Editor's note: This story was updated July 31 to correct the company name of Terry Bradshaw's hamburger business.
Early in my phone interview with Terry Bradshaw, I interrupt to ask him where he's at; it sounds like an aviary.
I definitely hear birds, and at times I can't tell if he is talking to me, his wife Tammy, who must be nearby, or the birds.
He's at his office in Texas and there are three birds, he says. I'm talking to him because he's coming to Branson. In fact, his first show is Sunday night, July 30.
I've often interviewed people accompanied by public relations people who are there to keep them on point, out of trouble and inauthentic. But I've never interviewed a source accompanied by an African grey parrot and two macaws.
“He's calling the dog,” Bradshaw, the NFL Hall of Fame quarterback, tells me. “Now he's whistling at my wife.”
This would be Stevie D., his 9-month-old African grey parrot. I just checked online and there's a good chance Stevie D. will live to at least 23.
Bradshaw, Emmy-Award winning co-host of “Fox NFL Sunday,” is now 74.
Bradshaw has local connections; his wife Tammy is from Rogersville
He's coming to the Clay Cooper Theatre in Branson. He sings, tells stories, answers questions from the audience and has fun.
The six 7:30 p.m. shows will be:
- Sunday, July 30
- Wednesday, Aug. 2
- Monday, Aug. 7
- Monday, Aug. 21
- Tuesday, Aug. 29
- Thursday, Aug. 31
Tickets start at $50.
All I can tell you is that I've been interviewing people for some 40 years now — I once had a phoner with Bob Hope — and I don't think I've ever enjoyed a conversation as much as I the one with Bradshaw and his birds.
If you go see him, I promise he will be authentic.
Here at the Hauxeda, we don't normally interview people about to perform in Branson. Our bread-and-butter is Greene County.
But Bradshaw has connections in the Ozarks. His wife Tammy was born and raised in Rogersville.
I interviewed Bradshaw also because in March of 2022 I wrote a story about Melissa Duvall, of Republic, who invented and patented The Ponchairo, a poncho that attaches to a fixed chair when you're out in rough weather watching Junior play ball in April showers.
Duvall is friends with people close to the Bradshaws. She called and asked if I was interested in talking to Bradshaw, the patriarch for two seasons of “The Bradshaw Bunch” on E!.
Due to health concerns — Bradshaw's second bout with cancer — the show did not have a third season.
I told Duvall, sure, I'd love to talk to Terry Bradshaw.
You'd be surprised by how much you don't know about Terry Bradshaw
This will be his third time appearing at the Clay Cooper Theatre. Prior to COVID-19, Bradshaw did the show in Las Vegas.
He'll sing several songs. And the songs will fit with a story he tells.
Some stories are about his years (1970-1983) as quarterback with the Pittsburgh Steelers, which won Super Bowls in 1974, 1975, 1978 and 1979.
For example, he's likely to sing “You Never Know How Good You've Got it Til You Ain't Got it No More.” He'll sing this at about the time he tells the story of when he realized he could no longer play pro football.
Bradshaw years ago recorded that song as a duet with none other than Glen Campbell.
If you didn't know, Bradshaw can croon. He sings country-and-western and gospel. He has recorded four albums.
“He is sitting there staring at me,” Bradshaw tells me, apropos of apparently nothing. “Now he is calling the dog.”
It takes a few beats for me to realize Bradshaw is talking about the parrot.
If you're like me, you would be surprised by how much you don't know about Terry Paxton Bradshaw, born in Shreveport, Louisiana, the middle child of three boys.
His 2001 memoir, “It's Only A Game,” was a New York Times bestseller. Writer David Fisher helped him with the book.
For long-time readers of Sports Illustrated, Bradshaw was highlighted in “Faces in the Crowd,” which the magazine started way back in 1956.
He was in the April 11, 1966, edition.
At the time, Bradshaw, who would be known as the “Blonde Bomber” in the NFL because of his hair color and arm strength, was a 17-year-old senior at Woodlawn High School in Shreveport.
He was in the magazine because he had shattered by more than 7 feet the national high school record for throwing the javelin.
I ask him: Did you ever think of competing in the Olympics in the javelin?
“I turned down the Olympic Trials because I had no interest in throwing the javelin,” he says.
He initially sat the bench in college
Instead, he went to Louisiana Tech University, and didn't initially start. He played behind Phil “Roxie” Robertson, who later invented the Duck Commander duck call and starred in the A&E television program “Duck Dynasty.”
In his senior year, Bradshaw started and was so unbelievably good he was the No. 1 pick in the NFL draft.
On the Silver Screen, Bradshaw has been in several movies. Perhaps you've seen him in the 2006 film “Failure to Launch,” in which Matthew McConaughey plays a 35-year-old who doesn't want to move out of his parents' home. Bradshaw plays his dad and Kathy Bates plays his mom. They want him out.
Bradshaw appears naked, from behind, in a scene in which McConaughey walks in on him. Bradshaw is in his son's room, naked, feeding the fish.
According to Bradshaw, the script said either “naked” or “in boxer shorts.”
Immediately, Bradshaw says, he chose naked.
“I opted to go naked because I wanted to shock my family, especially my mother,” he tells me.
“All they were going to do is show my lily-white butt. I thought it would be so much fun to shock everyone and they'd say, ‘Oh my God!'
He took his daughter Rachel to see the film.
“She was, ‘Oh my God, daddy!'”
His mom drives to another city to see movie
The holdout was his mother.
“Everybody was telling my Mom about it. So she and two of her girlfriends drove to Vivian, Louisiana. She said nobody would know who she was there.”
“I said, ‘Mom nobody knows who you are to begin with.'”
“She went to the movie theater and wore a basketball cap down low,” Bradshaw says.
He asked her one question: Did you laugh?
She admitted she did. His mother now lives in Florida.
Since Bradshaw is paid to give motivational talks, I ask for a Life Lesson from his portfolio.
“Everybody dreams,” he says. “As a child I was a dreamer. I always dreamed I could play in the NFL. I could very easily have not pursued football. It was not until my senior year in high school that I had success.”
Then, he rode the bench in college.
“I had every reason in the world to quit and just give up on it. But it was my dream. It is what I wanted in life.”
‘Say goodbye to Steve'
These days, he doesn't dwell on death, but he does think about it.
“I don't want to waste time,” he says.
“I have had two bouts of cancer and I wonder, ‘Is that what will kill me?'”
So he keeps his foot on the gas with his TV analyst career, his entertainment career and two separate burgeoning businesses: Bradshaw Bourbon and a hamburger company called Bradshaw Ranch Thick N Juicy.
“People often say, ‘Do you remember when?'” he says.
“I don't want to ‘remember when.' I just don't live like that. That is the reason why I am 74 years old and going 100 mph.”
I thank him for his time; he wants the parrot to say something.
“Stevie D., say goodbye to Steve.”
The parrot has nothing. Awkwardly, I say goodbye to him, the bird, and hang up.
This is Pokin Around column No. 123.
