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“The Stories Behind The ”

John Henderson

The Stories Behind The Songs

A compilation of “inside stories” behind hits and the artists associated with them

John Debbie & John

By John Henderson ( by Debbie Henderson)

A fascinating and entertaining look at the life and recording efforts of some of ’s most talented singers and

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Author’s Note

My background in country music started before I even reached grade school. I was four years old when my uncle, Jack Henderson, the program director of 50,000 watt KCUL-AM in Fort Worth/, came to visit my family in 1959. He brought me around one hundred and fifty 45 RPM records from his station (duplicate copies that they no longer needed) and a small record player that played only 45s (not ). I played those records day and night, completely wore them out. From that point, I wanted to be a . But instead of going for the usual “comedic” approach most DJs took, I tried to be more informative by dropping in tidbits of a ’s background, something that always fascinated me. Originally with my “Classic Country Music Stories” site on Facebook (which is still going strong), and now with this book, I can tell the whole story, something that time restraints on radio wouldn’t allow. I began deejaying as a career at the age of sixteen in 1971, most notably at Nashville’s WENO-AM and WKDA- AM, Lakeland, Florida’s WPCV-FM (past winner of the “Radio Station of the Year” award from the Country Music Association), and Springfield, Missouri’s KTTS AM & FM and KWTO-AM, but with syndication and automation which overwhelmed radio some twenty-five years ago, my final DJ position ended in 1992.

Since November of 1995, I’ve been a studio engineer at Meyer Communications, a group of radio stations in Springfield, Missouri. This continues my association with KWTO as it is now owned by that company. My parents actually met at KWTO in 1944 (Dad was hired away from KRLD in Dallas, while my mother was already working at the station as part of Aunt Martha Haworth’s “KWTO Belles” group). It was love at first sight and after a whirlwind courtship and marriage, they left KWTO and moved on to Nashville’s WLAC-AM to begin their duet act. My boss Ken Meyer, owner of Meyer Communications, gets a kick out of telling people that I got my “start” at KWTO, (a term most often used to describe an announcer’s first radio job). In Nashville, my parents adapted their stage name of “Ted and Wanda,” and achieved some regional success throughout the south via WLAC’s 50,000 watt signal. After only a few years, however, Dad grew disenchanted with the music business. They retired from the industry in 1951 and moved back to Southwest Missouri where my mother was raised. I was born in 1955.

Dad’s older sister Dot, along with her husband Smokey, appeared for several years on the and toured with ’s entourage in the late 1940s, performing with Tubb at New York City’s in 1947 at the first of two famous country music concerts held there. Her daughter Dottie was married for a number of years to ’s son, noted evangelist Jimmie Rodgers Snow, and is now married to Glenn Douglas Tubb, (Ernest Tubb’s nephew). Glenn’s most famous composition is ’s 1968 classic “Skip A Rope.” He also penned ’s “Home of the ” in 1958 and and ’s last major hit “” in 1980. Dad’s younger sister Irene Gibbs worked for Cash, serving as his personal secretary from 1973 through 1988.

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I have always been fascinated with country music due to my family’s close relationship with those in the industry. The stories presented in this volume are for the entertainment of those who read them. My sources for these stories are numerous and I continue to edit them on a regular basis. I have attempted to provide a glimpse of unusual or remarkable events which make the stories interesting in their context of the recording industry. I am continually updating and researching the original stories as I interview people connected with them. Much has been written about the stars and their associates (writers, producers, musicians) who created these hits and I am hopeful that readers will be as enthused about reading these stories as I have been in presenting them here. - JH

Dedication

To my wife Debbie. Her inspiration and devotion nurtures my research and writing.

Also to my late uncle Jack Henderson. Why he thought of his four-year-old nephew, I don’t know, but his gift of 150 duplicate 45 RPM records from his radio station in Fort Worth/Dallas in 1959 began my interest in the study of country music.

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Contents

VOLUME TWO: (alphabetized by artist)

1. – (1938) 2. RIVER – (1980) 3. LOVE IN THE FIRST DEGREE – Alabama (1981) 4. WILD & BLUE – (1982) 5. – (1968) 6. WILDWOOD FLOWER – The Carter Family (1928) 7. SUNDAY MORNING COMING DOWN – Johnny Cash (1970) 8. CRAZY – (1962) 9. HOLDING HER AND LOVING YOU – Earl Thomas Conley (1983) 10. LAST DATE – (1960) 11. – (1961) 12. READY FOR THE TIMES TO GET BETTER – (1978) 13. – (1967) 14. STAND BY ME – (1980) 15. YOU DON’T KNOW ME – Mickey Gilley (1981) 16. – (1969) 17. ALWAYS WANTING YOU – (1975) 18. BIG CITY – Merle Haggard (1982) 19. THE YEAR THAT CLAYTON DELANEY DIED – Tom T. Hall (1971) 20. LUCKENBACH, (Back to the Basics of Love) – (1977) 21. MAMMAS DON’T LET YOUR BABIES GROW UP TO BE COWBOYS – Waylon Jennings and (1978) 22. HE STOPPED LOVING HER TODAY – George Jones (1980) 23. PLEASE HELP ME, I’M FALLING – (1960) 24. I WAS COUNTRY WHEN COUNTRY WASN’T COOL – (1981) 25. – Reba McEntire (1992) 26. AM I LOSING YOU – (1981) 27. (THERE’S) NO GETTIN’ OVER ME – Ronnie Milsap (1981) 28. NOBODY LOVES ME LIKE YOU DO – and (1984) 29. – Willie Nelson (1982) 30. TAKE THIS JOB AND SHOVE IT – (1978) 31. NIGHT LIFE – Price (1963) 32. FOR THE GOOD TIMES – (1970) 33. – (1980) 34. DRIVIN’ MY LIFE AWAY – (1980) 35. THERE WON’T BE ANYMORE – (1974) 36. – Charlie Rich (1974) 37. EL PASO – (1959) 38. COWARD OF THE COUNTY – (1980) 39. – T. G. Sheppard (1975) 40. UNCLE PEN – (1984) 41. I’M MOVIN’ ON – Hank Snow (1950) 42. DO YOU KNOW YOU ARE MY SUNSHINE – (1978) 43. LET’S FALL TO PIECES TOGETHER – (1984) 44. – (1972) 45. – (1970) 46. I’D LOVE TO LAY YOU DOWN – Conway Twitty (1980) 47. I DON’T KNOW A THING ABOUT LOVE (The Moon Song) – Conway Twitty (1984) 48. COLD, COLD HEART – (1951) 49. HONKY TONKIN’ – Hank Williams, Jr. (1982) 50. – Tammy Wynette (1968)

Plus a bonus non-hit: OLD TIGE – (recorded: 1961, single release: 1966)

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The Story Behind The Song:

“Wabash Cannonball” (written by Williams Kindt, adapted by A. P. Carter)

Roy Acuff (#12 pop, 1938)

Roy Acuff scored only a dozen times on the country music charts, never hitting any higher than #3. His recording career after the 1944 debut of what was then the hillbilly record tracking system is so insignificant that few except hardcore fans can name even one of these releases. His appearances on the pop chart numbered only four, with a total of just seven weeks spent in the top one hundred. Yet, Acuff is widely known and revered as “The King of Country Music,” and was the first living artist to be inducted into the Country Music Hall of Fame in 1962. In spite of not having the chart numbers to make him any more than a minor bit player, Roy Acuff remains a genuine star.

A one-time baseball player, young Roy was a Baptist minister’s son who dreamed of playing major league baseball until a heat stroke confined him to bed for the better part of a year. While recuperating, he began to rethink his career aspirations. For a while he wondered he was being led to preach. Then one day, while listening to his father’s collection of records, Roy began to scratch around on one of the family violins. In no time he taught himself to play almost all of the fiddle jigs he had heard as a child. After he regained his health, Acuff hit the road playing in medicine shows. As the 1930s approached, he had formed his own band, the Tennessee Crackerjacks, and worked dances all around the area of Knoxville, Tennessee. His first real break came in 1932 when he and his band landed a regular spot on the locally-popular “Mid-Day Merry-Go-Round” on WNOX. After about a year, Acuff brokered a deal with WROL which gave him his own show. A slip of an announcer’s tongue may have changed the name of Roy’s band to the Crazy Tennesseans, but it did nothing for their financial status. Achieving just minor local fame, no recording contracts and only small-time bookings, the group was barely scraping by. They forged on that way for three more years. Then things started to change.

In 1936 (as noted in my earlier backstory about “The Great Speckled Bird”) Acuff obtained the lyrics to this song for fifty cents. The purchase landed Roy a recording contract with ARC. After his rendition of “The Great Speckled Bird” made the national pop chart two years later, Acuff was invited to become a member of Nashville’s Grand Ole Opry, where his showmanship and on-stage antics soon made him one of the show’s favorite performers. During the session which produced “The Great Speckled Bird,” Roy and his band also recorded an old standard called “Wabash Cannonball.” This tune eventually would go down in history as America’s most-loved and best-remembered train epic. Acuff had probably heard various versions of this song for most of his life, as it had been written in 1905. Roy later said that he definitely remembered the song as a child. As with many country music standards sung during the Twentieth Century’s first three decades, at least part of the song’s text was based on fact. There was a Wabash line passenger train that carried the name Cannon Ball as early as 1885. While its total run was far short of “the great Atlantic Ocean to the wide Pacific shore,” starting in Chicago and stopping in Kansas City, the rail line’s unique name created a far more romantic picture than the “New York Limited” or “San Antonio Express.” There was something distinctively poetic and American about the Wabash Cannon Ball. Here was an image made to order for a songwriter’s imagination.

Combining fiction with a patriotic theme, William Kindt used the very fabric of the American heartland to set up a version of the song he wrote and published in 1905. Kindt’s “Wabash Cannonball” was probably not the first, but it was the initial version to be both copyrighted and noticed by the public. The

5 first recorded versions of Kindt’s composition didn’t appear until the late 1920s. Record companies, eager to cash in on the success of acts such as the Carter Family and Jimmie Rodgers, were releasing scores of new versions of old songs. By this time, Kindt’s copyright had fallen into the public domain, and a shrewd A. P. Carter “rewrote” the song and claimed ownership of a newly-published version of the Kindt number. The Carters themselves sang the epic on many occasions. Yet, even with A. P.’s strong backing, “Wabash Cannonball” remained uncharted and, outside of the rural reaches of hillbilly music, very obscure. It took Acuff’s 1938 release to put the song and the by-then defunct passenger line on the map. By December Roy and his band had made it to #12 on the national pop chart, one position higher than “The Great Speckled Bird’s” #13 finish. From that moment on, Roy owned the song. Henceforth, no Acuff performance was complete without his audience being taken for a ride on America’s finest passenger train.

As was noted earlier, Roy Acuff became a country music legend without ever having a #1 record (his highest-charting song, “I’ll Forgive You But I Can’t Forget,” reached #3 in 1944), and without ever establishing a sound or style which was embraced by a long line of imitators. In one of country music’s strangest quirks, Roy didn’t even sing the lead vocal on the 1938 hit version of “Wabash Cannonball.” One of his band members, Dynamite Hatcher, earned the right to supply the lead. All Acuff did was provide the song’s unique whistle sound at the beginning. Many scholars and historians believe that this whistle is what made the song a real showstopper in concerts.

Almost a decade after Roy Acuff and his Crazy Tennesseans hit the pop charts with “Wabash Cannonball,” the star went back into the studio with his band, now known as the Smoky Mountain Boys. In his customary one take, Roy laid down a new version of the song using his own voice on the lead vocal. This version was never a hit and did not land on any national charts, but it is the one most frequently heard today. So why was it that Roy became such an American icon that during World War II, Japanese soldiers were heard to cry out, “To hell with Roosevelt! To hell with Babe Ruth! To hell with Roy Acuff!”? Radio and clear-channel WSM were a large part of the reason. The rise of the Grand Ole Opry coincided with Acuff’s arrival Auditorium. To those who listened each Saturday night, he WAS the Opry. Also, the two songs which he was so associated were both uniquely rural and supremely American. His edges were rough, his voice was pure country, and he was one of the first to carry the title of “hillbilly” proudly. Millions of poor, rural Americans idolized him for those qualities. This same group also responded to his adherence to old values, his gentle demeanor with fans and industry insiders alike, and his love of performing. Visiting with the fans after all his shows, signing autographs for hours, and personally answering all his mail made Roy the fans’ star.

Overlooked in the image of Acuff the man and performer was his business savvy. He created (with ) a publishing company that became the most dominant in the industry. While never changing his own style, he foresaw music trends and invested in them before they happened. This seemed to prove that, in Acuff’s case, he was able to hang around for so long because he wasn’t just a good man, but a smart man. Still, how did he become “The King of Country Music?” It seems that the title should have gone to , Ernest Tubb, Hank Williams, or at least a half-dozen others. In the long run, these artists’ musical contributions were far more significant. So why Roy?

For the answer, you must come back full circle to Acuff’s first love, baseball, and to possibly the game’s most colorful Hall of Famer, Dizzy Dean. As a baseball announcer on CBS Televison, Dean sang “Wabash Cannonball” live on the air countless times. This, and not the Acuff record, was the place where millions of Americans first heard the classic train song. Dean’s version became so popular that thousands of fans wrote in each week begging him to sing the song on every broadcast. And he did. The former St. Louis

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Cardinals pitcher was even invited to the Opry to perform “Wabash Cannonball” with Roy himself. At the Opry, and then hundreds of times thereafter, Dizzy referred to Acuff as “The King of Country Music.” Just as few would ever successfully challenge a Dizzy Dean fastball, no one ever argued with his coronation of Acuff. On the strength of two signature songs, Roy had come to the Opry during its most formative, fruitful and influential period, and through his own personality became the man who most signified country music. As the cornerstone of the show, he performed there every week for over fifty- four years, right up to the end of his life on November 23, 1992. He was 89. Roy Acuff is gone, but his presence is still felt on the stage where his reign began. – JH

The Story Behind The Song:

“Tennessee River” (written by Randy Owen)

Alabama (#1, 1980)

In one form or another, the four guys who made up the group Alabama had been playing music for well over a decade. By the end of the , they had worked their way from small gigs around their Fort Payne, Alabama home to being the house band at The Bowery, one of Myrtle Beach, South Carolina’s hottest clubs. Though not starving to death, the group wasn’t rolling in the chips either. They didn’t have a major record deal, nationally they were unknown, and the timing for a country band making it in Nashville seemed completely wrong. It appeared that the boys were about forty years too late.

The fact was that when country music fans thought of a country music group, they didn’t think of four guys playing instruments and singing. At that time successful groups were limited to quartets like the Statler Brothers or , and bands consisted of the musicians who played behind the big stars. When asked to name their favorite band, most country fans would just pick the men who backed up their favorite solo acts, such as Merle Haggard’s “Strangers” and ’ “Buckaroos.”

During that period, the Music City establishment thought little about signing country bands. Most producers and executives had never worked with a real band. Groups like the Texas Playboys and the Golden West Cowboys were just a part of the distant past, a vague memory from days long gone. Solo stars had dominated country music for decades, and most critics thought individual acts would continue to drive the genre well into the next century. Occasionally, a group might manage a fluke hit. That had happened a few years earlier with The Band’s “The Devil Went Down To Georgia,” but it was thought that no group would ever have the power to chart consistently. It just couldn’t be done in these modern times. Country wasn’t like rock. The country fans wanted their stars one-on-one. That was about to change.

RCA first took note of Alabama when the band took a self-penned song “My Home’s In Alabama” into the Top Twenty in early 1980. The company was impressed that an unknown band was able to notch a fair-sized hit on the small, independent MDJ label. Most record executives in town simply dismissed the accomplishment, but RCA decided to check into this group a bit further. Unannounced, a couple of the label’s executives went down to Myrtle Beach to catch Alabama’s stage show at the Bowery. They paid special attention to the guys’ unique mix of old country and sixties’ rock influences and noticed

7 favorably the positive response that hardcore country fans were giving to the band’s country/rock blend. RCA decided to take a chance and sign the group.

Using veteran producer , RCA put the boys in the studio and picked through their music, looking for anything that might be commercial enough to place Alabama in the Top Ten. One of the songs that RCA thought had potential was a tune that the group’s lead singer Randy Owen had put together a few years earlier called “Tennessee River.” Owen had composed the piece centered around his observations of “Trade Day” in Scottsboro, Alabama. Folks from all over the region would gather for a First Monday flea market event. Randy sensed a carnival atmosphere at the proceedings, and the song he wrote captured this jubilant spirit. In order to get to Scottsboro, the trip from Owen’s home in Fort Payne took the singer by the Tennessee River and past Lookout Mountain. Working these well-known settings into the song’s hook line, he finished three verses and turned it over to fellow band member Jeff Cook. Jeff was the group’s fiddle player and he arranged a hot rocking fiddle bridge that brought the song together.

In the studio, the boys recorded ”Tennessee River” two different ways. The longer version was used on their first , and the alternate take threw out the second verse and tightened the song in preparation for a single release (although Randy Owen thought the removal of the second verse disrupted the continuity of the storyline). The record shipped one month after it had been cut, and RCA and the boys waited to see if country radio was ready for a country band.

On the last day of May, 1980, “Tennessee River” surfaced on the Billboard country chart. At that time Ronnie Milsap was holding down #1. Less than a month before, even pop singer had taken a song to the top. There would be no confusing what Alabama was doing with either Milsap, Boone, Kenny Rogers, Barbara Mandrell, Eddie Rabbitt and the other “countrypolitan” artists. What gave RCA some hope that Alabama’s debut single would do well was the crowd which had made Hank Williams, Jr.’s Dixie rock so popular might also be caught up in Alabama’s sound.

Williams probably did pave the way for Alabama. Yet his music was actually harder than the stuff the boys were playing. Hank Jr. was closer to rock than the new RCA act but because they were a real band, many older listeners initially perceived that Alabama was simply a rock act trying to make it in country music. This was what RCA had feared would doom the group. However, their energetic, high-caliber music won a multitude of fans of all ages and the initial “carpetbagger” opinion of the guys never gained much footing. Alabama was destined to make plenty of country music history in the years to come.

