Ralph Emery On The Record

Country music veteran Ralph Emery interviewed Olivia in front of a live audience in Nashville, to promote her new album Back With A Heart and the re-release of Grease.

They discussed the phenomenon of Grease - Olivia has kept the black trousers, the leather jacket and her Pink Lady jacket from the movie but gave the infamous red shoes to a charity auction some years ago. Ralph and Olivia agreed that it was "strange" that her $125,000 salary for the movie was public knowledge.

One of her first radio interviews in the early 70s was with Ralph during which Olivia told him that she wanted to teach America how to make a proper cup of tea. Olivia then tells us just how to do that whilst making light-hearted fun of the British who have to make their tea just so!

A rare clip is shown of Olivia's acception speech for her controversial 1974 CMA Award. She was in London at the time so she'd recorded a videoclip.

Her duet with the Raybon Bros - Falling is discussed. Producer Tony Brown asked Olivia to record this and she was given the song at 5pm needing to be in the recording studio just 3 hours later at 8pm. Despite the tight schedule the song turned out great!

Ralph asks Olivia about her new album BWAH. He considers it strange that 6 different producers were used for the album. Olivia said that this meant the album could be completed quickly, if only one producer had been used it may have taken 9-12 months to get the mix right. She also said working with different producers gave the songs different flavors.

On replying why she'd recorded a country album Olivia said that country was her roots, where she'd begun. Pop music today wasn't where she was but that she could relate to country music as it's more about the song and singer.

A nice interview with some interesting insights into Olivia's career but with a large concentration on her recovery from breast cancer.

Ralph Emery also wrote about this interview in his book The View From Nashville