From Presley to Purpose with Jimmie Rodgers Snow: Audio automatically transcribed by Sonix

From Presley to Purpose with Jimmie Rodgers Snow: this mp3 audio file was automatically transcribed by Sonix with the best speech-to-text algorithms. This transcript may contain errors.

Ken McMullen:
So I'm at the movies and I'm watching the new Elvis movie. 22. And had to see it day. It came out of course took my parents because. Parents from the 50 seconds. They all loved Elvis. And my dad was, you know, an Elvis wannabe in high school. So I grew up with Elvis around all the time. I was a kid. I knew all of his songs and whatever, and his moves with the lip curl and whatnot. So I'm watching it and then I'm excited to see that they focus around his early life when he was touring with a guy named Jimmie Rodgers Snow, an RCA recording artist and the son of Hank Snow. Hank Snow was probably the biggest act in the 50 seconds as far as country music goes internationally, it was a big deal. So they portray him. And I'm thinking, I wonder what happened to Jimmy, because in the 90 seconds I lived in Nashville for a short time, and through my work I ran into Jimmie Rodgers Snow and he ended up allowing me may not have been every Friday night, but a lot of Friday nights for a year. He had he let me be in the green room at the Grand Ole Opry and sit on the stage and meet these old time singers at the Opry. So I met Hank Snow several times, but I got to hear stories from Jimmie Rodgers Snow, who was great friends with Elvis. As a matter of fact, Elvis's manager, the infamous Colonel Parker, has portrayed in this movie, used to be Jimmie Rodgers, Snow's manager and his dad, Hank and the colonel, Colonel Parker, were supposed to manage Elvis.

Ken McMullen:
But then the colonel snookered, snookered out of, well, God, Hank Snow snookered him out of the deal. That's what I'm trying to say. And became exclusively Elvis's manager for life. Anyhow, Jimmie Rodgers Snow has an amazing story. I'm calling from Presley to purpose and his life is amazing. More amazing than Elvis Presley, in my opinion. And they're going to have to make a movie on this guy. I loved his stories back then. When I saw him in the movie portrayed in the movie, I checked up on social media to see, you know, what he's doing. If he whatever I find him, we hook up. He calls me at work. He for about an hour just starts telling these stories again, being friends with Elvis and how the the contract went down for Elvis and his life. And he was Johnny he knew Johnny Cash and. It's this guy's life is amazing. So anyways, I said, How about can you call back and let me record some of this? If nothing else, for posterity's sake and I have. I talked to him for about three hours. I've got at least a couple hours of him just telling these amazing stories of amazing life. He's 86 years old now. And I'm going to share some of these. And before I get to the Presley with purpose, I want you to hear a couple just of these kind of random things to hear what it's like listening to this guy's life. So here's a quick one, just a few minutes long on Jimmy talking about what it was like being friends with Elvis in the early days and what Elvis was like

Jimmy Rodgers Snow:
Elvis was a very, very interesting man. I never heard him use a bad word. Now, I can't speak for after January of 1958 because I never saw him any more after that. Just got Christmas cards. But up till that time, he was a perfect gentleman. Everybody liked him. Everybody on the tours liked him. He never used bad language. He was a very. I did all of that. I drank, I cussed, you name it. I did it all. And it's one of the reasons why I rode with him. And he never put me down. He never said anything negative about me. He he was liked by all the people that we worked with. Everybody. So I never saw anything out of the way. Now, he liked the girls. That was for sure. He was single, and most of us in that day did follow that kind of pattern. And later on I heard about the drugs. I heard about his language. I heard about things that they are portraying him in that movie. As far as I can understand, I did not bring the record in and show it to Parker and to my father and say, Hey, you guys need to hear this guy and all that. None of that. The only thing I did was take the letter of intent. So much was missing. And like I said, I haven't seen the movie a moment ago, only going by what I'm hearing. But none of that happened. And we were just good friends. And so when he'd come over to Nashville in those early years and to meet with Dad or to talk with Parker or to pick up things or to drop off things, whatever, he'd have to come over, you know, 2 or 3 times a year.

