Each week, The Extraordinary Times catches up with folks from the local historical scene. This week we welcome Randy McNutt. A native of Hamilton, Ohio, Randy is a freelance writer and independent record producer. He has worked as a reporter, columnist, and feature writer at the Cincinnati Enquirer, a contributing editor for Ohio Magazine, and a staff writer for Design. His feature stories have appeared in newspapers and magazines across the country. He has also taught writing at Miami University, the University of Cincinnati, and the Antioch Writer’s Workshop. He has recorded rockabilly, country, soul, and rock music for labels in a number of countries, including the United States, the Netherlands, and Germany. His latest single, “Pain” by Little Flint, has just been released in the UK. * How did you construct a writing career from the old, strange byways of rural Ohio? When I was a junior at Miami University in the 1970s, the city editor of the Cincinnati Enquirer turned me down when I applied on campus for a summer internship. Defeated but not ready to surrender, I applied at little weekly in Lebanon, Ohio, and was hired. I rewrote press releases and did obits, mostly. We were crammed into two small rooms. The editor, a kind widow nearing retirement age, demanded that I lie down on the floor of the “newsroom” twice a day to do sit-ups. The women in the ad department must have thought the new guy with the clip-on tie was crazy. The editor didn’t want me to hurt my back on an old folding chair. My desk was an old card table and my typewriter came straight out of the 1920s. Walking to the ice-cream parlor one afternoon, I ran into the local bureau chief for the Enquirer. He asked if I wanted to be his “stringer”—correspondent—to cover events in Wilmington, Ohio. I said yes, and I didn’t even know where Wilmington was. As it turned out, that farm-centered little city became important later in my writing experience. One day when I was talking to the bureau chief in his office, I noticed a stack of news releases on his desk. He flipped through them, saying “nope, nope, nope” as he tossed each one into the trash can next to his desk. When he went to the rest room, I dug them out and found one about a planned anniversary ceremony for the survivors of the bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki. The event was at the Peace Memorial Resource Center at Wilmington College, a small Quaker school. This interested me. So, I went over there, interviewed several people, and wrote an advance feature. A week passed. I thought the paper wouldn’t run it. Then one afternoon a student ran up to me and said, “I read your story on the A-bomb, man!” I bought a paper and there it was—my story with a couple of my photos. It ran the day before the ceremony, so the Associated Press had time to pick it up. People from Japan started calling the paper, asking for me. Of course, I wasn’t there, but by this time that same city editor knew I existed. After I graduated, he hired me as a weekend copy clerk—I fetched coffee for arrogant reporters and changed teletype ribbons. I continued to write, too. Soon I leaped from copy clerk to bureau chief in then-rural Clermont County. I worked in a one-man office in the village of Batavia. My editors considered Clermont the boondocks of the universe, but I considered it fertile ground for characters. I passed through forgotten places like Rome, Neville, Tranquility, and Blowville. I loved them all. Slowly, I improved my writing. The editors all but ignored me for a year, which allowed me to experiment and roam the back roads. Unintentionally, they allowed to fail because, frankly, who cared? Then one day John Baskin, senior editor of Ohio Magazine, offered to publish a story, if I cared to submit one and if I had a thick enough hide to take his verbal punches. Sure, I did. Well, at least I wanted to sell him a story. He lived in Wilmington, familiar turf. Baskin liked my first story. He told me to rewrite it—four times. Before it even ran, he said, “What’s next?” That’s when I hit the blue roads and continued to write about rural people. He had unleashed me upon the Buckeye State. I discovered Sodom, Henpeck, and Dull. Meanwhile, Baskin wrote long letters telling me—bluntly—what I was doing right and wrong. I will be forever grateful. I tried to keep up with some excellent writers, including Baskin himself, author of the well-received “New Burlington: The Life and Death of An American Village,” and Josephine Johnson, who had won a Pulitzer in 1935 for her novel “Now in November.” By 1990, Baskin and a partner had formed a regional publishing company. They asked me to write a book about college football. I suggested a nonfiction book about ghost towns. Baskin liked it. But after a year, I discovered that I couldn’t write a book based solely on ghost towns because nothing was left in them. I threw out half the book and started over, expanding my view of ghosts to include forgotten people, places, and things. Finally, in 1996, a new book emerged from the murky swamp of my mind. My jaw dropped when it started to sell. It is still my best book out of the twenty-some I’ve done because of its quirky people, my personal experiences, and love that shines from between the lines. Baskin titled it “Ghosts: Ohio’s Haunted Landscapes, Lost Arts, and Forgotten Places.” When I pointed out that the book had no spirits, he said, “It’s a metaphor.” This was news to readers for the first few months. Then they caught on. The book is still in print with another publisher. Eventually, I ended up with a trilogy: “Ghosts,” “Lost Ohio,” and “Finding Utopia.” All travel narratives, all about Ohio. * What single nugget of history concerning your hometown of Hamilton, Ohio, would you most like to share with the world? The Soldiers, Sailors and Pioneers Monument—also known as the Memorial Building. It dates back to about 1903. On top stands a bronze statue named Billy Yank, a Union soldier. The building’s theme is universal. Every time I go in there—which is not often—I have a powerful and moving experience. I recall the days of my youth when I went there with my friend Michael Cahalane. We looked at the artifacts, and stared through the porthole window watching the Great Miami flowing below us. We imagined Anthony Wayne’s army stomping through the wilderness. We both appreciated our city’s roots, especially its sacrifices during the Civil War. A couple of years after we graduated from high school, he died a hero in Vietnam. For years after, I rarely went into the