Speaker 1: When you listen to yourself, like when you are re
Speaker 1: listening to the show to edit it. Do you sound
Speaker 1: so different you sound.
Speaker 2: Yeah, it's honestly doing it for so long, it's changed
Speaker 2: hearing both of us. I get to keep telling myself,
Speaker 2: oh man, this doesn't sound like me. But then I
Speaker 2: listen to your voice and it sounds exactly like I
Speaker 2: hear you. So I think that, oh, okay, well then
Speaker 2: I must sound like I sound. But also, sometimes, just
Speaker 2: in the world, just your own voice, I think it
Speaker 2: can get away from you. And if I not, if
Speaker 2: I'm not paying attention to how I'm speaking, if I'm
Speaker 2: not putting some effort into the voice that I want
Speaker 2: to have right, then sometimes it's like your posture slumping
Speaker 2: and link your voice agains really lazy and gross.
Speaker 3: That's true sometimes like now my throat, sit up, speak normally,
Speaker 3: not three your nows, and actually this is I would say,
Speaker 3: this is closer to my normal natural voice data day.
Speaker 2: Now, this is this is how I sat.
Speaker 1: That's your very white impression, very white, very white wishes,
Speaker 1: very white wishes. That's that's your single, very white Wishes.
Speaker 1: Sing a few lines of your new single, very White Wishes.
Speaker 2: I went down to the store.
Speaker 1: Oh, and I.
Speaker 2: Bought myself some more socks because my feet were getting big.
Speaker 4: And I went back to my house and I put
Speaker 4: on both those socks, and I also put on my
Speaker 4: hot pink wig, and then I danced around the room
Speaker 4: and I said, hey, look at me.
Speaker 2: But no one else was around. So I was a
Speaker 2: lone kale. And I jumped and screamed and sang, and
Speaker 2: I took a bell and I rang until all the
Speaker 2: neighbors came up to my door. You know what's that
Speaker 2: to do?
Speaker 1: Very white was funky? Okay, what is this country song
Speaker 1: you singing?
Speaker 2: I don't know. I'm in the I'm in a country
Speaker 2: song mood.
Speaker 1: I guess today, I guess.
Speaker 2: So talk about transitions. We're getting right into it because
Speaker 2: we are in. We're in. We're in the South today
Speaker 2: in Tennessee, Kentucky. Oh wow, Ashville.
Speaker 1: Bluegrass and Banjo's.
Speaker 2: Classic seventies, eighties, nineties country pop music. Dinah, what's your
Speaker 2: relationship to country music? We don't really talk about this
Speaker 2: because I don't think either us has much of one.
Speaker 1: I mean, I don't have much one, although I have
Speaker 1: a lot of family from Kentucky. Yeah, So there are
Speaker 1: a lot of bluegrass lovers, a lot of gospel records
Speaker 1: going on in Grandma's house, and mom Mom loves that
Speaker 1: stuff here.
Speaker 2: Yeah.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I did always like Johnny Cash sure like old
Speaker 1: school country. I never really liked pop country. That never
Speaker 1: appealed to me. I will say, after watching Oh Brother,
Speaker 1: We're I loved that soundtrack. Yeah, I did. Played that
Speaker 1: soundtrack a lot.
Speaker 2: That got us all into like old timey bluegrass, right
Speaker 2: like we were all like, give me them down by
Speaker 2: the river gospel music.
Speaker 1: Yo, I want the soggy bottom boys, but I want
Speaker 1: to I want to party. Let's put on the soggy
Speaker 1: Bottom boys.
Speaker 2: Similarly like I love that Oh Brother style, you know,
Speaker 2: real old timey, scratchy vinyl record, big rock, candy mountain
Speaker 2: kind of stuff. For me, I would say my strongest
Speaker 2: relationship to country music is also very old, not quite
Speaker 2: as old, but forties fifties. I think, like Marty Robbins,
Speaker 2: like cowboy music, word out in the out in the
Speaker 2: Old West, and honest, I'll be fully honest, this kid
Speaker 2: was born out of playing Fallout New Vegas, huh, because
Speaker 2: the soundtrack to that game is a lot of old
Speaker 2: cowboy music. Yeah, and and there was playing in the background.
Speaker 2: I think Big Iron was one of the big songs
Speaker 2: that played in that game a lot on the radio,
Speaker 2: and I was like, this is kind of a pop
Speaker 2: what's going on here with Marty Robbins And I just
Speaker 2: when I drove for the first time by myself out west,
Speaker 2: when I hit the desert, I was like, this is
Speaker 2: what I'm putting on. And I put on like a
Speaker 2: playlist and was just jamming to these old, you know,
Speaker 2: old cowboy country hits.
Speaker 1: Thank Williams je Sure that kind of stuff.
Speaker 2: I don't know, I really connected to it. And now
Speaker 2: whenever I'm in the desert, I feel like I need
Speaker 2: to listen to that music makes sense.
Speaker 1: I was just about to say this. I will never
Speaker 1: say that I dislike an entire genre of music right
Speaker 1: because I don't think music works that way. I feel
Speaker 1: like music is so much about your mood and your
Speaker 1: surroundings and what kind of mood you want to be in. Fully,
Speaker 1: I'm not gonna if I'm just like pulling up Spotify
Speaker 1: clean in the house, I'm not going to choose country music.
Speaker 1: But there's a time and a place where that's the
Speaker 1: only thing you need to have on or else. It
Speaker 1: just doesn't. It just a fits so well. It makes
Speaker 1: you feel like, I don't know, like driving through the desert.
Speaker 1: It's like you have the right soundtrack.
Speaker 2: I've seen you kick down a door and take out
Speaker 2: an entire gang of like drug dealers and thieves and
Speaker 2: you put on like def Leppard, you know it, Yeah,
Speaker 2: and it's it's perfect.
Speaker 1: What else?
Speaker 2: I think that's pretty cool. I mean, you're you're always
Speaker 2: like doing wall kicks and like flipping and you know,
Speaker 2: knocking down three dudes at a time one and you've
Speaker 2: got some serious heavy metal going on. Ye, it works.
Speaker 2: I totally get it. Well, we should get into it
Speaker 2: because today's episode, obviously we're talking about country music. This
Speaker 2: episode was born out of a simple, little brief, not
Speaker 2: even three sentence message on Instagram from our listener, Courtney
Speaker 2: May Klaus at CM Klaus eight thirty on Instagram. And
Speaker 2: side note, I cannot say the name Klaus without saying
Speaker 2: Klaus Klaus because it's just it sounds like it should
Speaker 2: be that so Courtney message us simply saying, listen to
Speaker 2: the story of Sha and the story of the Butterfly
Speaker 2: sounds an awful lot like the song Whiskey Lullaby once
Speaker 2: you said beneath the Willow Tree. And as people who
Speaker 2: don't know a lot about especially pop country music, we figured,
Speaker 2: all right, let's look up this song. It's Brad Paisley
Speaker 2: and Alison Krause called Whiskey Lullaby. I'm like, oh, a duet.
Speaker 2: Are they a couple? No, they're not. So I'm like,
Speaker 2: all right, well, nevermind, maybe there's nothing here. But as
Speaker 2: I'm just sort of glancing at the lyrics of this song,
Speaker 2: I come to find out that one of the writers,
Speaker 2: John Randall, was inspired for some of the lyrics to
Speaker 2: this song by his very challenging divorce from country singer
Speaker 2: Laurie Morgan. And whenever either of us I think finds
Speaker 2: out that two people were married or divorced, were like,
Speaker 2: wait a minute, is this an episode? Was it ridiculous?
Speaker 2: You know? Well, it turns out, my friends, that country
Speaker 2: legend Laurie Morgan was married no less than six times,
Speaker 2: and it does get pretty ridiculous there for a minute.
Speaker 1: So Country music King Henry, Yeah.
Speaker 2: So thank you so much, Courtney, because from that little
Speaker 2: offhanded reference to a song, you've given us a full episode. Hey, kloud,
Speaker 2: let's dive in find out about Lauri Morgan, her six
Speaker 2: husbands and the devastating divorce that would lead to a
Speaker 2: country hits.
Speaker 1: Let's get on this horse and rat hey their friends
Speaker 1: come listen. Well, Eli and Diana got some stories to tell.
Speaker 1: There's no matchmaking o romantic tips. It's just about ridiculous relationships.
Speaker 2: I love.
Speaker 1: There might be any type of person at all, an
Speaker 1: abstract concept or a concrete wall. But if there's a story,
Speaker 1: We're the second Glance and show Ridiculous Romance, A production
Speaker 1: of iHeartRadio.
Speaker 2: All right. Lori Morgan. She was born in nineteen fifty nine.
Speaker 2: Her father was famed country legend George Morgan. Now this
Speaker 2: is my kind of music because George was known as
Speaker 2: a country crooner. So he had a voice like a
Speaker 2: rat pack Vegas lounge singer, right, just real smooth, deep voice,
Speaker 2: beautiful singer. But he put this talents into country songs. Now,
Speaker 2: his daughter, Laurie was born in fifty nine, and her
Speaker 2: full name was Loretta Lynn Morgan. And of course everyone
Speaker 2: is thinking, well, she was named after my favorite country legend,
Speaker 2: Loretta Lynn. Yeah, corect But actually Laurie was born in
Speaker 2: nineteen fifty nine, Loretta Lynn did not come to Nashville
Speaker 2: to get famous until about nineteen sixty one, so she
Speaker 2: was just named that by coincidence. In fact, Laurie was
Speaker 2: on Larry King's show doing an interview and she said
Speaker 2: that Loretta Lynn always referred to her as her namesake,
Speaker 2: which she was very proud of, of course, but that's
Speaker 2: not really the case. It was just kind of a
Speaker 2: naming coincidence, just a good sound in country name.