“Tennessee River” started slowly. At a time when many records were hitting their peak within seven or eight weeks of release, this single was still working its way up Billboard’s country chart well over two months later. However the long wait proved fruitful when Alabama reached the #1 position on August 16, 1980 , and started the ball rolling toward their career mark of 32 chart-toppers (fifth most in history). Along the way, the group notched twenty-one consecutive #1 hits, a record that still stands today and will likely never be broken. Alabama is the most-awarded act in country music history, reportedly having won over 200 awards. They were named “Entertainer of the Year” for three consecutive years (1982-84) by the Country Music Association, and won that same trophy five years in a row (1982-86) from the . In 1989 the ACM also selected the group as “Artist of the Decade.” Alabama achieved the industry’s highest honor in 2005 when they were inducted into the Country Music Hall of Fame during their first year of eligibility.

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Through the , a younger crowd began to tune in country stations. There can be little doubt that the huge growth of country radio in the 1980s was created in no small part by the explosion of this band’s “edgier” sound and tremendous popularity. Because of Alabama’s success, other country groups began to spring up and acts such as , Exile, , , , , Shenandoah and others got their opportunities to spend some time in the spotlight. While the move toward country groups didn’t supplant the solo acts altogether, it did make a huge dent in their control of the genre.

Alabama’s first RCA release, “Tennessee River,” dramatically changed the course of country music. The “country band,” long just a product of local dance halls, would again become a major force in the country . With the insurgence of these young, driven musicians, a huge flow of new blood and fans would pour into Nashville-based music. The average age of the country music buyer would move downward as record and product sales spiraled upward. Building on their first #1 hit, Alabama resurrected the country band and changed the face of country music more dramatically than anything since Elvis and the movement of the , and in the long run was probably even a more lasting influence. – JH

The Story Behind The Song:

“Love In The First Degree” (written by Tim Dubois and Jim Hurt)

Alabama (#1 country, #15 pop, 1981)

In an interview with Billboard Magazine’s Robyn Wells, Alabama’s bass player Teddy Gentry affirmed, “We’re country first and crossover second. If crossovers come, that’s great, but we would rather have a #1 country song than get lost in the middle of the country and pop charts.”

Despite their country leanings, Alabama reached the on four different occasions, with “Love In The First Degree” (at #15) being their biggest pop tally. The others were “Take Me Down” (#18), “Feels So Right” (#20) and “The Closer You Get” (#38), all respectable numbers.

Although the pop market was just getting familiar with the band, Alabama had become such a country staple that “Love In The First Degree” represented their fifth number one record, coming just seventeen months after the first, “Tennessee River.” “Love In The First Degree” was the third single from the “Feels So Right” album, but it had already established itself in many cities when stations began playing it as an album cut. In those days before radio consultants and tight playlists, program directors could pull such wild shenanigans as this! I’m being sarcastic, of course. I think giving the deejays freedom to select what they wanted to play on their shows back then is what set stations apart from the others and gave them their own identity. Very much unlike now, with all stations sounding alike (programmed by a handful of national consultants) and radio listenership dwindling on a daily basis because of it.

“Love In The First Degree” came to Alabama’s attention via song plugger Ben Hall, who sent it to their producer Harold Shedd on behalf of House of Gold Publishing Company and songwriters Tim Dubois and Jim Hurt. Tim recalls his inspiration for composing the song. He was driving into work for a writing

9 session at House of Gold while listening to WSM’s Jerry Minshall delivering a news story about someone being found guilty of murder in the first degree. Nothing uncommon about that, but on this particular morning, the phrase struck a creative nerve with Dubois, and right then he began fashioning the basis for “Love In The First Degree.”

Tim arrived at the office and Jim Hurt had this piece of music he was playing with. Dubois had the lyrical idea started, so they spent the next hour and a half working on the song, coming up with the first verse and the chorus during that time frame. Tim wrote the rest of it at home that night. After “Love In The First Degree” was completed, the two writers were feeling a bit guilty because since the song had come together so fast, they reasoned that it was almost unfair for it to be that easy!

“Love In The First Degree” reached the summit on December 26, 1981 and helped the “Feels So Right” album establish a short-lived Billboard record when it spent a total of 27 weeks at #1 on the Billboard country album chart. Alabama broke its own mark within a year. – JH

The Story Behind The Song:

“Wild And Blue” (written by John Scott Sherrill)

John Anderson (#1, 1982)

After fourteen single releases dating from December of 1977, John Anderson finally reached the top of Billboard’s country singles chart with John Scott Sherrill’s “Wild And Blue” on December 25, 1982. This was also selected as the title of the album from which it came, and sadly, the sessions that made up the “Wild And Blue” album are footnoted in history as the last recordings ever made at Columbia Studio B, one of Nashville’s legendary rooms.

Owen Bradley and his younger brother Harold (a member of the elite “A-Team” group of musicians, and reportedly the most-recorded guitarist of all time) built the studio in the mid-1950s, naming it the “Quonset Hut.” The Bradleys sold the facility to in 1961, and the company re-named it “Columbia Studio B.” Owen, along with other producers such as and , cut an enormous number of hits in the building with the likes of Johnny Cash, Marty Robbins, George Jones (“He Stopped Loving Her Today” was recorded there), Patsy Cline, Ray Price, Tammy Wynette, and dozens more.

Frank Jones, who transferred from the Canadian branch of Columbia Records to Nashville in 1961, worked side by side with Don Law during much of the . As a team, they raked in over a dozen number one singles at Columbia Studio B, including Jimmy Dean’s “Big Bad John,” Johnny Cash’s “Ring Of Fire,” Flatt & Scruggs’ “The Ballad Of Jed Clampett,” Marty Robbins’ “Devil Woman,” and Lefty Frizzell’s “Saginaw, Michigan.” Law was forced to take mandatory retirement from Columbia in 1967, but continued on with his independent “Don Law Productions,” notching a massive country and pop hit with Henson Cargill’s “Skip A Rope” in 1968. Law retired in the late 1970s, but sadly died from lung cancer in 1982. He was posthumously elected to the Country Music Hall of Fame in 2001. In time, Frank Jones also went independent, finding himself working John Anderson sessions by the early ‘80s for

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Warner Brothers Records. It was he who produced Anderson’s “Wild And Blue” album, the final recordings made at Columbia Studio B before it was demolished.

Of the last Studio B session, Jones said it was an ironic and surreal time, very emotional for not only him but for many of the musicians, some of whom had performed on recordings there even before his arrival back in ’61. Frank was awestruck just thinking about all of the legendary hits that had been cut in that place, many of which he had participated on as co-producer with Law. After the final session was completed, they had to find another facility in which to mix the “Wild And Blue” album, because the demolition team started tearing down the building the next morning.

It’s appropriate that Jones produced the final master made at Columbia Studio B, and that it was John Anderson’s cover of the haunting classic “The ,” which Lefty Frizzell had originally recorded there in 1959. John had been hailed as an heir to Lefty’s honky-tonk territory, and in “Wild And Blue,” he certainly walked a hard-country line. John Scott Sherrill (no relation to producer Billy Sherrill) wrote the song over a six-month period at his home near Franklin, Tennessee. Anderson’s sister Donna frequented the Music City club where Sherrill’s short-lived band (“Wolves In Cheap Clothing”) played. She had an interest in “Wild And Blue,” and introduced the song to her brother, who gave it a Cajun feel and enlisted her to sing back-up vocals. Warner Bros. released it on September 1, 1982, four weeks in advance of the album. The single’s ascent to number one arrived the same time as Santa Claus, on the Billboard chart dated December 25, 1982, making for a very Merry Christmas in the Anderson household. Riding the wave of momentum created by the success of “Wild And Blue,” John was able to land his blockbuster just three months later: a little tune called “Swingin,’” which I’ll be writing about in an upcoming “Story Behind The Song.”

“Wild And Blue” was only the second of John Scott Sherrill’s songs to be recorded (Johnny Lee’s “When You Fall In Love” had been the first in the Spring of ‘82, peaking at #14). After “Wild And Blue’s” chart- topping appearance, Sherrill went on to pen other big hits, such as Brooks and Dunn’s “How Long Gone,” ’s “,” Neal McCoy’s “No Doubt About It,” Shenandoah’s “The Church On Cumberland Road,” Highway 101’s “Cry, Cry, Cry” and “(Do You Love Me) Just Say Yes” and Restless Heart’s “That Rock Won’t Roll,” all number one hits. – JH

The Story Behind The Song:

“Wichita Lineman” (written by )

Glen Campbell (#1 country, #3 pop, 1968)

Glen Campbell’s professional career began in 1954 as a member of his uncle’s country band in Albuquerque, New Mexico. By 1960 he had decided to make his way to in an attempt to make his mark as a . His prowess on the was immediately noticed and Glen became a member of “The Wrecking Crew,” the West Coast’s answer to Nashville’s renowned “A Team.” The Wrecking Crew was a group of musicians that played on almost all of the biggest pop records coming out of Los Angeles by such artists as , , , , , , and , to name just a few. While working as a session

11 player, Campbell also made his vocal debut with a modest #61 tally on Billboard’s Hot 100 pop chart with “Turn Around, Look At Me” on the tiny Crest label. This small success helped Glen secure a record deal from in 1962. His first release for Capitol, a cover of ’s 1944 number one country hit “Too Late To Worry, Too Blue To Cry,” provided Campbell with another minor pop entry, but when subsequent singles failed to chart, Capitol strongly considered dropping him from the label.

In a last-ditch effort, Campbell was teamed with producer Al DeLory in 1966. Together, they first collaborated on a song called “Burning Bridges” which became Glen’s first top 20 country hit in early ’67. His next notable single was “” which became a country standard despite its mediocre chart peak of only #30. The real breakthrough occurred when Campbell recorded the first of his nine chart placements written by Jimmy Webb: “By The Time I Get To Phoenix,” which sailed to #2 for two weeks on Billboard’s country chart and topped out at a decent #26 on the pop survey. Glen picked up a total of four Grammy awards for “Gentle On My Mind” and “By The Time I Get To Phoenix,” and major stardom was just around the corner.

With Campbell’s record of “By The Time I Get To Phoenix” along with The Fifth Dimension’s mega-hit “Up Up and Away” and actor ’s #2 record “MacArthur Park,” Jimmy Webb was about the hottest songwriter in Los Angeles in late 1967. “By The Time I Get To Phoenix” (based on Webb’s real- life breakup with a girlfriend) had been out for about six months although Jimmy and Glen Campbell still hadn’t met. They finally ran into each other one day at a session and Glen asked Webb if he had any more “town songs” (obviously thinking about a follow-up to “By The Time I Get To Phoenix”). Jimmy replied that he didn’t at the moment, but he promised to come up with something. He went home that afternoon and began writing “Wichita Lineman” specifically for Campbell.

Webb’s inspiration for the lyrics came from a time he remembered driving through Washita County, in rural southwestern . At the time many telephone companies were county-owned facilities, and their linemen were county employees. Heading west into the setting sun along State Route 152 in a very flat, desolate and wide-open part of Oklahoma, Webb drove past a seemingly endless string of telephone poles, each looking exactly the same as the last. Then, in the distance, he noticed the silhouette of a solitary lineman atop a pole. He described it as “a prairie gothic image.” Webb then “put himself atop that pole and put that phone in his hand” as he considered what the lineman might be saying into the receiver (the lyrics describe the loneliness that a telephone or electric company lineman feels while he works, and his longing for an absent lover). Reportedly, the storyline of “Wichita Lineman” was based around the same ex-girlfriend that had inspired the earlier hit “By The Time I Get To Phoenix.” In order for the new song to be more identifiable with listeners, “Wichita” was substituted for “Washita” because it “sang better” as Webb put it.

Webb wrote the first verse and part of a second verse of “Wichita Lineman” and sent a rough demo tape of it over to the studio to see if Campbell and his producer Al DeLory liked it. Jimmy planned to finish the second verse and write a third verse and a chorus if they liked what he had done with the song so far. Otherwise, Webb felt there was no need to spend any more time on it. When he never heard back from Campbell, Webb assumed he just wasn’t interested in the song. When he saw Glen several weeks later, Jimmy asked him, “so whatever happened with that ‘Wichita Lineman’ thing? I guess you didn’t like it, huh?”

“Didn’t like it?” Glen retorted. “We recorded it.”

“But it wasn’t finished,” Webb protested, to which Campbell laughed and replied, “Well, it is now.”

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Due to the short lyrical content, Campbell and DeLory simply added a long guitar solo that mimicked the melody of the verse to make the song long enough. DeLory then added a beautiful string arrangement for the introduction and fade-out, making it a huge crossover smash (reaching #1 country and #3 pop) becoming Campbell’s second-biggest career hit (next to “’). Not too shabby for an unfinished song.

Jimmy Webb was Glen Campbell’s all-time favorite songwriter, creating what Glen determined as the best melodies and chord progressions of any he had ever heard. As I mentioned earlier, Campbell charted with nine Webb songs. In addition to the two mentioned in this story, Glen had good-sized hits with “Where’s The Playground Susie” (#28, 1969), “” (#2, 1970), “It’s A Sin When You Love Somebody” (#16, 1975), “Still Within The Sound Of My Voice” (#5, 1988) and Campbell’s third- biggest career record, 1969’s “Galveston,” another of Webb’s superb “town songs” that topped Billboard’s country chart for three weeks and peaked at #4 on the Hot 100. Additionally, in 1979 Glen Campbell was the first to cut Jimmy’s “” a full six years before the song slammed into #1 for Willie Nelson, Johnny Cash, Waylon Jennings and . – JH

The Story Behind The Song:

“Wildwood Flower” (adapted by A. P. Carter)

The Carter Family (#3 pop, 1928) Hank Thompson and Merle Travis (#5, 1955)

What we now know as country music did indeed exist before the legendary Bristol recording sessions of August, 1927, but before this event, country music’s impact on the national market was only marginal and very inconsistent. The sessions that took place in Bristol, a small border town straddling the Tennessee/Virginia state line, is generally considered by most historians as country music’s “big bang.” Before then, artists such as Vernon Dalhart, Eck Robertson, Henry Whittier and others, who had made their name recording “hillbilly” songs (as country music was known in those days), were not from the hills and hollows or the plains and valleys. These early recording stars sang both rural music and city music, and most knew more about Broadway than they did about hillbillies. Their rural image was often manufactured for the moment and the dollar, and none were solely devoted to a country style. Thus, it was really only when Victor (later RCA) recording executive and talent scout Ralph Peer came to Bristol in the summer of 1927 looking for new recording acts that he uncovered the genuine article. In a yodeling drifter (Jimmie Rodgers) and a religious family trio (the Carter Family), Peer finally found the first real voices of what we now know as country music.

The Carter Family consisted of three individuals: A. P. (sometimes called “Doc”), his wife Sara, and A. P.’s sister-in-law Maybelle (she had married A. P.’s brother Ezra in the spring of 1926). With A. P. singing bass, Sara singing lead and Maybelle playing guitar and autoharp and adding harmonies, the family group had entertained around their home near Maces Springs, Virginia. Unlike other rural bands who played just for their own amusement, the Carters saw their music as both expression and a paycheck. Ambitious, they were one of the few rural acts in search of bookings that paid real money. A. P. even dreamed of cutting records.

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Legend has it that the family read a want ad in a newspaper and learned about Ralph Peer being in the area searching for new musical talent. However, research has never turned up any such advertisement. What probably happened was that A. P. heard the news of Peer’s arrival through the rural grapevine, or more likely caught a brief mention of the event in a newspaper story. In any case, the group’s leader was determined not to miss the opportunity to audition for a major label. Thus, on the appointed day, dressed in poor people’s best, the family made the twenty-five mile drive to Bristol where Peer had set up his portable recording equipment on the third floor of the Taylor-Christian Hat and Glove Company on State Street (which is the Tennessee/Virginia state line that cut right through the center of town).

Those who witnessed the group’s arrival were probably more amused than inspired. Dust-covered after a hot ride over unpaved roads, the small Carter band hardly appeared to be the focal point of country music’s “big bang.” Sara and A. P. had brought along their seven-month-old son Joe and eight-year-old daughter Gladys. Maybelle was seven months pregnant with her first child. In appearance they simply looked like hill folks on a monthly trek to civilization for supplies, but instead of producing a supply list, the Carters pulled their musical instruments from the dust-covered vehicle. As they wandered into the makeshift studio to meet the Victor Talking Machine executive, it must have seemed that this was just another rural, hayseed string band that had made a fruitless pilgrimage to town. But looks can often be deceiving, and under this plain veneer were three unique talents that would blend together to bring Ralph Peer much more than he had ever dared hope.

Sara Carter was a strong vocalist. Although she was raw and untrained, her phrasing and emotion set her apart. Much more than a singer, she was an interpreter of lyrics. She had a quality that made her distinctive in a world where most rural female singers sounded the same. Meanwhile, Maybelle was a woman in a man’s world. When most girls had been content to just sing, she had learned to play. She was a talented instrumentalist who brought a whole new style of playing to the guitar. On her Gibson L- 5 (with the instrument being tuned down from the standard pitch), Maybelle picked the chords on the low strings with her thumb while playing the lead on the high strings with her fingers. This unique and distinctive style (later dubbed the “Carter scratch”) was the dominant guitar-playing technique for decades. She had created a sound that Peer had never heard before and it fascinated him. Even though the didn’t realize it then, Maybelle’s guitar method was the rhythm on which country music was to be built.

While the two women may have had more visible musical talent, it was A. P.’s insight and drive that fueled the team. A. P. Carter was a promoter, a booker, a public-relations man and a salesman. It was his ambition that drove the trio past family get-togethers and into schoolhouse programs and local fair platforms. It was his desire for songs that sent him into the backwoods, listening to and transcribing folk tunes, old hymns, poems and country jigs. He then took the best of these primitive lyrics and melodies and refined them, shaping the material into something that seemed to have the Carter Family stamp all over it.

