Unlike certain color M&Ms that were removed by the contract riders of monster ego acts in the hair band ’80s, you could add a few more Ms to the subtitles of this memoir. How about meditation, metaphysics, melancholy, minefields, mesmerizing and marvelous.

Dixie Jane Gamble, is a pixie-ish powerhouse of love and light. When you first read about her childhood in the ‘50s, on a cotton farm minus indoor plumbing in North Carolina, her tales are full of many shades of light and very dark moments, but you are pulling for her. Early hints that there was a wider world in the works and a flying trapeze for her to grab onto come into view as she tells, in colorful details, of getting on a school bus, before being old enough for the first grade, just for a U-turn in their driveway, as a make-believe ride to the school; she couldn’t wait to go to. Or the tragedy that befell her playmate on her second day of school. There’s her unbridled excitement when the bookmobile came to visit, opting for Edgar Allen Poe. The flying trapeze becomes deja vu, when her Mom takes her to a tent circus and Dixie vainly tries to tell her that she’s flown on one before. Thirty five years later in Music City, Dixie was hit with a real mind bender, when the then reigning king and queen of country music tell her all three of them were trapeze artists in a past life.

Which brings us to music and the reason this review is here. Married very young to a doppelgänger for Elvis and with two young boys , the Gambles moved to Nashville, in the early ’70s. Although there was a sliver of security when Jesse Gamble starred in a show at the new Opryland Theme Park, their marriage quickly decamped into an outhouse of abuse. A job as a secretary and assistant to writers at Tree Publishing, the biggest dog in town, put Dixie into another world, with a circle of both legendary and soon-to-be-legendary songwriters like John D. Loudermilk, Roger Miller, Curly Putnam, Bobby Braddock and scores more of highly creative people.

“Oh, the Stories We Could Tell”: Dixie has a potpourri of them, culled from over 50 some-odd journals she kept. All are told with sensitivity, style and not a trace of h sensationalism, even when spending quality time with sensational folks like Paul McCartney or Elton John. Becoming the first female to head up a major music publisher, Elektra /Asylum set her to working and developing new artists and writers, in the Man’s World mentality of music row. A second marriage to a major music mogul, producer and label head Jimmy Bowen, provided lofty trappings of success that were head-spinning until the wheels came off. 

Off music row into a wide variety of humanitarian endeavors, Gamble worked in mental health and prison reform advocacy, a private practice in LA as a psychotherapist, documentary film maker and more, but music was always there. It returns in a mega dose when she met John Jorgenson, a world class musician, composer, of any genre he set his mind to, and from the vibes he sent out, even to strangers, one beautiful cat.  Our Renaissance woman discovered places that even her self described poorhouse princess never dreamed of. It’s not all fairytales though: life goes on and off with some heartbreaking realities to be dealt with.

As a companion to the book, John Jorgenson produced a CD, Chiaroscuro, that relates both musically and lyrically to characters and events in the book. It is a work of art unto itself, yet when coupled with the book, it goes one step beyond.

˗Ken Spooner