Speaker 1: I guess, Rede Lynn just a popular name at the
Speaker 1: reta Lynn.
Speaker 2: Yeah.
Speaker 1: She got welcomed into the country music biz in nineteen
Speaker 1: seventy two when she performed with her dad at the
Speaker 1: Grand Ole Opry at just thirteen years old. Laurie and
Speaker 1: her dad, George sang the song paper Roses Together, which
Speaker 1: had first been recorded by Anita Bryant innineteen sixty. Okay,
Speaker 1: and like side note, we're just gonna go ahead and
Speaker 1: call Anita Bryant this week's villain of the week because
Speaker 1: in the nineteen seventies she's the bit you made it
Speaker 1: her business to protests against gay rights.
Speaker 2: Wow.
Speaker 1: She was also one of the first public figures to
Speaker 1: get pied in the face. There you go, take that Anita.
Speaker 1: The pie thrower was Tom L. Higgins, who is the
Speaker 1: author and gay rights activist who coined the term gay pride.
Speaker 2: Oh okay, so.
Speaker 1: Thanks Anita Bryant. You helped a few thousand people learn
Speaker 1: more about gay history today.
Speaker 2: There you go. What a legacy your life, schoal. I
Speaker 2: didn't know who coined the term gay pride. I thought
Speaker 2: it was just always out there. Oh.
Speaker 1: Also another thing about Anita Bryant, because I like dunking
Speaker 1: on her. Vincent Price once said in a TV interview
Speaker 1: that Oscar Wild's play A Woman of No Importance must
Speaker 1: be about Nita Bryant.
Speaker 2: He Vince Price's the best. Also, apparently Johnny Carterson like
Speaker 2: every week, had on any to Bryant dunk. Yes, Johny
Speaker 2: was relentless making fun of her.
Speaker 1: I love that, Thank you, Johnny. Also in twenty twenty one,
Speaker 1: Anita's granddaughter, Sarah Green, announced that she was engaged to
Speaker 1: a woman and was having a hard time deciding if
Speaker 1: she should invite her grandmother to the Sarah Moon. So
Speaker 1: all the best to Sarah. I hope your wedding was
Speaker 1: lovely and Anita.
Speaker 2: Free anyway, So Laurie Morgan and her dad George sang
Speaker 2: Paper Roses and they got a standing ovation at the
Speaker 2: grand O Lobry, but sadly, just three years later, her
Speaker 2: father died after complications from heart surgery. Now Laurie she's sixteen.
Speaker 2: She went on to tour with members from his band
Speaker 2: and eventually she went to work for the publishing firm
Speaker 2: Acuff Rose Music as a receptionist and a demo singer,
Speaker 2: and in nineteen seventy nine this led to her singing
Speaker 2: with Hickory Records and she put out two singles, Two
Speaker 2: People in Love and tell Me I'm Only Dreaming, and
Speaker 2: these both charted with Billboard's Hot Country Songs. But by
Speaker 2: the end of the year she had also released I'm
Speaker 2: Completely Satisfied with You, and this was a duet that
Speaker 2: she made with her father using archived vocals of his
Speaker 2: and like some some new fangled electronic manipulation supposed to
Speaker 2: be real sweet and this also made the charts. And
Speaker 2: then she started touring with nightclubs. She was opening for
Speaker 2: musicians who, if you know country, are big names like
Speaker 2: Jack Green, Genie Seely, and Billy Thundercloud, who I found
Speaker 2: out was a First Nations Canadian country singer. Cool name yeah,
Speaker 2: he had the first full First Nations band and they
Speaker 2: were all like or at least, you know, on the
Speaker 2: charts or something like that, but they were all they
Speaker 2: all they were pretty famous.
Speaker 1: You think using someone's archived vocals to do a duet
Speaker 1: with controversial like them, like in the AI John Lennon thing.
Speaker 2: I don't think. I don't know. I don't know because
Speaker 2: I don't find the John Lennon thing to be that
Speaker 2: controversial myself because they're not generating. It's not like Lennon
Speaker 2: never took part in this song. They found a song
Speaker 2: that he did record and used AI to like make
Speaker 2: it sound good, right, right.
Speaker 1: So the name is like a hologram John Lennon walking
Speaker 1: out and being like, eat tostitos.
Speaker 2: Yeah right, Oh, everybody eat tostitos. Delicious. Here's a day
Speaker 2: in the life of me. First, I started the day
Speaker 2: with delicious, lucky charms.
Speaker 1: Damn John Lennon. That's when you get mad. We need
Speaker 1: to get mad. Is when they start to make John
Speaker 1: Lennon say some shit they would never say.
Speaker 2: Imagine all the people drinking fool just coffee.
Speaker 1: Okay, back to Laurie. Sorry, I'm going all over place.
Speaker 1: So at twenty years old, Laurie Morgan started touring as
Speaker 1: a backup vocalist for international country superstar George Jones.
Speaker 2: I've heard that name sure.
Speaker 1: While she was there, she met another young up and
Speaker 1: comer named Sammy Kershaw, and they flew. You know, they
Speaker 1: probably had a little fling on the you know, a
Speaker 1: little some something, but it was nothing serious because Laurie's
Speaker 1: real focus was on George Jones's bassist, a young man
Speaker 1: named Ron Gaddis, and when he met Laurie, his baseline
Speaker 1: hit a solid country group or something. I don't know,
Speaker 1: I don't know bass country music based terms. Okay, he he,
Speaker 1: He plucked her string just right.
Speaker 2: Okay.
Speaker 1: Anyway, so she and Ron Gaddis hit it off and
Speaker 1: they got married late in nineteen seventy nine. No, it's
Speaker 1: not much known about their marriage. They did have a
Speaker 1: daughter together, named Morgan Anastasia Gaddis. Anastasia was Laurie's mother's
Speaker 1: full name. But unfortunately their marriage only lasted about two
Speaker 1: years and it ended in divorce, and we don't know
Speaker 1: how or why, or like what happened to Ron after,
Speaker 1: but Laurie's career continued to grow. In nineteen eighty four,
Speaker 1: At twenty five years old, she became the youngest inductee
Speaker 1: of the Grand Ole Opry and the next year she
Speaker 1: met Keith whitt So.
Speaker 2: Keith Whitley is another country star making huge waves and
Speaker 2: when they started dating in nineteen eighty five, they were
Speaker 2: like the ultimate country music power couple, right. The speed
Speaker 2: like today non country comparison is like Billie Eilish and
Speaker 2: you know, one of the one of the one of
Speaker 2: the one of the one of the one of the
Speaker 2: one the of the uh uh a stroke.
Speaker 1: You can't think of a single name.
Speaker 2: No, I've got it. It's the band the K pop guys.
Speaker 2: Oh the b yeah BTS, one of the Billie Eilish
Speaker 2: and a BTS. Those are comparable aged people, right, sure,
Speaker 2: I don't know.
Speaker 1: Don't know.
Speaker 2: Damn, we're so lame when it comes to music. We're like,
Speaker 2: we're not that into country music. But otherwise we also
Speaker 2: know nothing about pop music, all right, So anyway, it
Speaker 2: was a big deal, is all. I'm getting that here.
Speaker 1: You could have just said jay Z and Beyonce.
Speaker 2: Yeah, it wasn't that big though.
Speaker 1: Too much. That's okay, that's too far. No one's like
Speaker 1: jay Z and Beyonce except Jay Z freak exactly.
Speaker 2: How dare I est? All right? So big country power couple.
Speaker 2: But Keith had kind of a rough life up to
Speaker 2: this point. He grew up in Sandy Hook, Kentucky, which
Speaker 2: is in a dry county, lots of dry counties in Kentucky.
Speaker 2: You can't buy alcohol there. And what happens is some
Speaker 2: of the teenagers there who are in the rural Kentucky
Speaker 2: where I don't know if you know, but there's not
Speaker 2: a lot to do, so they start trying to fill
Speaker 2: their time by drinking bootleg whiskey. You know, some moonshine
Speaker 2: out of a jar in the backyard somewhere, and they
Speaker 2: would race their cars around the Kentucky mountains, which, obviously,
Speaker 2: while drinking, is a bad combination. Once Keith was riding
Speaker 2: shotgun in a car with his friend, and his friend,
Speaker 2: who was driving, tried to pull a turn at one
Speaker 2: hundred and twenty miles an hour. While the car wrecked
Speaker 2: and his friend, the driver, was killed. Keith himself nearly
Speaker 2: broke his neck and barely survived the accident. Keith also
Speaker 2: once drove a car off a cliff into a frozen river.
Speaker 2: He managed to only break his collar bone this time.
Speaker 2: But in nineteen eighty three, Keith's brother Randy and his
Speaker 2: father Elmer died in a motorcycle accident.
Speaker 1: Damn.
Speaker 2: So just a lot of challenges, tragedy, pain, heartbreak, and
Speaker 2: despite all this success, which I'm sure fueled a lot
Speaker 2: of his music, Keith was battling with alcoholism his whole
Speaker 2: life and depression I'm sure as well.
Speaker 1: But he and Laurie tied the knot in nineteen eighty six.