With Maybelle’s guitar featured equally with Sara’s vocals on A. P.’s , the group was the most original sound that Ralph Peer had ever heard. He was so excited that he spent all of his first encounter with the Carters getting six of their songs recorded. He also obtained publishing rights to their material. Yet, while this first session on August 1, 1927 put the family on their way to a recording deal, it was a few months later before they would cut the song which would assure them a place in country music history.

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The following spring the Carters again emerged from the Virginia hills, journeying this time to Camden, New Jersey. Here, the group recorded ten songs over a three-day period. Among them were “Little Darling Pal of Mine” and their theme song “Keep On The Sunny Side.” Both of these numbers would become standards, but it was another A. P. Carter song that would fully mesh his song-adapting genius with Sara’s rich voice and Maybelle’s revolutionary guitar style: “Wildwood Flower,” recorded May 10, 1928.

“Wildwood Flower” is in itself a very curious song. The lyrics are confusing and far too poetic to have come exclusively from an unpretentious rural environment. Part ode, part folktale, the song contains phrases which are filled with unexplained symbolism. It is anything but a simple love song. How much of it A. P. actually wrote remains unknown. Sara would later admit that her mother had sung it more than two decades before. Some sources date variations of it as far back as 1860. Yet, no matter its origin, the song is a testament to A. P.’s research, his knowledge of , his own sense of style and his ability to blend the rural music of the times with Sara’s voice and Maybelle’s guitar prowess.

“Wildwood Flower” was a huge hit. Released in the late summer of 1928, the song raced up the national chart (country charts wouldn’t come along until 1944), peaking at #3. It would be fifteen years before another country act climbed this high on the more sophisticated ratings system. This kind of success was unheard of for a hillbilly group. While “Wildwood Flower” was a big hit in the city, in rural areas it quickly became an anthem. No one could have predicted the sales it generated in both sheet music and records.

Throughout the first few decades of country music, whenever a country act had a strong hit vehicle, a host of pop acts would usually cut their own versions of the song. Sometimes those newer renditions would outperform and outsell the originals. It is therefore a lasting testament to the Carter Family’s recording of “Wildwood Flower” that in spite of the song’s huge success, no pop versions followed. This was probably because nobody around at that time could imitate Maybelle’s revolutionary new guitar technique. Twenty-seven years later, a country act would give it a try. Hank Thompson’s Brazos Valley Boys along with guitarist Merle Travis rode their tribute to the Carters up to #5 on Billboard’s country charts in 1955. The talented Travis could duplicate Maybelle’s style of guitar playing pretty well, so their instrumental cover of “Wildwood Flower” became a fair-sized hit. Yet it wasn’t the chart numbers or the million-unit sales success of the original 1928 version that made “Wildwood Flower” one of the most important songs in the history of American music. This classic was the cornerstone on which country music finally built its own identity.

The Carter number didn’t just expand the audience for country music. With Maybelle’s unique and influential guitar style, it also expanded the role of the instrument itself. The guitar riffs that were captured on this and all the other Carter Family recordings radically changed music. Up to this point, a country vocal performance had little or no room for instrumental leads. Now guitar players were learning from and expanding on what Maybelle had created. Even musicians who played instruments other than the guitar were influenced by her. Legendary session pianist Floyd Cramer often said that it was ’s use of “grace notes” in her guitar playing which helped inspire his own trademark “slip note” style on the piano. Floyd’s own superb treatment of “Wildwood Flower” appears on his “More Country Classics” album released in 1969 on RCA Victor.

The Carter Family was inducted into the Country Music Hall of Fame in 1970, the first group so honored. – JH

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The Story Behind The Song:

“Sunday Morning Coming Down” (written by Kris Kristofferson)

Ray Stevens (#55 country, #81 pop, 1969) Johnny Cash (#1 country, #46 pop, 1970)

Johnny Cash literally owned the 1969 Country Music Association awards telecast. He was named Entertainer of the Year, Male Vocalist of the Year and, (with his wife June Carter), won the CMA Vocal Group of the Year award. “Johnny Cash ” brought him his second straight Album of the Year trophy and “A Boy Named Sue” earned Single of the Year honors. Additionally, television had made Cash the most recognizable performer of the era. Just four months earlier, on June 7, 1969, “The Johnny Cash Show” had premiered on ABC-TV as a summer replacement series, but it was so popular that the network renewed the program for the fall. The show reached an average of twenty-three million viewers each week, landing it solidly in the Top Twenty in the Neilsen ratings. After a nearly two-year run, “The Johnny Cash Show” made its final broadcast in May of 1971.

ABC attempted at first to exude control over the program, but Cash would have none of it. When the network would try to dictate how it wanted the show presented, Johnny simply would inform them that he was going to do it his way or not at all. It made no difference to him. So in the end, ABC would always concede, but the network brass wasn’t always comfortable with the guests Cash wanted on his show, musicians such as , , Pete Seeger and Joni Mitchell, non-country artists with decidedly left-wing political views. Of course, to keep viewership up, Johnny featured country music’s top stars as well.

At the height of his popularity, Cash received a call from White House aide H. R. (Bob) Haldeman (you might remember his name from the Watergate scandal), who asked Johnny to perform at a special White House ceremony at the request of President Richard Nixon. Cash accepted the invitation for the event, held on April 17, 1970. It seems that the president had a “wish list” of three songs that he specifically wanted Cash to perform, but Johnny declined two of them: a version of Merle Haggard’s “,” (Nixon wasn’t astute on country music and might have thought it was Cash’s hit, not Haggard’s) and the extremely controversial number “Welfare Cadillac,” which had recently climbed into Billboard’s Top Ten for an obscure artist by the name of Guy Drake. Johnny did play the president’s third request “A Boy Named Sue,” plus his own controversial anti-Vietnam release “What Is Truth.” That single eventually peaked at #3.

In the meantime, while all this was going on with Johnny Cash, songwriter Kris Kristofferson was living in a dilapidated tenement in Nashville (alone following a divorce), trying to get some of his tunes recorded. He had been only mildly successful thus far. His situation was a long way down from the potential he had shown during the early years of his life. Kris’s father Lars was a U. S. Air Corps officer (later rising to the rank of U. S. Air Force Major General). He attempted to push his son toward a military career, but young Kris wasn’t really interested in that. He aspired to be a writer and enrolled in California’s Pamona College in 1954, becoming a member of the Kappa Delta Fraternity at Pamona, graduating in 1958 with a BA in literature. Kris earned a Rhodes Scholarship to England’s Oxford University, achieving a degree in English literature by the time he returned to the in 1960, hoping to reach his goal as a novelist.

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During his time at Oxford, Kristofferson had become interested in songwriting. He composed a few tunes and sent them to a friend’s relative , a successful Nashville, Tennessee songwriter. This was his first contact with Music City. However, Kris was under pressure from his family (mainly his father) to join the military, which he reluctantly did and rose to the rank of Captain in the U. S. Army. He became a helicopter pilot after receiving flight training at Fort Rucker, Alabama and was stationed in West Germany as a member of the 8th Infantry Division. When his tour of duty ended, Kristofferson was given an assignment to teach English Literature at West Point, but he declined, deciding to leave the Army and pursue songwriting exclusively. His family disowned Kris because of this decision and they never reconciled with him. They saw it as a rejection of everything they stood for, in spite of the fact that Kristofferson has said he is proud of his time in the military and received the AVA “Veteran of the Year” award in 2003.

After leaving the Army in 1965, Kristofferson moved to Nashville, working at a variety of odd jobs while struggling for success in music. His first song to make the national charts was “Vietnam Blues,” which Dave Dudley took to #12 in 1966. A personal favorite of mine among Kris’s early compositions is “Jody And The Kid,” recorded by in 1968, but it reached only #24. These early tunes didn’t bring in much money for him, and Kristofferson was forced to take a couple of supplemental jobs to meet expenses. By day he was a bartender at Nashville’s Tally Ho Tavern, and by night he worked as a janitor at the Columbia Recording Studios. It was there that Kris became acquainted with Johnny Cash, but he was told to not attempt to pitch his songs to the artists who were there for sessions, or he might end up losing his janitorial job.

Using his earlier flight training from his military days, Kristofferson was also employed as a contract worker, flying helicopters for PHI, an offshore oil-drilling company based in Lafayette, . He would drive down there from Nashville every other week to work, and it was during those long, lonely nights sitting at the top of an oil platform or on his helicopter pad in the Gulf of Mexico that he penned many of his classic songs. However, it was at his meager housing unit up in Nashville that Kris wrote “Sunday Morning Coming Down,” and the story he tells in it actually happened during a walk around his neighborhood one Sunday morning. The song found its way to at , who recorded it with , a pop singer that Foster had just signed to the label. Stevens’ introductory version of “Sunday Morning Coming Down” in 1969 brought him to the country charts for the first time, but only at a distant #55.

Kristofferson followed up Dave Dudley’s “Vietnam Blues” and Roy Drusky’s “Jody And The Kid” with several more decent-sized releases of his early compositions: ’s “From The Bottle To The Bottom” (#20), “Once More With Feeling” by (#2), ’s “Your Time’s Comin” (#4), “The Taker” by Waylon Jennings (#5), “Come Sundown” by (#7) and ’s version of “Me And Bobby McGee” (#12). “Me And Bobby McGee” was covered two years later by rock icon and reached #1 on the Billboard Hot 100 pop chart, becoming one of the most famous songs in Kristofferson’s catalog.

Upon Kristofferson’s first meeting with Johnny Cash at the Columbia Recording Studios, he immediately struck up a fast friendship with him, and after Kris signed with Monument Records and released his first album, he and Johnny appeared together at the , at which Cash first introduced him as a stage performer. Kris was determined to have Johnny record some of his material, and since it was forbidden for him to hawk his songs to Cash or any other of the artists who showed up at the Columbia Studios while he was sweeping the floors, Kristofferson hatched a plan to get a song to Johnny away from the Columbia premises: he flew his helicopter (without prior arrangement) directly to Cash’s

17 front lawn at his home on Old Hickory Lake some twenty miles northeast of downtown Nashville to personally deliver a tape of “Sunday Morning Coming Down” to him. Then the story differs considerably: Kristofferson claims that Johnny actually wasn’t home the day he landed the helicopter. Cash, however, remembers it quite differently. He reflected to columnist Bill Flannigan that he was indeed home that day and heard the commotion, came out of his house and there was the helicopter sitting in the front yard. Kristofferson fell out of it with a beer in one hand and a tape in the other and said, “By God, I’m gonna get a song to you one way or the other!” Johnny said, “Well, you just did, let’s go in and hear it.”

Cash liked “Sunday Morning Coming Down” very much, and decided to perform it live on his TV show. However, Kris remembered one of the lines in the song: “I’m wishing Lord that I was stoned.” He thought the network brass might not take too kindly to the word “stoned.” Johnny said “Don’t worry about it, I’ll handle them.” Sure enough, ABC (which screened the lyrics of all the songs performed on the show) objected to the word, to which Cash replied as usual, “I’ll do it my way or I walk.” Kristofferson was in the audience at the Ryman Auditorium the night that Johnny was scheduled to perform “Sunday Morning Coming Down” for the television taping. He was nervous, wondering if Cash would cave to the network and cut the controversial word. Much to his surprise, Johnny sang the line just the way Kris had written it!

Cash’s live version of “Sunday Morning Coming Down” reached #1 on Billboard’s Hot Country Singles chart on October 10, 1970 and held that position for two weeks. It was named “Song of the Year” by the Country Music Association. That same year, the CMA’s West Coast rival, the Academy of Country Music, voted Ray Price’s mega-hit “For The Good Times” (also written by Kristofferson) as its “Song of the Year,” marking the only time a songwriter has received the same award from these two organizations in the same year for different songs.

The hits kept coming with other Kristofferson compositions. A second Ray Price single, “I’d Rather Be Sorry” soared to #1, as did “Please Don’t Tell Me How The Story Ends” by Ronnie Milsap in 1974, as well as Kris’s own chart-topper “Why Me” in 1973. Perhaps the most famous of all is ’s “Help Me Make It Through The Night,” a Grammy winner in 1971. A personal favorite of mine written by Kris was on the back of Price’s “I’d Rather Be Sorry” called “When I Loved Her.” Simply fantastic lyrics! I would definitely put “When I Loved Her” and “Sunday Morning Coming Down” on my list of the top ten all-time great lyrical works in country music. Kristofferson was voted into the Nashville on October 9, 1977 and achieved the industry’s highest honor in 2004 with his induction into the Country Music Hall of Fame. – JH

The Story Behind The Song:

”Crazy” (written by Willie Nelson)

Patsy Cline (#2 country, #9 pop, 1962) (#6, 1977)

When Faron Young topped Billboard’s country singles chart for nine weeks and reached #12 on the Billboard pop chart with “” in early 1961, songwriter Willie Nelson, a man considered kind of

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“quirky” by most people in the music business, suddenly found himself in high demand. It seemed that all of a sudden, everyone in town wanted to record one of his songs, and his demos were being ordered by dozens of different studios, managers and stars. When Willie would walk into Tootsie’s Orchid Lounge, the watering hole of choice for most music industry personnel, all the patrons would gather around to see what Nashville’s newest genius had written lately. Patsy Cline was no exception. She too grabbed Nelson whenever she got a chance and begged him to share some of his latest song ideas. After hearing Willie’s “Funny How Time Slips Away,” she knew she wanted that song for her next session, so she called the writer to arrange a meeting. However, things didn’t turn out the way Patsy had planned.

Billy Walker had known Willie Nelson since their days in Texas. The singer had even put Willie up at his house when Nelson first came to Nashville. When Willie had needed someone to cut demos, Walker had stepped in. Billy had even sung the vocal on “Funny How Time Slips Away.” When Walker’s label, Columbia, heard his version of the Nelson composition, they opted for Billy to re-cut and release the tune. It had been eight years since Walker had managed a Top Ten record, and the label thought this song might give his career a much-needed shot in the arm. Patsy Cline was infuriated when she discovered that Billy Walker and Columbia had beaten her to “Funny How Time Slips Away.” She needed a follow-up to her recent #1 hit “,” and she wanted it to have the ability to cross over to the pop chart. Cline urged Nelson to allow her to record “Funny How Time Slips Away” too, but Willie owed far too much to Walker to let that happen, so he declined. Then the ever-polite Nelson, addressing Cline as “Miss Patsy,” told her he had other songs back at the office that had hit potential, and she could have one of those.

It was Walker who then suggested one of Nelson’s tunes that he thought might be right for Patsy called “Crazy.” Willie himself had recorded the demo on that one, a song that Nelson had composed soon after his arrival in Nashville. When he had first pitched it, the song failed to generate any interest, so Willie simply filed it away. During his early years as a songwriter, Nelson had sold some of his tunes for a mere pittance of what they eventually turned out to be worth and occasionally he would try to sell “Crazy,” but finding a home for the number was not his passion. Yet, at the moment when Patsy and her producer were in dire need of a song, “Crazy” was all the young Texan had to offer at the time.

“Crazy” didn’t have any special story behind it. The song had fallen together in a writing session. Yet, even though the tune’s words were not apparently linked to any special event in Nelson’s life, they seemed to reflect a lot of what he was having to deal with upon his entry into the world of Music City songwriting. Poor, alone (his family had stayed in Texas until Willie could make enough money to bring them to Tennessee), talented, but unappreciated, Nelson had to be aware just how crazy he was for sticking it out in the music business. In almost a decade of work, he had very little to show for his efforts. He loved the industry, but it didn’t seem to express any affection for him. In a very real sense, even if it was unintended, “Crazy” reflected Willie’s relationship with his profession.

Patsy agreed to record “Crazy” without even listening to it first (just the fact that Willie had written it was good enough for her) and brought Nelson’s demo to the Quonset Hut studio on the evening of Monday, August 21, 1961. Arriving with her for the 7:00 PM session were producer Owen Bradley and the usual ensemble of Nashville’s acclaimed “A Team” group of musicians: on , Floyd Cramer on piano, on electric bass, on acoustic bass and Buddy Harman on drums, along with background vocalists . Also on the session was Patsy’s manager Randy Hughes chiming in on acoustic guitar (he would later pilot the airplane that would crash, killing Cline, himself, Cowboy Copus and ).

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Most recording sessions in those days were scheduled for three hours in duration, and three or four songs were expected to be completed during that time frame. But for whatever reason, it was decided from the outset that this particular session would be devoted entirely to “Crazy.” It is unclear why that decision was made or who made it, but as it turned out, there were so many problems that night, that “Crazy” was the only one they would have gotten around to anyway. The session started out badly. Owen Bradley put Willie’s demo of “Crazy” up on the big speakers in the control room for Patsy and the musicians to hear in order to get the initial “feel” of the song so they could begin work. Patsy hadn’t yet heard the song and when she listened to the demo, she absolutely hated the Nelson tune and refused to do it. One of the famous Cline/Bradley arguments ensued, which Owen won as always, and Patsy reluctantly started work that night.

The producer decided to let Cline fit the song to suit her own style. She began by tossing out Willie’s unique phrasing (he delivered the lyrics ahead of and behind the beat, which annoyed Patsy). She also tried to smooth the song’s meter. A ballad-type arrangement was worked up, but after that was all done, it was discovered that Cline was still adversely affected by the injuries she had received in a near fatal auto accident two months earlier. Her ribs still hadn’t healed sufficiently, and the pain was prohibiting her from holding the breath to sustain some of the notes. The session dragged on, but Patsy was unable to achieve a suitable vocal performance. Finally, over four hours later, at 11:15 PM, Cline called it a night and left, agreeing to come back and complete her vocal when she felt up to it. Bradley saved the musicians’ instrumental track, which he considered “perfect---one of the best tracks I’ve ever been associated with.”

Patsy Cline always considered overdubbing a sign of weakness. She much preferred stepping up to the microphone with all the musicians present and laying down the finished product in one take. But on this particular night, she gratefully accepted the chance to come in later after further healing of her ribs and dub her voice in, which she did just one week later. This time she nailed “Crazy” on her very first attempt. When Willie Nelson heard the final cut, he was blown away. He would tell those at Tootsie’s, “it was magic!” Decades later, Nelson still proclaims that Patsy Cline’s recording of “Crazy” is “my favorite of anything I ever wrote.”

