Will The Real Drifter Please Suit Up?

Hey, Marty, sing us a song. Give us a little El Paso ."

"Or White Sport Coat."

"Devil Woman."

"How 'bout My Woman, My Woman, My Wife?"

"That there is Marty Robbins? The stock-car driver? Ah'm embarrassed Ah don't know his songs. He sounds just like Eddy Arnold to me."

And on and on. This is NASCAR party night in Bryan, Texas, a town new to the vibes of Southern stock-car racers, a place trying to make it big with a four-year-old, two-mile track amid bankruptcy proceedings, court judgments, a change of owners and "Hook 'Em Horns" football. Still, it shows promise. "Give this place another two or three races," says one NASCAR party regular, "and Bryan'll be just like any other stop on the circuit."

Herb Nab, the crew chief for Cale Yarborough's Kar Kare Chevrolet, brings the well-lubricated crowd of about 200 to attention: "Everybody! A big hand for Marty Robbins!" And Robbins, all 145 pounds of him hidden away somewhere on a 5'9" frame inside his oversized Goodyear jacket, moves to the center of the Holiday Inn patio. With a borrowed guitar and a borrowed sideman, a huge Texas A&M veterinary student named Ray Hawthorne ("Man, if I was that big," says Marty, "I'd make people pay me a dollar just to stay alive"), Marty Robbins goes to work.

This is a tough audience, loosened by booze and the knowledge that this is the last night to stand on it before the Alamo 500 two days later, and Marty does not fight the mood. He sings without a microphone as best he can, possibly remembering his first tour date as an obscure Country and Western performer many years before. "It was 1946 in a" little place in Northern California," Marty says. "I can't even remember the name of that particular old town, but when they drew the curtain, there was chicken wire between the stage and the audience. The guy who ran the place said the customers got a little excited sometimes."

Marty sings the songs that have made him one of the biggest C&W singers in the business for over 20 years. Nearby an out-of-uniform deputy sheriff circles, not unobtrusively, and Don Winters, a longtime friend of Robbins who is built like a fire hydrant and who is one of the best yodelers in the Nashville Sound, says, "They was a bunch of us ready to get Marty out in case they was trouble. Me 'n' Cale 'n' Richard Petty wouldn't of let nothin' happen. Nobody'd go after Marty—if he got hit, it'd be by accident—but he could of got caught in the crossfire."

Near the end of the night, some long time after midnight, a man in the crowd asks, "You ever write a song 'bout stock-car racin'?"