building, except to write a short feature story about its history. Only about a month before I had finished writing “Ghosts,” I stopped at the Memorial on gray winter afternoon. I don’t know why. To my surprise I saw Mike’s picture, in a Marine uniform, and a couple of his medals on display in an old wood and glass case. A wave of sadness hit me. As I walked downstairs in a daze, I opened the heavy wooden door, ready to leave. The curator, an older vet, glanced up from her desk and asked me if I was OK. I choked up a bit and stepped outside. I’ll never forget her words: “You’ll be back. You’ll have to come back.” I went home and immediately added that scene to the older story I had already written. I then added my memories and my take on how the Memorial holds our town together. I slapped the new piece into the manuscript as the last chapter in the book. I had finally returned home. * Do you see any parallels between the corona virus and earlier pandemics in American history? I remember my paternal grandparents talking about the Spanish Flu of 1918-1920 in Cincinnati. During the crisis, my grandmother was about to give birth to my father. I didn’t comprehend the impact of pandemic as we sat on their front porch when I was a child. Polio was my generation’s big crisis. Kids were wearing metal braces. I wanted a bike. I had no way of knowing the Spanish Flu happened concurrently with other societal turmoil. The war—World War I, that is—had ended. Soldiers were returning home, and they needed jobs. Prohibition had started, and in beer-happy Cincinnati this was a big deal. Forty years later, my grandfather, who by then worked in an asbestos factory, was still complaining about “near beer.” Through all this, the city functioned—life and commerce continued. I suppose my grandparents just muddled through it. I suppose people were more resilient then. They had a deeper sense of community. * Music features prominently in your writing. What particular artists or recordings have fascinated you most over the years? The music business itself fascinates me. In my teens, I dreamed of producing records. I met another Hamilton guy, a singer named Wayne Perry, and we cut records and wrote songs. I was fortunate to experience the thrill of seeing one of my productions rise on the national charts, only to experience the downer of seeing it fall. Hamilton was an important place in the regional music scene then, in the 1960s and 1970s. Later, Wayne went to Nashville and wrote five No. 1 hits. I got into narrative writing, a lot of it music stories. As a kid, I knew who Buck Owens was, and Dave Brubeck, and the Zombies, and even the scratchy Mrs. Miller. By the time I turned twenty my record heroes were producers and songwriters. I identified with them—guys like Chips Moman, the Memphis producer who cut big hits by B.J. Thomas (“Hooked on a Feeling”) and anyone else who dared enter his funky old American Sound Studios in Memphis. In 1999, I decided to write a music book something like “Ghosts.” I mapped out a long vacation and headed south. I came up with “Guitar Towns,” a travel book that is also part history and part memoir. I went searching for my fading musical heroes. At his home in Nashville, songwriter Dan Penn explained how he wrote his hit songs. The guy is the best white soul singer I have ever heard. In Muscle Shoals, bassist David Hood gave me a tour of the iconic Muscle Shoals Sound Studio. I love the stuff from there, including the soulful records by Delbert McClinton. In Memphis, I met some studio and club musicians who had cut hits for Sam Phillips at the birth of rock ’n’ roll, the hot ones like “Great Balls of Fire” and “Whole Lotta Shakin’ Going On.” The aging musicians had recently formed a group called the Original Sun Rhythm Section. This would be their last twang. Marcus Van Story, the upright bassist, invited me to a concert at the Overton Shell, in the park where Elvis played before he hit big. As I stood in the wings that evening, watching these legends pick, I was seeing music history happen. I still love all the stuff that came out of hole-in-the-wall studios in unlikely hit capitals—Cincinnati, New Orleans, Norfolk, Muscle Shoals, Cincinnati. They all had indigenous sounds. I’m fortunate to have interviewed a number of musicians and producers of their eras. I just called them up and asked them if I could talk to them. Other meetings were serendipitous. One day in Shreveport, at noon, I walked into an empty club owned by Elvis’s Vegas guitar player, James Burton, who had become famous among musicians for his good licks. Shreveport was his hometown. I walked into the empty club and saw a guy standing at the top of a ten-foot ladder, precariously stretching his arms to screw in a huge light bulb. I looked up and said, “Sir, can you tell me where I can find James Burton?” He peered down and said, “Son, you’re lookin’ at him. I’m the janitor, too.” We talked for a long time. I put him in “Guitar Towns,” along with dozens of other players who are now only fleeting echoes in the night. How can I forget Roy Head, the wild-man of Houston and the soul singer of “Treat Her Right” fame? He told me about the night he bit Elvis on the leg. I can’t get enough of those roots stories and sounds, even when they are viewed through the prism of the commercial music of their day. At the least, I hope I’ve captured a bit of their energy. Any new projects as we speak? I always have projects in the works. I’m not doing any recording. I don’t want to put the musicians and myself at risk. But I continue with my books. My role model is John Ruthven, the acclaimed wildlife painter. Though John is in his nineties, he keeps accepting commissions. At this point in my life, the only books I want to write are about people who interest me. For the money, I’ve had to write too many stories and a book or two that bored me. Books are like spouses. You don’t want to be stuck with one you can’t stand. I want to do things that please me, and I hope my enthusiasm allows readers to enjoy the subjects as much as I do. Unfortunately, not all of us can go on as long as John, riding a wave of good genes and a love for his work, but we can try.
1 Comment
Joseph Gorman
2/27/2024 10:32:18 am
Randy has more soul than any man I know.
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AuthorMatthew Smith, PhD (History). Public Programs at Miami University Regionals. Historian of Appalachia, the Ohio Valley, & the early American republic. Archives
February 2024
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