Released in mid-fall, “Crazy” landed on the Billboard pop chart first, on November 6, 1961, and made the country listing the following week, on November 13th. It went on to peak at #2 for two weeks on the country chart in early ‘62, and provided Patsy with her only Top Ten pop hit, reaching #9. Accolades for Cline’s recording are many. “Crazy” is ranked #85 on a list of the “500 Greatest Songs Of All Time” (in all genres of music) compiled by “” Magazine. It was inducted into the in 1992, and received a placement in the Library of Congress’s “National Recording Registry” in 2003, the highest honor a recording can achieve. - JH

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The Story Behind The Song:

“Holding Her And Loving You” (written by Walt Aldridge and Tommy Brasfield)

Earl Thomas Conley (#1, 1983)

In 1975 when Earl Thomas Conley and his future record producer Nelson Larkin still lived in Huntsville, Alabama, they frequently headed over to Muscle Shoals to hang out with some of the local musicians. They formed a friendship with songwriter Tommy Brasfield. Despite their camaraderie, Brasfield never pitched a song to Conley until 1983, when he finally felt he had written one suited to Earl’s musical personality: “Holding Her And Loving You.”

Tommy and his songwriting buddy Walt Aldridge composed the number about a friend of theirs who was going through the difficult situation described in the song’s storyline. They were talking about this guy one night, trying to put themselves in his place and imagining what it must be like to be in that sad predicament. “Holding Her And Loving You” was born out of their conversation.

When Brasfield took the song to Nashville, Conley and producer Larkin were preparing for a rough recording session. Earl wanted to use his road band in the studio, but the night before, things had not progressed well. They decided that evening to bring in session players for the next day’s work, but only after a long, drawn-out argument. Larkin wasn’t particularly thrilled about the songs they planned to cut, and decided to attend the session out of duty.

Larkin was about to head to the studio when Brasfield came into his office, promising a hit for Conley. The producer tried to put off listening to the demo, but at Tommy’s insistence he put the tape in his cassette player. Nelson didn’t like the first song, but he let the tape run while he gathered up material and after hearing the first few lines of the next track, “Holding Her And Loving You,” he knew he had a hit.

Getting Earl to listen wasn’t easy. Larkin showed up at the session fifteen minutes late and Conley didn’t want to hear anything new. They worked on the two scheduled songs and after things went smoothly, Earl consented to listen to “Holding Her And Loving You.” After hearing just three lines, he decided to record it. The musicians played it through just twice and Conley laid down his track. But Earl was getting sick and didn’t feel like doing another take. He promised Larkin that he would come back in and do another vocal when he felt better, but the producer didn’t want a second performance. Nelson thought the first one was perfect.

“Holding Her And Loving You” sailed to #1 on Billboard’s country singles chart November 26, 1983, becoming Conley’s fourth of his eighteen career chart-toppers, and is one of the hits included in Earl’s string of sixteen number ones in a row. This achievement ties for second place on the list of consecutive number one singles (Alabama holds the clear-cut record with twenty-one). After reaching the summit, “Holding Her And Loving You” earned respect for Aldridge and Brasfield from their peers when the Nashville Songwriters Association named it the “Song of the Year.” – JH

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The Story Behind The Song:

”Last Date” (written by Floyd Cramer)

Floyd Cramer (#2 pop, #11 country, 1960) – “ (With You)” (#5, 1961) Conway Twitty – “(Lost Her Love) On Our Last Date” (#1, 1972) – “(Lost His Love) On Our Last Date” (#1, 1983)

During the formative years of country music, the piano had not been considered a mainstay of that genre. The instrument was ranked well behind the guitar, fiddle, stand-up bass, , , etc. as an important ingredient for a country band. While some progressive bands such as and his Texas Playboys always carried a keyboard player, most groups let ivory-ticklers find work in gospel, blues or . When RCA Victor’s A & R director brought Floyd Cramer to Nashville in 1955 to work sessions, the concept changed dramatically.

Four years earlier, at the age of eighteen, Cramer had been hired as the house pianist for the famed “” radio program out of Shreveport, Louisiana, heard throughout the South every Saturday night live over 50,000 watt KWKH-AM. Many country music performers, who would go on to become top stars in Nashville, cut their teeth on the program. So much so that the Louisiana Hayride came to be known as the “Cradle of the Stars.”

At the Hayride, Cramer not only played for all the artists who needed a piano for their live weekend performances on the show, but often joined them in the studio or on the road. Between 1951 and 1955, Floyd traveled or recorded with, among many others, Hank Williams, Faron Young, , Lefty Frizzell, Jim Reeves, and Elvis Presley. His solid work didn’t go unnoticed by the music industry’s executives. Chet Atkins, by then heading up RCA’s Nashville recording operation, came to know Floyd and his arsenal of keyboard talent when the young man accompanied Jim Reeves, Webb Pierce and other Hayride stars to Nashville for studio sessions. Impressed, Chet pitched the idea for Cramer to move to Nashville and work sessions exclusively. Floyd accepted, and very soon upon his arrival in Music City, he was the busiest studio musician in town.

Leaving the confines of the studio from time to time and touring as a solo act, Cramer (along with Atkins) became one of only two session players who came to be recognized not just by the recording artists, but also by country music fans. Yet, it was the development of a certain piano style that was to make Floyd a star.

Songwriter and pianist Don Robertson had tried a new playing technique on a demo which had found its way to Atkins’ desk at RCA. Chet was fascinated by what Robertson had done with the piano on “Please Help Me I’m Falling,” and played the demo for Cramer. Floyd shrugged and effortlessly mimicked Roberston’s blended method of playing. Turned out that Floyd had been experimenting with a similar style for years, he had just never had a reason to use it when he was doing session work. The process consisted primarily of a “slurring” effect of certain notes, resembling a style of guitar-playing popularized years earlier by Maybelle Carter of the Carter Family. Cramer easily adapted the sound to the piano.

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After the massive success of Hank Locklin’s release of “Please Help Me I’m Falling,” featuring Floyd’s new “slip-note” piano style, Atkins saw commercial possibilities for the sound, and urged Cramer to come up with a song that would display this new country keyboard style. It just so happened that Floyd had already created such a tune, as yet un-named. The song didn’t have any lyrics, but with its sad, mournful melody line, Cramer thought it would be the perfect number with which to showcase his new piano lick. It wasn’t until Chet gave him the green light to record the piece did Floyd stop to consider a title. Cramer decided on “Last Date” because he felt the whole thing sounded sad and so final. To him, the somber melody just seemed to fit a “last date” situation.

Released in the fall of 1960, Cramer’s “Last Date” worked its way onto the Billboard pop chart by late October. It would spend fifteen weeks on the pop side, peaking at #2 and holding that position for four weeks, blocked from the top spot, ironically, by Elvis Presley’s “Are You Lonesome Tonight,” a song on which Floyd had played.

Country disc jockeys were slower to pick up on the piano instrumental. The reason may have been based on the prejudice that the keyboard was not a true country instrument. Yet, just a couple of weeks after pop fans had begun to request Cramer’s slip-note style, country listeners jumped on the bandwagon too. Lingering on the playlists for four and a half months, “Last Date” ended its run just out of the country Top Ten at #11.

The haunting melody which Cramer had written challenged several songwriters, who wanted to fit words to the instrumental. The first to give it a try was singer Skeeter Davis. Floyd’s record had been out just a few weeks when Davis brought Chet Atkins some lyrics she had written to go with Cramer’s music. Sensing the possibilities of a vocal hit on “Last Date,” Atkins called in Boudleaux Bryant (half of the famed husband/wife songwriting team Boudleaux and Felice Bryant) to rework and polish Skeeter’s draft.

Bryant initially attempted to simply finish what Skeeter had started, but he was having some difficulty. As time went by, he wanted to scrap the whole thing and start fresh, but Davis didn’t want to give up the words she had already written. Finally, Chet decided to simply combine the lyrics of both writers. Bryant didn’t like the final result at all, thinking the two different versions didn’t fit well together. Boudleaux may not have liked it, but the public did. They gave Skeeter a three-month chart ride, and her “My Last Date (With You)” finished at #5 on Billboard’s country singles chart in early 1961. Even though Davis’s chart peak on the country playlists had been better than Cramer’s, in most country fans’ eyes “Last Date” remained Floyd’s song. Everywhere he appeared he had to close the show with the sad melody.

At about the same time that Davis was working up her first draft of words for Cramer’s song, another notable name in the music industry got the same idea. Like most recording artists, Conway Twitty had known Floyd Cramer for some time. When he heard the piano master’s “Last Date,” he too was moved to write words to it. When Skeeter Davis beat him to the recording studio, Twitty sat on his completely different version of “Last Date” for eleven years. Finally in 1972, Conway issued his rendition, which he titled “(Lost Her Love) On Our Last Date,” but instead of spotlighting a piano on it, Twitty used his trademark sound: John Hughey’s steel guitar on the breaks and fills. This third rendering of “Last Date” took the song to its first appointment with #1 on Billboard’s country chart. Eleven years later, the song reached the summit again, this time (with slightly adjusted lyrics for the gender change) by Emmylou Harris. It seems that just like Cramer’s unique playing style, his classic composition will never go out of fashion.

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After the phenomenal success of Floyd ‘s original 1960 recording of “Last Date,” dozens of vocalists (country and pop alike) wanted the distinctive “slip-note” piano sound incorporated on their own records, and Cramer became a busier session player than he had ever been before, plus he had to juggle his own solo career as well. This caused him to be unavailable at times, and there were quite a few instances when scheduled sessions would have to be postponed because many artists wouldn’t record if Floyd could not be there. Elvis Presley, for example, wanted only Cramer as his studio pianist, and used him prominently on many of his hits through 1968 (the year that Floyd began to dramatically cut back on his session work), most notably on “Can’t Help Falling In Love” (1961), “Anything That’s Part Of You” (1962) and “Puppet On A String” (1965). When Elvis recorded away from Nashville at RCA Victor’s facility, Cramer would be flown to California (at RCA’s expense) to work those sessions.

Looking all the way back to Al Stricklin, the innovative keyboardist for Bob Wills and his Texas Playboys, , the “King of the Hillbilly Piano Players,” , the Grand Ole Opry’s “Queen of Country Ragtime,” Jerry Lee Lewis, rockabilly’s frantic piano pounder and Hargus “Pig” Robbins, Nashville’s other great session pianist, country music has recognized a small, but diverse group of keyboard masters. Yet, before the emergence of Floyd Cramer, the piano was a country music novelty to most fans. Its place in the genre was small and somewhat unimportant. Cramer, with his unique sound as well as his work on thousands of studio sessions, put the ivories on the Music City map, and in doing so, was the first musician elected to the Country Music Hall of Fame in 2003. Floyd’s “Last Date” was inducted into the Grammy Hall Of Fame the following year. That classic song earned the keyboard an overdue date with destiny and became the national anthem of the country piano. – JH

The Story Behind The Song:

”Big Bad John” (written by Jimmy Dean)

Jimmy Dean (#1 country, #1 pop, 1961)

In the early 1960s, Jimmy Dean was primarily known as a television performer, not a hit-maker. He had started out hosting a local, country music television show in the Washington, D. C. market. Among the performers who got their first big break on Dean’s program were future Country Music Hall of Fame members Patsy Cline and (whom Dean ended up having to fire because of Clark’s habitual tardiness).

A few years later, Dean found himself based in New York, hosting a program for the CBS Television Network called “The Morning Show.” Unfortunately, not being at the same level of NBC’s popular “Today Show,” Jimmy’s program was cancelled after only nine months, but CBS kept him on staff. The network changed the name of his program to “,” revamped the format and moved it to weekday afternoons and Saturdays. While serving as a TV host, Dean had also been making records for CBS’s recording division, Columbia Records (signing to the label in 1957). He had released about ten singles, but they hadn’t really gone anywhere. His one lone Top Five country hit had come several years earlier called “Bummin’ Around” on the Four Star label in 1953, but he hadn’t appeared on Billboard’s country chart since (although his name did show up in the lower rungs of the pop listings every once in a while). Dean usually recorded in Columbia’s New York studios and rarely did sessions in

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Nashville, but during one particular recording assignment to Music City, his career took a dramatic turn upward.

The general routine at Nashville sessions in those days was to complete four songs in three hours (enough for two 45 rpm records). That included working up the arrangements, figuring out each musician’s part, going through the song a couple of times, then stepping up to the mic and delivering the goods live with the featured artist and all the players together. It was just a “go in there and do it” type of mentality. Needless to say, this method took an abundance of talent from everyone involved. Nowadays, in some cases, it takes weeks to make just one recording, with multiple overdubs and layer upon layer of instrumentation.

Dean was on the flight to Nashville for his assigned recording session with just three songs prepared. He needed one more for a “B” side. As Jimmy sat there on the plane thinking about what he might do, he came up with an idea. A few months earlier in New York, he’d had his first acting experience working in a play, a summer stock production of “Destry Rides Again,” based on the 1939 movie starring Jimmy Stewart. It was there that Dean met and worked with an actor named John Mento, a very large man, burly and extremely tall, who dwarfed just about everyone in the play. Whenever Jimmy would pass Mento on the set, he’d address him as “Big Johhnn.” Dean thought it had a nice ring to it, so during the hour-and-a-half flight from New York to Nashville, he decided to write a story around his actor friend, lyrically putting him in a mine and killing him.

Jimmy looked around for some paper to write on but all he could find was an American Arlines boarding certificate. So, on the back of the certificate Dean wrote “Big Bad John.” He recorded the song as he read it from his original scribbling. The session took place at the famed “Quonset Hut” studio, owned by Owen Bradley. Used for television productions as well as recordings, Columbia had been leasing the Quonset Hut for many years to handle sessions for the label’s large stable of artists. Bradley sold it to Columbia outright in 1962 and it became “Columbia Studio B.” Dozens of classic recordings came out of there over the next twenty years until the studio was demolished in 1982 immediately following the John Anderson sessions which made up his “Wild And Blue” album.

On “Big Bad John,” work began with legendary A-Team guitarist Grady Martin assisting Dean with the song’s arrangement. At the time, Martin owned Cramart Publishing Company (in partnership with Floyd Cramer) and in return for Grady’s help on the arrangement, Dean gave him the publishing rights. At the helm was Columbia’s most prolific Nashville-based producer Don Law, and in addition to Martin on guitar, Floyd “Lightning” Chance played bass with Buddy Harman on drums, plus background vocals by The Jordanaires.

However, by far the most memorable musician on the recording that day was Dean’s old friend, pianist Floyd Cramer, who ended up not playing piano at all. During the rehearsal of “Big Bad John,” Cramer turned to the producer (Don Law) and said, “Don, you don’t need me to play piano on this song. I’d just be playing the same notes as the background vocalists.” Then an obvious idea hit him. Floyd reached over and picked up a chunk of steel generally used as ballast for a TV camera, tied a coat hanger around it and hung it on a coat rack. Somewhere in the studio, he found a hammer and began to strike the chunk of steel, apparently looking for the sound of a miner’s pick. He then pulled a microphone over to it and told the engineer to add some echo. Cramer worked magic that day, and the sound effect he created became a very important part of “Big Bad John’s” success.

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Of course, there used to be a lot of that creative thinking and ability in Nashville, and Don Law received quite a bit of credit for it. But the truth was that he merely let the musicians do what they knew how to do. The producer had a studio full of creative people, and he let them create. Floyd Cramer was indeed one of the best, and it’s a safe bet that this was the first and last time that one of the greatest pianists in the world ever played a hammer on a record. Earlier that same year, Law received kudos for creating a new type of guitar sound on Marty Robbins’ #1 hit “Don’t Worry,” but actually it was a blown amp in the mixing board that caused Grady Martin’s guitar to distort, creating the “fuzz-tone” sound that other producers and musicians tried to re-create for years afterward. In reality, it was a total accident, which Law and Robbins decided to leave on the finished record (reportedly Grady wanted to re-cut it).

Upon its release in the fall of ’61, “Big Bad John” sailed effortlessly (in just three weeks) to the top of both Billboard’s country chart and Billboard’s Hot 100 pop chart, becoming one of only four records during the 1960s to accomplish this (the others are Marty Robbins’ “El Paso” in January of 1960, and Jeannie C. Riley’s “Harper Valley PTA” and Bobby Goldsboro’s “Honey,” both in 1968). “Big Bad John” was actually a bigger pop hit, resting at the summit for five weeks there, while holding the #1 slot for only two weeks on the country playlists. Any way you slice it though, it was a monster record. Dean didn’t realize just how massive it was until one day he was driving in New York City in his purple ’57 Oldsmobile convertible and “Big Bad John” came on the radio while Jimmy was crossing the George Washington Bridge. Never wanting to hear himself sing, he reached over to change the radio to another station and there it was again. Before he could get across the bridge, he turned the dial again and heard it playing on a third station! And this wasn’t a multi-station simulcast, it was three individual broadcasts.

After the incredible success of “Big Bad John,” Dean wanted to do something special for the man who had inspired the song, his actor friend John Mento, so Jimmy set up an appointment with his tailor so “Big John” could go in and be fitted for a brand new suit, reportedly the biggest one Jimmy’s tailor had ever worked on. Not bad for a fellow who merely had a catchy name and happened to be several inches taller than anyone around.

Jimmy Dean admittedly didn’t think very much of the song when he scribbled the words to it on the back of the American Airlines boarding certificate during the flight to Nashville that day, but to date “Big Bad John” has sold a little over eight million copies. A pretty fair tally for what was supposed to be the “B” side of a record. And speaking of “B” sides, Dean’s cover of ’s song “I Won’t Go Huntin’ With You Jake” (a #3 hit for Stuart himself in 1950) was placed on the back of “Big Bad John.” This made Hamblen a very wealthy man because, in those days, composers of “B” sides received the same amount of royalties as the “A” side composer.