Speaker 1: A year in they had a son named Jesse Keith Whitley,
Speaker 1: and Keith even adopted Laurie's daughter, Morgan from her previous
Speaker 1: marriage with the bassist. Both of their careers worre skyrocketing.
Speaker 1: Keith had been recording songs for a new album, but
Speaker 1: he kind of felt like they weren't up to his standards,
Speaker 1: so he went to RCA. He asked if they could
Speaker 1: scrab everything and just start over and let him have,
Speaker 1: you know, more creative control with the writing and the
Speaker 1: producing of the music.
Speaker 2: Right, most country music is written by other people than
Speaker 2: the singers.
Speaker 1: One of the time he's like, let you know, this
Speaker 1: ain't hidden. I want to let me let me drive
Speaker 1: this train, and they agreed.
Speaker 2: Which is surprising. That's bold for them to He must
Speaker 2: have had some real sway shows.
Speaker 1: Hey, that shows must be you know, he must have
Speaker 1: been making good money. Yeah, so they said, all right,
Speaker 1: And in nineteen eighty eight he was topping the country
Speaker 1: charts with songs like I'm No Stranger to the Rain,
Speaker 1: Oh and don't close your e's.
Speaker 2: Off the top of your head. Do you know any
Speaker 2: of the lyrics to I'm No Stranger to the Rain
Speaker 2: that you could sing us Diana? Sure?
Speaker 1: Yeah, please, Well, I don't know well bow sunshine. Oh,
Speaker 1: I don't know well about blow Oh, but I know
Speaker 1: all about thunder because I'm No Stranger to the Rain.
Speaker 2: Totally see why that topped the charts. Beautiful can you? Hey, Hey,
Speaker 2: I've got it on looping that for the rest of
Speaker 2: the night.
Speaker 1: It's a very good song.
Speaker 2: No, no about flowers anyway, all right.
Speaker 1: Meanwhile, Laurie Morgan had signed with RCAs well. She put
Speaker 1: out her first single with them in late nineteen eighty eight,
Speaker 1: and then in nineteen eighty nine she started touring to
Speaker 1: promote her debut album Leave.
Speaker 2: The Light On, Oh Lovely, and so this would have
Speaker 2: been the first time that she went out to like
Speaker 2: tour on her own name to sell her own music.
Speaker 2: But on May ninth, just two days before this album
Speaker 2: was released, Keith Whitley woke up. He made a phone
Speaker 2: call to his mother and he had breakfast with his
Speaker 2: brother in law Lane, Lane was going to take him
Speaker 2: golfing and then in the evening, Keith was planning to
Speaker 2: sit down and work on songs for him and Laurie
Speaker 2: to sing together when she got back. Because Laurie was
Speaker 2: still on tour and while she was gone, she asked
Speaker 2: Lane to keep an eye on Keith. And this was
Speaker 2: the first time that they'd been apart for a long
Speaker 2: time since they got married, and she knew enough about Keith,
Speaker 2: you know, with his depression, with his alcoholism, to be
Speaker 2: worried about him being all alone all of a sudden.
Speaker 2: Laane dropped Keith off at home at eight thirty am
Speaker 2: and said he would pick him back up in an
Speaker 2: hour for golf. When he got back to Keith's place,
Speaker 2: Lane found Keith face down on the bed, unresponsive. He
Speaker 2: was rushed to the hospital but pronounced dead at the
Speaker 2: age of thirty four. The medical examiner said Keith's blood
Speaker 2: alcohol level was zero point four to seven, which they
Speaker 2: said is the equivalent of drinking thirteen shots of high
Speaker 2: proof whiskey back to back.
Speaker 1: Oh my god.
Speaker 2: Laurie of course was crushed, and she actually spent the
Speaker 2: next few years dead dedicated to preserving Keith's memory and
Speaker 2: his contributions to country music, and in nineteen eighty four,
Speaker 2: in an interview, she said, quote, at this point in
Speaker 2: my life, if I met another Keith Whitley, I would
Speaker 2: walk away because I don't think I could handle it.
Speaker 2: But as far as him being the one, yeah, I
Speaker 2: think we could have lasted forever.
Speaker 1: Oh that's so.
Speaker 2: Yeah. Get a sense for how challenging it probably was.
Speaker 2: She's like, I don't think I could handle it. No,
Speaker 2: someone who's very famous and powerful and also very depressed
Speaker 2: and an alcoholic. That's got to be really challenging.
Speaker 1: Well, and you know, from her perspective, she's thinking of
Speaker 1: all of everything while he was alive, and also having
Speaker 1: to deal with him dying that way. Like I think
Speaker 1: she's like also saying, I can't do that again. I
Speaker 1: cannot be told my brother called me and is telling
Speaker 1: me that my husband's unrespondiyeh, and all this stuff. Yeah, right,
Speaker 1: Like that would be really hard to go through once, but.
Speaker 2: It was definitely not her last whirlwind row Man. It's
Speaker 2: in fact, that's just number two of her six marriages.
Speaker 2: So we're gonna come back. They do keep getting crazier
Speaker 2: and crazier. We'll take a quick break. We'll be right
Speaker 2: back right after this. Welcome back to the show, y'all.
Speaker 2: We had some good commercials. Now they're done and we're good.
Speaker 2: Keep on telling you this story. Unfortunately it doesn't end
Speaker 2: with the good. Oh that is spoiler alert. There's no
Speaker 2: shootings in this.
Speaker 1: No shooting, right, dudes. Okay, so we know Loriie, you know,
Speaker 1: very devastated by the Keith Whitley death. So it was
Speaker 1: a few years before Laurie started looking for love again.
Speaker 1: But in nineteen ninety one she had a marriage more
Speaker 1: like her first marriage in that we don't know much
Speaker 1: about it and it didn't last very long.
Speaker 2: Okay.
Speaker 1: His name was Brad Thompson and he was the bus
Speaker 1: driver for country star Clint Black.
Speaker 2: I know that name, do you?
Speaker 1: I didn't?
Speaker 2: Yeah, Clint Black famous enough for me to be familiar
Speaker 2: with his name when I see.
Speaker 1: It, famous enough that should be on his tour bus.
Speaker 1: Famous enough for Eli Banks to know about hahu. Now,
Speaker 1: Laurie was touring with Clint and she had her eye
Speaker 1: on Brad. But you know, he's the bus driver. He's
Speaker 1: not gonna go ask out one of the hit stars
Speaker 1: of the tour. That would be maybe a bit presumptuous
Speaker 1: what Brad to do. So Laurie's like, this one's on me.
Speaker 1: She went and asked him out, and soon Brad asked
Speaker 1: Laurie to marry him. Five months later she did, with
Speaker 1: Clint Black standing as Brad's best man. Pretty cool, but
Speaker 1: it turned out that Brad had a drinking problem that
Speaker 1: Laurie did not know about. Man Once she came home
Speaker 1: from a tour to find Brad getting ready to take
Speaker 1: her son Jesse out in the snow, and she's like,
Speaker 1: what y'all doing? And Brad said, quote, I'm gonna pull Jessie.
Speaker 1: I want to slip brown mastruck. Oh, And of course
Speaker 1: Laurie could smell the alcohol on him, even if he
Speaker 1: didn't sound like I just sounded just smell it. So
Speaker 1: she flipped out about this because of course we already
Speaker 1: know she has a bad history of people who were alcoholics. Yeah,
Speaker 1: she was also already stressed out. She had some bad
Speaker 1: money problems and even worse health problems because after a
Speaker 1: few weeks of having like constant pain in her abdomen,
Speaker 1: Laurie discovered that she had endometriosis.
Speaker 2: Oh yeah. Her doctors recommended that she have surgery to
Speaker 2: have the cysts on her ovaries removed, but while she
Speaker 2: was on the operating table, the surgeons decided that it
Speaker 2: would be best for her to have a full hysterectomy.
Speaker 2: Since she was under of course, she could not decide
Speaker 2: or consent to this, but her husband could, so it
Speaker 2: was up to Brad. The doctors went to him and
Speaker 2: were like, Hey, should we should give your wife a hysterectomy?
Speaker 2: You in or you out?
Speaker 1: Yeah, sign here or whatever.
Speaker 2: I mean, Like, I can't imagine that's a fun choice
Speaker 2: for Brad either, not because he's got to not only
Speaker 2: if he ever cares about having kids with her, you know,
Speaker 2: that's something he has to consider. And also, oh, I'm
Speaker 2: making this huge life changing decision for you, but also
Speaker 2: it might it's medically necessary and you might have to
Speaker 2: go into surgery again later. Nobody wants to do it twice.
Speaker 1: No, there's really this feels like a situation where there's
Speaker 1: no way to be right yeah or do a good
Speaker 1: yeah for real. I feel like either way you can
Speaker 1: get in a lot of well.
Speaker 2: He decided that they should go for it, and so
Speaker 2: she didn't even find out that she'd had her uterus
Speaker 2: removed until she woke up from the operation. She wrote
Speaker 2: that she was depressed when she found out that she
Speaker 2: wouldn't have any more kids, but ultimately she's, you know,
Speaker 2: a very religious person. She said, it's it's God's will.
Speaker 2: I'm okay with that. Plus, of course, she was not
Speaker 2: so sure that things were going to work out with Brad,
Speaker 2: and she thought maybe having another kid with him would
Speaker 2: have been a bad move anyway, and sure enough, she
Speaker 2: filed for divorce from Brad in nineteen ninety three, less
Speaker 2: than two years after they got married. She said she
Speaker 2: basically never saw or heard from him again, although reports
Speaker 2: say that in their divorce, Laurie gave Brad sixty five
Speaker 2: thousand dollars and a pickup truck, which also sounds like
Speaker 2: a country song making sure does I got sixty five
Speaker 2: thousand dollars, ain't a pickup truck in my divorce? And
Speaker 2: now I'm going on to eat a pie.
