By Joe Heim
Special to The Washington Post
Sunday, July 27, 2003; Page N01

NASHVILLE

Country music has its share of wild characters, but old-fashioned, clean-cut, suit-and-tie-wearing Eddie Stubbs isn't one of them. He abstains from bad habits ("dadgummit!" is as close as he comes to swearing), goes to church every Sunday and has a work ethic that would put Puritans to shame. Above all, he is an evangelist, a spreader of the word, eager to initiate the uninitiated and bring those who have strayed back into the fold. It is not belief in God, though, that he is trying to sell. Eddie Stubbs is on a mission to save the soul of country music.

He'll come right out and tell you as much if you ask him. Country has forgotten its roots, he'll say. It has neglected its pioneers and forsaken its heroes. What he won't say out loud, but what you think he secretly believes, is that most new country music isn't country music at all.

For a radio disc jockey faced with media conglomeration, target audiences and shrunken playlists, filling commercial and even public airwaves with classic country -- music from its golden era of the 1940s, '50s and '60s -- is a tall order. But as any listener to his Sunday afternoon show on Washington's WAMU-FM or his weeknight and Saturday morning shows on Nashville's WSM-AM knows, Stubbs is diligently stoking the embers of old-time country, bluegrass and honky-tonk. "Yes sir, friends, that was Johnny Paycheck singing 'The Real Mr. Heartache.' I'll tell you what, he makes you believe he's been there. Wow, it doesn't get any better than that. Great stuff." Stubbs is standing in front of the microphone in his fishbowl of a studio in the lobby of the Gaylord Opryland Resort hotel. Tall and fence-post thin, he has a slightly haunted face that's all bone and little flesh.

Unless he's flashing his grimace of a smile, he looks straight out of a Depression-era photo. Listeners, he says, are often surprised by his appearance. "They usually think I'm 65 to 70, bald, portly, smoking a pipe and do the show every week with a dog at my feet," he says. "Well, I don't like dogs, I don't smoke, I'm far from portly and I'm 41."

Stubbs is unfailingly polite, modest and solicitous. But he's also serious and reserved; hidden beneath those gaunt features is a sense of melancholy that's more difficult to define. "The sadder songs are," he says, "the better I like them."

Like the blues, country weepers provide their own sort of solace.

In the studio, Stubbs finds another sort of solace. In many ways, this is his home away from home. This is where he brings his treasured LPs and scratchy 78s, what he calls his "deep catalogue" material, to make the case for "the era of great country music that we'll never see again." This is where he gets lost in the sounds of simple chords, steel guitars and a high lonesome fiddle.

It's not surprising that many listeners assume Stubbs is a generation older than he is. Whether he's talking about music or cabinetmaking or even a simple handshake, he bemoans that "things aren't the way they used to be." He readily admits he would rather have arrived in Nashville in 1945 than 1995, and he occasionally uses phrases that make you think he did. His favorite Italian restaurant is a "fine place to get fed and watered." And LeAnn Rimes "can sure sing the fire out of country music."

Stubbs wonders aloud: What became of the dress code for entertainers? "Is professionalism a bellybutton ring and a bare midriff?" he asks. "Would you go into IBM dressed that way?"

He's not given to that sort of scolding on the air, though. With help from the 50,000 watts of WSM, "the Air Castle of the South," he transmits his fervent belief in the classic sound to listeners all over the South and Midwest. On the clearest of nights, the station's signal (650 on the dial) can reach 38 states, and with his show now available at www.wsmonline.com, he hears from fans as far away as London, Johannesburg and Tokyo.

"When music gets inside of you and gets a part of your heart and a part of your being and a part of your soul, for those who experience it at that depth, there's nothing quite like it," says Stubbs, as he cues up Kitty Wells's "It Wasn't God Who Made Honky Tonk Angels."

As the music plays, he takes calls off the air from listeners like the 37-year-old trucker speeding along I-70 in Missouri who thanks him "for playing all that old music 'cause no one else does." And the elderly woman in Chillicothe, Ohio, who praises him for digging up a favorite Hawkshaw Hawkins song she requested. "How'd you find that so fast, Eddie?"