An amazing footnote to the “Big Bad John” story is that Jimmy Dean’s contract with Columbia Records had expired before he recorded the song. No one had realized it, including Dean himself. The expiration had somehow slipped through the cracks of Columbia’s legal department. A classic case of the right hand not knowing what the left hand was doing. Of course, with Jimmy now having the hottest record in the country, the matter of renegotiating his contract would be considerably different than before, and Dean ended up with a particularly lucrative new deal.

Another bit of trivia about “Big Bad John” is that there were two different endings to the song. In 1961, modesty and decency had to be used in the content of records, movies, TV shows, etc. (unlike now, when anything and everything can be said or shown). Well, the original ending that Dean had written was “At the bottom of this mine lies one hell of a man, Big John,” and that’s how Jimmy recorded it. The record was released that way and about twenty-five thousand copies had already been pressed and

26 shipped when Columbia suddenly halted production. The company ordered Dean back into the studio to change the lyrical content, thinking the word “hell” was too risqué. The label’s executives instructed that the original spoken-word ending be replaced with “At the bottom of this mine lies a big, big man.” Jimmy considered it odd that the change was ordered because he had already said the word “hell” earlier in the song (“through the dust and smoke of this man-made hell”), but that didn’t bother them, only the ending. Reportedly, the original ending was released just on the first twenty-five thousand singles and supposedly was never issued on an album, although I do personally remember hearing this ending several times over the years and I doubt that I was listening to an original 45 RPM single.

“Big Bad John” won several accolades for Jimmy Dean, including “Most Popular Juke Box Record of the Year” from the Music Operators of America. Jimmy acquired a “gold record” award from Broadcast Music Inc. The song was also nominated for four 1961 Grammy awards: Record of the Year, Song of the Year, Best Male Vocal Performance and Best Country and Recording of the Year, winning in the latter category. “Big Bad John” also opened many doors for Dean, allowing him to perform at the London Palladium, The Hollywood Bowl, on television’s “ Show,” and as a guest-host on Jack Paar’s “Tonight Show,” where he reconciled with one of his guests that night, Roy Clark, whom he had fired from his Washington, D. C. television show several years earlier. With their friendship re- established, they remained close until Jimmy’s death on June 13, 2010. Four months before his passing, word came that Dean had been elected to the Country Music Hall of Fame and would be officially inducted at the Medallion Ceremony in October. Unfortunately, he died before that ceremony took place. In an interview shortly after his selection was announced, a reporter asked Dean how he felt about becoming a member of the Country Music Hall of Fame and Jimmy quipped “I thought I was already in there!” – JH

The Story Behind The Song:

“Ready For The Times To Get Better” (written by )

Crystal Gayle (#1, 1978)

Riding behind a monster hit, the obvious move for Crystal Gayle would have been to imitate “Don’t It Make My Brown Eyes Blue” with her next single. Instead, she segued from that bluesy record to the haunting sound of “Ready For The Times To Get Better.” Crystal observed that usually whenever an artist would have a big hit, the follow-up would sound almost exactly the same as the first one (the basic idea being to not disturb a formula that worked), but it generally didn’t come off nearly as well. So she liked to try the opposite approach – releasing something totally different than the previous single.

“Ready For The Times To Get Better” was certainly an unusual selection. Not only did it differ significantly from “Don’t It Make My Brown Eyes Blue,” but it wasn’t even from the same album “.” Instead, Crystal’s label United Artists dipped back into the previous album titled “Crystal” for the new single. Additionally, the song broke another of Nashville’s long-sacred rules: it was written in a minor key.

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“Ready For The Times To Get Better” is one of the five Top Ten songs that producer Allen Reynolds has written. The others are ’ “” (#5), Waylon Jennings’ “Dreaming My Dreams With You” (#10), and two others for Crystal: “” (#6) and “Somebody Loves You” (#8). Reynolds penned “Ready For The Times To Get Better” during a three-hour period at a friend’s house. He had gone to water the plants during his friend’s vacation, and ended up “noodling” at the keyboard.

Allen didn’t play the piano that much, but a dissonant chord came into his head and as he was working with it, the first part of the song came really fast. Reynolds barely had time to rustle up a pen and paper and jot down the lyrics of the first verse. “It just popped out,” he reflected.

Doubting his objectivity about his own song (especially since it was so much different than the usual country music fare at the time), Reynolds was reluctant to play “Ready For The Times To Get Better” for Crystal. Those doubts were erased on April 1, 1978 when the song became Gayle’s fourth number one record. – JH

The Story Behind The Song:

“Ode To Billie Joe” (written by Bobbie Gentry)

Bobbie Gentry (#17 country, #1 pop, #7 adult contemporary, 1967) (#39, 1967)

I had a request for this one from “Sharon,” one of our regular KWTO listeners, and it’s a great suggestion because there is a most interesting story behind this song. “Ode To Billie Joe” is a very unusual tune that turned out to be the third biggest pop hit of 1967 (behind only the Box Tops’ “The Letter,” and “To Sir With Love” by Lulu). The tune spent four weeks at #1 on the Billboard Hot 100, but also scored well on Billboard’s country chart, reaching #17. It was written and recorded by Bobbie Gentry, a 23-year-old singer from Chickasaw County, Mississippi. Her real name was Roberta Streeter and she adapted her professional name from the 1952 movie “Ruby Gentry,” starring and Charlton Heston.

“Ode To Billie Joe’s” storyline was set in the Mississippi Delta country where Bobbie grew up, and the song mentions actual landmarks in the area (there really was a “Tallahatchie Bridge,” located about twelve miles from Gentry’s hometown of Greenwood, Mississippi). This, combined with the fact that the piece was so intricately detailed, led many listeners to speculate that the song might have been written around a true-life occurrence from Gentry’s childhood, but that wasn’t the case. “Ode To Billie Joe” was strictly fictional.

The song is a first-person narrative that reveals a Southern Gothic tale in its verses which feature a teenage girl telling a story of herself and her family sitting around the table at dinnertime discussing the big news of the day: a local young man named Billie Joe McAllister has taken his own life by jumping off the Tallahatchie Bridge. During the conversation, the girl grows moody and withdrawn and won’t eat her dinner. Her mother reveals that the local minister had seen her and Billie Joe throwing something off the bridge only the day before, revealing that she and Billie Joe were at least friends, and probably even

28 closer than that. The song’s narration ends one year later with the girl’s father now deceased, her mother despondent because of this and the girl wiling away her time just sitting at the top of the bridge dropping flowers into the murky water below.

Thus the song’s mystery: what did Billie Joe and his now obvious girlfriend throw off the bridge? The listeners wanted to know. Speculation ran rampant after “Ode To Billie Joe” hit the airwaves in August, 1967. It was a media frenzy (similar to the “Who Shot J. R.” scenario from the television series “Dallas” in the early ‘80s). In a November, 1967 interview, Gentry said the question was asked of her by literally everyone she met. The most-guessed items were an engagement ring, a bottle of LSD pills, a draft card and an aborted fetus (which I personally thought was the most logical answer). As the song’s writer, Bobbie knew what the object was, but she wouldn’t reveal it. For years she said, “No matter what the item was, it was there for two reasons: it locked up a definite relationship between Billie Joe and the girl, and it provided a possible motivation as to why he jumped off the bridge the next day.” At the time I felt that Gentry’s rather veiled explanation gave the “aborted fetus” theory the most credence. Years later, the real answer finally came to light.

When writer Herman Raucher met Bobbie Gentry in preparation for writing a novel and screenplay based on “Ode To Billie Joe,” Gentry submitted that the song’s real theme was “indifference.” First, the illustration of a group of people enjoying a nice dinner while nonchalantly discussing a well-known young man’s suicide. Second, the obvious gap between the girl and her mother after both women experience a common loss (first, Billie Joe, then later, Papa), and yet the mother and daughter are unable to recognize their mutual loss and share their grief.

The bridge mentioned in “Ode To Billie Joe” was a real-life landmark which indeed crossed the Tallahatchie River. It was located near Money, Mississippi, twelve miles north of Bobbie Gentry’s hometown of Greenwood. Soon after the record’s success, the Tallahatchie Bridge saw an increase of people willing to jump off of it. Since the bridge’s height was only twenty feet above the water, death or injury was unlikely. Still, to curb the trend, the Board of Aldermen of Leflore County, Mississippi enacted a law fining jumpers $100. The bridge collapsed in June, 1972 and has since been replaced. The November 10, 1967 issue of Life Magazine featured a photo of Gentry crossing the original bridge.

“Ode To Billie Joe” was originally intended as the “B” side of Bobbie’s first single for Capitol Records (the “A” side was a blues number called “Mississippi Delta”). “Ode To Billie Joe” was recorded at Capitol’s Studio C in Los Angeles on July 10, 1967. The original cut, with musicians backing Gentry’s guitar, contained eleven verses. It told more of Billie Joe’s story and ran over seven minutes. Capitol’s executives realized “Ode To Billie Joe” was a better option for a single, so they cut the length by almost half (down to 4:15) and re-recorded it with a string orchestra. The shorter version left more of the story to the listener’s imagination, and made the single more suitable for radio airplay. Musically, the song is noted for its long descending scale by the strings at the conclusion, depicting the flowers being dropped off the Tallahatchie Bridge and ending up in the river below.

“Ode To Billie Joe’s” popularity proved so enduring that in 1976, nine years after the record was released, Warner Brothers commissioned author Herman Raucher to adapt it into a novel and screenplay, using the song’s title for both. The film’s tagline indicates the picture was based on a true story, and even gives the exact date of Billie Joe McAllister’s death (June 3, 1953), which contributed even further that the song was based on actual events. Again, that’s untrue. Max Baer (who played “Jethro Bodine” on “The Beverly Hillbillies”) was assigned to produce and direct the movie. By most accounts, he did a credible job.

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In Raucher’s novel and screenplay, he knocks everyone off guard by having Billie Joe (played by ) committing suicide as the result of a drunken homosexual encounter (with a character played by , later of “Sheriff Roscoe P. Coltrane” fame on the television series “”), and the object thrown from the bridge is revealed to be the girl’s ragdoll. In the novel and film, the ragdoll is the girl’s confidant and advisor. Tossing it off the bridge symbolizes throwing away her childhood and becoming a self-contained adult.

Reportedly, Bobbie Gentry approved the selection of Herman Raucher to write the book and screenplay of “Ode To Billie Joe” (she supposedly even served as “technical advisor” on the film), and was evidently okay with the direction he took in making the character of Billie Joe a homosexual, although it’s unclear if that was Gentry’s original idea when she recorded the song in 1967. Billie Joe’s story is analyzed in Professor John Howard’s book on the background of homosexuals in the state of Mississippi entitled, “Men Like That: A Queer Southern History” as an archetype of what Howard calls the “gay suicide myth.”

In the film, Bobbie sings only the first, second and fifth verses of the song, omitting the third and fourth verses. The original 1967 hit, with all five verses intact, ruled the #1 position of the Billboard Hot 100 for four weeks and garnered eight Grammy nominations, resulting in four wins (three for Gentry and one for arranger ). Unfortunately, Bobbie’s career didn’t bear much fruit after her debut blockbuster. In the next three years, she managed just one minor chart placement as a solo performer, “Fancy,” in early 1970, which nudged up to only #26 country and #31 pop, (Reba McEntire covered it in 1991 and landed at #8 on the country chart). Gentry did have a couple of successful duets with label mate Glen Campbell, reaching #14 with “Let It Be Me” and #6 with “All I Have To Do Is Dream” (both earlier hits by ), but these records made little impact and Bobbie disappeared from the American charts shortly after that. She did turn in one last hit performance, however – a cover of ’s “I’ll Never Fall In Love Again,” which became a #1 record in Great Britain, but amazingly didn’t chart at all here in the States. – JH

The Story Behind The Song:

“Stand By Me” (written by Jerry Leiber, Mike Stoller and Ben E. King)

Ben E. King (#4 pop, 1961) Mickey Gilley (#1 country, #22 pop, 1980)

Mickey Gilley’s Pasadena, Texas nightclub provided the centerpiece for a movement that became a major music trend in the early 1980s. Columnist Aaron Latham, in an Esquire Magazine piece titled “The Ballad of the ” commented that Gilley’s club was “just a honky-tonk, but in scope it looks as big as the MGM Grand Hotel or St. Patrick’s Cathedral.”

Record executive Irving Azoff acquired the rights from the magazine to use the story as the basis for the movie “Urban Cowboy,” through which actor John Travolta helped build an already growing interest in Western themes and fashions. A two-album set, the soundtrack used a multiformat approach, featuring

30 such diverse talents as Joe Walsh, , , , Linda Ronstadt and Mickey Gilley.

In a 1981 interview with , Azoff reported that “Urban Cowboy’s” soundtrack album had grossed more than $26 million in the United States alone (it had been in circulation about a year by then). The record executive went on to say that the soundtrack was far and away the biggest money- maker Warner Communications had marketed in years and the album had far out-grossed ticket sales for the movie.

The picture popularized the mechanical bull, a rodeo aid adapted for entertainment at Gilley’s. Manager Sherwood Cryer had installed the bull at the club – despite Gilley’s protests – and it became an immediate sensation. Cryer bought out the rights to manufacture and sell the machine, and clubs all over the country purchased the mechanical bulls at a cost of $7, 495 apiece.

That fad lasted only a short time, but Gilley’s major musical contribution to the film made a lasting impression. Although Epic released “True Love Ways” first, Gilley’s session on “Stand By Me” was his debut with new producer , who matched the song to the movie.

First cut by Ben E. King in 1961, “Stand By Me” proved to be a test of the new artist/producer pairing. During his days with Playboy Records, Gilley had gotten used to recording three songs during each three-hour session. By contrast, Norman worked methodically on “Stand By Me” for more than two days. Gilley was incensed by the third day and stormed out of the studio. Norman pieced together the single from the tracks he had already recorded, and the result was Gilley’s biggest record of his career.

Mickey’s version of “Stand By Me” debuted at #63 on Billboard’s country chart on May 31, 1980. It had reached the Billboard Hot 100 pop chart two weeks earlier, and eventually climbed to #22 for a high- water mark on the pop side. In country, the song kept advancing and by July 26th, “Stand By Me” and “True Love Ways” gave Gilley the rare accomplishment of having two solo records in the Top Five simultaneously. Two weeks later, after “True Love Ways” had fallen out of the top spot, “Stand By Me” reached the summit on August 9, 1980, marking Mickey’s ninth of his seventeen career #1 hits. – JH

The Story Behind The Song:

“You Don’t Know Me” (written by and Eddy Arnold)

Jerry Vale (#14 pop, 1956) Eddy Arnold (#10, 1956) (#2 pop, #1 adult contemporary, 1962) Mickey Gilley (#1, 1981)

“You Don’t Know Me” is a rare example of a country song that became a significant pop hit, only to return years later for another successful chart run in the country field, this time reaching the #1 plateau.

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The idea for the song belonged to Eddy Arnold, who mulled over the title and a storyline for a couple of years before taking them to songwriter Cindy Walker. She had provided Eddy with a number one hit five years earlier with 1950’s “Take Me In Your Arms And Hold Me,” and was one of Nashville’s most respected songwriters.

The scenario of “You Don’t Know Me,” was brought to Walker’s attention as she attended Nashville’s annual disc jockey convention in the fall of 1955. As Cindy was leaving, she stopped by the RCA Victor suite to say goodbye to producer Steve Sholes. Eddy Arnold walked up to her and said, “I’ve got an idea for a song called ‘You Don’t Know Me,’ and I was hoping that you could do something with it.” Arnold intended to portray a man who is too shy to approach a woman he cares about, and stands in the shadows as he watches her settle down with another man.

Walker promised Eddy that she would work on the idea. Within days, she completed the song and sent it to her publisher. Although the title and the basic storyline were Arnold’s (and because of that, he received co-writing credit), the first rendition of “You Don’t Know Me” was issued by pop singer , who carried it to #14 on Billboard’s pop chart in early 1956. Eddy’s country version made it to #10 two months later.

Then in 1962, Ray Charles included the tune on his #1 pop album “Modern Sounds In Country And Western Music,” and his single of “You Don’t Know Me” (the song’s overall biggest-selling version) went all the way to #2 on Billboard’s Hot 100, although it was blocked from the top spot by ’s “Sheila.” However, Ray’s record did spend three weeks at #1 on Billboard’s “” chart (now known as “Adult Contemporary”). Over thirty years later, Charles’ version of “You Don’t Know Me” was featured prominently in the 1993 movie “Groundhog Day” starring Bill Murray. Ray re-recorded the song as a duet with jazz singer Diana Krall for his second and final #1 pop album, 2004’s “,” making “You Don’t Know Me” the only song common to both of Ray Charles’ two pop albums that made it to the top. He also logged a #1 country album, “Friendship,” in 1985.

“You Don’t Know Me” was cut through the years by dozens of other top-name artists, including Elvis Presley, Anne Murray, Bob Dylan, , Rick Nelson, , , , Charlie Rich, Floyd Cramer, , Emmylou Harris, Harry Connick, Jr. and Willie Nelson (in his tribute album to Walker titled “You Don’t Know Me: The Songs of Cindy Walker”). Cindy’s tremendous catalog of classic hits made her a shoo-in for country music’s highest honor: her induction into the Country Music Hall of Fame in 1997. Walker is one of only five non-performing songwriters so recognized.

Nearly twenty years after the song’s chart-topping success with Ray Charles, “You Don’t Know Me” made one last appearance on a Billboard listing and once again landed at #1, this time making the summit of Billboard’s country singles chart dated September 19, 1981 with Mickey Gilley at the microphone.

Gilley was super-excited when his producer Jim Ed Norman brought the song in, but Mickey (a great admirer of Ray Charles) was kind of nervous about it, too. He had always loved “You Don’t Know Me,” but was really intimidated about trying to cover a Ray Charles performance. Jim Ed reassured Gilley by promising to “make a great record.” With that guarantee from his producer, Mickey became more at ease and they went to work on it. The two men put their best efforts into the finished product and it paid off when “You Don’t Know Me” became Gilley’s 12th number one country hit. Although he believed

32 he did his best possible job, Mickey still felt that he hadn’t topped the Ray Charles version. In his mind, nobody could. – JH

The Story Behind The Song:

“Statue of a Fool”

Jack Greene (#1, 1969) Brian Collins (#10, 1974) (#2, 1990)

Country music is mostly ignored by most college music departments. The genre is considered to have standards that are far too low to be studied alongside Bach or even Stephen Foster. Yet at Nashville’s Belmont College, the music theory department does spend some time reviewing what it takes to make a solid country song. Each semester students listen to and dissect some of Music City’s finest compositions and biggest hits. What they are taught is that wrote the “perfect song” in the early 1960s. Crutchfield’s “Statue of a Fool” is the standard by which all other songs must be judged.