Speaker 1: Oh wow, I thought it was gonna be something about
Speaker 1: like and and a pickup truck. And now all see
Speaker 1: is you in my rear view?
Speaker 2: Oh see that's pretty good. Now we got something. Somebody
Speaker 2: call up John Randalls. This nice. So Brad got the
Speaker 2: sixty five K the pickup truck. Apparently, she also gave
Speaker 2: him back all his possessions, which included a photo of
Speaker 2: him that said World's greatest bus driver. Sure I would
Speaker 2: brought that back too. I also would find no reason
Speaker 2: to keep that if in the divorce, I don't need this,
Speaker 2: you can have Yes, you can have your weird picture back.
Speaker 1: Well. Now, before Laurie's divorce with Brad was finalized and
Speaker 1: he had his pickup treck, she was dating the Dallas
Speaker 1: Cowboys quarterback Troy Aikman.
Speaker 2: Oooh do you know Troy Aikman.
Speaker 1: Not at all? Oh man less than Clint Black. Do
Speaker 1: I know Troy aiks Wow?
Speaker 2: Okay, I mean I was. You know, I was never
Speaker 2: a big football fan, but when I was a kid,
Speaker 2: you know, early nineties, Stephanie, Troy Aikman was a huge name.
Speaker 2: It was like him, Dan Marino, Oj Simpson, all of
Speaker 2: them turned out great.
Speaker 1: Out fantastic, still making headlines.
Speaker 2: Because well, that's for sure, some more than others.
Speaker 1: Right. I think the only name in the nineties that
Speaker 1: I knew related to sports was Dave Justice and Chipper
Speaker 1: Jones because the nineteen ninety six Braves won the World Series.
Speaker 2: Oh there you go. Yeah, I wasn't in Atlanta yet.
Speaker 2: I didn't know Chipper Jones to he moved down here,
Speaker 2: but I never knew Dave Justice. Dave Justice and Chipper
Speaker 2: jas also sounds like a country song to me. Old
Speaker 2: ages to say, Chipper Jones going down Lanta and they're
Speaker 2: entering your homes. I don't know they're entering their own.
Speaker 2: I think I said your homes.
Speaker 1: Why are they coming to my house? It sounds kind
Speaker 1: of scary, like funny games like Justice and they're entering
Speaker 1: your homes causing psychological damage?
Speaker 2: Wow? I thought maybe they were just like signing baseball's
Speaker 2: or something. Why are they negative? Right away?
Speaker 1: I really start therapy again, Really, ship, I should look
Speaker 1: into this. Why is like the first thing I saw,
Speaker 1: I was like, they're trying to murder me? All right,
Speaker 1: You're like, oh, it's like a nice make a wish
Speaker 1: type is it?
Speaker 2: But and then you go said, I'm just like they're
Speaker 2: coming into sign baseballs and you're like, it's my last wish. Wow,
Speaker 2: you're so.
Speaker 1: Right, it's so naked psychological damage. Well for another podcast.
Speaker 2: Get a Better Help sponsorship over here.
Speaker 1: We'll start another struggle what the fuck is wrong with Diana?
Speaker 1: And it'll just be me to asking better Help what's
Speaker 1: wrong with me? And it'll be like, you know what, girl, great.
Speaker 2: Question at a ringing endorsement, Better Help. I think we
Speaker 2: just lost our sponsorship.
Speaker 1: Like, I just want to try to say it's better Help.
Speaker 1: Can't just tell you what's wrong with you. You got
Speaker 1: to do the work. I think Better Help would agree
Speaker 1: with me. Oh sorry, I'm feeling so silly today.
Speaker 2: Wrong with that?
Speaker 1: All right? So whatever Laurie was dating, the well known
Speaker 1: everyone knows about him was quarterback Troy Aikman. At first,
Speaker 1: she was very disinterested when her friend was trying to
Speaker 1: match her up with Troy. But he was very handsome
Speaker 1: and successful and he did not have a drinking problem.
Speaker 2: Check check check.
Speaker 1: So they started dating. But it was a lot tabloids,
Speaker 1: gossip magazines, morning news. She couldn't even go to the
Speaker 1: supermarket without it being a big deal. You know, they're
Speaker 1: like stars, Y're just like us. They eat food, you know.
Speaker 1: And so this was a level of fame that Laurie
Speaker 1: really didn't get as a country music star.
Speaker 2: Right.
Speaker 1: Also a big problem with them was that Troy wanted kids,
Speaker 1: and he was eight years younger than Laurie was. So
Speaker 1: he's dating an older woman who had two children already,
Speaker 1: who also definitely could not have any more children. That
Speaker 1: was really tough for him, and Laurie wrote quote, I
Speaker 1: couldn't blame him for that. That's a big hurdle for
Speaker 1: a man in his mid twenties. So they broke up
Speaker 1: amicably less than a year later.
Speaker 2: Right, So Laurie's single. Now she's killing it professionally, She's
Speaker 2: playing on TV. She's doing huge concerts alongside big names.
Speaker 2: She was on the soundtrack for the Beverly Hillbillies movie,
Speaker 2: which had like Dolly Parton and Willie Nelson, like a
Speaker 2: lot of big names. She also put out a Christmas
Speaker 2: album that had her doing duets with Andy Williams, Johnny Mathis,
Speaker 2: and Tammy Wynette. She even starred in a TV pilot
Speaker 2: about a country music singing detective called Laura Lei Lee.
Speaker 2: The show was not picked up for a series, and
Speaker 2: I'm half wondering if it's not just because people couldn't
Speaker 2: pronounce Laura Lei. Lee reminds me of the rural drove
Speaker 2: Laurelie Lee. Have you seen it? You sound drunk when
Speaker 2: you talk about it.
Speaker 1: Loy also a country music the Tectics kind of Philly.
Speaker 1: But I don't know. Maybe maybe they do a song
Speaker 1: after every U, or they do the song and they
Speaker 1: reveal the culprit.
Speaker 2: Oh yeah, in the lyrics they're like, turns out David
Speaker 2: Justice and Jibber Jones had come down to Atlanta. They
Speaker 2: were entering homes.
Speaker 1: I knew the crime all the time.
Speaker 2: Suspicious. You were right to be suspicious of everything.
Speaker 1: Yes, never trust your fellow man.
Speaker 2: Wow in the caston all right. Well, after dating Troy Aikman,
Speaker 2: Laurie went in a different direction, and in nineteen ninety
Speaker 2: four she started dating US Senator Fred Thompson of Tennessee. Wow.
Speaker 1: So she's had a bassist, a bus driver, a footballball star,
Speaker 1: and a country music thing of course, and then now
Speaker 1: a senator.
Speaker 2: Wow.
Speaker 1: She really does do be trying style.
Speaker 2: Yeah, she said in her autobiography Forever Yours Faithfully My
Speaker 2: Love Story that Fred was great. He is so great.
Speaker 2: Even his ex wife still liked him. She said that
Speaker 2: she liked dating older, successful man and she felt very
Speaker 2: secure with him. He also was very kind to her.
Speaker 2: He pushed her to feel more confident about her talents
Speaker 2: and her music and everything. He lavished her with gifts.
Speaker 2: Obviously a very wealthy man because he's a Southern senator.
Speaker 2: And Fred was even mulling a presidential run at that point,
Speaker 2: and Laurie wrote quote, I would be sitting at a
Speaker 2: glamorous party and have the flickering thought, so this is
Speaker 2: what it's like to be a first lady. Hell. I
Speaker 2: could handle that. Then I would say, oops, better drop
Speaker 2: the hell. Beautiful country singers and they're just have you know,
Speaker 2: foul mouth, they got no hesitation occurs in stuff.
Speaker 1: You know. I'm into that. But yeah, Laurie thought dating
Speaker 1: a politician was too stifling. Sure, She wrote quote, I
Speaker 1: cannot express myself as a pungent, pithy country singer. I
Speaker 1: began to feel programmed to smile and be well political.
Speaker 1: I put myself to the task could be in a
Speaker 1: great companion to a stimulating and important man, and as
Speaker 1: a result, I became boring. I mean right there, She
Speaker 1: had to drop the hell. Yeah, right, so that makes sense. Yeah,
Speaker 1: she said. She felt like everything she said she had
Speaker 1: to think about the political implications. She couldn't really be herself.
Speaker 1: And just like when she dated Troy Aikman, every time
Speaker 1: she went out in public, it was tabloids and TV
Speaker 1: analyzing everything she wore, every facial expression she made, which
Speaker 1: I was going to say, I feel like dating a
Speaker 1: senator is not all the way to get out of
Speaker 1: the public eye.
Speaker 2: Right right, the worst direction even worse, right, she said.
Speaker 2: I used to think I better drop the hell. Then
Speaker 2: I realized I better drop the hell out of this relationship.
Speaker 1: I dropped the hymn instead. Shortly after they broke up,
Speaker 1: she started dating another country singer and songwriter named John Randall.
Speaker 1: John Randall the co writer of the song A Whiskey Lullaby.
Speaker 1: We got him, We made it to everybody clap. So
Speaker 1: in nineteen ninety six they got married, same year she
Speaker 1: broke up with the senator. Yeah, so just a quickie,
Speaker 1: quick turnaround for ol Laurie. A year later, she published
Speaker 1: her autobiography that we mentioned earlier, Forever Yours Faithfully My
Speaker 1: Love Story.
