Nothing captures my attention like the true-life stories people share. As an alternative to HGTV, last night I selected “Tennessee Whiskey: The Dean Dillon Story” for us to watch. The storyline captured my attention: “Dean finally comes out of the shadows and shares his music, his life, and the stories behind the hits in this honest film about the man responsible for songs that shaped an era.”
I had never heard of Dean Dillon, but surprisingly, I was familiar with many of the songs he wrote or co-wrote. Would you believe he wrote the songs that shaped George Strait’s career path? He wrote 55 songs for Strait, including 19 singles that topped the charts as number one.
Strait was only one of several country-western singers who benefitted from the writing style and insightfulness of a man that captured the attention of the listening public. Several of those award-winning musicians appeared in the documentary honoring Dean Dillon. I found his story very interesting.
Wikipedia writes of Dean’s early life: “Dean Dillon was born Larry Dean Flynn on March 26, 1955, in Lake City, Tennessee, where he was raised. He began playing the guitar at the age of seven, and when he was 15 he made his first public appearance as a singer and performer in the Knoxville variety show Jim Clayton Star Time.
Perhaps his life story was exclusively and privately his life story and unknown to those crafting his biography for Wikipedia. The documentary “Tennessee Whiskey: The Dean Dillon Story”, begins with Dean sharing about the only time his father saw him.
Picture a young mother holding an infant in her arms. The young mother had delivered her son without the father being present.
In the portrayal, a young man driving a new 1955 Oldsmobile pulls up in front of a house and the mother holding her son walks out on the front porch.
As the man steps outside the car, the mother’s father appears at her side carrying a shotgun. Before the young father even utters hello or makes two steps in their direction, the father raises the shotgun and points it in the man’s direction.
The first shot hit the man in his arm, while the young mother holding her son intuitively pushes the barrel of the shotgun up as the father clicks the second trigger.
Dean’s dad didn’t need to be told a second time that his presence was unwelcome. He existed a lot faster in the Oldsmobile than he arrived. It was only a fleeting moment, but it was the only time Dean shared with his dad. He never saw him again.
The subsequent divorce was uncontested and a couple of years later, Dean’s mother remarried and the family moved north.
At the age of five, Dean remembers being pleased that the family was moving back to Tennessee. When the family started the road trip South, they didn’t tell Dean he wasn’t going with them all the way. They dropped him off with a grandmother he had never met and his life started all over with a stranger and the loss of the only family he knew.
Can you imagine the sense of rejection, abandonment, and the level of pain that he experienced at the young age of five? I can’t quite wrap my head around it.
I have a friend from Mississippi whose father took their family to a park to play. The family was vacationing in California. He was three years old at the time and his youngest brother was a newborn. He doesn’t remember the experience, but it was life changing.
Under the ploy of going to pick up lunch, his dad left and didn’t return. He failed to tell his wife who didn’t have two thin times to rub together that he had checked them out of the motel where they were staying. She turned to churches and chairty to help the family get back to Mississippi.
My friend doesn’t remember the experience. He does remember being five years old when his mother survived a gunshot fired with the intent to take her own life. As a five year old, he propped her up against a kitchen cabinet and held her until his older brother could run to the nearest neighbor to telephone for help.
I share Dean Dillon’s story and that of my friend’s to suggest that if we knew people at something other than a surface level, we’d probably have more empathy and understanding.
All My Best!
Don
Carpe Diem 