me, I turned around to stare into the face of
Jimmy Dean Now, most of you in the USA know about Jimmy Dean pork sausage but, back then, Dean was a big country/western singing star who once had a national show on NBC. He brought Skeets a case of his pork sausage and they sat in the booth for half an hour talking about how Johnny Cash was at Skeets' house just the other night and they called Merle and had some good laughs on the phone.
I'm sitting there with my chin on the floor. All those irritating phone calls were actually from some of the biggest country/western singing stars in the country!
The next day, I told the office staff about it. "Oh, yeah," they said. "Skeets and all them go way back. Skeets even had a radio show on CBS Radio in the 1940s."
The next year, Skeets was inducted into the Country Music Hall of Fame in Nashville.
