Ask American Profile 1/25/2009

Q One of my favorite Garth Brooks songs is “Calling Baton Rouge.” I’m sure I once saw a video of a group singing it before Garth did. Did Garth come up with the song first?
—Elaine Pfeiffer, Upper Sandusky, Ohio

Before Garth Brooks made it a household tune, the bluegrass group New Grass Revival recorded and released “Calling Baton Rouge” in 1989. The band disbanded the following year. Founding member Sam Bush began a solo career and banjoist Bela Fleck launched his own group, The Flecktones. The song’s writer, Dennis Linde, who also wrote the Elvis Presley hit “Burnin’ Love,” went on to more success with the Dixie Chicks’ “Goodbye Earl,” Mark Chesnutt’s “Bubba Shot the Jukebox” and Joe Diffie’s “John Deere Green.”

Q I recently saw Reese Witherspoon in Four Christmases, which reminded me that I always wondered: Did she do her own singing in Walk the Line?
—Carita Wilson, Plano, Texas

Witherspoon, 32, was so nervous about singing professionally for the first time, in Walk the Line, that she had second thoughts about starring as June Carter Cash and almost didn’t accept the role. But six months with a singing coach helped cure her jitters. In interviews to promote the movie, she told reporters that singing was the most challenging part of the gig.

Q I’m very impressed with ventriloquist Terry Fator, winner of last season’s America’s Got Talent. What can you tell me about him?
—Marjorie Oestreich, Davenport, Wash.

Fator grew up in Dallas fascinated from an early age by ventriloquism. “I started to learn how to talk without moving my lips and saved up my money for a little ventriloquist puppet,” he says. “I don’t think a Hollywood writer could have written a script as well as what happened on America’s Got Talent when I walked out on that stage and David Hasselhoff said, ‘Oh no, a ventriloquist.’ And I ended up winning the show.” Fator, 42, lives in Dallas with his wife, Melinda, and recently bought a condominium in Las Vegas to accommodate his five-year deal to entertain at the Las Vegas Mirage hotel. His new autobiography is called, appropriately, Who’s the Dummy Now?

Q My husband remembers a movie from a few years ago about how the Army was changing over at the end of World War I from horses to vehicles. Some cavalrymen were trying to save the horses from being slaughtered by taking them to Canada. He thinks Lee Majors starred in it.
—Judy Clouse, South Solon, Ohio

Your husband recalls In Pursuit of Honor, a made-for-TV movie from 1995. It starred not Lee Majors, but Don Johnson, who’d left Miami Vice and was just a year away from beginning his TV comeback with Nash Bridges. The movie was filmed in Australia.

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