Doing a comedic impression is all fun and games until you’re put in a situation where the subject of your imitation wants an in-person demonstration—an awkward life lesson Vince Gill learned the hard way when meeting Bill Anderson for the first time. The soon-to-be and bona fide country legends, respectively, met each other at the Grand Ole Opry in Nashville.
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And while meeting a musical icon like Anderson should’ve been a thrilling moment in Gill’s career, Gill’s habit of doing impersonations on his Code-a-Phone messages made the experience a little more embarrassing than exciting.
Why Vince Gill Tried Running Away From Bill Anderson
During a 2021 visit to the Country Music Hall of Fame and Museum, Vince Gill explained that he had a “long tradition” of doing impersonations on his Code-a-Phone, a name-brand answering machine. “I had a Bill Anderson one on there when I first moved to town,” Gill recalled.
“It basically said, ‘Hello, this is Whisperin’ Gill,’” the country singer said in a voice meant to mimic Anderson’s signature, softspoken affectation that garnered him the nickname “Whisperin’ Bill.” “‘I’m not here right now,’” Gill continued, “‘I’m out doing whatever, but if you’d like to leave a message, please do, and I’ll call you back. I’m busy writing “City Lights.”’”
“It was funny because when I first met Bill at the Opry, I walked in the back door, and he was all the way at the other end of the hallway. He saw me, and I went, ‘Oh, crap.’ We’d never met. He’s making a beeline for me, and he knows I do an impersonation of him, and I’m in trouble. So, I started trying to find a way to skate away, and he caught me, and he goes, ‘Alright, I hear you’ve been mocking me. Let’s hear it. Do me.’”
Gill obliged, adopting his feathery timbre as he said, “Alright, I’m Whisperin’ Bill Anderson, I wrote “City Lights,” and if you don’t like it, you can kiss my a**.” Gill said that he and Anderson have been friends ever since.
The Pair Later Collaborated In The Early 1990s
As awkward as it must have been for a fresh face like Vince Gill to have to answer to a silly impression he did of a musical icon while meeting said musical icon, it’s clear there was no bad blood between the two musicians. In addition to working alongside one another as cast members at the Grand Ole Opry, Gill and Bill Anderson began collaborating more closely in a songwriting capacity in the early 1990s.
On the suggestion of a mutual friend, Gill and Anderson sat down together to co-write, despite Anderson’s initial trepidations. Before they began, Anderson expressed concerns that he was no longer relevant, having enjoyed the peak of his career decades earlier in the late 1950s and early 1960s. But Gill, who had long been an admirer of Anderson’s (certainly enough to include him on his Code-a-Phone impersonation roster), pressed the industry vet to keep pushing anyway. The pair wrote “Which Bridge to Cross (Which Bridge to Burn)” together, which Gill released as a single in 1994 to great critical acclaim.
“He kindly credits me for kind of rebirthing his second career as a songwriter, you know, after he thought that maybe he was done,” Gill said. “I kind of half-refused to take any credit for it because it was always in there. It just took the right guy to say, ‘Hey, come on, let’s go try to do something, and it was successful.”
Photo by Erika Goldring/FilmMagic
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