It's hard enough to tell truth from fiction when different guys who were there in the early days make competing claims. On top of that, sometimes it's just faulty memory. For example, in one of the guitar books, Les Paul talked about his TV show that ran for 7 years in the 50s. He and Mary did appear on national TV shows quite a few times in the 50s but in fact, he never had a TV show, unless you count the five minute Listerine commercials they did for about 18 months as a TV show.
In Smith's book -- Fender: The Sound Heard 'round the World -- Randall told a story about Shifty Henry (a/k/a Shifte Henri) that was completely false. I doubt it was done maliciously, but there it is in the book, and it paints Henry in a bad light over something that never happened.
Of course, Randall could be right about everything he claims in the Reverb interview. There's just no way of knowing.