Jan and his brother were raised in a rich musical heritage in Paducah, Kentucky. The boys grew up in a family whose listening interests ranged from classical to gospel, from jazz to hillbilly. In the Crutchfield family, the only thing more important than listening to or singing music was studying it. Before they reached their teens, the boys knew music history all the way back to the dawn of the popular age in 1890. This education would prove invaluable when Jan would later decide to try his hand at songwriting.

Jan Crutchfield was just eleven when he started singing in a gospel group. Most of the group’s material was centered around the style of the then-popular Blackwood Brothers. Jan loved that particular type of sound, but he was also drawn by other brands of music as well, such as big band, country from WSM’s Grand Ole Opry out of Nashville every Friday and Saturday night, jazz and even blues (Nashville was also a major hub for blues music, thanks to its other 50,000 watt radio powerhouse WLAC). Amazingly, Jan was a fan of all these genres of music.

After singing in high school, the Crutchfield brothers turned up in Nashville and joined Chet Atkins at RCA. It was while performing with the Country Gentlemen in the 1950s that Jan began to branch out and write songs. While it would be a long hard road to personal success, Jan soon found himself in the company of a pretty elite group of people. Most of them are now songwriting legends, but at that time they were all struggling just to keep groceries on the table. The rockabilly and rock ‘n’ roll eras had kicked into high gear a few years earlier, and had adversely affected the country music industry in Nashville. Music City’s songwriters all knew that writing a country hit wasn’t necessarily enough. Their songs had to have the capability to cross over to the pop charts to assure a strong financial advancement. Even though times were tough for the country songwriters at the time, Jan considered those days to be extra special. He and his friends like , Willie Nelson and would gather around a table, pass around a guitar and sing their latest songs for each other.

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Crutchfield’s songwriting career took much longer to materialize than most of the other scribes he knew. This wasn’t caused by a lack of talent or seasoning. Rather, it was because Jan was involved in other areas of the business. Over the years, he was a song promoter, a performer, a manager and a producer. Due to the wide variety of hats he was wearing in the industry, he had less time to work on his songwriting craft than most of his writer friends.

Jan did find the time to write some standard three-chord tunes (the normal style of composing) but with his advanced musical education, he also came up with an occasional multi-chord ballad as well. Faron Young, , Ray Price and were among the few artists in Nashville at the time who would record songs that contained multi-chord arrangements. Young cut Crutchfield’s “Down By The River,” (a #9 hit in 1963), Burgess did “Tear Time” and took it to #16 in 1967 (Dave and Sugar’s cover went all the way to #1 in 1978). One of Crutchfield’s greatest thrills was when his idol, , recorded Jan’s “Dream on a Little Dream.” While he was making a modest living with his writing, Crutchfield’s compositions were either being overlooked or recorded in markets outside country music. This would be the story of the piece that Belmont College would call “the perfect country song:” “Statue of a Fool.”

Crutchfield wrote the song in 1961 as “Name It After Me.” He didn’t consider it a country idea, nor did he determine it as even being a country song at first. In his mind it was just a ballad. Jan got the idea for the number one day as he thought about how statues of famous people are erected in public places to remember them. Many noteworthy individuals from our past are honored in this fashion and Crutchfield came up with a unique idea for a song about a statue being erected to a guy who has been a loser in the game of love, a fellow who had it all and threw it away. To Crutchfield, this idea seemed to have commercial possibilities.

The major labels in Nashville didn’t care for Jan’s latest ballad. Ultimately the song was recorded in Latin America and by a couple of blues groups here in the United States. Country music ignored it until Jack Greene reached stardom with “There Goes My Everything” in December, 1966. Greene first became aware of “Name It After Me” just after it had been written. While working on the “Dixie Jubilee” show out of , Jack was approached by RCA Victor executive Sam Wallace about the possibility of recording for the label. So Greene went back to Nashville looking for a couple of songs to use for his RCA audition. Teddy Wilburn of Surefire Music gave him several including “Name It After Me.” Unfortunately, the RCA deal never came off, but four years later Jack signed with . He still had the song and took it to his new producer Owen Bradley. At the time Owen didn’t think it would play in the country market and turned it down. Greene really believed in the song though, and devoted much of his free time molding it into something he hoped Bradley would eventually approve. Jack made a couple of lyrical changes and slowed the tempo down. By 1969, after Greene had become a star and topped the charts on four different occasions, he brought “Name It After Me” back to the producer.

This time Bradley warmed up to the song much more than before, but he still thought it was way too pop-sounding for Greene, whom Decca was marketing as a straight country artist. Owen reluctantly let Jack record the piece, but he had no intention of releasing it. Bradley and the label were just going to let it sit in the vault, unissued. But Greene wouldn’t give up. Changing the song’s title to “Statue of a Fool,” he kept prodding Decca for a single release. When they refused, Jack reminded them that he was about the biggest act the label had at the time, and it might be a good idea to pay attention to his suggestions! So Decca relented and issued “Statue of a Fool” as a single, all the while telling him that the Crutchfield number would ruin his career! Well, that turned out to be one of the biggest miscalculations in all of country music’s storied past.

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Jack Greene’s “Statue of a Fool” debuted on Billboard’s Hot Country Singles chart in May, 1969 and reached the pinnacle on July 5th, staying at #1 for two of its eighteen weeks on the playlist. The record’s success had a host of producers and artists wondering why they hadn’t taken the song when it was first pitched to them in 1961. Greene’s version had been out nearly five years when a young artist by the name of Brian Collins covered “Statue of a Fool” and had his own hit with it, reaching #10. Writer Crutchfield had never even heard of Collins, but was very happy about his song turning up again in the high rungs of the Billboard chart. As Jan would discover, there was still a lot more money to be made with the tune.

Country music had swung back to a more traditional sound by the mid-1980s and Ricky Van Shelton was one of the major contributors of this newly revitalized (and extremely popular) style. Shelton had a penchant for covering old classics, doing so on several occasions. He reached #1 with four of them: “From A Jack To A King” (originally a #2 hit for in 1963), Harlan Howard’s “” (which took to #11 in 1967), a 1970 Roger Miller single “Don’t We All Have The Right” and “I’ll Leave This World Loving You,” a minor chart entry for in 1980. Ricky also finished at #4 with 1969’s “Life’s Little Ups And Downs” by Charlie Rich.

By 1990, Shelton was one of Nashville’s top stars, having won several CMA awards and racking up a string of hits for the Columbia label. He had started using “Statue of a Fool” in his live concerts and was receiving wildly enthusiastic crowd response to it. Ricky’s producer Steve Buckingham asked Shelton about the song and was told that it was an old Jack Greene hit from back in ’69, written by Jan Crutchfield. Amazingly, Buckingham had never heard Greene’s record! He contacted Crutchfield to inform him of Ricky’s intention to cut “Statue of a Fool” and release it as a single. Shelton’s version went for a 26 week chart ride, landing at #2 for two weeks. – JH

The Story Behind The Song:

“Always Wanting You” (written by Merle Haggard)

Merle Haggard (#1, 1975)

This is the story of a song in which the performer expresses love for another person in the storyline. In country music, that’s pretty ordinary. The big difference here is that Merle Haggard was professing his real-life love for an artist that he had become infatuated with while on tour with her: . He didn’t mention Parton by name in the song, of course, but it became common knowledge that’s who he was singing about, and he had no problem talking publically about his feelings regarding Dolly. She and Merle had toured a lot together during 1974-75, and during that time they spent large blocks of time with each other. Traveling from show to show, she would ride on his bus or he would ride on hers, and they talked a great deal about music and their personal goals. Not only that, Haggard expressed his desires for a more intimate relationship on several occasions, but Dolly insisted throughout that it could never work (she was married, but he was between wives at the time). Although her husband Carl Dean never went on tour with her, she claimed that she loved only him, and would never cheat on him. Nonetheless, Merle’s desires persisted.

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The situation got to the point that Haggard literally couldn’t get Dolly off his mind. He would envision her when he walked out on stage to do a show, when he went to sleep at night and when he woke up in the morning. He tried everything to put her out of his mind, but nothing worked. Merle was the type of songwriter who could be inspired by the least little thing which might trigger an idea for a song. But this infatuation with Dolly was big and it completely overwhelmed him. So, of course, there had to be a song come out of it. He proudly wrote “Always Wanting You” specifically for the object of his desire. In fact, he was so proud of his accomplishment that he telephoned Parton at three o’clock one morning from Reno, Nevada and sang the song to her right over the phone (hoping this could possibly impress her enough to give in). Once again, she explained her inability to get involved and eventually, after she listened to the song and his pleading, he finally allowed her to go back to sleep.

This episode became a matter of public record after its inclusion in Merle’s book “: My Own Story.” Haggard wasn’t embarrassed about it, nor did Dolly claim to be. She handled it with her usual grace, saying that she was more flattered than anything about him feeling that way. By withholding her temptation (if she ever was tempted) and Merle not claiming that they had had an affair (so the issue of a scandal was avoided), were the two things she says kept the embarrassment in check. She wrapped it up neatly by simply saying that Merle is a very special friend to her, and it was very bold and sweet of him to tell her that he cared that much.

Although written especially for Dolly, “Always Wanting You” was Merle’s first and only number one single to feature Louise Mandrell. She toured with Haggard’s band for six months, and when he recorded the song at ’s studio in Nashville, she joined Ronnie Reno as a supporting vocalist. “Always Wanting You” reached the pinnacle of Billboard’s Hot Country Singles chart on April 12, 1975, and was strong enough to remain in that position for two weeks. It was Haggard’s sixth number one single in a row, and the 20th of his eventual 38 chart-toppers, the third most in history. – JH

The Story Behind The Song

“Big City” (written by Merle Haggard and Dean Holloway)

Merle Haggard (#1, 1982)

Merle Haggard rarely got enthused about any of his album projects. He always claimed that he wasn’t really trying very hard to turn out a good record, that whatever happened, good or bad, was all the same to him. But the “Big City” project was different for some reason. Maybe it was because of his brand new association with , after many years at Capitol. “Big City” would be the debut album for his new label, and perhaps he was trying to make a good impression. Whatever the reason, Haggard always spoke very highly of the “Big City” album project, saying that he was very proud of it. The record took about two years to write and refine, and oddly enough, the title track was one of the last songs added to it.

Longtime friend Dean Holloway accompanied Merle to Britannia Studios in West Hollywood for several of the sessions that would make up the “Big City” album. Holloway became totally disgusted with the Los Angeles area, complaining to Haggard about, among other things, the “dirty sidewalks of the big

36 city.” That’s all it took to pique Merle’s creative juices. He took note of that line, and off he went writing what would turn out to be the title track for the album, finishing “Big City” in just twenty minutes.

In the early days of his career, Merle had performed in a lot of barrooms and clubs, and the order of the day in country music was the honky-tonk “shuffle” beat, most notably associated with Ray Price’s musical style at the time (Price later switched to a smoother, more pop-oriented sound). Well, Haggard did so many shuffles at the clubs that he grew to hate the style and vowed never to resort to that sound in the studio. But when Merle went in to record “Big City,” guess what? He decided to put a good old shuffle beat on it, the first of his entire recording career, and it worked. The record kicked off with the twin of and Jimmy Belkin and “Big City” turned out to be an extension of Merle’s 1969 hit “Workin’ Man Blues,” lamenting the stress of the rat race and the precarious posture of Social Security.

Haggard believed that anybody could have sung “Big City” and had a hit with it because the song proclaimed what people wanted to hear: Things they believed in their hearts and were disgusted having to put up with, but skittish about publicly stating it themselves. The tune sailed to #1 on Billboard’s country singles chart on April 10, 1982. The following year, the “Big City” album was certified gold on June 11, 1983, becoming Merle’s first gold album in nine years. It was the third of his career after a couple of “greatest hits” packages on Capitol.

Haggard followed “Big City” with another track from the album called “Are The Good Times Really Over,” yet another commentary on the poor state of the American economy (a frequently-used topic in his songs). Peaking at #2, its melody was similar to “,” the “Big City” album’s first single and Merle’s first of twelve #1 hits for the Epic label (in all, he scored 38 chart-toppers, mostly for Capitol). With the similarity in melodies, it’s not surprising that both “Are The Good Times Really Over” and “My Favorite Memory” were written the same day. – JH

The Story Behind The Song:

”The Year That Clayton Delaney Died” (written by Tom T. Hall)

Tom T. Hall (#1, 1971)

If country music ever had a Mark Twain, it was probably Tom T. Hall. He is known as “The Storyteller” because his songs stand apart from most in the sense that they speak poetically of normal life and normal people. There is a direct, no-nonsense quality about his tunes, evident in their simplistic story lines. But while Hall’s compositions may appear that way upon first glance, they are actually built in layers, with each piece of fabric slowly revealing Hall’s own life experiences.

Tom’s interest in music began at a very early age and by his teenage years he had already formed a small string band, playing backwoods schoolhouses and small fairs. His band also performed on the local radio station, where Hall also took a job as a disc jockey and his daily show became quite popular in the area. Hall had begun writing songs by that time, but when he turned twenty-one he grew restless (as most young men that age do) and wanted to see the world. About the only way for a poor boy to

37 manage that was to join the Army, which he did in 1957. By the end of his three-year hitch, he had been a lot of places and seen a lot of things, and many of those adventures would later end up in some of his songs.

For a while he went back home to Morehead, Kentucky to his old disc jockey job, then attended college working toward a degree in journalism. Still dabbling in music, Tom sent a few of his compositions to Nashville. That was the beginning of a career that would culminate with his name enshrined in the Country Music Hall Of Fame.

Hall’s songs were becoming noticed, and he obtained a songwriting contract with a Nashville publisher. He seemed on his way to becoming the writer of major country music hits. Then reality set in. The songs which Hall wrote were much different from those the established writers were turning out at the time. Like Roger Miller, Tom’s stuff was considered too off-the-wall for the big artists. A few of his tunes did find homes, such as “D.J. For A Day,” a Top Ten hit for Jimmy Newman in 1964, and “Hello Vietnam,” by Johnny Wright, which spent three weeks at #1 in 1965. However, most of Hall’s material was rejected.

Soon after his arrival in Nashville, Tom had become friends with a session player by the name of . When Kennedy was appointed A & R director for , Jerry approached Tom with an opportunity to sign with the label as a performer. That way, Tom wouldn’t have to shop his songs around to the artists, he could just record them himself. A pretty good plan, except for one thing: Tom didn’t particularly want to be a recording artist. By and large, he considered himself a songwriter and nothing more. That was what he really wanted to do. Touring and working the road just didn’t appeal very much to “The Storyteller.”

Tom did sign though, and started having minor hits right off the bat in 1967, starting with “I Washed My Face In The Morning Dew” (#30). The following year he reached the Top Ten for the first time with “Ballad Of Forty Dollars” and by ’70 he topped the chart for the first time with “.” A couple of years earlier, in 1968, an unknown Nashville secretary named Jeannie C. Riley had showcased Hall’s songwriting skills in a big way. Recording an ode about a P.T.A. meeting Tom had once attended, Riley came out of nowhere and suddenly took both the country and pop charts by storm with the breakout hit of the year “Harper Valley P.T.A.” which instantly reached #1 on both charts, and generated more airplay and more money that all of Hall’s other songs combined. By 1971, still riding the wake created by “Harper Valley P.T.A.,” Tom pulled out another memory from his past. It was the story of a man whom he had known as a boy.

The man Hall identified as “Clayton Delaney” in “The Year That Clayton Delaney Died” was his neighbor and childhood hero. To stay active in music, Tom’s friend had moved to Ohio and Indiana to work clubs while he was still a teenager. He was doing pretty well but he got sick and was forced to come home. He died when he was about nineteen or twenty (of an undiagnosed lung disease), but a lot of people thought the song was about an old man.

The man who inspired “The Year That Clayton Delaney Died” was not really named Clayton Delaney at all. His real name was Lonnie Easterly. Tom T. Hall had veiled the late guitar picker’s legacy by using two street names in the song. Lonnie (“Clayton Delaney”) had impacted Tom in a very strong way. Hall didn’t just write the line “I remember the year that Clayton Delaney died,” he lived it. Tom was eight or nine and had just been given an old Martin guitar when he first met Easterly, who was already in his teens. Tom was impressed with Lonnie’s guitar picking, but what impressed him most was the older boy’s great independence and style.

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Easterly would take the hit records of the day (tunes by , Ernest Tubb, Hank Williams, etc.) and sing them in his own style. He didn’t imitate anyone, he just tried to be himself. That was one of the most valuable lessons Hall learned from him. So much so that, after Easterly passed away, Tom vowed to start singing like himself too, and not try to copy anybody. Like “Clayton Delaney,” Hall did everything he could to be true to himself and his own feel for music, not just in his singing but in his songwriting as well. Easterly had played regularly at the Buckeye Gardens in Connersville, Indiana, and when Tom resumed performing after his Army service was over, he started at that same club.

Hall was hardly blessed with exceptional vocal skills, but did well enough to convey his story songs quite effectively, notching twenty-one Top Ten country hits, with seven of those going all the way to #1. His career culminated with his induction into the Country Music Hall Of Fame in 2008. Tom had a creed when it came to his own recordings. His first and foremost rule was that nothing was to get in the way of the lyrics. He didn’t want any fancy guitar riffs, dramatic backup vocals or sophisticated instrumentation. He didn’t even allow his own vocal to stand out. Only the song’s message was important. It was the story he was trying to sell above anything else. Hall’s policy is, of course, completely forgotten today in this new, modern era of “imitation” country music (and that’s putting it nicely), where profound lyrics are a thing of the past, replaced by ridiculous bubblegum fluff, meaningless lyrics about driving pickup trucks down dirt roads, partying all night, guzzling beer and “making out” down by the river, all backed by blaring rock . Total garbage.