Jimmy Rodgers Snow:
Parker, you know, pretty much demanded that kind of attention, and we all gave him that. And I would be kind of a go between. Ken My what I mean by that is if Dad needed something to be sent over to Parker, I'd drive it over on my motorcycle. At that time I had a motorcycle, and if I had to bring something back, I'd go over and get it and bring it back. So then Elvis would give me a jingle and he'd say, Well, let's run around a little bit. I'm going to be here for a few hours. And so we come over to the house. We'd go back on the barn and throw knives or throw them at a tree or, you know, shoot guns or or get on our I had two motorcycles get on the motorcycles and we'd go riding and we'd go different places. You know, we'd go over maybe to places that hamburger joint or something like that. If the people in my area had known who I was bringing in there, they they would probably have pictures all over their walls today. But he wasn't known, you know, in those early years. And I would say he was a very likable person.

Ken McMullen:
Before we move on to hearing Jimmy talk about from Presley to purpose, I've got to just play this other random clip of him talking about how he crossed the paths in life with Jack Ruby. Jack Ruby is the one who killed Lee Harvey Oswald, who of course, killed President John F Kennedy.

Jimmy Rodgers Snow:
We're living in Dallas and how we wind up in Dallas is dad wound up losing all his money in Hollywood, trying to further his career, didn't become a Hollywood actor or anything like that. And so he winds up coming to Dallas, Texas, because there was a radio station there that was playing one of his records that was really getting a lot of attention, a song called Brand on My Heart, which, by the way, Elvis could sing, he memorized it and it it got him a little attention in the United States. So he winds up here in the United States now in Dallas when he sends for Mother and I. So we crossed the border in 1948 and moved to Dallas, Texas. Dad becomes a guest on Big D Jamboree. That's the one I wanted to remember. I couldn't remember it. The one in Wheeling, the Wheeling Jamboree, I think, is what it was called. Big D Jamboree. Elvis worked that, by the way. Big D Jamboree. I've got a poster with his name on it from Big D now. Dad would guest on it once in a while. And how did he met Ernest Tubb, whose hero was likewise? Jimmie Rodgers. So they corresponded through the years, never met one another, never worked with one another, but they would write to one another.

Jimmy Rodgers Snow:
Ernest was a super nice guy. He's a guest at Big D Jamboree, so my dad immediately goes to that show. He wasn't on, but he was. He wanted to meet him. So backstage they talked, they talk, they talk. And Ernest says, I think I can get you a tryout on the Grand Ole Opry. Would you be interested? Well, that was the Mecca for country music singers, right? My dad said, Are you kidding? You bet I would do that. This was in 1948. But while we're there in Dallas, they. This is interesting. While we're in Dallas now, my father is working two nightclubs because this is the only way he could make a living. They didn't want him for his singing because he wasn't all that popular as far as the nightclubs were concerned there. But his horse did all these tricks. So they would literally bring the horse into the nightclub a couple of nights a week. And he was working between two different nightclubs downtown Dallas. I used to go in the nightclub during the day and lay the straw down on the on the dance floor in order for the horse. When he do his series of of tricks at night when dad would be guesting there and they wanted the horse more than they wanted his singing, but he would sing some.

Jimmy Rodgers Snow:
The horse would kneel down, lay down all of these different things. So that was the purpose of the straw. I'd lay it down. And so I got to meet some of the people in there because there were no there was no drinking going on during the daytime when this would happen. So I'd be it'd be okay for me to go in there. I was like helping lay down the straw. Little did I realize that years later. When I would be involved in ministry preaching that I would be watching the the death of John F Kennedy. And then ultimately, a week later or two weeks later, the death of the guy that assassinated him, Oswald. And I see this guy run up, stick this gun in the stomach of Oswald and pull the trigger. And I'm looking at him. I see his profile and I turn to the pastor of the church while I'm drinking a coffee watching the news. And I said, I know that guy. And he said, Well, who is it? I said, His name is Jack Ruby. And I said, We used to lay straw on the floor in his nightclub, and he would talk to me and kid with me every time we'd go in there. What a small world.

