Maybelline

The Unbroken Circle

By Edna Peirce Dixon

December 1, 2023

The story of Maybelline begins in 1947. Howard and Annie Mae Dixon were just kids when they got married 4 years before. Already they had faced enough adversity to dishearten even the most seasoned souls. Howard was just 21 and he worked hard in a South Carolina cotton mill to support his little family, 3-year-old Paul and baby Shirley. Nothing could have prepared the couple for the meningitis that took the life of their baby girl at 18 months of age. And as if that were not tragedy enough, Howard’s older brother, Walter, came home from WWII after four years in France only to die of tuberculosis in a VA hospital at the tender age of 23.

Perhaps all this unbearable sorrow was part of the reason Howard went out and purchased something that would bring him joy and purpose. Most certainly, as his brother, Jack, remembers, all the family was happy when Howard bought his beautiful new 1947 Epiphone Broadway guitar.

As the Dixon boys were growing up in the country, the family lived off the land. They labored in farm fields in return for an old house with no electricity or running water. Their garden, chickens, a hog, and a milk cow provided everything they needed. Each Fall their friend, “Kill” Starns, came to help the family kill and butcher a hog and they would preserve the meat with salt for the year ahead. Kill was also a fine guitar player and promised Howard he would teach him how to play. And so he did.

For Howard, this was just the beginning of a lifelong love of making music. For several years during his youth – after the family saved enough to afford a radio and a battery to run it – they all loved listening to the Grand Ole Opry. Inspired by all the different performers, Howard’s one big desire was to pick and sing just for the love of it.

So Howard learned to pick this shiny new Epiphone. After four or five years, he was ready to move on up, so he added another guitar and then another to his collection. Eventually, he gave his first guitar to his older sister, Matt, and for the next 25years or so the Epiphone was mostly stored away. Seldom played and without proper climate conditions, the instrument’s wood began to crack, and its seams come apart.

Fast forward to 1976. Howard’s younger brother, Jack, now lives in Texas with a family of his own. On a trip back to visit the family in South Carolina, Aunt Matt wants to give everyone gifts. She takes them to her storage shed to pick out something from among her many treasures. It was love at first sight when 13-year-old Heyward sees the Epiphone for the first time. Though somewhat damaged, the guitar is still beautiful to see and hear, and soon she is on her way to a new home in Texas.

A few years later, the family leaves Texas and moves to Tennessee. Heyward graduated high school, and though he never found his niche as a musician, he knew the guitar was special and  when he went off to college, the treasured Epiphone went with him. In time as his circle of college friends grew, Heyward took notice of another student whose expressed philosophy of life was not unlike his own. Larry happened to be a musician, and Heyward was glad for the opportunity to attend a campus performance as an assignment in his journalism class. Heyward was to interview Larry and write a piece about him.

The interview went well and opened the door for future conversations that sparked the beginning of a lifelong friendship. As Heyward would learn, Larry played a mean blues guitar and wrote much of his own material. On one particular night, Larry brought the house down spinning a humorous musical tale about the adventures of a bullfrog. After the show, Heyward invited Larry to come to his apartment; said he had something to show him. When Heyward opened the guitar case and saw Larry’s eyes light up at the sight of the old Epiphone, he knew his impulse had been correct, and in that moment in 1983, he gifted the old guitar to his friend.

As a college student, Larry didn’t have much money and once he found someone with the skills to repair the old guitar, it took several years and no small expense to get the full restoration completed. Once imbued with new life, the Epiphone would travel widely with the now professional blues man known as Warren Gently. Somewhere along the way, shortly after coming off stage one night, someone admired Warren’s old guitar and asked if she had a name. Just at that moment, Warren heard the next act belting out their version of Chuck Berry’s Maybelline. Without blinking he told the fan, “Maybelline, that’s her name.” And so it was and still is.

Now forty years have passed since Warren and Maybelline began their love affair. Oh, she’s been a high-maintenance girl. Maybelline doesn’t cotton to the heat or the cold, so Warren babies her like the classy lady she is. Maybelline may be a bit of a diva, but she still rides around snug in her comfy old case held together with love and a few rolls of duct tape.

There’s an old song about an unbroken circle that country folks everywhere know and love. Come to think of it, back in the day Howard Dixon may very well have sung that song when Maybelline was still shiny new. Howard has been gone for many years now but brother Jack, at age 92, still has memories of those times of hardship, sorrow, and joy so long ago. Now, on this day, November 24, 2023, it just so happened that Heyward and his sweetheart were getting married at their Tennessee home. Family members from around the country were gathered for the wedding. Both father, Jack, and old friend, Warren, were there to celebrate…and so was Maybelline.

After the ceremony on this November evening, most of the family had gone outside to roast marshmallows and sing around the fire pit. The old man, up past his bedtime, was tired and ready to go home, but when he saw Warren bring the battered old case into the kitchen, he forgot his weariness. The next half-hour was simply magical. Hearing Warren play and sing with his brother’s old guitar made all the good memories come flooding back.  Years before, he had had some misgivings when Heyward gave the guitar away. But as he listened to the music and heard the stories Warren had to tell, he truly understood that Heyward had made the right decision. The old guitar was indeed in the best hands and in this moment, the circle was complete.

UPDATE August 2024 – From an old letter dated June 2003: Jack’s brother, Howard died recently and we attended his funeral. He was 77 and had been ill with kidney disease for some time. His passing was not so much a sad time as a time of joyful remembrance and reunion for scattered family. His children have always been special to us so we were delighted to have the chance to see them again…and their now-grown children. There is one special thing I’d like to share. Howard was a very hardworking, gentle man who spent his life laboring in the cotton mill and tending his beautiful vegetable gardens. He never ventured far from home. Though not educated, Howard always had this uncanny ability to recite poetry right out of the blue which amazed everyone. This talent was much discussed and his daughter, Peggy’s only regret is that she never got his poems recorded.B ut she did share the roots of his ability which should strike a cord with the teachers among us.

When Howard was in 3^rd an 4^th grades in a small country school he was quite smitten with his teacher. One of her favorite activities was to have her students memorize poems and recite them. Wanting so much to please, Howard went far beyond the call and memorized ALL the poems in the book…and he never forgot a one of them. Now, many years later this same teacher happened to be teaching in town at the Junior High and had a couple of Dixon kids in her class. She mentioned to Peggy and Jimmy that she once had a student named Dixon and began to describe him. Part of that description was this young man’s special talent for reciting poetry. Peggy asked his first name and was not surprised to learn it was her dad. Soon thereafter, Peggy and Jimmy took their dad to school to meet his old teacher and for a couple of hours, he once again recited his poems for his “first love.” Even during his last few days in the hospital, Howard kept the nurses enthralled with his poetry. epd