Michael Twitty couldn’t deny his father if he wanted to. When you look at him, you see shadows of his father dancing on his handsome face and when he opens his mouth to sing, you hear Conway ringing through Michael’s strong vocals. “People say, 'You look just like your Dad!' and I say, it must be the genes. The tight-fitting jeans,” Michael says laughing.
Michael was raised by his paternal grandparents about seventy miles south of Memphis, Tennessee , on the banks of the Mississippi River . Father and son realized their musical bond early, “I first sang with my dad on stage at age eight at the restaurant/night club Mamaw and Papaw owned called ‘Conway’s.’”
Growing up on the Mississippi Delta, Michael mirrored his father by playing his guitar and singing to his friends and family. “I'd always done music as a hobby, through high school, I had a hard rock band, we played on weekends at the sock hops and what have you, but I never really thought about it as a career. After I graduated, I kind of got a little tired of rock, and I formed a country band. I was doing a show at a place called, Eddy Bond’s Radio Ranch, kind of a nice, big, supper club thing outside of Memphis. Unbeknownst to me, there was a booking agent from Nashville in the audience. I didn't realize he was out there until after the show. Afterwards, he came up to me, introduced himself, gave me his card, sat down and talked for a while. He told me he thought I was plenty good enough to become a professional in this. He said to move to Nashville and get in the business, which was something I'd never considered before. So, I gave it some serious thought and talked to different people about it, including my Dad, of course. After about three months of careful thought and consideration, I moved to Nashville, October of '72, I was eighteen. I’ve been doing it ever since.”
“Can you imagine being a rookie entertainer just getting started in the biz and have somebody with the stature of a Conway Twitty? I mean just to work with a Conway Twitty would make you nervous, put the fact that he's your Daddy on top of that. That's kind of a double whammy. But it was good, in a way, that I had that kind of knowledge that I could tap into. When my Dad spoke, I listened to every word. He'd been doing this since 1956 professionally. He was willing to share that experience with me, all of his knowledge. Best part of it was, we traveled together when I did do the same show with him, or was the opening act or whatever. We got to spend a lot of time on the bus, lot of quality time. That was always a big plus. Back in those days, before we had the satellite TV's and all that, all we had was a radio. We had a TV, but the only time it worked was when you were sitting outside a main city. So on the road it didn't do much good. There was a lot of quality time for a man and his son. I did the same thing for my son for about five years. He was on the road with me on this Memories of Conway show. His name is Tre Twitty. He's flown the coup now, kind of went out on his own. I did the same thing, so I totally understand it. We had a lot of fun, me and him, just like my Dad and I did.”
“I remember being in a show with Dad one time, we were up in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. He'd always walk out and open up with 'Hello, Darling' the band doing a big intro type thing. He'd walk out and drop his hand and the music would stop. He'd point to like the first two rows, say 'Hello, Darling' and go right into the song. Usually when he did that, thousands of women would start screaming at the top of their lungs. Well, he did it this time and nothing happened. It threw him so bad, he forgot the words, now he wrote the song, but he forgot the words. He was just so used to women screaming at those two words. On this night, you could hear a cricket chirp. He was just so used to those women screaming at those two words, 'Hello, Darling'. He just started stumbling and bumbling. Finally he just stopped the music, something's wrong here. He just stopped the music and told them to turn up the house lights. When the lights came up he saw that there was about 10,000 people out there, but they were all men. It was a men's convention, there wasn't a woman in the place. He later said, 'All I could see was bald headed men sitting everywhere!' That explained to him what the problem was. He had a big laugh, went on with the show and had a great time. I never forgot that. That was a good one. True story. I was there.”
In June of 1993, Conway Twitty suffered a fatal abdominal aneurysm at the age of fifty-nine. His death left fans heartbroken, but it left his son bereft and questioning his own future. “I've been in this business for thirty-six years now. I've been a traveling, performing, and a professional entertainer all my adult life. I've recorded for several different record labels, but when we lost Dad, I didn’t even know if I was going to stay in the business. Losing him so suddenly really threw me for a loop. After I thought about it for a few months, knowing my Dad, the way he was, he definitely would have wanted me to stay after it.”
The desire to keep Conway ’s music alive in the hearts of his admirers, spawned impersonators and tribute shows across the country. “Over the years I saw a lot of acts try to do a tribute to Conway Twitty. I thought, 'Nobody can really do that and do it right except me. I'm the one who knows all the inside stories, all the cute things and how Dad was. The things that I can share with an audience that nobody else could. So I started talking to my managers and booking agent about it. We started calling different people we'd worked with over the years. Everybody thought it was a great idea, so in 1998, I started to go on and put it out there. I’ve been doing that ever since. There's so many people trying to do it, they were doing alright, but I thought I could do it so much better, with me doing it, not because I'm a better singer or story teller, but because I know so much inside information that a lot of them don't.”
“The show I'm currently doing is called Memories of Conway. I guess you can call it a tribute show. It's kind of different, really, a lot of inside stories about my Dad's life, his music, and things of that nature. It features Twitty and Lynn together. I have a girl, Jenny Sims, who portrays Loretta Lynn. We do a lot of Conway and Loretta stuff together. I've done shows all over the world, been to Europe, Germany and England and France. Been to Japan with a show. We travel a lot and it’s well received wherever we go.”
”A lot of these things I learned working with and around my Dad through the years. People like the stories of how he came to write certain songs. What gave him the idea? 'Course, humorous stories, there was a lot of those. People come through to get autographs and pictures, I like to listen to their thoughts of the show ... people just really enjoy hearing those stories. As long as people wanna hear them, I’ll keep telling them.”
“All crowds are different. All audiences are different. I guess it's kind of a mutual love affair between me and the audience, really. I love to hear everywhere we go people tell their stories about what Dad did to their life. Certain songs, certain shows they were into. I really enjoy hearing all those stories. I love seeing pictures they took of Dad.”
Conway Twitty’s steadfast devotion to his fans is also a strong conviction for his son. ”The main thing that Dad passed on to me that I would pass onto everybody else is that the fans out there, the ones that buy tickets to see the show, they are the ones that are really your boss, not the promoter or whatever. It's the fans. I saw my Dad stand out in 105-degree weather for hours at a time signing autographs, taking pictures. I've always done it, I still do it today, and I always will. Nowadays, I see so many artists that come off the bus, go on the stage, get back on the bus, and leave. They never say anything to anybody. I just think that's wrong. The fans are what the entertainment business is really about. That’s what my Dad taught me, his words, not mine, ‘Sixty seconds with a fan, hugging necks and they'll follow you the rest of their lives.’ That's the main thing, keep the fans number one in your heart.”
Married to wife Barbie, who doubles as his tour bus driver, the Twitty’s and their three grown children continue to live in Nashville, surrounded by music and family. Conway ’s other children, Joni, Kathy and Jimmy also live in the area.
“We've got a new product just started this year. It's a musical about Dad's life. It's called, 'Conway Twitty: The Man, the Music, The Legend'. Randy Johnson out of Hollywood, California, is producing it. He did the Patsy Cline musical ‘Always Patsy’ that was so popular a few years back. He also did ‘Elvis Lives’, he got Elvis’ entire original band. Put them back together, all the original pickers. Elvis was singing on the great big huge screens and the band was playing along with him. It was really a unique idea.”
Some people might say Michael Twitty lives vicariously in the shadow of his famous father. What Michael Twitty has actually done is find his own true self through the celebration of his birthright, while basking in the loving memory of an extraordinary man who was lucky enough to have a remarkable son.
| written by Debbie DuBois Miller
