 Take time in the stillness of night to listen to the whispers of God. He will show you the way. Whispering Bill, a nickname given to music artist, songwriter Bill Anderson, years ago as a result of his warm soft approach to singing and country song over 60 years. He has captured the attention of millions of country music fans around the world and enroute to becoming a member of the Country Music Hall of Fame, the Grand Old Opry, Nashville Songwriters Hall of Fame, and one of the most popular, most endearing entertainers of our time. This is his story. This is today's Nashville. This is faith. Whispering Bill Anderson, I have been wanting you on my show for so long, but you are so busy, you're everywhere. I can't keep up with you. Well, I'm glad you finally caught up with me, because I've been wanting to do your show. Thank you. Well, thank you for having me here at your beautiful office, all your awards, and wow, 60 years. Have you been entertaining people? Doesn't seem like it. Seems like yesterday. Well, take me back to where it all started. Well, it all started in Columbia, South Carolina, where I was born, as far as getting into the entertainment business. It started in a little town called Commerce, Georgia, where I went to work as a disc jockey on the local radio station back in the late 1950s. And when I wasn't on the radio, I used to spend my time on top of the tallest building in Commerce, which was three stories high, was a little hotel where I lived. And I used to go up on the roof of the hotel at night after I got off of the radio, and I'd take my guitar up there, and I'd sit up there and strum and play. And one night I happened to write a song called City Lights up on top of that hotel. There were no city lights in Commerce. There were a couple of traffic lights and a flash-and-drug store sign. That was about it. Well, how old were you? I was 19. 19. And I don't know, this song found its way to Nashville. It became a hit for Ray Price, and it opened all the doors for me in Nashville. And I thought, well, I'll just go to Nashville and see what's going on. And that was 60-plus years ago, and I'm still here, and I'm still trying to figure out what's going on. Oh, well, you've done quite a bit since then. Well, I've been very blessed, I really have. Even though you've been at Nashville, though, you've done a lot of television and talk shows, and tell me about that. Well, I haven't let a lot of grass grow under my feet. I have moved around a good bit. I went to California back in the late 70s and got very involved in television out there, hosting game shows, which was something totally foreign and new to me. And I found that I enjoyed it. I had a lot of fun doing it. And I would guest on a lot of the other game shows and things in California. If you look on the Game Show Network or the Buzzer Network, you'll see reruns of those shows all the time. Every time they rerun one, I make $11. $11. No, I think it's up to 19 now. Well, I even read that you were on a soap opera. Is that right? My whole life has been a soap opera. Yeah, after the Game Show that I was hosting on ABC went off the air. They came to me and said that certainly wasn't my fault that the Game Show didn't continue. And soap operas were very popular in those days. They were some of the biggest rated shows on television. And they wove me into the storyline on a show called One Life to Live on ABC. I remember it. And I played the part of Bill Anderson, which was a real stretch. How long did you do that? Off and on for three years. Three years. And we did that in New York, most of it, although we went on location. We went to Knoxville and did some. We came here. We actually filmed some One Life to Live segments at the Grand Ole Opry House. And it was an interesting experience. I enjoyed it. So you're out in Hollywood. Then you came back to Nashville. What happened after you got back? Well, they started a network here on cable television called TNN, the Nashville Network. And I hosted a Game Show there for six years called Fandango and got very involved with TNN. I looked better on the radio, but I ended up on television a whole lot. And then you got back into writing and your music? Yeah, I had really kind of gotten, I came to Nashville basically as a songwriter in the late fifties and early sixties. And that was kind of what I hung my head on for a while. And then somebody said, well, why don't you record some of those songs? And I said, I thought you'd never ask. So I went down the artist pathway along with the songwriting pathway and one door opened and just kind of led to another. And I've always been kind of curious what's behind door number one, door number two, door number three. And I've had a lot of wonderful, interesting experiences that I never started out to have. A lot of things just happened. Isn't that wonderful? Tell me how you got your nickname Whisperingville. I don't know. I guess I was blessed or cursed as the case may be with kind of a soft voice. And I started early in my career doing some songs where I would sing a little bit and talk a little bit. And a guy named Don Bowman was a comedian on a syndicated television show. I was doing it. And Don is the first one that hung me with the nickname of Whisperingville. And it just kind of stuck. And really, I'll tell you in the beginning, I kind of resented it. I thought, well, they're making fun of me. And then I realized that I had something a little bit different