Talentless Nashville hopeful helps solve Kevin Hughes murder
This is the seventh part of an eight-part series about the murder of Kevin Hughes in 1989, a country music chart director who knew too much.
Sammy Sadler’s right arm didn’t work well enough to play guitar.
It was mid-1989 when he moved back to Texas. He said he was done with Nashville. His friend was dead. He had been shot. No one was promoting his records. And his recording career was abruptly over.
“My career was basically over,” Sadler said. “I think what the police did to me put a damper on my career. It’s just not fair to me. It’s not fair to Kevin Hughes. Kevin Hughes died for country music. I took a bullet for it.”
He was suspected of being involved in Hughes’ death.
He said he was still afraid that the person who killed and shot Hughes would try to come back and finish the job.
And yet …
On June 10, 1989, his song “You Made It Easy” appeared in Cash Box Magazine’s Indie Spotlight.
A week later, the song entered the charts at number 87. Within ten weeks in June, July and August 1989, “You Made It Easy” charted 16 times and rose to number 2 on the Country Indie Singles chart.
Sadler’s picture appeared in an advertisement with the note that he was sponsored by Chuck Dixon.
In August, Sadler was named the fifth best male singer by Cash Box magazine.
In October, November and December, Sadler’s song “Once in a Lifetime Thing” charted eight times.
He was nominated for Song of the Year for a cover of “If You Don’t Know Me By Now” by Harold Melvin and the Blue Notes, which he did not record.
Sadler’s photo appeared in Cash Box in December 1989 with the following words: “Thank you Country Radio for a great 1989.”
In 1990, Sadler’s song “Mississippi’s Burning Tonight” spent nine weeks on the country singles charts (these are the superstar charts with Garth Brooks, Faith Hill and Reba McEntire).
Chuck Dixon was involved in the songwriting of this song.
Sadler said he had no idea how those songs got into the charts or why a song he didn’t sing was nominated. He said neither he nor his family paid for the chart positions or the advertising.
In total, Sadler achieved 26 chart positions in the 28 months before Kevin Hughes’ death and 33 chart positions in the 19 months thereafter.
The singer who couldn’t sing
Beth Watts sang – how best to describe it? – like someone who had never sung before.
Whispering, serious, fake. Not like a future country star.
Watts performed in Nashville for the first time in 2000. That same year, she heard that someone wanted her dead.
Her story sounded familiar. She said she came from Carthage, Tennessee, with a few poorly written songs.
And $10,000 to spend on becoming famous.
“My husband and I made this horrible demo tape,” she said.
It was just a sample song to attract someone from the music industry. It was called “Love Enough for Two” and no one, not even the professionals in the music industry, could have thought it was any good.
She mailed it to famous promoter Robert Metzgar, whose list of country music accomplishments was as long as Willie Nelson’s hair.
“Mr. Metzgar called me and said he really liked my demo tape,” she said. “He had a little office near Music Row… I went there. He had an office with records on the wall, just like you saw on TV.”
“He was really happy to see me, really friendly and raved about how wonderful my demo tape was. He thought he could really make me a star.”
Watts signed a recording contract with Metzgar and agreed to pay him back the entire $10,000 she had brought with her.
No singer, a thorn
Beth Watts wasn’t real.
It was a creation of the Nashville District Attorney’s Office after several wannabe country singers received complaints in 2000 about coming to Nashville and being ripped off for all their money.
Therefore, the prosecutor launched an undercover operation.
Beth Watts was actually the District Attorney’s investigator Myra Langlois. She was chosen for the role of the wide-eyed singer because her husband worked in the music industry. She knew the lingo and knew how to act.
Her most important quality: she couldn’t sing. The worse she was, the more absurd it would be if someone like Metzgar told her he could make her a star.
When it was over, Langlois said her life was in danger.
“Deaf as a stone”
Langlois posed as Beth Watts and wore a listening device.
Metzgar, she said, was “embracing.”
“So he wants to hug me,” she said. “Luckily the battery and everything are further back. So I’m positioned so that he doesn’t touch me back there.”
The guys in the truck listening could hear Metzgar making a very flattering comment.
“He flattered me by telling me what a wonderful singer I was,” she said. “Believe me, I’m completely tone-deaf. It was terrible.”
Metzgar told her to sing as if she were drunk.
She said her voice could only be heard thanks to auto-tune software. She sang a song called “Hell Froze Over” and another called “Every Time I Look For Love, I Go Blind.”