Speaker 2: Oh okay, so she's married and she puts out this
Speaker 2: autobiography titled My Love Story. Well Entertainment Weekly gave the
Speaker 2: book a C, saying quote Morgan offers unsavory new details
Speaker 2: about Keith Whitley's last days and dishes the skinny on
Speaker 2: dating Troy Aikman and Senator Fred Thompson, but she doesn't
Speaker 2: do much soul searching about the four marriages she's racked
Speaker 2: up by age thirty eight, and when she fails to
Speaker 2: even mention her current spouse, singer John Randall, you can't
Speaker 2: help but size him up as a future ex husband.
Speaker 1: Oo out.
Speaker 2: I think that's insane for someone to publish an autobiography
Speaker 2: called Forever Yours Faithfully My Love Story and not mentioned
Speaker 2: their current spouse.
Speaker 1: I mean that is pretty crazy.
Speaker 2: A little prescient maybe.
Speaker 1: Though I don't love the judgment that I'm hearing in
Speaker 1: not much soul searching about the four marriages she's racked
Speaker 1: up by age thirty eight. Yeah, now, Laurie, I don't
Speaker 1: think that she's necessarily the steadiest like partner everything, but
Speaker 1: one of them died.
Speaker 2: You know.
Speaker 1: It's not like she's trying to jump from man to
Speaker 1: man or something. There's just there's it's smacks of a
Speaker 1: judgment that I don't love.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I totally get that.
Speaker 1: I just wonder, you know, I have to wonder if
Speaker 1: if it was a man who had racked up four
Speaker 1: marriage that they would even mention it. You know, it
Speaker 1: would just be like some dude doing his thing. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I don't like. I just don't. I don't see them
Speaker 1: being like he needs to really think about what he's doing.
Speaker 1: It's never like that.
Speaker 2: No, you're right, I don't know. And to be fair.
Speaker 2: On page two hundred and eighty seven out of three
Speaker 2: hundred and one, so fourteen pages before the end, she
Speaker 2: does mention John Randall once. Oh I am Yeah, she
Speaker 2: does say I married a country singer name John Randall,
Speaker 2: and it must have been really hard for him to
Speaker 2: see me writing about all my ex husbands all the time.
Speaker 2: That's it. That's the only mention of him. She didn't
Speaker 2: like go in and add a chapter about like, but
Speaker 2: I finally found the love of my life and I'm
Speaker 2: so excited that that was not in there.
Speaker 1: You think John read it and was like, okay, am
Speaker 1: I kicking up what you're putting down?
Speaker 2: Is there a sequel you're planning or Because it says
Speaker 2: my love story and I ain't in it.
Speaker 1: I'm not in it, so I guess it's not my
Speaker 1: love story.
Speaker 2: It says forever yours faithfully, and it's not to me
Speaker 2: your husband. So that's interesting. Now.
Speaker 1: I will say, in defense of their smack of judgment,
Speaker 1: that it is funny to call your book forever Yours faithfully,
Speaker 1: and then we talk about all these different.
Speaker 2: Men, right right. I do think that mostly refers to Keith,
Speaker 2: because she's like, he died and a lot of it
Speaker 2: was about her dealing with his death, which I understand.
Speaker 2: But yeah, it is kind of like I love story.
Speaker 2: But you know who doesn't factor into my love story
Speaker 2: at all? My current husband, a guy.
Speaker 1: Who's ring I'm wearing well. In December of nineteen ninety six,
Speaker 1: just a month after their wedding, Laurie and her new husband,
Speaker 1: John performed together on the Grand Ole Opry, singing a
Speaker 1: duet of the song by My Side. In nineteen ninety seven,
Speaker 1: Laurie performed the National Anthem at the Daytona five hundred,
Speaker 1: which was historic because it was also Jeff Gordon's first
Speaker 1: Daytona win.
Speaker 2: Look get that.
Speaker 1: She also sang let It Snow at the White House
Speaker 1: Christmas tree lighting. Oh and in nineteen ninety eight, tabloids
Speaker 1: claimed she had quote a wild ride in the backseat
Speaker 1: of a limousine with President Bill Clinton.
Speaker 2: Oh scandalous.
Speaker 1: The Laurie angrily refuted this story. She said her only
Speaker 1: interaction with Bill Clinton was in public for the tree lighting.
Speaker 1: Uh huh, but of course makes sense to be like,
Speaker 1: you know, our our swingin' playboy president.
Speaker 2: Well, I mean, Bill Clinton said in January of ninety eight,
Speaker 2: I did not have sexual relations with that woman, so
Speaker 2: talking about Monica Lewinsky, of course, so this had have
Speaker 2: been right. So if he was fooling around with more
Speaker 2: than one woman, as men who fool around with other
Speaker 2: women often.
Speaker 1: Do, very true.
Speaker 2: I'm just look, I will totally take Laurie's word for this,
Speaker 2: but there's a part of my brain she can't convince
Speaker 2: that something didn't happen. His little little part of the
Speaker 2: tabloid stuck in my head. That's how they make their money.
Speaker 1: I just love thinking that an actual wild night with
Speaker 1: Bill Clinton would be like he pulls out the sacks
Speaker 1: and he's like it's time there whispers whatever, and she's
Speaker 1: in the back of limousine like hanging out the sun roof.
Speaker 2: He's got fucking Baker Street blasted. Yes, she's like too wow.
Speaker 1: Also a side note, just a little happy story. A
Speaker 1: month after that, in April, on Interstate sixty five in Nashville,
Speaker 1: two dogs got loose on the highway and drivers had
Speaker 1: to like hit the brakes to avoid them, and it
Speaker 1: caused a huge backup that Laurie's tour bus got stuck in.
Speaker 1: So Laurie Morgan got out of her bus, walked across
Speaker 1: the highway and rescued the two dogs. Aw Hey, Lourie.
Speaker 1: She showed up late for her rehearsal covered in mud.
Speaker 2: Oh worth it well. Later that year, Laurie recorded a
Speaker 2: duet with a country singer that she knew way back when,
Speaker 2: and he had become quite famous himself. His name was
Speaker 2: Sammy Kershaw. And if you remember back when she was
Speaker 2: touring with George Jones when she was twenty years old,
Speaker 2: she had a little flaying with young Sammy Kershaw before
Speaker 2: she ended up marrying the bassist Ron Gaddis Right. Well,
Speaker 2: turns out the spark was still alive between Laurie and Sammy,
Speaker 2: who was also very married. EU it's gonna get messy
Speaker 2: in here. So before we get to her fifth marriage,
Speaker 2: let's take a quick break. Prepare for all this drama
Speaker 2: and see I would eventually lead to the song that
Speaker 2: Courtney originally sent us, Whiskey Lullaby. Find out how right
Speaker 2: after this, Well, going back, y'all to the show, Jipper
Speaker 2: joneses here and he's coming in your door. Oh my god,
Speaker 2: get away from this song. It's so fun.
Speaker 1: I'm terrified of Chipper Jones showing up of my door.
Speaker 1: So it's the late nineties. Country music star Laurie Morgan
Speaker 1: is married to another country singer and songwriter, John Randall.
Speaker 1: Now the big picture of what happened next is totally true,
Speaker 1: but the little details are from some tabloids.
Speaker 2: Okay, so we'll try to.
Speaker 1: Differentiate for you. Yeah, you can take the tabloid stuff
Speaker 1: with the large grain of salt.
Speaker 2: Sure.
Speaker 1: So, according to Star Magazine in nineteen ninety eight, Laurie
Speaker 1: was recording a duet with another country star, Sammy Kershaw.
Speaker 1: Now we know Sammy and Laurie had that flaying when
Speaker 1: they were both touring with George Jones back in seventy nine,
Speaker 1: but she ended up marrying the bassist. Well, Sammy and
Speaker 1: Laurie crossed paths a lot over the years, and they
Speaker 1: kept in touch a little. But The Star says that
Speaker 1: during these recording sessions they were quote flirting heavily, and
Speaker 1: they were also going to each other's concerts. They even
Speaker 1: did a few duets outside the studio.
Speaker 2: Oh that's the Star, Okay, a little honkey tonk in
Speaker 2: the bedroom there, Okay, okay. Now. The Star also says
Speaker 2: that John Randall started hearing these rumors, and, according to
Speaker 2: a friend, quote he started calling Sammy's band members asking
Speaker 2: what's going on with my wife and Sammy?
Speaker 1: Yikes.
Speaker 2: Well they must have given him some detailed answers, because
Speaker 2: on August eighth of nineteen ninety nine, the Tennesseean reported
Speaker 2: that John Randall and Laurie Morgan were getting a divorce. Meanwhile,
Speaker 2: Sammy Kershaw's wife, Kim, whom he had been married to
Speaker 2: for fourteen years and had two daughters with, was none
Speaker 2: too happy when news got back to her that her
Speaker 2: husband had been fooling around with his long lost sweetheart.
Speaker 2: On November ninth of nineteen ninety nine, she filed for
Speaker 2: divorce from Sammy in Nashville, citing irreconcilable differences. So that's
Speaker 2: you know, the divorce filings in both cases were true.
Speaker 2: We don't know if, like, you know, all those about
Speaker 2: all the rumors getting back to them and their angry
Speaker 2: responses and all this stuff that's kind of being filled
Speaker 2: in by the tabloids. But you know, some tabloid stuff
Speaker 2: is true.
