The Dillards

Songs That Made Charlene Cry

Bluegrass Hall of Famer Rodney Dillard uses two criteria when choosing what he’ll do next in music—Is it too much hassle, and is it fun? His decision to write and record The Dillards’ latest album, Songs That Made Charlene Cry, fit just right. He had mulled over the idea for years after being a member of the Darlings Family on “The Andy Griffith Show.” Maggie Peterson, who played Charlene Darling, would tell her Pa, Briscoe, that certain songs he wanted him and the boys to play would make her cry. The Dillards pay tribute to their onscreen Mayberry family, especially Charlene, with this project. 

Meeting Andy Griffith   

The connection with Andy Griffith began when the bluegrass band left their home in Salem, Missouri, in 1962, with their sights set on making a living playing bluegrass music. Heading west, brothers Douglas and Rodney Dillard, along with bandmates Dean Webb and Mitch Jayne, ended up in Los Angeles at The Ash Grove, jamming on stage their first night in the city. An Elektra Records rep in the crowd was so impressed with what he saw that the next day he offered the group a record deal. An ad about their signing in Variety magazine caught the attention of Desilu Studios, and the band was invited to audition for the role of The Darlings on the TV sitcom.  “We kicked into a number and maybe halfway through it, Andy got up, slapped his knees, and said, ‘That’s it’,” Rodney Dillard recalls. “I turned to Douglas. I said, ‘Doug, they’re kicking us out. ‘Andy said, ‘Where are you going? You got the job.”

Originally, the band was only supposed to perform on one show, but the response was so positive that they appeared in a total of six episodes between 1963 and 1966, exposing bluegrass to a national television audience. During the show, Sheriff Andy Taylor introduced The Darlings. 

“Andy said, ‘Okay, let’s go pick a little bit or whatever’,” Dillard explains. “Then, he’d say, “Let’s do “Dirty Me, Dirty Me I’m Disgusted With Myself.” Charlene would say, ‘Gee, Pa, that makes me cry.’  Then, he would say, ‘Then, let’s do “Dooley.”  So each one of the songs we did on “The Andy Griffith Show,” he introduced it with a funny title.”

Rodney knew a goldmine of songwriting ideas could be mined from those humorous song titles, but he said it wasn’t until the COVID-19 virus halted performances that he and his wife decided to tackle the tunes. “To keep from killing each other after 43 years [of marriage], we decided to sit down and write those lyrics. So, we wrote the whole album during COVID while everybody else was running around masked up.” 

The two real-life sweethearts sing “Will You Love Me When I’m Old And Ugly” that they created. “We thought it would be a great senior citizen love song,” Rodney says. “It’s a tribute to old married couples everywhere and not necessarily just make Charlene cry. It makes me cry now.”

Rodney and Beverly have been putting their heads together on songwriting and creating comedy in various formats for years. “I’m glad I have a sense of humor,” Rodney says. “Without it, he would have no sense at all,” Beverly replies. “In the middle of writing he’d wake me up at three in the morning and say, ‘Is this funny?’ And he’d say a line. I said, ‘Rodney, nothing’s funny at 3 in the morning’.” Rodney and his wife were talking to Bluegrass Unlimited from Sedalia, Missouri wheretheir 14-year-old granddaughter, Madelyn, rides Arabian horses. 

“We come up with stuff that we think is funny,” Rodney said. “We did a show for eight years at the amphitheater at Silver Dollar City in Branson and had to write a new show every year. We had 10 people in it.” Beverly adds, “We also did that radio show every week with different music, different comedy.” 

The album opens with “Dirty Me, Dirty Me, I’m Disgusted With Myself,”—a tribute to show character, Ernest T. Bass, the rock-throwing hillbilly who was head over heels in love with Charlene.  “My wife almost killed him,” Rodney says about Howard Morris who played Ernest T. “Nobody knows this, but you’re going to be the first one to find it out.”

“We had a Mayberry thing that we did in Branson years ago in the theater,” Beverly explains. “Don Knotts came in, Howie came in, and Maggie [Peterson, who played Charlene], several of the characters. Maggie, my mom, and I were going shopping, and he wanted to go. Seriously? But he did. So, we’re riding around shopping in Branson, and he saw on the side of the road one of those places where people have out these velvet Elvis paintings. So, we had to stop. He had a fit. This will look great over my fireplace in California! We get out somewhere, and he’s wanting to show somebody, and I lift the tailgate of our minivan. While I’m talking to Maggie, I was trying to close it and it would stick sometimes. I’m just looking at her talking and I’m pulling it down. I turn around’ and I’d been hitting him on top of his bald head and he was about to be knocked out. So he always would tell Rodney, ‘Your wife tried to kill me’.” 

When Rodney went to Nashville to record, he brought longtime Dillards band members Gary Smith, Tony Wray, who produced the album, and Cory Walker (a member of East Nash Grass) into the studio. Cory’s brothers, Jarrod Walker, who plays mandolin for Billy Strings, and Tyler Walker were recruited as was fiddler Maddie Denton of the Dan Tyminski Band and East Nash Grass. The 11-cut album features humorous songs like “Don’t Hit Your Gramma With A Great Big Stick,” “Towsack Full Of Love,” “Keep Your Money In Your Shoes And It Won’t Get Wet,” “Dance ‘Til Your Socks Are Hot And Ravlin’,” and “Wet Shoes In The Sunset.” But there are a few serious songs too like the wistful instrumental, “Brisco’s Dream,” their bluegrass standard, “There Is a Time,” and “Slimy River Bottom,” which they penned as a critique and warning to Christians to resist the prosperity gospel. 

“Having traveled around in a lot of American churches—this is not a blanket statement about them all—but there is a tendency to be maybe leaving Jesus out of the equation and to make it more about success and self-help and prosperity and those things. Prosperity doesn’t mean money. It means having a healthy life if you go back and do the translation. Somehow we take his words sometimes and run with it in the direction where we think it’ll do us the most good.”  

Rodney and his wife had a ministry for years called “Mayberry Values in Today’s World.”  “We saw a lot of things when you’re out like that,” Rodney explains. “We had some very weird experiences so that kind of lent to our writing of that, and you have to think about it before you release something like that. I cannot hide behind the pew and pretend that everything is okay. That’s so selfish because there’s other people out there scrambling, not having any direction, and sometimes they’re being fed a false gospel. But I said, and Beverly agreed, that we would just do this because we felt it, and I’m ready to suffer the slings and arrows.”

Overall, though, Rodney simply wanted to enjoy recording this album. 

“It was just fun doing songs that people would think the Darlings would go home and go to a festival, and somebody would sing these songs,” Rodney said.  In addition to the new album, The Dillards will perform at the ROMP Festival this month in Owensboro, Kentucky, and Rodney will be part of an artist feature exhibit at the Country Music Hall of Fame in July. Rodney recently delivered the college commencement at the University of Missouri where he was bestowed with an honorary doctorate. The 83-year-old musician continues to play Mayberry tribute shows as well as various venues across the country. 

“We like festivals, but we do a lot of theater shows,” Rodney says. “As long as I can play venues I know I could do well in, I’ll go on as long as I can remember all the lyrics to about 100 songs.”

“He will drive, 10, 12 hours, play a couple hour shows, stay and talk and sign autographs for a couple hours,” Beverly says. “He’s pretty amazing.”