And Then There's This...The Butterfly Effect of Ray Brack

The concept of the “butterfly effect” is that a small stimulus — say the flapping of a butterfly's wings — can with time, distance and accretion result in a large consequence — say a tornado. Ray Brack was our family's butterfly.

Between 1960 and 1970, I had taught writing, literature and journalism at four different colleges in Ohio, Kentucky and Pennsylvania. Alas, I was not much of a scholar — no PhD, no publications and no vaulting ambition to move up in the profession. Consequently, by the end of the decade, I was out of a job and back in my native West Virginia looking for work, along with my wife, two kids and a third one on the way.

After months of odd jobs and sparse living I was hired to create teaching materials for a federally funded organization called “Appalachia Educational Laboratory.” My office mate and fellow creator was a guy about my own age who had recently been Chicago bureau chief for "Billboard," the entertainment magazine. His name was Ray Brack. Something of a hippie, he'd migrated to West Virginia with his family, bought a small farm and was working a side gig as the youth editor for a local newspaper. In that capacity, he was often given tickets to cover the various musical acts passing through town.

Ray suggested I might supplement my slim salary by writing an occasional article for "Billboard" and toward that end introduced me to one of its editors. Pretty soon, I was on my way to becoming a minor but regular contributor to the magazine.

All this took place in 1972 when West Virginia was still basking in being the focal point of John Denver's breakthrough hit, “Take Me Home, Country Roads.” (The fame-starved state quickly adopted “Almost Heaven” as its official motto.) When Denver, still riding high on the song, came through town on a concert tour, Ray gave our oldest daughter, Erin, then a seventh grader, a free front row ticket. The impact of that one event still reverberates. Erin instantly became a John Denver fanatic, immersing herself in each of his new albums, learning the lyrics to all his songs, reading about him in fan magazines, soaking up all his television and movie appearances and even teaching herself to play guitar.

In 1973, a cutback in funding cost Ray and me our jobs. Soon after that, our family moved out of West Virginia and re-settled in Bowling Green, Ohio, where I'd often done graduate work. I soon lost track of Ray, but throughout the '70s, Erin and I continued to ride the momentum he'd given us. She was able to attend two more of Denver's shows that decade, including one in Toledo for which I bought her a ticket but frugally stayed outside the arena waiting for her. When the show was over, we sneaked around to the backstage entrance hoping to witness the star's departure.

During this hit-and-miss period, I floated from one job to another. But the one constant through it all was that I continued to pitch articles to "Billboard." Besides the stories I generated on my own, the magazine gradually began assigning me articles and occasionally bringing me to Nashville to fill in for vacationing staffers. Finally, in 1981, "Billboard" hired me full-time. Norma, my wife, stayed in Bowling Green so the two younger kids could finish high school. In her first year of college, Erin hit the jackpot by scoring a phone interview with Denver for the school newspaper. She still has the tape of that milestone.

I would cover various aspects of entertainment for "Billboard" for the next 14 years, the last five as country music editor. That post enabled me to chat with, interview and write about Grand Ole Opry stars my parents had listened to and loved in the 1940s, among them Bill Monroe, Roy Acuff, Ernest Tubb and Eddy Arnold. Mostly, though, I worked with such then-newer names as Reba McEntire, Barbara Mandrell, Loretta Lynn, Ricky Skaggs, Vince Gill, John Anderson, the Oak Ridge Boys, Randy Travis and virtually every other star who rose and fell during the '80s and early '90s. It was a delightful and enriching run from start to finish and led me to write two star biographies "Alabama" and "Garth Brooks: Platinum Cowboy."

Once I got settled into my new job, my family began moving to Nashville one at a time. Erin was the first to join me. She worked as an editorial assistant at "Billboard" for three years while completing her degree at Belmont University. RCA Records hired her as a publicist in 1984. For the next 10 years, until she co-founded her own own publicity agency, she beat the drum for such luminaries as Alabama, Kenny Rogers, the Judds, Clint Black, Keith Whitley, Waylon Jennings, Ronnie Milsap and Earl Thomas Conley.

To her abiding sadness, Denver died in 1997. Because of her zeal for his music, she was hired to publicize the first memorial concert in his honor in Aspen. There she met Denver's former lead guitarist, Pete Huttlinger, who was serving as band leader for the memorial. She would go on to manage his artistic career — which included three performances at Carnegie Hall — for nearly 20 years. They married in 2006 and continued to work closely together until his death in 2016. Her daughter, Sean Della Croce, was selected after high school to study at the Paul McCartney-founded Liverpool Institute for Performing Arts and is now an acclaimed singer-songwriter and recording artist.

Erin and I weren't Ray Brack's only career beneficiaries. By the early '90s our whole family had decamped to Nashville. Our son Jason became a song plugger and music publisher, with represented songs recorded by Don Williams, Big & Rich, Reba McEntire, the Zac Brown Band, Patty Loveless and George Jones among others. Our youngest daughter, Rachel Serrato, has mothered a family of four gifted songwriters and performers, including son Austin, a semifinalist on “The Voice.”

My wife Norma was the last to board the Ray Brack music train. A former photographer and college textbook writer, she joined Erin's publicity team and helped boost the careers of Steve Wariner, Paul Overstreet and Martina McBride. For 20 years, she was the publicist and spokesperson for Ralph Stanley and was instrumental in promoting him to two Grammy wins. She died in 2021.

With the coming of Google, I was able to track Ray down and send him a letter thanking him for his monumental impact on our tribe. He wrote back, deflecting our praise and bringing me up to date on his family. That was our last contact — probably 25 years ago. In preparing this column, I Googled Ray again and discovered he had died in 2018. I didn't know him well enough to grieve at his passing, but I can't imagine how scattered we would have been had he not passed our way with his butterfly wings.

(Please send your comments or questions to stormcoast@mindspring.com with “And Then There's This” in the subject line. And thanks for reading.)