and unique. And I also realized that there's a million Bill Anderson's in the world. But there's only one they call Whisperingville. So it became an asset to me. In the beginning, I thought this is not good. And then I realized as it kind of turned and time went by, I realized that it was good. And it gave me a unique handle. I didn't have to change my name to Conway Twitty. You even wrote your autobiography. Isn't it called Whisperingville Anderson? The first one, I've done two autobiographies. I've had such a busy life, we couldn't get it all into one. Yeah, the first one is called Whisperingville, a life of triumph and tragedy, I think was the subtitle. And then the other one was an unprecedented life in country music, Whisperingville Anderson. And we do the Whispering without the G, which I guess makes it a little more country, just Whispering, Apostrophe. So the trials and triumphs, can you tell me one of your trials that you've gone through? We got long enough. My trials have basically been in my personal life as opposed to my career. My career has been marvelous. And as I said, very, very blessed. I've had a couple of things in my personal life. My wife was very badly critically injured in a head-on automobile wreck in 1984. And we didn't know for a couple of weeks whether she was even going to live. And she and I had a six-year-old son at the time. And I had to kind of become mom and dad to him for a long time as she recovered. And she didn't recover, as the doctor said, she rehabilitated and was able to get back and live a fairly normal life not too long after the accident. Well, a couple of years or so after the wreck. And then I've had a grandson who from the time he was six years old, he's 18 at the moment. He was diagnosed with a very rare form of cancer. And that has been a very important part of my life and a trial and something that on the family side I've had to learn to live with and accept. Fortunately, the good news is after 12 years, for the first time a few months ago, they announced that he's in remission. So he's going to graduate from high school and hopefully go to college. He's picked out. He wants to be an electrical engineer. Bless his heart. Just glad he didn't want to be a guitar picker. Bill, we're going to talk about what God is doing in your life and how you encourage people that are going through those trials. And we're going to talk about it when we get back from our break. Bill, we're talking about your autobiography and the trials and the triumphs that you faced. And we're talking about your grandson and your wife who is critically injured in the car. How has your faith pulled you through that? And to be an encouragement, how does that encourage others? Well, I would hate to think that I would have had to go through both of those, particularly the thing with my wife and having a six-year-old son at the time. I don't know how somebody could make it through something like that. Without faith. Without having God that you could talk to first thing in the morning, last thing at night. And a dozen times during the day, you know, just help me figure all this out. Just putting one foot in front of the other and knowing that God was going to take care of me and bring me through and bring her through. And then with my grandson, you know, to bring him through. I have a wonderful family. I have three children, two daughters and a son. My son is now that little six-year-old boy. He's now almost 45 years old and he's a pilot for Delta Airlines, flying their biggest planes all over the world. I used to take him on tour with me back, especially when his mother was not able to do a lot of things with him. And I thought, well, I'll take him out on tour with me and I'll teach him about the music. Maybe he'll get into the music. Well, I was flying to a lot of my shows back in those days. And he cared about the music and he liked it. And he became a pretty good little drummer. But what really fascinated was those airplanes. And now I should get over those planes. And that was what he wanted to do from a very early age. So I've been very fortunate in my life. I've been able to make a living doing something that I love and to see my son be able to do the same thing. And my daughter, my younger daughter wanted to be a nurse from the time she was old enough to know what a nurse was. And she's been able to do that and live her dreams. So we're the lucky people. But three children and eight grandchildren. So we leaned on each other an awful lot during all of these times and leaning on God and on our faith, but leaning on each other at the same time. That's beautiful. Let's talk about your triumphs. And that is a triumph, what you've gone through and what how God has helped you through. But let's talk about some of your successes. Because I mean, it is still going on. Well, I just got nominated for a Grammy award. I didn't win. I know. I, you know, I was trying to get you on my show. And it's like, where is he? And we turned on the TV. And my husband said, well, he's at the Grammy. Yeah, I got to go out there, Dolly Parton. And I did a duet together of a song called Someday It'll All Make Sense last year. And we got a Grammy nomination. Let's talk about that because I saw the video. I love, first of all, I love the song. Thank you. And I love the video. I mean, it was, it's just beautiful. Thank you. Did you write that song? I wrote it with two other guys. I got into co-writing after I kind of