Speaker 1: Something I don't know is something.
Speaker 2: Also, according to The Star, Sammy and Kim actually had
Speaker 2: had a great marriage. They had both been married a
Speaker 2: couple times before, and they had both had troubles with
Speaker 2: drugs and alcohol in their previous relationships. So now, after
Speaker 2: fourteen years of marriage and two kids, they both really
Speaker 2: felt like they'd settled down, their crazy days were behind them.
Speaker 2: But then Laurie walked back into Sammy's life and everything changed,
Speaker 2: and Kim allegedly was pissed.
Speaker 1: So Kim went after Sammy hard in the divorce, and
Speaker 1: we did find a few details of their divorce proceedings
Speaker 1: on rolandnote dot COM's country music database. So on day
Speaker 1: one of their divorce trial, Kim accused Sammy of adultery
Speaker 1: with Laurie Morgan. He fired back and said that she
Speaker 1: had had an affair where a used car sales. What Then,
Speaker 1: on day two, it was revealed that Sammy Kershaw had
Speaker 1: paid fifty thousand dollars to settle a sexual harassment lawsuit
Speaker 1: back in nineteen ninety seven. Oh man, we cannot find
Speaker 1: any more info about that.
Speaker 2: And I know it was like trying so hard, but
Speaker 2: it's the only record of that.
Speaker 1: I mean, I guess if you settle part of.
Speaker 2: That is the whole point is like cleaning my soft
Speaker 2: quiet Yeah.
Speaker 1: My record and stuff. So anyway, so this trial just
Speaker 1: went on for weeks, and they were a little bombshells
Speaker 1: being dropped and thrown by each each of them and everything.
Speaker 1: But during their divorce trial, it seems like Laurie and
Speaker 1: John was it have a more of a quick and
Speaker 1: clean process. CMT dot com said, quote Morgan will keep
Speaker 1: all her own assets and Randall will keep his. The
Speaker 1: two have reportedly stated that they will remain friends and
Speaker 1: possibly work together in the future. Though it sounds like,
Speaker 1: you know, he's all right, buye you like famy whatever.
Speaker 2: So by week three of Sammy and Kim's divorce trial,
Speaker 2: he had accused Kim of excessive spending, saying that she
Speaker 2: logged one hundred and eighty two thousand dollars in personal
Speaker 2: expenses in nineteen ninety nine. Well damn, but Sammy could
Speaker 2: throw whatever accusations he wanted at Kim and just nothing
Speaker 2: was sticking, probably partly because even during their divorce trial,
Speaker 2: Sammy and Laurie were not even trying to be discreet
Speaker 2: about their relationship together. Laurie even opened a restaurant called
Speaker 2: Laurie Morgan's Spicy Hot Chicken Coop, which had Sammy Kershaw's
Speaker 2: potato salad on the menu.
Speaker 1: Wow.
Speaker 2: At one point, Kim Kershaw dropped this bombshell on the court.
Speaker 2: She testified that Laurie Morgan admitted to her that she
Speaker 2: had an affair with Sammy back in nineteen ninety three. Now,
Speaker 2: Sammy would have been still married to Kim at that
Speaker 2: point because they got married in the mid eighties. But
Speaker 2: if we play back the tape from earlier in this podcast,
Speaker 2: we know that in nineteen ninety three, Laurie was feeling
Speaker 2: unhappy with her bus driver husband, Brad Thompson, and divorced
Speaker 2: him for sixty five thousand dollars and a pickup truck.
Speaker 2: So maybe that affair had something to do with what
Speaker 2: ultimately broke up Laurie and Brad or came about because
Speaker 2: Laurie and Brad were already on the rocks, right, but
Speaker 2: either way kind of adds a new piece of info
Speaker 2: to that story.
Speaker 1: Very true.
Speaker 2: Well.
Speaker 1: In April of two thousand and one, Sammy and Kim
Speaker 1: Kershaw's divorce was finalized. The judge head zero sympathy for
Speaker 1: sam He's like you are wild annowed Sammy, So he
Speaker 1: was ordered to pay thirty five thousand dollars for Kim's
Speaker 1: legal fees, four thousand dollars a month in alimony, and
Speaker 1: six thousand, five hundred dollars a month in child support.
Speaker 2: Right.
Speaker 1: Kim also received primary custody of the kids, and the
Speaker 1: judge said, quote.
Speaker 5: Mister Kershaw's marital misconduct has been open and notorious, with
Speaker 5: absolutely no discretion being used to protect his wife and
Speaker 5: children from information concerning his affair.
Speaker 1: With Miss Lori Morgan.
Speaker 2: Sorry, I love this Tennessee judge. Should I give more
Speaker 2: this Sam Eagle from Tennessee? Oh no, it's.
Speaker 1: A powdered wig that he puts on to make his judgment.
Speaker 2: Country Bumpkins.
Speaker 1: He was sent there as from the city.
Speaker 2: From the city for being for being two by the book,
Speaker 2: he couldn't he couldn't work with the mobsters that were
Speaker 2: running you know, the city Seattle, where he had previously
Speaker 2: been a judge, and they were like, I'm sending you
Speaker 2: to Nashville. Like, no, fine, I'll bring my brand of
Speaker 2: justice to Nashville. Let's see how it works down there.
Speaker 1: Call me barrister.
Speaker 2: That British.
Speaker 1: Well, anyway, you might wonder, you know, did Sammy take
Speaker 1: that to heart, this judge being like hella judgmental?
Speaker 2: He was, maybe like judgmental.
Speaker 1: That judge really pegged me I should maybe act a
Speaker 1: little more discretion and humility, maybe act like a gentleman. Nope,
Speaker 1: because eleven days after the divorce was finalized, he and
Speaker 1: Laurie went on Live with Regis and Kelly to announce
Speaker 1: their engagement. I swear they are like why people to
Speaker 1: get mad at them?
Speaker 2: Right, Like it's not even like, well they got engaged.
Speaker 2: Eleven days later, they went on the biggest live morning
Speaker 2: talk show in the world to tell literally everyone, they will, yes,
Speaker 2: screw our previous marriages. We're starting this one now.
Speaker 1: First it was chicken and potato salad. Now it's heart
Speaker 1: and soul. So on September twenty ninth, two thousand and one,
Speaker 1: they got married in Nashville.
Speaker 2: Now on Larry King, Laurie did an interview and she said,
Speaker 2: quote from the first time I met Sammy, there was
Speaker 2: a traction there. Nothing happened, and some twenty years later
Speaker 2: we were both in marriages and we decided to get
Speaker 2: out of those marriages to pursue the love that we
Speaker 2: felt for each other. It was tough on our family,
Speaker 2: our children and our fans. But you know, you only
Speaker 2: live once, which I mean, you know, there's something to that,
Speaker 2: and sort of like, why am I, for the sake
Speaker 2: of etiquette gonna delay the thing that brings me happiness?
Speaker 1: Right?
Speaker 2: Something there? But also you got to consider who you
Speaker 2: are hurting, right, and you can't always just pursue the
Speaker 2: thing that you want the most deeply when you've got
Speaker 2: to consider other people's feelings and well being as well.
Speaker 1: But you know, well, and this might be where you know,
Speaker 1: you want some of that self analysis to come in,
Speaker 1: get her to think to herself, you know, my heart
Speaker 1: is a little fickle. Yeah, maybe I don't need to
Speaker 1: marry every man. We could just stay for a.
Speaker 2: While and maybe you know, when there's when I'm married
Speaker 2: to someone and I'm attracted to someone else, I sort
Speaker 2: of ride that out, you know, and try to get
Speaker 2: through it and see what's going on with Yeah, I mean,
Speaker 2: who knows what was going on?
Speaker 1: Mind or heart hurt wants what it wants and so on.
Speaker 2: But a year into the marriage, things apparently got a
Speaker 2: little rocky again. That fickle heart reared its head because
Speaker 2: Laurie and Sammy had both filed restraining orders against each other.
Speaker 2: She told Larry King in this interview, which was after
Speaker 2: or they'd reconciled, that this had come from pressure from
Speaker 2: outside forces who quote didn't want us to succeed. They
Speaker 2: were being played against each other by either people who
Speaker 2: you know, who were angry about how their previous divorces
Speaker 2: went down, or by the tabloids who were seeking drama.
Speaker 2: She said, quote we fell for it. We took it
Speaker 2: out on each other, and one fight led to another
Speaker 2: and it became extremely, extremely violent. It was very uncalled for.
Speaker 2: Of this violence. Can only find out that in court.
Speaker 2: Sammy is the one who claimed that Laurie assaulted him.
Speaker 2: But she did say that neither of them were doing
Speaker 2: any drugs or drinking. She said, neither of them do
Speaker 2: because they both had bad histories with it. It was
Speaker 2: just a lot of built up frustration and hot heads
Speaker 2: and you know, tempers and all that. But when she
Speaker 2: came back later to pack up some of her stuff,
Speaker 2: you know, they saw each other. They started to talk.
Speaker 2: They realized that they had already gone through so much
Speaker 2: drama just to be together, that they must really matter
Speaker 2: to each other and they should try and work this out.
Speaker 2: So they talked for a while and it seemed like
Speaker 2: things were going to be okay, okay.
Speaker 1: But even though they were later seen acting quote unquote
Speaker 1: lovey dovey, I guess there were a lot of PDA
Speaker 1: going on in Hot Chicken, Cooper.
Speaker 2: Probably trying to undo all those tabloid headlines.