“Then it was time to leave and he walked me out,” she said. “He walked me to my car, gave me one more hug and kissed me on the mouth. It was not pleasant.”
Langlois recorded four songs with Robert Metzgar.
In 2000, Metzgar showed her an Internet music chart (she forgot which one) in which “Hell Froze Over” landed at number 3 with a bang.
Metzgar said their next goal was to get on more charts. He wanted to introduce them to a producer named Chuck Dixon. If they hired Dixon to produce their record, Dixon could get their song noticed.
Beth Watts was on her way to stardom.
“Metzgar was a huge show-off,” Langlois said. “He was extremely friendly and gregarious. He was about six feet tall with white hair. He was a little overweight and kind of reminded you of Santa Claus. I mean, he had this Santa Claus personality where he could talk you into buying ice cream even in a snowstorm.”
More secrets revealed
Beth Watts never became a country star.
Their producer Metzgar was arrested and charged with fraud.
“Of course he was shocked that I wasn’t Beth Watts,” Langlois said. “He was really stunned. I mean, he had no idea.”
As a bonus, the prosecutor’s undercover operation was at the center of their fraud investigation: Chuck Dixon.
Langlois had no idea that there was an eleven-year-old murder investigation involving Chuck Dixon.
Can you guess who else was surprised by her revelation?
Det. Bill Pridemore, who investigated the 1989 Music Row murder, had no idea that his suspect was now the target of a prosecutor’s sting operation.
Beth Watts was gone, but Myra Langlois joined searches throughout Nashville. She said they found recordings of Metzgar and Dixon cheating on singers.
They also found that Dixon made payments to a woman named Audre Medlock, who was the mother of his child, Blayne.
Just as a side note for context, Dixon’s family didn’t know about the Medlock connection until research for this series began. When Dixon’s family found out about the secret son, they were first in denial. Then they were shocked. Then they were sad.
They declined to be officially interviewed.
The Dixons have now established a telephone connection with Blayne, who lives in another state.
Blayne Medlock was 8 years old when prosecutors searched his home.
“He (Dixon) had another family that they didn’t know about,” said Medlock, now 31. “When I was little, the police came and searched our house. They took all our computers. They took my mother’s records.”
Audre Medlock was once the editor of a music chart called Indie Bullet. Then she became the editor of a magazine called Indie Tracker, owned by Chuck Dixon.
State evidence
Metzgar didn’t want to go to prison.
In doing so, he gave investigators information that Pridemore had been waiting for for more than ten years.
Court records show that in 1988 and 1989, Metzgar stated that he would pay Dixon $15,000 if he placed two of his songs on the Cash Box charts.
Richard “Tony” D’Antonio was also in the room when Dixon agreed to accept the money in exchange for the chart position.
But Metzgar mentioned that there was a problem. He had heard that Kevin Hughes wanted to call on the media to expose the chart manipulation.
According to Metzgar, Dixon stated, “I’m going to take care of Kevin Hughes, and if I don’t get a handle on him, he’s gone.”
Langlois remembers her conversation with Metzgar.
“He (Metzgar) said he knew something about a murder,” Langlois said. “Of course, I didn’t know anything about it. He said Kevin Hughes, and I didn’t know anything about Kevin Hughes or the history of it.”
“So at that point I turned it over to the folks in Nashville (the police)… And they took it from there.”
That’s the thing about Metzgar, he never stopped talking.
Even after investigators searched his homes, businesses and the homes of his friends, Metzgar continued to contact Langlois.
“He still wanted to be my friend,” Langlois said. “He was a very strange character. He would call me and come to the office to see me.”
In one of these conversations, Metzgar told her to be careful.
“He just wanted me to know that Chuck Dixon wanted me dead,” Langlois said. “He (Dixon) gave me an assassination attempt or the green light. Basically dead.”
Attention turns to Chuck Dixon
Even though the investigation had taken more than a decade, the essential elements of the Music Row murder seemed to fit together exactly as Pridemore had imagined.
It seemed as if Dixon wanted Hughes dead.
It seemed like Tony D had carried out the execution.
Metzgar agreed to testify in court and was granted immunity.
But before Pridemore and the homicide squad could make a sensational arrest, something happened that threatened to stop the case.
Chuck Dixon has died.
December 23, 2001. Cirrhosis of the liver. At the time of his death he weighed 52 kg.
“Dixon died a month before we arrested him,” Langlois said.
But instead of hindering the case, Dixon’s death provided new impetus.
Suddenly, people who were afraid to join in started coming forward.
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