Here’s the line I’ve waited all my life to see in a musician’s memoir of the civil rights-era South: “There were Southerners who were ahead of their time on race, and I wish I had been one of them, but I wasn’t, and to try to suggest otherwise would be a lie.” That’s a taste not only of Braddock’s candor, but of his ability to string together a sentence — if that were ever in doubt from the genius behind “He Stopped Loving Her Today” and the truck-driving marvel “Gear Bustin’ Sort of a Feller.” As for the anecdotes … well, we leave it to you to find which Music Row vet supplies the index entries “and Asshole Johnson,” “marijuana smoking” and “Krogerphobia.”
