Journalists tend to remember symbolic details from many of interesting interviews — whether they are with superstars of various kinds or ordinary people who have seen remarkable things.
Exhausted after signing hundreds of copies of her “Love Can Build a Bridge” memoir back in 1993, Naomi Judd retreated to her tour bus parked behind the bookstore. She apologized for heading to the back room to get out of one of her famous stage dresses and into something from her farm outside of Nashville. The ground rules: no photos, but all questions were fair game.
At point in her life, she had already talked about some dark days and nights — from rape to a crisis pregnancy and beyond. But she hadn’t dug deeper into her childhood and the abuse that created the deep pools of depression that would eventually take her life.
But this was a woman who was driven to talk about her angels, as well as her demons. My favorite quote from that interview didn’t make it into the “On Religion” column that I wrote pre-Internet, but stashed deep in my file cabinets with pages of notes and transcripts.
Naomi Judd stressed that if people — journalists included — want to understand country music, and the relationship between the musicians and their fans, they need to remember that it’s normal, in a country music show, “to sing about Sunday morning, as well as Friday and Saturday nights.”
That’s what I went looking for in the coverage of her death and then the ceremony in which The Judds — Wynonna and Naomi — entered the Country Music Hall of Fame. Here’s the top of the Nashville Tennessean report on that event, as it ran in USA Today:
As Grammy-winning duo The Judds were inducted into the Country Music Hall of Fame Sunday evening, Wynonna Judd addressed the passing of her mother Naomi just one day earlier.
Following brief remarks from her younger sister Ashley, Wynonna spoke for roughly four minutes.
"It's a strange dynamic to be this broken and this blessed. … But though my heart is broken, I will continue to sing," she said.
Wynonna said Naomi Judd, 76, passed away at 2:20 PM, and that she kissed her mother "on the forehead and walked away." She also stated that the last act she, Ashley and unnamed other family members did together was praying the Bible's 23rd Psalm. The crowd in attendance all recited the Psalm in unison with Judd to complete her speech.
That’s solid and hints at the atmosphere during the ceremony.
Truth is, Hall of Fame member Ricky Skaggs — who knew the Judds from the days before their rise to fame — took the audience to church, as he struggled to control his emotions through the entire speech-sermon. The Tennessean report noted:
Vocalist — and fellow Kentuckian -- Ricky Skaggs inducted Wynonna and Naomi Judd into the Hall. Citing the legends' music connecting people with a "front porch, back porch and no porch," his comments also referenced numerous Biblical scriptures to appeal to the crowd in attendance to use prayer and love as a cue for healing.
Here is the whole ceremony — via YouTube — for those who want all the details.
Most of the press coverage of Judd’s death skated around the faith details, while stressing — with good cause — the tragic elements of this drama. In other words, the stories placed the emphasis on Friday and Saturday night, without getting to Sunday morning at the Charismatic churches that The Judds call home.
This section of the Associated Press report is a perfect illustration of the problem:
Daughters Wynonna and Ashley Judd accepted the induction amid tears, holding onto each other and reciting a Bible verse together.
“I’m sorry that she couldn’t hang on until today,” Ashley Judd said of her mother to the crowd while crying. Wynonna Judd talked about the family gathering as they said goodbye to her and she and Ashley Judd recited Psalm 23.
Actually, Wynonna said that the family and some unnamed friends recited Psalm 23 over Naomi’s body. Leading the Country Music Hall of Fame audience through those familiar lines, Wynonna stated the final words with as much fervor as she could muster: “Surely goodness and mercy shall follow me all the days of my life: and I will dwell in the house of the Lord forever,” with the ending stated as FOR. EV. ER.
The details of Naomi Judd’s life are dramatic, no matter what. Consider this excellent — but faith-free — chunk of the New York Times obit:
Diana Ellen Judd was born on Jan. 11, 1946, in Ashland, a coal-mining town in northeastern Kentucky, along the Ohio River. Her father, Charles Glen Judd, owned a gas station, and her mother, Pauline Ruth (Oliver) Judd, was a homemaker.
When she was 3, an uncle molested her, an experience she later cited as the root of her struggles with anxiety and depression.
Naomi was an honors student with plans for college. But a brief romance with a high school football player left her pregnant at 17, and when the father skipped town, she married another suitor, Michael Ciminella. Wynonna was born the week Naomi graduated in 1964.