Ken McMullen:
Now you're getting an idea of why I've appreciated over the years hearing stories from Jimmie Rodgers Snow and hearing how things really happened, you know, even like how the movie portrayed things about Elvis that weren't exactly right, like his dad, Hank Snow in the movie shows that he didn't really care for. Elvis wanted to fire him. That's not true. He liked Elvis. He was going to manage Elvis. And the deal went down totally different than the movie portrayed. But I got to hear all that kind of stuff. And I'm glad you're getting to hear some of it, too. Now, here's an amazing story that took a man, a young man. He was only in his early 20 seconds. Friends with Elvis has his own recording contract. His dad's a living legend. His career and life is going nothing but up. And he has a divine encounter.

Jimmy Rodgers Snow:
So then we wind up moving to Nashville. Dad bombs on the first few weeks that he's there as a singer on the Grand Ole Opry. He's not doing very well. They're deciding in two weeks or three weeks they're going to have to let him go. Well, he's all hurt and upset, but he has a brand new record getting ready to come out called I'm Moving On. Changed everything for all of us. Opened the door up. Well, now he becomes a number one country singer overnight. As a result of that. I had always felt during those early years that you asked me about, that there was something different going on in my life. I just wasn't as happy as he was. I didn't have the drive towards becoming a country singer like he had. Even though I was on a major label singing before, thousands of people working shows with all these big stars, I saw the I saw what was going on in my life and I wasn't really all that happy. Unfortunately, I started drinking too, so I started taking my first drink at 15. Believe it or not, by the time I reached 22 years of age, I was pretty much an alcoholic at that age. Single and and my life in a mess had a very bad car wreck and 56 nearly got killed, nearly lost my leg, as a matter of fact, still suffering today from it. The guy was doing 105 miles an hour running from the cops with a stolen car when he hit me.

Jimmy Rodgers Snow:
I was on my way to a drive in movie. I had spent all my money that week and I was, you know, drinking a little bit, but I wasn't drunk. Yeah. He wanted me to read this script while I was there. And it was and I'm almost positive that was the title of the movie King Creole, because it was, I think, one of his best. So he said, Hey, why don't you read this? See what you think of it? We're getting ready to film this. And I'd read a little bit every morning when we'd come in after being out all night. And got to the end of it when my time there was over and I knew I was going to have to go home. When I got to the end of it, he he said to me, he said, What do you think of that script? I said, I think that thing is great. It's probably going to be one of your best movies. And of course, I was a movie buff and I saw, you know, his films, the ones he'd already done had done that Love Me Tender and and Jailhouse Rock and so forth. And I believe this one was either his third or fourth. And we went and saw them while I was there, too, by the way, which would have been a second time for me. He said, Hey, why don't you why don't you come out and go out there with us? And, you know, he was that way with his friends.

Jimmy Rodgers Snow:
He wrapped the whole movie theater for just a bunch of us, but he wanted me to see it, you know? And of course, I said, Sure, you know, I'd love to go with him. We watch other movies, too. And so we were sitting there and watching those movies. We rent the roller skating rink all night and we'd roller skate and 15 of us maybe 12, maybe 20. I don't remember exactly how many, but most of them had hung with him all the time. And so then when I'm ready to leave, I had been dealt with by God and how God started dealing with me in those years. When I came back from doing the Lawrence Welk Show, which was September of 57, when I get back into Nashville, I'm back drinking again. But I'm feeling the need to change my life. And so I'm. I'm dating this girl and I decide I think I want to take her to a drive in theater. We'll park on the back row. I'll do my thing. I had some thoughts in my mind of how I what I want. I wanted to go to the back row. Right. Well, I call her on the phone and say, Would you like to go to the drive in? Oh, yeah, I'd like to go. Well, what would you like to see? She said, I'd like to go see the Ten Commandments.

