The Ballad of Doug Cole
Straight up, he was about 6-foot-4 and stood out from his beginnings in the northwest Georgia town of Trenton. Music was on him like dead-red needles coat a piney woods floor; his mother clawhammered the banjo, his sister played the guitar. The homeplace was on the sunset side of Sand Mountain, a stone’s throw from Alabama, a dog’s trot from Henagar, hometown of the Louvin boys (whose sisters could sing better, he said).
By high school, Doug Cole was in a band called The Dixieland Drifters with a guy named Norman Blake, who would go on to record who knows how many albums of traditional music. Norman told the 16-year-old to get rid of that Gibson and to buy a Martin. Doug did-a 1947 D-28. Norman should have let him keep the Gibson: he had to fire the boy for “pickin’ too loud” and covering up the star.
Doug left high school, got married, and began to play country shows and radio stations around Chattanooga and Knoxville. He joined the Army. What must he have been like then: a country giant of a young man with his head in hillbilly heaven, a great grin on his face, and that big hand stretched out to shake.
Hit Hard
And what must it have felt like that early sixties night when his boots went sideways, and he took that 40-foot tumble off a German wall. His back snapped, fate slapped him senseless, Doug would never walk again.
Stateside, he recuperated in a Washington, D.C. hospital. Much of what any young man looks forward to lay dead at the foot of the wall, but there was sure something in there alive and kickin’-Doug sent for the Martin. He started making the rounds of the clubs where bluegrass was hot with young musicians who are the stars we revere today.
Doug picked; he sang; he made friends. He always made friends.
After the injury, Doug trained to become an instrument repairman. He made his money fixing reed, brass, and wind instruments in Memphis, a town based on blues and rock and roll, but where, in those days, the music stores got most of their business from high school bands. He left word at the music stores that if an “old” Martin came through the door, he wanted to know about it.
One day one did. A guy came in to Melody Music with a trade in for (bless his heart) a Yamaha electric. Word went out about the 1938 D-28 Martin Herringbone, and Doug wanted it. So did Paul Craft, who ran his own music store. Today Paul is probably rich and surely famous. He’s a respected songwriter in Nashville (yes, he wrote the legendary “Drop Kick Me, Jesus, through the Goalposts of Life”). But money was money in those days, and Doug outbid him at $250.
Paul Copeland said there came a time, in the late seventies, early eighties, when Doug and the boys were about to play the Schlitz Memphis Music Festival. Doug reached into the trunk of his car, pulled out that guitar, and hit a few licks. Doc Watson and his bass player, T. Michael Coleman, walked by just then, and Doc said, “That sounds like an old pre-war Martin.” Doug played a tune to warm up, and Doc said, “That Martin is in good hands.”
Doug drank. You could excuse it, considering what he’d been through, but it wasn’t doing anybody any good. When he and his second wife, Ramona, decided they wanted to adopt a boy (Doug’s oldest boy, Tommy, was back in Georgia), Doug threw the bottle away and never went looking for it. Their new son would be named Scott.
Doug Cole went on to do much good with his gift of life. He was a baseball coach. He was there to bring scattered musicians together to create The Lucy Opry. He laid those rhythm licks down textbook tight with his Dixie Bluegrass Boys. He was one of the country’s best soundmen. He knew everyone; many a Memphis friend on the road with Doug was surprised to see the stars coming up to shake his hand.
Disabilities aren’t physical. A man who can’t walk is no different than a man who can’t use a hammer or play a D-28. Folks can do different things; that’s all. True disabilities are of the heart-those who can’t love, give, keep promises. Doug’s heart was an Olympic runner.
Promise
“I never knew him to go back on his word,” Paul Copeland said. “What he said he would do, he did-period. Doug always told us ahead of time what the gig paid, and no matter what happened, we got what was promised. He also was more interested in promoting bluegrass in general than he was in promoting any particular groups of person. I know for a fact that he used his influence to help others succeed.”
At Doug’s funeral, the chaplain, who had gotten to know him during those painful days at the Veteran’s Administration Hospital, said he knew Doug always wanted to be able to put his hands in his pockets and walk down the road. “He dreamed about it,” Ramona said from the front pew.
Above the clouds, beyond the sun and storms, over where the rainbow rides out into the holy forever, dreams do come true. Walk on, Doug, walk on.
-Tom Stone
The Lucy Opry