got back into music a little bit a few years ago. And I do a lot of songs with other people. I wrote Someday It'll All Make Sense with Bobby Tomberlin and Ryan Larkins. And Dolly heard it. It was amazing because Bobby Tomberlin, one of the co-writers, was good friends or is good friends with a lady named Cheryl Riddle, who was a dear friend of mine, as well as Dolly's hairstylist. And Bobby played Someday It'll All Make Sense. I cut it by myself to start with. And he played my version of it for Cheryl. And Cheryl says, Dolly's got to hear this. And she took it to Dolly. Next thing I knew, Dolly put her voice on it and sent it back to me. And it was just like an angel from heaven. I mean, you talk about an answered prayer. I didn't even dare to pray for something like that. And it happened anyway. What's the song all about? Well, basically what it says is kind of summed up in the title. No matter what we go through in life, we don't understand it. I mean, it starts off with the singer being angry. He said, I was angry. I was shaking my fist at the heavens. I didn't say what he was angry about, but he was angry. And then suddenly this voice speaks to him and says, Don't worry about it. Someday It'll All Make Sense. It's kind of a modern day version of the old song called Farther Along. Farther Along will know all about it. Farther Along will understand why. And this one just says someday the picture will come into focus and we'll see it all plain and clear. So it talks about faith. You know, when we come together in the place he has for us, where the pain and the hurt disappear. So that's what it's about. And Dolly and I both felt this song very strongly. She's a person of great faith, as you know. Yeah. I had the privilege to interview her years ago just for a little, she wasn't on the show, but I just loved her faith too. You know what I love about Dolly? And I've told people this since we did the record and since the video came out. Dolly takes what she does, her work, her craft, very seriously. But Dolly doesn't take Dolly very seriously. Dolly cuts up and has more fun. We were in the studio doing this very serious song and she's cutting up and cracking jokes and entertaining everybody that's on the set. And then when it comes time to be professional and to do her part, then she knows how to do that. I admire that so much. Yeah. Everybody loves Dolly. Everybody loves Bill too. But the song is very touching and I think a lot of people really don't understand sometimes. They get angry and they, you know, even tragedies that we have seen this week. We don't understand why. Why is this happening? Yeah. But someday, you know. It'll all make sense. Well, that's, that's faith. That's not just believing that he can. It's knowing that he will. And I kind of based my life on that. Tell me about Still, the song. Back in my other life when I was a child. We're going to go back. You know, I listened to that and I'm thinking, oh, and I read a little bit. Do you know who, did you write that song about somebody? Well, for years, I would not answer that question, but I finally confessed. I didn't write it for somebody, but I wrote it because of somebody. I ran into a girl, a lady, that when she was a girl and I was a boy, we dated some and she ran off and married somebody else. And I ran into her again and saw her and it, I didn't fall in love with her all over again or anything like that, but it brought back the memories and the song was just based on the feeling. And I try to write songs not so much for what I'm feeling and what's personal to me as I do for the listener. And I kept thinking of people that, you know, they don't work their relationships out for one reason or another. All kinds of various reasons. And yet they never quite get past it. There's still a little part of whatever that was that lingers inside them. And I've had so many people tell me, the greatest compliment I think I can be paid as a songwriter is for somebody to say, you must have written that song just for me. And I can't tell you how many people over the years have said you must have written still just for me. And when somebody tells me that, that's about the greatest compliment I think I can be paid. Well, you know, when I listen to it, same thing, it's like, oh, you can go back, you can go and think about that, you know, one person or that one time in your life, you know, you hear a song and I don't know, maybe, maybe you do, maybe you don't, I'll hear a song. And if the song is important to me and has in my life, I remember where I was the first time I heard it, or I remember what I felt like the first time I heard it, and that feeling never goes away. And I think that's one of the great things about music, because music kind of becomes the tapestry of our lives. And we're going to talk about it. We're going to talk about where God is leading you. If you know, please tell me. Yeah. We're going to talk about it right after the break. Bill, you've had such an amazing career, Country Music Hall of Fame. Tell me about it. Well, I keep using the word blessed because I can't help but feel that way. You know, I came here, I had a hit song when I came here, so I was one step ahead of a lot of people who come here. You know, they call Nashville the 10 year town. They say, you got to be here 10 years to crack it open. Well, I was very fortunate because I did come here with a hit song under my belt, and the doors were open to me, so maybe I