There is wide agreement in the country music world that no one is as knowledgeable about the music as Eddie Stubbs. "Everybody understands that he knows more about it than anybody else, and they just defer to him," says country star and historian Marty Stuart. "He's a beacon. He's a reminder of greatness. Any time you need to know where the standard lies, tune in."

Bluegrass legend Earl Scruggs concurs. "Eddie is one of the best things that ever happened to Nashville," he says. "All of the extra facts and information he provides about the music, well, no one else can do what he does."

From 8 p.m. until midnight Monday through Thursday and 6 until 10 Saturday mornings, Stubbs stands alone at the WSM mike, working without notes and dipping into his memory for the back story about songs and performers. "Little tidbits to try and help sell the artist, sell the record," he calls them.

Even when a request comes for a less-than-classic-country song, John Denver's "Take Me Home, Country Roads," Stubbs is ready with the dossier. He mentions that the tune is by Washington-area songwriters Bill and Taffy Danoff. And then he recalls being told that it wasn't the rolling hills of West Virginia that inspired it, but "the beautiful rolling hills of northwest Montgomery County . . . along Maryland's Route 117," the route the pair took on a trip to West Virginia.

Listening to Stubbs's shows is tantamount to a distance-learning class at the University of Country Music. Unlike most DJs, he is given plenty of latitude as to what songs he can play. At WSM, there are a few he's required to include each night, but the majority are his own selections. His WAMU show, on the other hand -- which he now records in Nashville -- is entirely up to him.

His authoritative knowledge and easygoing, radio-rich voice were instrumental in helping Stubbs land a premier gig, one of the three regular announcers at the Grand Ole Opry, which hosts the longest continuously running radio broadcast in history. Every Friday and Saturday night he shares duties with his fellow announcers, welcoming the audience at the show's 4,400-seat venue and introducing Opry legends like Little Jimmy Dickens and Porter Wagoner.

It is a dream come true for the kid from Gaithersburg, whose dad taught him to play the fiddle at age 4. For Stubbs, who had visited the Opry as a youngster with his parents, the program is sacred territory.

"Don't ever forget what you're seeing here tonight," he whispers urgently to a visitor backstage at the Opry earlier this year. "History is passing us by, and this is a very special place."

Increasingly the industry, which wants mostly to tout its new stars, has recognized Stubbs's contributions as both disc jockey and invaluable resource.

Last year the Country Music Association named him the large-market Broadcast Personality of the Year, the first time in 20 years that a DJ for an AM station had received the award. In 2001, the International Bluegrass Music Association chose him as Broadcaster of the Year. And he's already been nominated for the Country Broadcasters Hall of Fame, even though he hasn't met the 25-year minimum working requirement.

Along the way, Stubbs has become something of an unlikely favorite of Nashville hipsters. According to WSM's Web site, Arbitron ratings for his show consistently beat FM country stations in Nashville and boast surprisingly young demographics. The alternative weekly Nashville Scene named him Best Country Deejay, and a few years back he made the list of Nashville Life magazine's 100 Coolest People.

Eight years ago, Eddie Stubbs might have had difficulty imagining anything like this sort of success.

Before he moved here from Gaithersburg in 1995, his life was running out of promise. He was 33 years old, recently divorced and unsure of what to do next. From his senior year at Gaithersburg High School he had been a fiddle player and vocalist in a much-heralded traditional bluegrass band, the Johnson Mountain Boys. But the band split up a decade later and was playing only sporadically.

His radio career also seemed iffy. Stubbs' first job was in 1983, a weekly bluegrass show for tiny WYII-FM in Williamsport, Md. He was paid $20 per program. In 1984 Stubbs landed a job at WAMU, working with Gary Henderson, one of the station's longtime country DJs. His own weekly show had its debut in 1990but as Stubbs points out, "No one gets rich in radio." To keep himself in groceries he was painting houses and doing occasional carpentry work. Things were not looking up.

"There have been times in my life when my records have been my best friends," he says. "Something that you can grab on and hold to that will always be the same."

Over the years he had developed a friendship and working relationship with country singer Kitty Wells and her husband, Johnnie Wright, often playing fiddle for their band when they visited the D.C. area. In 1995, Wright and Wells persuaded Stubbs to move to Nashville and play with them regularly. For a fifth-generation Montgomery County man, whose parents and two younger brothers still live in Maryland, the move felt much bigger than the 750 miles between Gaithersburg and Nashville.

