On Monday 1 February 2021, Gene Watson was in a reflective mood, as he thought about his look in the 1980s.
‘From the mutton chops to this look.
I’ll keep this story short but in 1980, I had a club owner incorrectly claim I violated a contract by playing another club.
All that was corrected (in my favour) but not before he had the local police impound my bus.
We had nothing but our show clothes and some of our instruments and had to fly to New York City for a job at The Lone Star Cafe the next day.
Didn’t have time to get to a barber, so the full beard started that day, along with the new hairstyle.
We may have been a bit edgy, but I think we did one of our best shows’
Source
• Gene Watson on Facebook
Gene Watson’s new look, in the early 1980s, came at the same time as his only No.1 hit single on the Billboard country music singles chart; ‘Fourteen Carat Mind’, which was written by Dallas Frazier and Larry Lee Favorite (Saturday 6 January 1940 – Saturday 26 May 2001), was included on ‘Old Loves Never Die‘ (MCA Records, 1981), and was No.1 for one week in January 1982.