THE VIRGINIAN-PILOT
Copyright (c) 1996, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: Tuesday, July 16, 1996 TAG: 9607160049
SECTION: DAILY BREAK PAGE: E1 EDITION: FINAL
SOURCE: BY BILL RUEHLMANN, SPECIAL TO THE DAILY BREAK
LENGTH: 149 lines
CAROLINA MILLIE is on the air:
``Alan Jackson's weekend concert for neighbors and fans at Center Hill Lake in Tennessee drew 3,500 boats and 40,000 people,'' reports the up-tune lady with the down-home voice.
More: ``Four of the overloaded boats sank.''
Still, she assures us, nobody got hurt.
``And surprise guest Shania Twain has now sold more albums than Patsy Cline.''
Seven million.
Hampton Roads lovers of country music need to know this, and who better to tell them than Millie Voliva-Wiggs, 41, song-savvy editor of Country Star and author of that monthly magazine's showbiz-smart column, ``Millie's Chili''?
Now she's serving it up spicy every Wednesday at 9:15 a.m. on ``The Jimmy Ray and Jay Show'' on Eagle 97.3 FM.
And friends and neighbors, those beans are bubbling:
``During Nashville's Fan Fair,'' Carolina Millie confides to her listeners, ``my sources reported seeing Faith Hill's car in Tim McGraw's driveway at 2 a.m. in the morning.''
Pour on the Texas Pete, partner!
``Since the touring match of Faith Hill and Tim McGraw, there have been numerous rumors. My Nashville sources tell me that Hill has indeed dumped Capitol president Scoot Hendricks for McGraw. But rumors that Hill is pregnant are untrue - for now.''
Deep dish!
``Fans are my greatest sources for local and national news,'' Millie says. ``They phone me, fax me, tell me stuff; I'm on everybody's mailing list. When I get a contact, I stay in touch.''
Carolina Millie even knows that McGraw has six dogs.
The black Labs are named Oprah and Haggard; the others are Road Dog, Whitley, Possum and Elvis.
So what else do you want to know?
``Millie,'' says Eagle program director Randy Brooks, ``is a real go-getter who likes to dig around and find all the interesting tidbits. She's also a sweetheart. Millie's the kind of gal you'd like to talk to over the backyard fence.''
Today's backyard fence is a boom mike in Virginia Beach.
Things are fast and loose at show time in the Eagle 97 studios of Pembroke One. Disc jockeys Jimmy Ray Dunn and Jay Francis, bad in blue denim on local billboards, ride the airwaves surfer-style this morning in sportshirts and shorts.
They make howdy-folks Carolina Millie feel right at home.
``If you don't mess up,'' Jimmy Ray assures her, ``people will think it's taped.''
The early days
Carolina Millie is a short, fire-engine redhead who favors western vests and a silver spur belt buckle that spins.
She's been serving up Millie's Chili in the 30,000-circulation Country Star for more than four years now.
``In 1992, Carolina Charlie made me write my first story, about Marie Osmond at the Smithfield Ham Festival,'' Millie says. ``He wanted me to get more involved in the Star. So I gave him my story, and he promptly tore it all to pieces.
``It took me a while to realize how much he'd improved it.''
The late Carolina Charlie Wiggs (1932-1993), founder of the magazine, was Hampton Roads' own country star.
A hip wrangler with a smoky voice that came across low-down and laid-back, he built a big following in local clubs with sorghum-smooth renderings of songs like ``Shiny Red Cadillac,'' ``Montego Bay'' and ``Help Me Make It Through the Night.''
Wiggs graduated from Cradock High in Portsmouth, formed the Sunset Valley Boys and set about popularizing country at places like Billy's Grill, Ben's Kitchen and the Wingding in an era when Hank Williams was a name without a Jr. on the end of it.
``Military clubs wouldn't hire country groups in those days,'' he once said. ``So we'd go down in these faded tuxedos that had once been white, calling them `special-order eggshell,' and we'd sing pop - the first set. `In the Mood,' `Begin the Beguine'; the second set, we'd cross over to `Oh, Lonesome Me,' `Waterloo.'