What happened when he arrived, Stubbs says, was a miracle. Within 17 days, he had been hired by WSM and selected as an announcer for the Opry. "Five people up for the job, and the new kid in town gets the gig? If that's not God, I don't know what is," he says.

Stubbs feels indebted to Wright and Wells. He is still a regular visitor at their home and is fiercely protective of her position in country royalty. He's incredulous to hear that a crossover star is being called the queen of country music. "Can you imagine that?" he asks, his voice rising. "Kitty Wells is the queen of country music. End of story."

There is no room for gray in Eddie Stubbs's vision of country. He knows, of course, that all music has to evolve. WSM bills itself as "country's past, present and future," and Stubbs says, "That's the way it should be." But that doesn't make finding modern music that speaks to him any easier.

"I really get a kick out of listening to him when he has to announce a contemporary country artist," Stuart says. "It's like pulling gravel out of his mouth. It just doesn't come out the same as when he's talking about some obscure dead hillbilly."

It burns Stubbs that most country stations can't find room for legends and that most DJs have no authority to choose songs to play. It burns him that they won't play country music that "speaks to people, people who have lived these songs."

The incredible success of the "O Brother, Where Art Thou?" soundtrack shows him that real country and bluegrass has a huge potential audience.

"People are starved for substance. And they get frustrated because they can't hear the music they want to hear on the radio," he says. "We've got people like [Merle] Haggard and [George] Jones still making records, and they've just shut these people out."

Of course, more people clamor to hear Shania Twain than Ernest Tubb, and Stubbs isn't arguing otherwise. "You can't ignore someone who's got a number-one record. That's not responsible," he says. "I'm not saying you have to be a student of the music, but you have to appreciate where it came from."

That's a good summation of Stubbs's credo, and his dedication extends beyond playing the music on his shows. Though he never went to college, he is a self-taught scholar who is endlessly researching, and has written extensively about, songs and artists. He conducts lengthy interviews with important figures of country's early years, and has contributed exhaustive liner notes to a number of the ambitious box-set compilations of seminal country artists that are issued by the Bear Family label. To commemorate the 50th anniversary of Hank Williams's death this past New Year's Day, Stubbs put together a six-hour radio documentary for WSM.

Stubbs has sought out many aging country performers not only for the history they can provide, but simply to befriend them. Marty Stuart recalls that last year when Bashful Brother Oswald, the legendary dobro player for Roy Acuff's Smoky Mountain Boys, fell ill, Stubbs was among a group of bluegrass musicians who visited and played for him on Sunday afternoons. "He really does more than talk about these old-timers, he cares for them and he backs it up by his actions," says Stuart. "He's really community-minded that way."

These days in Nashville, when a country performer dies, Stubbs is often asked to speak at the memorial services or to write a remembrance. He has also created tribute shows to honor greats who pass away, including Oswald, who died in October, Tammy Wynette and Bill Monroe. "I go to a lot of funerals," Stubbs says wearily. "In the past few months, 15 bluegrass and traditional country artists have died. And I knew 13 of them personally.

"That really gets to you after a while."

Sitting at a bustling Cracker Barrel restaurant not far from the Opry, Stubbs slides his tie inside his white shirt before tucking into a pair of pork chops. Then he notices the 79-year-old Earl Scruggs and his wife, Louise, seated at a table across the room. He excuses himself and walks over to say hello, kneeling on the floor to talk to them.

"It's a very gratifying thing to meet your heroes, get to know them and then become their friend," he says when he returns to the table. "It's just another amazing blessing."

Marty Stuart and other colleagues worry that Stubbs's all-consuming commitment to a bygone era of music takes too much out of him. And he's aware of their concern, but he waves off the notion. "I know people say, 'Eddie, you don't have a life.' But I have a wonderful life," he says. "I know that I miss out on things by doing things the way I have, but who hasn't? We all wish we had more time. It's a precious commodity."

Each person is put on Earth for a purpose, he says, and he feels lucky to have found his. Old-time bluegrass and classic country may be fading into the past, but Eddie Stubbs is fighting a mighty battle to help it stay a little longer.

Eddie Stubbs can be heard from 3 to 5 p.m. Sundays on WAMU-FM (88.5), and on the Internet at www.wamu.organd www.wsmonline.com.