Speaker 1: Yeah, so yeah, even so they had problem. Yeah, in
Speaker 1: two thousand and five, the Hot Chicken restaurant closed, you
Speaker 1: know seven Sammy filed for bankruptcy, and later that year
Speaker 1: he announced his candidacy as a Republican for Lieutenant governor
Speaker 1: of Louisiana. Oh and we know, LORI, you know, don't
Speaker 1: like Dayton politicians.
Speaker 2: Right, you know, nice like I tried that.
Speaker 1: By the way, he lost. Yeah, he did not win
Speaker 1: that win.
Speaker 2: Also weird that he like declared bankruptcy and was like
Speaker 2: I know how to get back on my feet with
Speaker 2: money run for politics, which just kind of shows you
Speaker 2: what her political run will do for your financial situation.
Speaker 1: That's true, But I was about to say, it's very
Speaker 1: expensive to run a president right, I mean, not even presidential,
Speaker 1: any any office. A race for any office is pretty pricey. Yeah,
Speaker 1: so it's like you kind of have to have some
Speaker 1: of your own money too.
Speaker 2: Well, that's one thinking is this was a play against
Speaker 2: the system. This is one of those like I'm a
Speaker 2: declare bankruptcy so that I have I can debt free
Speaker 2: run for office, and in running for office, I can
Speaker 2: raise money, I can sell books, whatever it is he did,
Speaker 2: because a lot of people walk away from a run
Speaker 2: with more money than they started with, despite having spent
Speaker 2: millions of dollars on the run. There's a big problem
Speaker 2: with money in the political system, is all I'm saying here.
Speaker 1: You're so right. So on top of all that, even
Speaker 1: their respective crowds couldn't get along because Lori said she
Speaker 1: was quote unquote laid back music, kind of like Tammy Wynette,
Speaker 1: you know, in that vein. Sammy meanwhile, was more like
Speaker 1: southern rock, like a Leonard Skinnard. Okay, so they're like,
Speaker 1: we can't even tour together because their fans didn't mix,
Speaker 1: they didn't share interest in the others music or whatever.
Speaker 1: So it was just a lot of problems like that,
Speaker 1: and in August of that year, Sammy and Laurie legally separated.
Speaker 1: By October, LORII filed for divorce. The next year, some
Speaker 1: trust sued Laurie Morgan for three hundred and twenty seven
Speaker 1: thousand dollars in unpaid debt, So then she filed for
Speaker 1: bankruptcy in two thousand and eight, citing between one and
Speaker 1: ten million dollars in debt, which it's like, that's a
Speaker 1: huge disparity.
Speaker 2: There's a big difference between one and two million dollars.
Speaker 2: In fact, there's a million dollar difference between those two numbers.
Speaker 1: I think, I see what your problem is is that
Speaker 1: you don't be tracked.
Speaker 2: She's like, I don't know, one million, ten million, it's
Speaker 2: all the same.
Speaker 1: No, it isn't it's it's not the same very much,
Speaker 1: not so big shock. Laurie was never good with money.
Speaker 1: She told the Boot in twenty sixteen that her bankruptcy
Speaker 1: was because, quote, she didn't watch her own money or
Speaker 1: audit her accountant, right that is a trap.
Speaker 2: And if you're so rich that you.
Speaker 1: Have so many people looking after your money, yeah, look
Speaker 1: after them right.
Speaker 2: That was a comment in one of these articles too,
Speaker 2: that it's like this is not uncommon for celebrities who
Speaker 2: suddenly have a lot of money and don't really know
Speaker 2: how to handle it. So they have people do and
Speaker 2: they just assume all their bills are getting paid. They
Speaker 2: just assume everything's being handled and then they get a
Speaker 2: letter one day that's like, hey, it hadn't been handled.
Speaker 1: Right, look at Shakira, right?
Speaker 2: Was not?
Speaker 1: Her argument was that her tax people were doing her taxes.
Speaker 2: Yeah, so that's pretty much. The most ridiculous of Lori
Speaker 2: Morgan's love life is those those first five husbands number five,
Speaker 2: especially that whole just tabloid drama, divorce, cheating everything. Afterwards,
Speaker 2: she did get married one more time to Randy White,
Speaker 2: a businessman. That was in twenty ten, and they seem
Speaker 2: to still be married happily today. Oh yeah, she's got
Speaker 2: an active Facebook page where she almost exclusively posts dog memes,
Speaker 2: but she does have pictures of the two of them
Speaker 2: on a beach and stuff, and you know, seeming to
Speaker 2: be doing okay, I guess she does little tours. She
Speaker 2: was like, I'm playing this music hall and Niagara Falls
Speaker 2: and stuff like that. So I guess she's still playing
Speaker 2: a little bit. So that's that's Laurie and her ridiculous
Speaker 2: love life but ridiculous romance. Some might even say, what
Speaker 2: But now we can finally loop back to Courtney's original
Speaker 2: Instagram message and the song Whiskey Lullaby that set us
Speaker 2: off on this tangent in the first place. Now that
Speaker 2: we know how Laurie and John's divorce went down, we
Speaker 2: can understand why afterwards John was kind of a wreck. Right.
Speaker 2: I mean, his wife, who'd never even mentioned him in
Speaker 2: her autobiography about the loves of her life, right, was
Speaker 2: off cheating on him with her you know, effectively teenage sweetheart.
Speaker 1: She's in hot chicken with someone else.
Speaker 2: Right. So within days of the divorce, John also lost
Speaker 2: a record deal and a songwriting contract, according to an
Speaker 2: article on American Songwriter dot com. So things a really
Speaker 2: low point in John's life, and he started drinking heavily
Speaker 2: after this, and he went back to a lot of
Speaker 2: his worst habits. Just having a really hard time and
Speaker 2: seeing him in this state. Apparently, his manager said to
Speaker 2: him quote, hey man, every now and then you got
Speaker 2: to put a bottle to your head and pull the trigger.
Speaker 2: And John was like, uh shit, I got to write
Speaker 2: that down for later, which also like imagine walking in
Speaker 2: on your friend who's like drunk passed out and being like, yeah,
Speaker 2: sometimes you gotta do that. I mean, it's not exactly
Speaker 2: what he needed to hear.
Speaker 1: Especially your manager, should you not be like, hey man,
Speaker 1: let's clean get you cleaned up. You know what I'm saying,
Speaker 1: Like we'll go on a little sabbatical or something. Get
Speaker 1: your head right.
Speaker 2: You wucking guy's face down of the toilet, three whiskey
Speaker 2: bottles empty around him, and you're just like, yep, it happens.
Speaker 1: Go on a bender until you.
Speaker 2: Die there some of us don't come back.
Speaker 1: Geez, you're a terrible manager, right I Oh. John was like,
Speaker 1: I'm going to get any manager who cares if I
Speaker 1: liver ORed.
Speaker 2: I Well.
Speaker 1: John cleaned himself up, got back to work, and he
Speaker 1: paired up with songwriter Bill Anderson to try and put
Speaker 1: a song together. Now Anderson had his own idea for
Speaker 1: a song called Midnight Cigarette.
Speaker 2: Oh no, that's country.
Speaker 1: That is that is very country sound. He said, quote
Speaker 1: can you imagine a cigarette just sitting on an ash
Speaker 1: tray at midnight, nobody's smoking it or paying it any attention,
Speaker 1: and it just burned out. And he kind of likens
Speaker 1: that to a relationship where you don't hit a wall
Speaker 1: or anything. It just sort of goes away, kind of pizzles.
Speaker 2: Right.
Speaker 1: We've all had one of them. Yeah, yeah, Like neither
Speaker 1: of us are trying to say it, but we both know.
Speaker 2: I had one where we're like never We never really
Speaker 2: broke up, just kind of left one day. It was like,
Speaker 2: all right, I guess I'll wow see you later. And
Speaker 2: so I guess technically I'm still dating that person, babe. Sorry,
Speaker 2: we unbelieve the ball.
Speaker 1: I'll text full time.
Speaker 2: I'll text her and be like, hey, we need to
Speaker 2: make this official. You have multiple children, we should break up.
Speaker 1: We should probably break up now. She's like, who is
Speaker 1: this no offense?
Speaker 2: Damn wow. I actually would take a lot of offense
Speaker 2: if she said that to me.
Speaker 1: That would be very upset. So anyway, John loved the
Speaker 1: idea for this song, and he said, quote, yeah, well
Speaker 1: I put the bottle to my head and pulled the
Speaker 1: trigger a few times. Oh, And Bill was like, for
Speaker 1: good midnight cigarette. Now that's a line.
Speaker 2: You know who told you that, some supportive friend, I hope.
Speaker 1: When they were telling you to get yourself clean. But
Speaker 1: actually both lines ended up going into the song that
Speaker 1: they wrote together, which is Whiskey Lullaby. So y'all, I
Speaker 1: don't think we can legally play it for you. I
Speaker 1: do think we can go on down to a poetry
Speaker 1: corner and give a read of a few of these
Speaker 1: here lyrics.
Speaker 2: She pooed him out like the burning end of a
Speaker 2: midnight cigarette. She broke his heart. He spent his whole
Speaker 2: life trying to forget. We watched him drink his pain
Speaker 2: away little at a time, but he never could get
Speaker 2: drunk enough to get her off his mind until the night.
Speaker 1: He put that bottle to his head and pulled the
Speaker 1: trigger and finally drank away her memory. Life is short,
Speaker 1: but this time it was bigger than the strength he
Speaker 1: had to get up off his knees. We found him
Speaker 1: with his face down in the pillow, with a note
Speaker 1: that said I'll love her till I die. And when
Speaker 1: we buried him beneath the willow, the angels sang a
Speaker 1: whiskey lullaby.