``By the third set, they didn't give a damn.''
A fixture at the old County Line Restaurant and Lounge in Norfolk with the Heavy Cowboys, Carolina Charlie also became a well-known on-air personality at WCMS, WHNE-AM, WYVA, WQZQ, WTID and WPEX.
Lanky and leonine, he was a wild-oater and a show-boater, but on the air he was always speaking to Mom.
``Country music talks about life,'' Charlie maintained. ``It's real music. Tin Pan Alley stuff is fantasy - stardust, drifting in dreamland, that kind of thing.
``But country and western tells about the cloudy days and the hard times; people can identify with that.''
Millie used to take requests with Charlie on Sunday mornings on ``Country Classics'' at WKEZ-FM in Yorktown. An Air Force brat from Columbia, N.C., she hit all the bases with her seven brothers and sisters, graduating from Kellam High School in 1973. Millie was a Hampton Roads waitress when she met Charlie.
She was with him when he started up the Country Star in 1987, and she nursed him through the cancer that killed him at age 61 in 1993.
Their daughter, Tiffany, 8, is a rising third-grader at Kingston Elementary in Virginia Beach.
Millie sold the Country Star to North Star Publishing in Norfolk after Charlie became ill. But North Star kept her on the publication as full-time editor and reporter. The magazine, a tabloid-size compendium of country news and features, is available 12 times a year by subscription or free at area Food Lions, restaurants and nightclubs in Southside Hampton Roads and on the Peninsula.
``As the Ricochet song goes,'' says Country Star managing editor David Stump, ``Millie is as country as a turnip green. She's imbued with the genre - the history, the background. Millie's really carrying on the legacy of Carolina Charlie.
``She knows the business.''
The beat goes on
Millie routinely interviews the stars - Pam Tillis takes pictures with Tiffany, and Willie Nelson pronounces her mother a good ol' girl - but the Country Star editor finds particular affection for talent grown closer to home.
Millie writes at length about musicians like Hopewell-raised Keith Horne, now Peter Frampton's bass player. Or Dane Bryant of Bristol, who plays keyboard for Clint Black. Or Glen Snow, who lived in Virginia Beach for a decade before adding his bass to Ty England's ensemble.
Millie promotes her neighbors.
Says young vocalist Troy Hedspeth, 14, who is already booked for the upcoming Virginia State Fair and the Virginia Beach Neptune Festival: ``She's helped me with my career so much. She goes out to my shows. When I get big, I want to take her with me.''
The Country Star editor is typically aw-shucks about her influ-ence.
``I maybe can open some doors,'' she allows, ``but they got to walk through.''
That's tough and getting tougher. Never forget that Garth Brooks majored in marketing. Billy Ray Cyrus personally pushed a new album at Millie.
And not everybody in the biz is that up-front about agendas.
``You've got snakes in any field,'' she concedes. ``Once you recognize a snake, you walk around it. I always expect the best of people until they show their shark side.''
Opines Charlie Taylor, 67, former president of the Virginia Country Music Association: ``I've known Millie for a long time, and she's a mighty fine person.''
Says Warren Seaburg, 38, executive director of the Tidewater Entertainer's Association: ``Millie's done more for the country music scene in this area than anybody I can think of.''
Notes Linda Wagner, 35, marketing director for Naval Amphibious Base Little Creek: ``She knows everybody that's anybody.''
Millie shrugs.
``My whole life's been on-the-job training,'' she says. ILLUSTRATION: Color photos
CHARLIE MEADS/The Virginian-Pilot
Besides editing Country Star, Millie Voliva-Wiggs in on the air,
below, on Eagle 97, where he[sic] works with Jimmy Ray Dunn, left,
and Jay Francis.
KEYWORDS: PROFILE BIOGRAPHY COUNTRY MUSIC by CNB