Tom T. Hall’s writing of “The Year That Clayton Delaney Died” and all his other great story songs, reflected Tom’s own introspective view of life. He wrote about things he knew and wrote them from a viewpoint that was uniquely his. In his mind, these stories were important slices of his life. He wanted them to be poetic and informative, as well as entertaining. He wanted his words to paint pictures, but being commercial was the last thing on his mind. On September 18, 1971, twenty-three years after Tom’s mentor and idol had passed away, “The Year That Clayton Delaney Died” topped Billboard’s country singles chart for two weeks. It not only gave Hall his biggest hit and his personally highest artistic achievement, but also provided him with some undesired commercial success too, which Tom discovered could be lived with easily.

Lonnie Easterly, the man immortalized as “Clayton Delaney” probably died of tuberculosis, his death slow and painful and he passed away without ever fulfilling his dreams. Yet, his legacy lived on in another young man whom he inspired. Tom T. Hall took the most important lesson Easterly taught him to heart, and became an influential songwriter and performer because he sought his own way of expressing his music. In a sense, both Tom and Lonnie made it to the warm spotlight at the same time. That seems appropriate, because Hall always said that it was “Clayton Delaney” who had bought his ticket for the big show. – JH

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The Story Behind The Song:

“Luckenbach, Texas (Back To The Basics Of Love)” (written by and Bobby Emmons)

Waylon Jennings (#1 country, #25 pop, 1977)

Songwriters who knew Waylon Jennings well were keenly aware that the best way to get him interested in one of their tunes was to use a little psychology on him by saying, “Here’s a song that you can’t do, but I’d like for you to listen to it anyway and give me your opinion.” More often than not, Waylon would take the bait and decide right then and there to make the song his.

That’s the method that Waylon’s producer Chips Moman used to introduce Jennings to “Luckenbach, Texas (Back To The Basics Of Love).” However, Moman actually did feel that Waylon might not want to record it because the lyrics referred to him by name, in addition to other performers Willie Nelson and Hank Williams, as well as songwriters Mickey Newberry and Jerry Jeff Walker. Of course, other artists had mentioned themselves on their own records before, particularly in “Hey Loretta,” and David Allen Coe in “You Never Even Called Me By My Name.” Jennings had no problem with the song’s references and quickly snapped up “Luckenbach, Texas” to launch his new album “Ol Waylon,” the first country album to “ship gold,” (meaning advance sales of 500,000 units before the album was released), and the first to debut in the #1 position on Billboard’s country album chart, where it remained for thirteen weeks. The “Ol Waylon” album (its title taken from the previous fall’s CMA telecast in which Willie Nelson amusingly refers to Jennings several times as “Ol Waylon”) reached platinum status on October 7th, 1977.

While Waylon was in Moman’s American Studios in Nashville recording “Luckenbach, Texas,” Nelson happened to drop by for no particular reason. Jennings saw him and said, “Hey come on over here and sing with me on this.” So Willie ended up adding his voice to the final verse, providing a couple of lyrical alterations in the process.

On April 16, 1977 “Luckenbach, Texas (Back To The Basics Of Love)” made Billboard history when it became the first single ever to debut in the upper half of the 100-position country chart. A handful of records had debuted in the 50s before, but “Luckenbach, Texas” came in at #48 in its first week. It went on to claim the #1 slot just five weeks later on May 21st, spending six weeks at the summit, one of only three country singles to achieve this feat during the 1970s (the others are ’s “My Hang Up Is You” in 1972 and C. W. McCall’s “Convoy” in late 1975 and early ‘76).

Suddenly the small town of Luckenbach (there really is such a place, basically just a wide spot in the road 50 miles north of San Antonio) was besieged by network reporters and camera crews. Reportedly, over one hundred city limit signs have been stolen from the town since Waylon’s famous record first hit the airwaves in 1977. Twenty years later, toward the end of his career, Jennings finally made an appearance in Luckenbach for the first time, performing a concert there on July 4, 1997. Neither of the song’s writers (Chips Moman and Bobby Emmons) ever made their way to the tiny community. – JH

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The Story Behind The Song:

“Mammas, Don’t Let Your Babies Grow Up To Be Cowboys” (written by Ed and )

Ed Bruce (#15, 1976) Waylon Jennings and Willie Nelson (#1 country, #42 pop, 1978)

In 1975 things weren’t working out the way that had always planned. he figured he should have been a star. He had been paying his dues for nearly half his life. Ed was thirty-five years old, had recorded for just after Elvis had left that studio, had charted six times with three different record labels, had a solid core of fans in the business, had opened for some of country music’s hottest acts, but hadn’t been able to turn out any hits. His wife Patsy managed to get the singer/songwriter some work in commercials to help pay the bills, but in those roles Ed felt as if he was just marking time by making money off his speaking voice. For almost twenty years things went along that way, and Ed became more frustrated with each passing year.

One afternoon, Bruce turned his emotions inside out and began to write a very autobiographical song that had “Mammas, Don’t Let Your Babies Grow Up To Be Guitar Players” as both the title and the hook line. The first verse and the chorus summed up Ed’s feelings about his own life. Yet, after weeks of trying, he couldn’t come up with another verse. It was as if there was nothing more to say. How much lower could he get? Patsy revealed years later her theory why Ed couldn’t finish it. She believed her husband was embarrassed that the song was so autobiographical, and when it hit him that he was sharing his own story, the rest of the song just wouldn’t come.

As Patsy looked over what Ed had written thus far, she suggested a subtle but monumental change. She felt the song was solid, but it needed something different than “guitar player” as the hook. After all, except for the several hundred undiscovered guitar players walking the streets of Nashville, there weren’t that many who could relate to a broken-down musician whose life had fallen far short of his dreams. Besides, most of those who could relate didn’t have the money to buy their next meal, much less a record. So Patsy recommended that the title and hook line be adjusted to “Mammas, Don’t Let Your Babies Grow Up To Be Cowboys.” To her, it seemed so natural. Cowboys were the Knights of the American Round Table, the childhood heroes of most country music fans, and the most romantic of all the country’s legendary figures. At that point, with that image in mind, Ed and Patsy sat down and finished the song.

Ed was between record deals at the time “Mammas, Don’t Let Your Babies Grow Up To Be Cowboys” was completed, and for a while Bruce thought about pitching the song. He and Patsy believed strongly in its sales potential. Yet, rather than give it to somebody else, Ed first took it to United Artists, hoping they would like the song so much that they would sign him to a new contract. The ploy worked, and in late ’75 Ed’s cut of “Mammas, Don’t Let Your Babies Grow Up To Be Cowboys” was released. By simply staying on the Billboard country singles chart for fourteen weeks and topping out at #15, it had become the singer’s most successful record. Still, with those weak numbers, it couldn’t be considered a legitimate hit, and Ed was very disappointed. When his next release failed to make the Top Thirty, he was right back where he had started. Time was running out and Ed Bruce still couldn’t climb any higher up success’s ladder.

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A couple of years later, Patsy Bruce had put “Mammas, Don’t Let Your Babies Grow Up To Be Cowboys” out of her mind and was going about the daily routine of running her management business. While her husband’s recording career was pretty much stuck, Ed was being called for more commercials and they were getting by reasonably well. In real-world terms, the Bruces were settling in to a middle-class life. That suddenly changed one afternoon when Patsy received a telephone call while attending a tea party. It was from her husband. Ed had tracked his wife down because he couldn’t wait to tell her the news: Waylon Jennings had cut “Mammas, Don’t Let Your Babies Grow Up To Be Cowboys.”

With country music’s “outlaw” movement going strong, ’s old band member was capitalizing on it in a very big way. Waylon’s “Luckenbach, Texas (Back to the Basics of Love),” a six-week chart- topper, had skyrocketed the singer into the upper echelon of performers and made him a household name. To have someone of Jennings’ caliber select and record “Mammas, Don’t Let Your Babies Grow Up To Be Cowboys” was a dream come true for Bruce. Even better was the fact that RCA had plans in the works to release the track as a single.

“Mammas, Don’t Let Your Babies Grow Up To Be Cowboys” had all the elements to be another big Waylon Jennings hit. Still, as Waylon listened to the playback, it seemed that the arrangement was missing something. Jennings mentioned to his producer Chips Moman that he thought the recording sounded a bit “flat” and needed something to make it “jump off the record,” as he put it. The problem was easily solved in the same fashion that had helped turn “Luckenbach, Texas” into the monster hit it was: the addition of Willie Nelson’s unique voice to the record. So “Mammas, Don’t Let Your Babies Grow Up To Be Cowboys” was re-cut as a duet, and Waylon was then satisfied that the track sounded “complete.”

The Jennings and Nelson duet formula had worked once before, even preceding “Luckenbach, Texas,” when Willie was brought into the studio to accompany Jennings in a duet re-working of one of Waylon’s earlier solo hits from 1972, “Good Hearted Woman.” The new duet version topped the chart in early ’76 and won the CMA “Single of the Year” award. RCA executives believed that the Ed and Patsy Bruce composition would have the same kind of appeal of the other two earlier hits, and decided that “Mammas, Don’t Let Your Babies Grow Up To Be Cowboys” should be the first single issued from the “Waylon & Willie” album.

RCA’s prediction about “Mammas, Don’t Let Your Babies Grow Up To Be Cowboys” proved to be spot on, as the single easily glided into the #1 position on March 4, 1978 and stayed there for four weeks. Jennings and Nelson won the “Vocal Duo of the Year” Grammy award the following February. Meanwhile, the song’s writer Ed Bruce, who had labored in obscurity for so long, was now being recognized as an authentic cowboy star. Some sharp publicity people took note of Ed’s characteristically rugged “cowboyish” looks, and the NBC Network stepped up to the plate and signed him to appear in the television series “Bret ” (Bruce played “Tom Guthrie” on the show). Additionally, one of the major record labels, MCA, signed Bruce to a new recording contract and in the ensuing years, Ed delivered a total of thirteen Top Twenty singles, including five Top Tens and the #1 hit “You’re The Best Break This Old Heart Ever Had.”

In later years, Ed and Patsy ended up divorcing, but Patsy continued to marvel at the remarkable things that just one song could do for a career, and how much a song could mean to so many people. For example, Tom Brokaw of NBC News once claimed that “Mammas, Don’t Let Your Babies Grow Up To Be Cowboys” was his favorite song. It was a tune whose audience seemed to cut across all lines and ages, and although very country-sounding in nature, the record crossed over to the pop chart, finishing at a

42 respectable #42 at a time when hard rock was blasting away most of the competition. Jennings and Nelson recorded together several more times after “Mammas, Don’t Let Your Babies Grow Up To Be Cowboys,” even notching another number one hit in 1982 with “Just To Satisfy You” (its backstory previously told here on Classic Country Music Stories). Their cover versions of Otis Redding’s “(Sittin’ On) The Dock Of The Bay” (also in ’82) and The Eagles’ “Take It To The Limit” the following year were less successful, peaking at #13 and #8 respectively. In 1985, the “Highwayman” project (which also featured Johnny Cash and Kris Kristofferson) returned Waylon & Willie to the top spot one last time.

The outlaw music and style, which had made stars of Waylon, Willie and the boys, rode tall and proud on country music’s range for a good number of years, but as all things do, it eventually faded away. The “group” movement in country music, propelled by the emergence of Alabama to superstar status, would lead to its demise. Yet, the song that seemed to characterize this Texas-based counterculture period remains as well-known as any icon of the era. In a sense, “Mammas, Don’t Let Your Babies Grow Up To Be Cowboys” has become part of the American myth, just like the lonely life it celebrated. It has grown well-past a frustrated guitar player’s look at his own life. – JH

The Story Behind The Song:

“He Stopped Loving Her Today” (written by & )

George Jones (#1, 1980 - Inducted into the National Recording Registry: 2009)

There’s an old cliché that says country music is mostly comprised of three chords and the truth. There’s also a generalization that says country music is, on the whole, unremittingly sad. Needless to say, those are broad descriptions that limit the scope of a type of music that encompasses many different musical strategies and is capable of conveying the full range of the emotional spectrum. Yet there is no doubt that “He Stopped Loving Her Today,” the 1980 masterpiece by George Jones, does indeed adhere to those clichés, even as it finds a way to transcend them.

After all, the song is pretty much just three chords (technically, there are six, but that’s only because of the key change). The truth can be found in Jones’ stunning performance, a vocal for the ages. And the song itself contains the sadness, which was then amplified to majestic proportions by the production of Billy Sherrill. All of those disparate elements and unique personalities meshed to create this one-of-a- kind recording from 1980. The accolades for “He Stopped Loving Her Today” were immediate, as it won multiple Grammy, Academy of Country Music and Country Music Association awards. It continues to amass honors, including selection by the Library of Congress’s National Recording Preservation Board for induction into its “National Recording Registry” in 2009 (the highest honor a recording can achieve), and numerous occasions when it was named the greatest country song of all time on various media lists. The only thing that can match its lofty status might be the unlikeliness of the circumstances behind the song’s creation and recording.

George Jones was at a low point in 1980, both personally and professionally. Substance abuse had wrecked the trajectory of one of the finest careers in country music history, and his previous few singles and albums were lacking in comparison to some of his best. As fate would have it, legendary producer

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Billy Sherrill was going over some new material for Jones’ next album when he came across a song about one man’s unwavering devotion to a former love: “He Stopped Loving Her Today.”

The song was written by Bobby Braddock and Curly Putman, a pair who, ironically enough, had their previous biggest success as collaborators with Tammy Wynette’s “D-I-V-O-R-C-E” in 1968 (Jones and Wynette’s tumultuous marriage had resulted in a 1975 divorce). A myth was perpetuated almost from the outset that “He Stopped Loving Her Today” had been written specifically for Jones because his substance abuse had seemingly gotten worse since the divorce, and George was envisioned as being completely and hopelessly broken up over his split from Tammy. Supposedly, that wasn’t true, but something happened at the session when “He Stopped Loving Her Today” was recorded that might indicate otherwise. I’ll explain that in a moment.

Johnny Russell had recorded the tune twice (for two different labels) well over a year before the song came to Billy Sherrill’s attention (although neither of Russell’s recordings were ever released). Sherrill’s production skills are unmatched in the annals of the Nashville recording industry, but he also had an uncanny sense of determining which particular songs would be best-suited for certain artists, and he deemed “He Stopped Loving Her Today,” in which a man’s love for his ex is interrupted only by death, as the perfect vehicle for George Jones. However, he thought the song needed something more. Sherrill had an idea and discussed it with Braddock and Putman, and they agreed. That “something” turned out to be a spoken-word middle section in which the woman comes back to see the man at his funeral.

When Jones appeared at Nashville’s Columbia Studio B to record the song on February 6, 1980, he was in bad shape and things didn’t go smoothly. At first, Sherrill had a battle on his hands just getting an acceptable performance from him. Initially, Jones had difficulty with the basic melody. He kept confusing it with the tune from Sammi Smith’s “Help Me Make It Through The Night.” The spoken-word section also tripped up the singer, who kept slurring the words. Throughout Jones’ career, he always had the amazing ability to sing perfectly when high on booze and drugs, but he couldn’t talk without slurring when in that condition. So Sherrill decided to forget about trying to get the spoken part for now (since that could be dubbed in later) and concentrate on trying just to obtain a suitable singing performance from him, which at that point seemed doubtful.

Finally, Jones was able to make it all the way through the song, but the first cut failed to impress anybody. George’s voice was flat and unemotional. All those present in the studio could tell that he didn’t care for the song or feel its message. Then, just before the second take, an odd occurrence took place which changed the atmosphere dramatically.

As I mentioned earlier, the first attempt at recording “He Stopped Loving Her Today” had gone absolutely nowhere. It was totally uninspired. Then by some bizarre coincidence, at that moment Tammy Wynette and her new husband unexpectedly walked into the studio, just to observe. Nobody knew they were going to be there. Jones watched her as Tammy went into the dimly lit control room and sat down beside Billy Sherrill. It was strange because, where she was sitting, a single light came down and illuminated her face. George Jones seemed riveted to that scene and when he sang the song again, he never took his eyes off Tammy. It was as if he was singing every word just for her and on that second take, George’s voice filled with enormous power and emotion and he delivered a brilliant performance of “He Stopped Loving Her Today.”

After the session wrapped, Billy went to work on the mix, bathing the song in production techniques that had undeniable flair, yet weren’t invasive. There’s Charlie McCoy’s lonely harmonica blowing

44 through the early verses, followed up by a subtle string bed and ’s whining steel guitar. In the chorus, the strings come alive and soar to a crescendo as Jones delivers the refrain in the midst of it all. As for the spoken part, it took Sherrill several weeks to find Jones sober enough to where he could say those four little lines without slurring. When he finally got them on tape, they were electronically layered over Millie Kirkham’s mournful high-soprano background vocal (another nifty production touch by Billy) and the record was finally ready to be issued.

