ROSINTON, Ala. — When Dale met “Red” Stanton, she was 16. She didn’t think she was going to like him.

“I wasn’t going to marry a red head,” said Dale while seated in the living room of her Rosinton home. “I heard men with red hair had a temper and were mean.”

That was before she met Bartis “Red” Stanton.

“It turned out the blonde had the temper,” chuckled Dale. Of course, Dale was the blonde in question.

Dale was 16, and set to graduate high school that January. She wanted to go on to nursing school.

The couple was introduced to each other in a drug store in Meridian, Miss., a little before Christmas in 1947.

By Jan. 17, Dale had married Red.

Stanton was divorced, about 14 years older than Dale and had three children. He made his living running a band and playing on local radio stations.

“My daddy warned me about him, but he could see I was determined,” said Dale.

Dale recalls that her father did make sure that the wedding was legal, getting a minister that was a family friend to officiate at the wedding.

“My family signed the papers so I could get married, and Daddy told him to be sure and take care of me,” Dale said.

Eventually, Dale says, her family grew to love Red.

Stanton kept playing and singing traditional country music the rest of his life. However, Dale says when country music started to change away from the “old time” sound he loved, he became a full-time carpenter in the Miami area, playing out on weekends Before moving to Miami, Stanton worked at a Louisiana chemical plant and as a disc jockey at a Louisiana radio station.

While the popular image of a musician is hard-living and hard-drinking, Dale says Red didn’t fit that mold.

“He was a Christian,” Dale said. “Having his own band, he felt he had to be.”

The Stantons moved back to Rosinton, where Red grew up, when he retired in 1979 to care for his mother.

He eventually became a member of the Mobile Country Music Association and served as a trustee of the organization and was the second member of the group’s Hall of Fame.

Dale and Red were married for 61 years. On Friday, March 27, pneumonia took Stanton. He was 92 years old. He had broken a hip earlier in March and the trauma coupled with the enforced bed rest led to the infection.

Dale and their daughter, Barbara Staples, took turns reminiscing about Red and their time together.

By Dale and Barbara’s accounts, Red had a lively sense of humor. That’s reinforced by a story Ray Ayres, a former member of Red’s band who went on to the Grand Old Opry sent in an e-mail:

”The most fun we had during the year or year and a half I was with Red’s band was a statewide tour we did with Lycergus Spinx, who was an independent candidate for governor of Mississippi. He looked like a slim version of Col. Sanders – pocket watch with gold chain across his vest. We would park in front of the local courthouse of a small, rural county, unload our equipment, set up a battery-powered public address system, and play music until a crowd gathered around us, then Lycergus would take the mike and give his campaign speech. While the rest of the band was playing, Slim Free would lead a goat around town with a sandwich sign across the goat’s back identifying the goat as “Billy Bureaucrat.” Of course, Lycergus’ speech was all about elimination of “Billy Bureaucrat” from state government. (If he had won, I don’t know who he thought would take care of the state’s business.)”

Carl Fitzgerald, another band mate of Stanton’s, recalls that, “he hired me to play rhythm guitar. We didn’t always have a drummer. We had a six-piece band that played on a local radio station.”

“I remember he liked the funny songs,” Staples recalled. She has also learned that her father had a knack for making gas money.

“Joseph Ellison called us,” she said. “He grew up here and says that when he was growing up, Daddy was the only one with a car around here. He’d charge 10 cents a ride into Robertsdale. Dad would go to the PZK hall and the kids would have to find their own way home.”

Stanton was a Mason for many years. He and Dale were active in Eastern Star, the Masons and DeMolay International.

Stanton came from a musical family, Dale says.

“His mother played piano and sang. Red started on the fiddle,” Dale said

Eventually, Stanton would play guitar, banjo, mandolin, steel guitar and bass.

That love of music took him from Rosinton where he and his eight brothers and sisters would farm, and Red would trap muskrat.

He also appeared with his cousin, Marguerite Martiniere, also known as “Fannie Bell,” in local comedy routines.

My best memories,” said Staples, “are of family reunions in the back yard. His brothers, sisters, and my grandparents would just get together to sing.”