Speaker 2: There you have it, folks whiskey lullabye, midnight cigarette, midnight
Speaker 2: cigarette and bottled of his head and pulled the tree,
Speaker 2: which like, oh, it's clever. But the more I hear it,
Speaker 2: I'm like, that's stupid, that's so rude. I don't mean that.
Speaker 2: It's fine. A lot of people love that song. It's
Speaker 2: a very popular song. Our dear listener, Courtney may Klaus,
Speaker 2: I assume loves that song. She knew it well enough
Speaker 2: to make the link between the willow trees lines. I'll
Speaker 2: tell you. We're obviously history fans, and we love going
Speaker 2: to ancient China and France and you know, getting all
Speaker 2: these medieval love stories and stuff like that. It's a
Speaker 2: lot of fun. So it's nice to dive into something
Speaker 2: that I think we're really truly unfamiliar with once in
Speaker 2: a while, just like the country music scene, despite the
Speaker 2: fact that we kind of I mean, Atlanta's a bit
Speaker 2: of a bubble, but we are certainly surrounded by a
Speaker 2: lot of country music around, yeah, and I think we
Speaker 2: just kind of tune it out generally, So it's cool
Speaker 2: to get into this story and learn a different, different
Speaker 2: part of the world. Oh side note, Senator Fred Thompson
Speaker 2: who Laurie dated is an exact replica of Kelsey Grammar.
Speaker 2: What these guys look? Look him up? Okay, look, I
Speaker 2: want you to google Fred Thompson right now and give
Speaker 2: me your immediate reaction. Oh my god, yeah right. I
Speaker 2: mean I'm not the first to say so. If you
Speaker 2: scroll down, there's surely like four pages that show pictures.
Speaker 2: They're like Kelsey Grammer, He's just playing a movie or something.
Speaker 1: Actually. People also ask why did Fred Thompson leave Law
Speaker 1: and Order? Did he have something?
Speaker 2: Maybe that's a different fred Thompson.
Speaker 1: That's funny. It does say he was an actor, so
Speaker 1: maybe he was on Law and Order.
Speaker 2: He sure was. In the final months of his US
Speaker 2: Senate term. In two thousand and two, fred Thompson joined
Speaker 2: the cast of Law and Order, Wow, starring as a
Speaker 2: district attorney. Well, anyway, it was a really cool story
Speaker 2: to just stumble across. I love those. Let me look
Speaker 2: up this song. Ah, there's nothing here. Wait a minute,
Speaker 2: there's a little bit here. Oh my god, there's six marriages. Yeah.
Speaker 1: My question is why Mary. I feel like after the
Speaker 1: third or fourth time, I'd be like, you know, well,
Speaker 1: let's just date for a while, you know, like why
Speaker 1: would you want to tie the net so quick?
Speaker 2: I think for some people, especially older generations, there's this
Speaker 2: sort of idea that like, that's exclusively why you date
Speaker 2: someone is to marry them.
Speaker 1: That's true.
Speaker 2: And if after a couple of months things are going well,
Speaker 2: you're like, all right, well, then things are going well,
Speaker 2: let's get married and then we'll have kids together. And
Speaker 2: that's why. Also, I think a lot of people older
Speaker 2: generations who got married a lot of and this came
Speaker 2: from many years of marriage wasn't necessity for comfort, which
Speaker 2: I totally understand. But a lot of people will get
Speaker 2: married quickly and then realize that they're not compatible or
Speaker 2: they don't like each other, because sometimes it takes a
Speaker 2: while to figure that out. So then you got these
Speaker 2: sort of rotten marriages, these grumpy old people who don't
Speaker 2: like each other, or divorce or whatever happen happens, which
Speaker 2: is why, of course we waited eight years before we
Speaker 2: got married, just to be ex sure. But again I
Speaker 2: still feel like that was like holding our noses and
Speaker 2: jumping in so but I think it's so far it's
Speaker 2: worked out pretty well.
Speaker 1: It's good to hear.
Speaker 2: Yeah, yeah, I guess you're right.
Speaker 1: I don't know, there is there is something different about
Speaker 1: people's mindset today, I guess about a relationship, it's like
Speaker 1: it's totally fine too, or we even did Kurt Russell
Speaker 1: and goldiehun who've never chosen to get married, and they've had,
Speaker 1: you know, more commitment than Laurie had with many of
Speaker 1: her actual marriages. And as we've seen several people who
Speaker 1: married multiple times, like Ron Shephard what's his name, the
Speaker 1: most married man or whatever? Oh yeah, but anyway, I
Speaker 1: just think it's funny to have so many failed marriages
Speaker 1: and then just keep doing it. Like I feel like
Speaker 1: at some point, if it were me, I'd be like,
Speaker 1: you know what, let's just you know what, we're just
Speaker 1: gonna hold off, Like I don't get married again, Like
Speaker 1: we're together for at least a year or two before
Speaker 1: right thing goes down. Especially with some of them, are
Speaker 1: like there's literally a couple months between it is in
Speaker 1: the divorce and the marriage.
Speaker 2: To me, I'm like, in her heart and mind, when
Speaker 2: you know divorce is a fairly ready option, what is
Speaker 2: the difference between that and just long term dating?
Speaker 1: Right?
Speaker 2: Right? I mean we're in a committed relationship for two
Speaker 2: years to me, the only difference between that and long
Speaker 2: term dating is that you had a ceremony to say
Speaker 2: we're in this committed relationship and also you said in
Speaker 2: your vows till death do us part or something along
Speaker 2: those lines, and then did not really think that because
Speaker 2: like till death or discomfort or awkwardness or I find
Speaker 2: somebody better, you know. It kind of like yeah, So
Speaker 2: to me, it's just like you all you did was
Speaker 2: technically all you did was date these people. You just
Speaker 2: made it legally official.
Speaker 1: That, which I guess is the weird party because I'm
Speaker 1: it's not like you're in it for their money or something.
Speaker 1: You have all your own shit going on, so you're
Speaker 1: actually putting your own self in danger by marrying this
Speaker 1: bus driver or this one whoever, And it just seems
Speaker 1: like an odd choice, I guess. But you know whatever,
Speaker 1: she's happy now, so good for you, Laura.
Speaker 2: And she you know, a life full of adventures and
Speaker 2: for her that was you know, I think she was.
Speaker 2: It sounds like she was more often happy than not,
Speaker 2: and that she was excited each time that she got
Speaker 2: into one of these relationships. They she usually dated people
Speaker 2: for a fairly long time slash married them for a
Speaker 2: couple of years at least. It wasn't like, you know,
Speaker 2: bouncing one of the next all the time. So I
Speaker 2: don't know. It's certainly not my cup of tea. And
Speaker 2: I don't think it was only anyone was happy to
Speaker 2: get divorced so many times.
Speaker 1: Yeah, and I'm not trying to say she should stay
Speaker 1: with someone she didn't get into. I must rather be
Speaker 1: a multiple divorce than be married to the wrong person.
Speaker 2: Right, but pump the brakes on getting married.
Speaker 1: But the marriage exactly just like just hang on on
Speaker 1: that part.
Speaker 2: Yeah.
Speaker 1: Well, I mean, I am very glad that we got
Speaker 1: this message from Courtney May because this was a fun,
Speaker 1: like a kind of clib messy dramas.
Speaker 2: Yeah, a little bit of tabloid episode, which we don't
Speaker 2: get to do too often.
Speaker 1: Way, But as you say in the country music world,
Speaker 1: which is very unknown.
Speaker 2: To men, also just goes to show that any message
Speaker 2: you send us could turn into something very valuable. So please.
Speaker 1: You might not even think so if you're.
Speaker 2: Just like man, I have the dumbest thought about their episode,
Speaker 2: but I don't you know what, they won't even care.
Speaker 2: We will, we will. It might change our lives forever,
Speaker 2: So please.
Speaker 1: We might talk about it for an hour and a half.
Speaker 2: Yes, So do please send us your thoughts, your feelings,
Speaker 2: your ideas, anything that might have crossed your mind while
Speaker 2: you were listening to this episode. Tell us if you've
Speaker 2: been married and divorced several times and sort of how
Speaker 2: you know your take on everything we've been talking about here.
Speaker 2: If we're absolutely have no idea what we're talking about,
Speaker 2: or if we're spot on, you know, I love to
Speaker 2: hear it. Either way, shoot us an email at ridic
Speaker 2: Romance at gmail dot.
Speaker 1: Com right or we're on Instagram. I'm at Dynamite Boone.
Speaker 2: And I'm at Oh Great, It's Eli and.
Speaker 1: The show is at ridic Romance.
Speaker 2: Thank you so much for tuning in with us today.
Speaker 2: Thanks again, Courtney and y'all take a take, take it,
Speaker 2: take it, take it good, take it, have it fun,
Speaker 2: have it fun there at all fun and take watch
Speaker 2: out for Chipper Jones and David Justice. Don't let them
Speaker 2: into your homes if you see them on your right cameras.
Speaker 1: Pretend not to be home.
Speaker 2: All right, We'll see y'all next time.
Speaker 1: Love you by all right, So long, friends, it's time
Speaker 1: to go. Thanks for listening to our show tell your
Speaker 1: friends
Speaker 3: David's uncles and dance to listen to our show Ridiculous
Speaker 3: well Nance