The family moved to Los Angeles in 1968, where Mr. Ciminella found work, and Ms. Judd studied for a nursing degree. Ashley was born that same year. But Ms. Judd said the marriage never clicked, and they divorced in 1972.
Single and raising two daughters, Ms. Judd left school and worked as a model, waitress and secretary, including for the band Fifth Dimension. She dated occasionally, but when one casual boyfriend beat and raped her, she fled California, moving to Morrill, Ky., a town in the center of the state with one road and 50 residents.
They lived simply, without a TV or phone. Ms. Judd studied nursing in nearby Berea. To entertain herself, Wynonna began singing and playing guitar. Occasionally, Ms. Judd would join in, and soon they were regularly making music together.
Once again, lots of Friday and Saturday night details, but zero content about church, Bible stories, old hymns and the family ties to faith that Naomi Judd would stress, when allowed to tell her own story.
Thinking through all of this, I dug into my files and found that 1993 column. Please allow me to end with this:
NASHVILLE -- The line started forming soon after sunrise and, once the bookstore opened, it snaked through the aisles and shelves on both floors.
It was a well-mannered, family crowd. Somewhere there were lots of empty church pews on this Sunday morning.
"Hey, I missed church today, getting ready for this. It's a big deal for me, too," said Naomi Judd, who signed nearly 700 copies of her new autobiography, "Love Can Build a Bridge" in a four-hour marathon with the faithful. "People haven't seen much of me, lately. They want to know what's going on and if I'm OK."
It has been two years since Naomi and her daughter Wynonna performed their emotional last concert as The Judds, a duo that sold 10 million albums and racked up 20 Top 10 hits. Naomi closed the book on her music career because of a debilitating form of hepatitis that threatened her life. She retreated to her farm in the hills outside of Nashville to regain her strength -- the disease is currently in remission -- and to write.
For years, many have said The Judds' story resembled fiction, and that was before Naomi opened the windows of her memory and aired out some of the wilder episodes. Guided by her private journal, and aided by researcher Bud Schaetzle, the result is a first-person account of a life that no novelist would dream up.
Naomi Judd is not your typical Bible Belt matriarch.
"I think people know that Wynonna was conceived when I was 17 and unmarried," she said, relaxing in her tour bus after the book-signing event. "They've got to know that -- living all over America like I did, with the two kids, during the U-Haul-it years -- some pretty hairy things went down. But I also think they know that I didn't get to be 47-years-old without learning a few things. I say that experience sort of gives us the tests first, and the lessons come afterwards."
Naomi Judd has survived fire, floods and earthquakes. She has been raped and sexually harassed. She has moved from her Appalachian homeland to Bohemian California -- more than once. She has been on welfare and socialized with millionaires. She has been chased by madmen and flirted with superstars. Today, Wynonna remains a country music superstar and Naomi's younger daughter, Ashley, is one of Hollywood's hottest actresses.
As they lined up with their books, fans said they admired Naomi's relationship with Wynonna and see them as a Christian example for others. Yet, as a teen-ager, Wynonna once carved, "I hate my mother" on her bedroom wall with a kitchen knife.
Fans said they admire Naomi's commitment to traditional values. Yet she has called her stormy relationship with singer Larry Strickland a "comedy of Eros" and they shared a bedroom for years before getting married.
In one of The Judds' most beloved songs, "Grandpa," they sang of earlier times, asking: "Did families really bow their heads to pray? Did daddies really never go away?" Yet appeals to the "good old days" are ironic, in light of a tumultuous family history that even includes a grandmother who may or may not have murdered one of Naomi's grandfathers.
There's no escaping paradoxes, said Naomi. But The Judds have always tried to take their problems to church and their sins to God. Many of their fans respect that approach to life because it's their own, she said.
This has created an unusual bond. For many, The Judds are both celebrities and Christian examples, flaws and all, for their families -- a rare combination in American popular culture.
"Wynonna and I believe in marriage, and faith, and family, and fidelity. That's what we have been searching for. I think many people see that search in their own lives," said Naomi.
"People do know that I've done a lot of living and I know what I'm talking about. … I've always said that if I had to go to a detox center -- for drugs, or alcohol or whatever -- I'd want a counselor who once was worse off than me. Don't give me somebody who just talks that talk. Give me someone who has lived it."
May her memory be eternal.
FIRST IMAGE: Naomi Judd talks about her battles with depression, in a screen shot from her Today show appearance in 2017.