didn't have to struggle. I mean, I had a lot of struggles because you don't want to become a one hit wonder in the Johnny One song. You know, you don't want to be that. You want to go on and create some other things, but to be eventually named a member of the Nashville Songwriters Hall of Fame and then later on the National Songwriters Hall of Fame that encompasses all kinds of music, the Country Music Hall of Fame. Not only did they make me a member, but they did a big Bill Anderson exhibit, and it stayed up for almost two years, and I was extremely proud of that and happy. But I didn't get into the music business to win awards or to hang trophies on the wall or this kind of thing. I got into it because I love the music. I still love the music. It's changed, but everything's changed. You know, my grandpa's old car that I learned to drive on had a running board. They don't have running boards on cars anymore. So everything changes, and I've tried to just kind of change with it. I've tried not to get locked into any one particular thing, and I wrote songs in the old days for Ray Price and Farron Young and Charlie Louvin and the traditional country artists, and I've been lucky enough to write them for Brad Paisley and George Strait and Allison Krauss and people like that. So when I say blessed, I really mean it. You really are. When you step on the grand old opera stage, what's the feeling like even today? How many, you've been on it countless of times, but I joined the opera as a regular member in 1961, so that has been a while. It's still the most special stage in the world. You can play anywhere, and I've played just about everywhere there is to play, and there's something about that grand old opera stage. Whether it's at the Opry House or occasionally we go back to the old Ryman Auditorium where the Opry was when I became a member, and there's no feeling quite like it. The young kids come to me. They say, don't you get nervous playing the Opry? I say, no, I don't get nervous. I don't get scared. I get a little keyed up because it is the Opry, and I tell them what Minnie Pearl told me one time. She said, if you don't get a few butterflies, then it doesn't mean as much to you as it should. Do you still get the butterflies? It means a lot. Oh yeah, yeah, because it still means as much to me as it ever did. When you think back of all the people you have worked with, any interesting stories, or because I've heard stories sometimes you guys play jokes on each other, or do you have anybody? Oh good golly. I came to town with a young guy named Roger Miller. His nickname was The Wild Child. Roger and I met each other in Atlanta when he was in the army, and I was a disc jockey, and we both had dreams of coming to Nashville. And you don't come here and hang out with a guy like Roger Miller and go away without stories. I mean, you put me on the spot and say, tell one. It's kind of hard just to dig one up, but I've been around some of the great characters of the world. I toured with little Jimmy Dickens and Minnie Pearl, and these great legends and people of great substance in our business, and I feel very fortunate to have done so. What's Minnie Pearl like? Incredibly beautiful lady, Sarah Cannon. Of course, the Sarah Cannon Cancer Center here is named for her. She was such a caring person. She cared I think more for other people than she did for herself, which is evidenced by the fact that she put her name on this Cancer Center. I didn't mention when you asked me about trials and tribulations in my life, I had, after my wife and I did not survive everything in our marriage, I was with a lady for 12 years who developed cancer and was treated at the Minnie Pearl or Sarah Cannon Cancer Center. She eventually passed away, but Minnie put so much of herself into other people, and she'd walked down that hall at the Grand Ole Opry on a Saturday night, and maybe she would be on early and was going to leave, and maybe I would have a late spot, and she'd walked down that hall, and I never will forget the last time I saw her. She was walking down the hall, and she reached out and she touched me on the arm, and she never called me Bill. She called me Bill Anderson, and she put her hand on my arm, and she said, I love you, Bill Anderson, and I put my arm around her, and I said, I love you, Minnie Pearl, because I did. I loved her very, very much. Bill, what's next for you? What's first godly to you? We have a few minutes left. Well, next Saturday I'm going to be on the Grand Ole Opry. Well, I just might come and see you. I asked Tex Ritter that question one time. I said, you've done everything. You've been in movies. You've won Academy Awards. You've run for the United States Congress. What's next? And he said, next Saturday I'm going to Pennsylvania, and that's kind of what I just do. I didn't plan any of this. It all just happened, and I just try to stay open-minded and attune to it. I still love to write. I'm not touring at the present time. I'm doing the Opry. I'm writing songs. I'm making a lot of new records, and I'm just looking to see what's behind door number one, door number two, and door number three. Well, I'm sure glad that you opened the door so that I could come in and sit down and talk to you today. Thank you. It's been my pleasure. You beautified my office. Oh, well, thank you. My friend, are you facing a trial in your life? Like Bill said, someday it'll all make sense. This is Today's Nashville. This is faith.