Jimmy Rodgers Snow:
I said, what? She said Ten Commandments. She said, I'd like to see that. Well, that's the last thing I wanted to go see right then with the way I was feeling. But I agreed. I said, okay, we'll go see the Ten Commandments. And I still had it on in my mind. Park on the back row. So I went in, parked on the back roads like I had intended. All of a sudden, you know, all the preliminaries are coming on. So the movie starts and. I start putting my arm around her and so forth. She she wants to see the movie. So, you know, that's not part of her plan. So I'm getting a little bit disgusted after about 20 to 25 minutes of making moves. And all of a sudden I just get real upset about it and I sit back and look up at the screen and I'm looking at that part of the movie. Charlton Heston is in it's played every year around the holidays. At the very precise time that Cecil B DeMille gives the monologue, the man that walked with kings now walks alone, stripped from all power and everything that he had. And it talks about him, you know, going through the desert. He's been ostracized by Pharaoh, who's the power at that time. And he's put out there in the desert by himself. And the the Cecil B DeMille says the the man that walked with these kings driven into the dust from whence he came.

Jimmy Rodgers Snow:
The metal is now ready for the makers use. And God shot this arrow into my heart. And I want you to know I couldn't wait to get that girl home and get away from. I mean, a whole change came over me. I went home. My dad was on the road. I didn't travel that much with him during this time. And. Mother was in bed reading something. It was late at night, midnight or so. I went in and I was so I was like a rubber band. Ken Being stretched and pulled. And I just felt the the presence of God. People say that they don't even, you know, believe a lot of people don't even believe. But I'm telling you what I felt was real. I reached in the drawer and grabbed my gun. I always carried this gun. And I went out in the front yard and knelt down beside the tree. And I had planned on getting rid of myself. Believe it or not, with all that going for me. And I started praying instead. And I said, God, is there such a thing as you in existence? Are you really a true God? Is there such a thing as you? And I said, If there is, I said, Can you give me a burning bush experience like you gave? The man that's playing Moses in that movie, and all of a sudden a marvelous forgiveness came over me.

Jimmy Rodgers Snow:
God changed my heart by that tree. And it probably was around 2:00 in the morning at the time. I DON'trillionEMEMBER The exact time. But I know that right then God laid it on my heart and He spoke to my heart. It was just like, I'm talking to you almost inside my mind. God said to me, I am overshadowing you at all times. Walk softly before me, for I intend to use you for the Kingdom of God. And then I knew what my world was going to be from then on. That's the night that I started deciding. I made the decision that I was going to become a preacher. Well, it wasn't that easy. What am I going to do? How am I going to get into it? I don't know that much about the Bible. I can't quote two of the Ten Commandments. All That I know is a couple of movies that I saw. I never grew up in a church. All I knew. I didn't know much about the name of Jesus. Hardly. First song that I ever sang at the age of three, standing on Coca Cola boxes on one of my dad's shows, believe it or not, was a song called Jesus Loves Me. This I know for the Bible tells me so. But I didn't know who that was.

Jimmy Rodgers Snow:
I was three years old. I didn't understand anything about what went on in churches. Nobody ever talked to me about it. Nobody ever handed me a track or witnessed to me or discuss it with me. I didn't know nothing about Jesus, nothing. And now all of a sudden, these couple of movies are having an impression upon me. And I had come to the Lord when I was 14, 15 years old. And only lasted for six months in a church that had 75 people in it. That was my first knowledge of knowing anything about God. Dating a girl whose mother and father and I'm kind of backtracking here. Whose mother and father were members of this church. And so I went I surrendered that night to God. But I didn't last. That's when I went into my drinking and to my show business career bigger and stronger. So I had that period of time right there. I hope I don't confuse people with that, but. Six months, I might say maybe eight months of church background is all I had. So I knew nothing. Didn't know how to preach. Didn't know a thing about it. And you got to understand this. One of the reasons I drank was because I was real shy and I didn't know how to talk to an audience. So if I took a pill or two. I could go out there and I.

