Link: Jim Reeves DVD
I remember she told me that when she moved back to Springfield to take care of her ailing mother, and then her mom passed away, she kept everything in the house exactly the way it was when her mother died. She was such a sentimentalist.
She also was blunt about her assessments of people and situations, giving me some of the most colorful quotes in my book, "Jim Reeves: His Untold Story."
If you watch the TV interview that is linked on this page, you will notice Dottie saying how Anita Kerr became Chet Atkins' co-producer, but finally quit BECAUSE SHE WASN'T GETTING CREDIT FOR IT. This is exactly what I reported in my book. Leo Jackson even said old Chet would come in just long enough to sign the time card for the union so he'd get paid, then he'd leave and go play golf...but he'd still get paid anyway PLUS his name would end up in the album credits even though it was Anita doing the work.
This is borne out by the Studio B footage of Jim recording and Anita talking to him from the control room. She was producing the session that day. VoiceMasters/H&H were the first to release this footage on video and it was re-released last year in improved audio and video quality on "The Great Jim Reeves Anthology" DVD. (Click the link below to read more and order).
I don't know if it has ever been publicly reported or not but I can share a secret with you and that is that Dottie Dillard and Owen Bradley had a long-term very close relationship, that was openly known around Nashville. She still was grieving his loss the last time I spoke with her.
He was more than a mentor to her.
To think that Dottie could not read music, but had an instinct for quickly learning the harmony parts to the music she had to sing as part of the Anita Kerr singers -- appearing on hundreds of hits - is a testimony to her great, native talent.
She was a very unassuming person and a very candid one, who told me a lot of things I did not have room to put in my book. I hope to gather some of these anecdotes together at some point in the future and share them with the fans. Everything I have is on tape so I may post some of that on my blog in the weeks to come.
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