Remembering Music Row's Argyle Bell
by Bryce Martin

Argyle Bell (1951-2001)


Argyle made me feel welcome without ever actually welcoming me. I thought of him as being a Yankee by his looks and the fact I think he told me he was from Boston. Maybe even from New York or Jersey, what with the Ramones hair and clothes.

He always seemed in a hurry, as if he was only where he was because he was running late to his real destination. He was like a marathon runner speaking to observers on the sidelines as he trudged on.

I came to Nashville in 1987 and soon after was writer and editor for a Music Row publication called Independent Record Magazine and later called Nashville Inquirer. Argyle liked the fact I had came from Bakersfield, Calif., and that I could tell him things I knew about Clarence White and about Gary Paxton regarding recording ventures in Bakersfield. He mentioned how much he cherished a picture he had of himself with Buck Owens.

I would see Argyle walking the Music Row area much the way did a long and gangly Zac Meadows. Each of them picked up copy, delivered copy, and ran errands in connection with various small publications they were associated with. Argyle was a hustler, but in the old meaning of someone not afraid to wear out some shoe leather to earn a respectable living.

I drank way too much and was, in fact, a common drunk. Argyle once told me when we met on a sidewalk, "Bryce, you drink too much," and walked on. He wasn't walking away because I had consumed too much Schaefer. He was always walking away. The fact he would always remember my name made me feel good. And I knew he really meant that I did drink too much and was concerned for me, though he didn't know me well enough that it should matter to him.

Once, at the Third Coast bar, I saw him walking across an upstairs level. "Oh, he lives up there," another bar sitter said. I thought that was the neatest thing, living right here on Music Row in the middle of such a show. I didn't even know the place had rented rooms, or even that it had an upstairs area. At the Third Coast, he gave me a flyer about a show he was planning involving mainly Clarence White and The Byrds. I thought it a great idea but a bust commercially. I mean you have to hit the public over the head to get their attention and most had no idea who White was or knew much about The Byrds. This wasn't his first year putting it on he would have me to know. Sometimes I rummage through old boxes to see if I still have that old flyer. I haven't found it yet.

The last time I saw Argyle was when I was in a line in Hillsboro Village to go inside the Belcourt regarding an audition for a movie due for shooting in Nashville at the old prison. I had moved from Music Row years before. I saw Argyle, the same old Argyle, the hair, the slim-legged black pants from the 60s, bustling along like in the old days. I didn't want to lose my place in line, or holler out, so I just watched as he turned a corner and disappeared. Not long after, he was gone. I wish now I had left my place and joined him for a while. We could have talked on the run, as in days of old. I bet he would have still remembered my name. "Take care, Bryce," he would have said as we parted paths.

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