Jimmy Rodgers Snow:
I could stand before that audience and talk more. Well, now all of a sudden, I'm saying to myself, I'm too scared and shy and I don't know any Bible or anything. So all of a sudden my mind is telling me, Well, maybe that's not what God wants you to do. Maybe he just wants you to stay in the business because that gives you open doors where you can talk to people about your relationship and therefore give a testimony and sing a couple of gospel songs, something like that. And that made sense. But I kept getting this tearing at my heart. It was very difficult. I didn't know what to do, so I kept putting it off and putting it off. So we're talking now over at Elvis Presley's place in January. And, you know, I still had a few drinks. I hadn't broken all my habits totally yet, but I'm trying to do a better thing, trying to be a better person. So here I am at Elvis's house and he's offering me an opportunity. That I could have jumped at. So now I'm saying, Elvis, if you'd have just told me that six months ago, I would have jumped at it. I don't know what kind of a part, you know, how big it was going to be or all that stuff. But it was interesting. And all of a sudden. I turned to him and I say, No.

Jimmy Rodgers Snow:
I said, Elvis, I. I think I'm going to quit my career. I'm going home from here and I'm going to go into full time ministry. And so when I made the choice to go into full time ministry, God didn't just put me out there in front of 10,000 people. My last show was in Denver, Colorado, to 12,000 people. I received an encore that night. I had a record doing real good. I had been on television a lot now. I did the what they call in Compton in the Los Angeles area. I had done a show that just thrilled me to death even more than the Lawrence Welk thing. And that was town hall party, which now YouTube is playing those shows. Town hall party had all those old Western stars on there Jimmy Wakely, Eddie Dean, Tex Ritter, all of these people that I used to watch as a kid. Now I'm going to get to sing on the stage with them. Can you imagine that? Would you believe that? How things come full circle. And so here I am getting to do that program that my dad had been on when he was out there in 1948. Now, here I am doing this in 1957. So all of this became part of my past. So when I started hitting the evangelistic trail, when I made the step forward to become a full time preacher, when I'd go out on the stage, I'd have a certain night.

Jimmy Rodgers Snow:
I'd my like my honey service, you call it that. I would advertise because back then they used to have revivals. The the shortest one would be a two week meeting. But many times I'd be there 4 or 5 and six weeks. You know, nowadays it's different. Church world has changed. But back then you went for two, three, 4 or 5 weeks. I'd have a certain night that I would advertise every night, put it on the on on marquees and things like that. I'm going to give my personal testimony of my days in country music and the people I worked with. Now, there are certain people could look at that and they could ridicule it and they could say, because I have had people that have come up, Well, the only thing he wants to talk about is his days in country music. Well, you use what you have available to you to get the attention of people about the things of Jesus Christ. And that's what I felt God wanted me to do. I wasn't putting it all on the back. I wasn't trying to brag on it. And I started later telling the audiences, when I start giving my testimony, I'd say to them, I want to say right off the bat, I'm not here to glorify the entertainment business. I'm not here to to pat anybody on the back, including my father.

Jimmy Rodgers Snow:
I'm not here to brag on who I was and what I've done. I'm not doing it anymore. I haven't been doing it X amount of years. I'm 65 years now going into my ministry. I've never gone back into the business in 65 years. I'm still doing what I started out doing at age 22 and I'm 86 now. So I want you to understand I'm not here to brag on me. I'm here to brag on Jesus and to let you know how much he loves you and cares about you. Now, that has to put a question in your mind. What's that question? Why would you walk away from $350 a day? Why would you walk away from a renewed RCA Victor contract? Why would you turn your back on all of these Johnny Cash's and Texas Rangers and all these big stars and walk away from everything you had that most people would give their eye teeth for? Why? Because I found something in my spirit better. That's much better. A future. Something that is wonderful that even with all my trials and all my temptations, all my heart aches and and all of my bad decisions along with my good ones. That I don't want to go back on and I don't want to change. So I'll do this till my death or until it all comes to an end.

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