George Jones didn’t have very high hopes for “He Stopped Loving Her Today.” In his autobiography “I Lived To Tell It All,” Jones wrote: “I looked Billy square in the eye and said ‘nobody’s gonna buy that, it’s too morbid.’” Later, after the song’s success, George’s opinion changed. “To put it simply, I was back on top,” he wrote. “Just that quickly. I don’t mean to belabor this comparison, but a four-decade career was salvaged by a three-minute song.” This, however, was no ordinary song. “He Stopped Loving Her Today” is about the kind of love we all would like to find, one so powerful that not even separation can diminish it. Many break-ups are instigated by one person who, to soften the blow, will speak just like the woman in the song: “She told him ‘you’ll forget in time.’” Most of the time the other person eventually does. Only this guy doesn’t forget. He says it in the very first line, sung by Jones with placid authority before the music even begins: “He said ‘I’ll love you ‘ti I die.’” And he backs up his word. Sherrill was right to want the scene of their quasi-reunion at the funeral because, in a way, it resolves the story, even as it opens up the floodgates of sorrow. Jones’ narrator makes the final ironic statement: “This time he’s over her for good.” The cerebral reaction to “He Stopped Loving Her Today” is that it embraces country music’s hallmarks and shows just how effective they can be. – JH

The Story Behind The Song:

”Please Help Me I’m Falling” (written by Don Robertson and Hal Blair)

Hank Locklin (#1 country, #8 pop, 1960) (#12, 1978)

Hank Locklin had enjoyed some moderate acclaim during the early part of his recording career in the early 1950s on the Four Star label. He even notched a #1 hit with “Let Me Be The One” in 1953. With that record’s success, he was invited to join Nashville’s Grand Ole Opry. Later, after signing a more lucrative deal with RCA Victor in 1956, Locklin landed in the Top Ten four more times during the balance of the decade. One of those records, Hank’s self-penned #5 hit “Send Me The Pillow You Dream On” in 1958, became a bona fide country classic and was covered several times, first by the Browns in 1960, then by who had a #17 pop hit with it in 1962. But all this was nothing compared to what was to come at the dawn of the 1960s. Hank Locklin, producer Chet Atkins and session player Floyd Cramer would all figure prominently in the creation of one of the all-time great mega-hits in music history, featuring an innovative new sound, and a record that would take the popularity of modern country music to stratospheric proportions.

By early 1960, Hank Locklin’s recording career was floundering. He hadn’t made a chart appearance in two years, although he was still quite popular with Opry fans as he continued to sing his past hits each

45 week on the show. Amazingly, RCA Victor had stuck with him, keeping him on their roster even though his value as a recording artist appeared to be completely dead.

A couple of years earlier, songwriter Don Robertson had been working with lyrics and music that had a straight country feel. He was attempting to compose a song centered around the idea of a man who was trying hard not to fall for a woman he shouldn’t love. Several times Robertson had endeavored without success to finish the number. Sensing that he had something special, but didn’t know what to do with it, he took the piece to several other writers. None of them were interested in helping Robertson complete it, so Don filed the still un-named song away and began working on other concepts.

One year later, Robertson was writing with Hal Blair. As the two tunesmiths went over each other’s ideas, Don pulled out his unfinished song about forbidden love. Robertson’s lyrics could have been the story of Blair’s life. Hal had actually fallen in love with someone he shouldn’t have. He had even written about this experience in “One Has My Name (The Other Has My Heart)” which had been a #1 hit for Jimmy Wakely back in 1948. As Blair read Robertson’s lyrics aloud he began to give Don his insights, and in a matter of only a few minutes the writers had finished the piece. They titled their new song “Please Help Me I’m Falling.”

Taking the completed number into the studio, Robertson decided to cut a demo on it himself, not only playing piano (which he had done many times before), but for the first time contributing the vocal as well. In an effort to give the recording a very “country” feel, he also used a new piano style which he had been experimenting with. His idea was to imitate a banjo slide on the piano, a sound that had never been tried on keyboards before. Don’s demo was delivered to Hill and Range Publishing Company and from there it made its way over to RCA Victor, ending up on Chet Atkins’ desk. Chet listened to the demo and liked the song very much, but what impressed him even more was the new sound Robertson had created with the piano. Atkins telephoned Don to inquire about this revolutionary new piano style, and even asked Robertson to demonstrate the technique for RCA’s top session pianist Floyd Cramer. The “lesson” wasn’t necessary though, because Cramer had been secretly experimenting with a similar style for years, he had just never used it on sessions. Floyd’s inspiration for the new piano sound had been Maybelle Carter’s unusual ability of incorporating “grace notes” in her guitar playing, which could be easily adapted to the keyboard.

Atkins may have been especially interested in Robertson’s new piano lick, but he was also impressed with “Please Help Me I’m Falling.” Chet took the song to one of RCA’s hottest acts, Jim Reeves. Jim listened to it for three weeks and then turned it down. It was at this point that the song found its way to Hank Locklin. RCA desperately needed a hit for Hank, who was enduring a long dry spell, chart-wise. The Robertson/Blair piece seemed a perfect fit of subject and style. Locklin, Atkins and Cramer, along with the rest of the A-Team musicians, gathered in Nashville’s RCA Victor studio on the afternoon of Tuesday, January 5, 1960 to record “Please Help Me I’m Falling.” It was on that recording that Floyd Cramer’s “slip-note” piano style was heard for the first time. The style went on to become one of the most widely- acclaimed and most-imitated instrumental techniques in music history, and variations of it can still be heard today, long after Cramer’s death in 1997 and his posthumous induction into the Country Music Hall Of Fame in 2003.

“Please Help Me I’m Falling” debuted on Billboard’s country singles chart March 7, 1960. From the immediate response, RCA knew that this was going to be a big one, but they couldn’t have imagined just how big. Within days, RCA’s record plants were pressing day and night just to keep up with the sales demand. “Please Help Me I’m Falling” locked onto the #1 spot of Billboard’s country singles chart on

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May 16th and didn’t release its hold on that position for fourteen weeks. In a year that saw just five songs reach #1, Locklin’s record had the longest overall chart run, surpassing Marty Robbins’ “El Paso,” “Alabam” by Cowboy Copus, ’s “On The Wings Of A Dove,” and “He’ll Have To Go” by Jim Reeves, the artist who had originally turned down “Please Help Me I’m Falling.” The record also did very well on the Billboard Hot 100 pop chart, peaking at #8. Over fifty years later, “Please Help Me I’m Falling” by Hank Locklin is ranked the eighteenth biggest hit in country music history.

The success of “Please Help Me I’m Falling” was incredible, but strangely enough it failed to provide much momentum for Hank Locklin’s American career. Recording for another nineteen years, he never again peaked any higher than #7. Only two of his follow-up recordings even landed in the Top Ten. Yet, while mostly ignored in the United States, Locklin would go on to become one of Europe’s biggest country music stars. In Ireland, his tenor voice made him a legend. Much of the successful introduction of country music to Europe was thanks in large part to his efforts, and the worldwide popularity of “Please Help Me I’m Falling.” – JH

The Story Behind The Song:

“I Was Country When Country Wasn’t Cool” (written by Kye Fleming and Dennis Morgan)

Barbara Mandrell (#1, 1981)

After it became a #1 hit for Barbara Mandrell, songwriter Kye Fleming was proud of the fact that the title of one of her songs had become a key slogan among many country music artists during interviews: “I was country when country wasn’t cool.” Fleming came up with that idea for a title during the “Urban Cowboy” craze of the early ‘80s and jotted it down in her notebook. A few weeks later she and cohort Dennis Morgan thought it might be the right time to fit some lyrics to it, although they were a bit nervous about telling their idea to record producer Tom Collins. It was a scary piece to write. The tunesmiths felt that it could be real big, or just a real joke.

Around Christmas of 1980, Fleming and Morgan went out to California and visited with Barbara Mandrell, who was working on her NBC television show. They played five or six songs for Barbara beside her swimming pool and she reacted the most strongly to “I Was Country When Country Wasn’t Cool.” The song became the centerpiece of her album “Barbara Mandrell Live,” recorded June 7, 1981 at the Roy Acuff Theater at Opryland in Nashville. Ironically, the number was actually cut in a Los Angeles studio! Released on April 16th, it was already in Billboard’s Top Five when she recorded the album.

Producer Collins flew piano player David Briggs from Nashville to L. A. for the session. Bassist couldn’t get out of an earlier session and showed up at the end of their booking. Mandrell cut her lead vocal without any bass and Stubenhaus overdubbed his part during the final 20 minutes. With George Jones’ name mentioned in the lyrics, it was decided to get another vocalist to join Barbara on the record. Initially, Ernest Tubb was considered, but then a pretty sharp cookie observed, ”hey wait, why not get George himself?” Jones was more than happy to participate, (after all, who could turn down Barbara Mandrell?) and it took George only ten minutes in Nashville’s Woodland Sound Studio to give Collins a definitive take and virtually no time at all for engineer Les Ladd to mix it in.

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Collins and Ladd added one other little nifty touch to the recording. They found some old “crowd noise” tapes at Woodland, and turned the record into a “live” single. “I Was Country When Country Wasn’t Cool” quickly became Mandrell’s biggest hit, slamming into the #1 spot on Billboard’s country singles chart on July 4, 1981, marking Barbara’s fourth of her six chart-toppers. Its title also became a staple of country music’s lexicon. – JH

The Story Behind The Song:

“Is There Life Out There” (written by Rick Giles and Susan Longacre)

Reba McEntire (#1, 1992)

When he was a kid, Rick Giles played guitar and often told his folks about his plans to make it in music. His family discouraged Rick, informing him that his future in the entertainment industry would be limited at best, and recommended that he set his sights on business. He listened to their words of wisdom and after finishing his education, moved to Washington, D. C. and became a very successful buyer for a large retail department store. Giles was a yuppie who was on his way up the ladder. Just in his twenties, he was making good money and had a bright future. His parents were justifiably proud.

However, Giles wasn’t satisfied. He wanted more. Against the advice of everyone he knew, the cocky young man quit his job to make it in the music business. It turned out to be not nearly as easy as he thought it would. For ten years he tried to write and perform. A decade of work produced just one song that charted, a minor rock hit that Rick had penned for a band called Silver. The group’s lone chart entry “Wham Bam (Shang-A-Lang)” managed a decent finish on the Billboard Hot 100 (at #16 in the summer of 1976) largely through the efforts of Chicago’s rock superstation WLS-AM, which played it heavily. The band dissolved when a successful follow-up couldn’t be marketed.

With only that one small accomplishment to show for all those years, Giles looked back on his musical career with despondency. He was thirty-five and at the end of his rope. He was now of the belief that there was no hope of him making it in the industry. Rick had fallen a long way since his days in retail sales. He had gone from confident and brash to depressed and doubtful. Between 1976 and 1982 Giles wrote no songs, but at the end of that long, dry run, fate stepped in and a New York publisher hooked Giles up with one of his associates in Nashville. It was at this time that Rick made the decision to get involved in country music. He moved to Nashville and began to make some headway. Getting his feet firmly planted on the ground, he was able to sell some of his material. As Giles approached his fourth decade of life, he was no longer cocky. He may have not been the world’s biggest star, but his depression had vanished and Rick had found happiness. His subsequent songwriting displayed his new- found spirit.

Creating songs like “Jealous Bone” (), “Wild Man” (Ricky Van Shelton), “” (Steve Wariner) and several other top ten cuts, Rick found his composing skills in demand. At about the same time he was starting to feel successful, he met a young woman whose songwriting talent seemed to mesh very well with his own. In earlier times of brashness, Giles most certainly would have refused to work with anyone, but the now-settled young man now gladly welcomed the advice of his fellow scribe.

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Rick felt he could learn a lot from the woman who had penned Steve Wariner’s #6 hit “.” Her name was Susan Longacre.

One day Longacre came in with an idea that she didn’t believe was commercial, but she wanted to write it anyway. It was about her stepmother who felt that she had lost most of her identity after the kids left home. As Susan related the story to Giles, he began to think about a similar situation regarding his own grandmother, who had gone through the same thing. The feeling of loneliness and emptiness that these two women must have felt was the driving force behind the creation of “Is There Life Out There.”

The song turned out to be not a normally-formatted song, as its verses contained an uncharacteristic five lines each. That notwithstanding, the song came together reasonably quickly and Giles immediately produced a demo and started pitching “Is There Life Out There” around town. One of the first artists Rick took the song to was a Canadian singer who was just beginning to make her mark in the States. Michelle Wright liked the song, but her manager didn’t think it was a good idea for Wright to record it. Next, Giles approached , who had a major problem with the line “Is there life beyond my family and my home?” She thought that wives and mothers would be really upset with that question, so she passed.

“Is There Life Out There” soon found its way to Tim Dubois at MCA who pitched it unsuccessfully to Steve Wariner, who had previously scored some moderate success with both Giles’ and Longacre’s individually-written songs, but he too passed on this one. From Steve, the song travelled over to Starstruck Entertainment and Reba McEntire. “Is There Life Out There” was thrown in with a batch of two dozen other songs being considered for Reba’s next session.

Even before McEntire selected it, Giles had a strange feeling that “Is There Life Out There” was a perfect song for Reba and he was so certain she would cut it that he called Longacre to assure her that not only would “Is There Life Out There” appear on Reba’s next album, but he believed the song would be picked as an upcoming single and become a hit. As Giles would later find out, it was never a sure thing. McEntire was drawn to the song, but was having problems getting it right. She considered dropping it. Reba finally changed the tempo, played with the phrasing a bit, and came up with a cut that satisfied her. Still, she had doubts about the song’s possibilities. It was only later, after they reviewed the whole session, that MCA and the singer agreed that “Is There Life Out There” would be issued as McEntire’s forty-seventh single.

Reba had grown up in Oklahoma singing with her sisters and brother. A college graduate, she had planned on teaching elementary school. Then country singer heard her perform “The Star- Spangled Banner” at the National Rodeo Finals competition in and convinced her to give country music a try. A stylist in the mold of Patsy Cline, Reba placed no limits on her music, her career or herself. Driven and intelligent, she was constantly pushing herself to new levels of performance. Sixteen years after her arrival in Music City, McEntire had risen to the status of Nashville’s dominant female talent.

Reba was one of the first country music performers to understand the real power of video. While some established stars were avoiding the new medium (considering it a trashy gimmick), with others simply using filmed concert footage for their video productions, McEntire was making mini-movies. Her videos were not only as affecting as her vocals, they often developed emotional edges that cut even deeper. In “Whoever’s In New England” viewers could see how it felt to be the other woman. “Sunday Kind Of Love” presented the emotions of homecomings in a fashion long-since forgotten in Hollywood. Because

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McEntire used this creative avenue to its full potential, the release of each of Reba’s videos had become an event.

Reba’s production team selected a Harvard graduate by the name of Alice Randall to prepare and photograph the visual scenes for the video, and it was an inspired choice because Alice’s own mother had gone through basically the same situation as Giles’ grandmother and Longacre’s stepmother, and the story depicted in the video is largely hers, all the way down to the scene that shows McEntire reading “I Know Why The Caged Bird Sings” to her daughter. That was one of Alice Randall’s mother’s favorite stories.

The video of “Is There Life Out There” became one of the most remarkable pieces of film ever shot in Nashville. Using the city’s Belmont College for many of the background scenes, the mini-movie cast Reba as a wife, mother and waitress trying to juggle all aspects of her life while working to achieve her dream of going to college. Too old to fit in with the other students, wearing clothes that were ragged and worn, trying to pick up where she left off two decades before, she struggled but never gave up. In the end, she celebrated with her husband (played by popular rock singer Huey Lewis) and family as she accepted her diploma.

The video was so well done that the preview brought tears to most eyes. Yet, if both TNN and CMT would have had their way, “Is There Life Out There” would have never aired. The two networks objected to the video’s length (well over four minutes) and the fact that it had dialogue mixed in with the music. They wanted it cut into a standard video format, insisting that the video present only the song and nothing more.

Reba fought hard to keep her video intact. Lobbying in print and on talk shows, she forced the cable outlets to give “Is There Life Out There” a fair shot. When TNN and CMT relented and ran the video, they were overwhelmed by viewer response. Within days of the initial airing, Reba was in heavy rotation. Just weeks after the video debuted on television, the audio single of “Is There Life Out There” jumped onto Billboard’s country radio playlist. The composition that Rick Giles and Susan Longacre both felt wasn’t commercial, slammed into the #1 position on March 28, 1992 and stayed there for two weeks. Yet, even more remarkable than the song’s strong sales was the effect it was having on thousands of women. Not long after the song’s release, McEntire was being approached on the concert trail by women, both young and old alike, thanking her because the “Is There Life Out There” video had inspired them to go back to school. Others told her that because of the video, they had gotten their GED. Some of these women were in their seventies!

Several different national education agencies estimated that the video had been the prime motivating factor for driving as many as forty thousand women back to either high school or college. Some college classes even adopted the song as their theme. In its original form, “Is There Life Out There” posed the question about whether there was anything left for a woman who had raised her children and watched them leave the nest. The song grew into not only a , but a full-length movie the following year, this time co-starring Keith Carradine as Reba’s husband. The video and movie not only answered that question in a triumphant manner, but presented a formula for thousands of women who wanted so badly to advance into an aspect of their lives where they didn’t feel trapped and unappreciated. “Is There Life Out There” came to mean much more than anyone could have imagined.

The song also demonstrated something else very important. It proved the real power of the country music video. The new age had arrived and artists could use this new medium as not only a creative

50 marketing outlet, but as a forum to inspire and motivate. At the time of what became known as country music’s “big bang” (the legendary Bristol recording sessions of 1927), nobody would have believed that hillbilly music could ever be a factor for a dramatic increase in college enrollment, but then who would have guessed back then that country music would someday grow into one of America’s most-important art forms? Just like the character Reba played in her video, country music has graduated and found its potential unlimited. – JH

The Story Behind The Song:

”Am I Losing You” (written by Jim Reeves)

Jim Reeves (First version: #3, 1957; Second version: #8, 1960) Ronnie Milsap (#1, 1981)

Multi-talented as a vocalist and as an instrumentalist, Ronnie Milsap took lessons in his youth on piano, violin and guitar. The first song he ever learned to play on the six-string guitar was “Am I Losing You,” written and recorded by the great Jim Reeves, and years later, that song provided Ronnie with a #1 single during a recuperative period in his career.

Milsap had toured quite heavily during 1980, and hadn’t been able to take time to review song submissions in order to come up with enough material to record a new album. His label RCA was calling for one though, and one day Ronnie was on the phone with the label’s division manager Jerry Bradley (son of legendary producer Owen Bradley) and during the conversation Milsap started talking about how much he loved the music of Jim Reeves. Many artists have recorded albums that paid homage to past stars (Hank Williams in particular), but Jim Reeves had never received such an honor. Ronnie and Jerry both agreed that a tribute album to Reeves would keep new Milsap music in the marketplace, without taxing him to find new songs. It would also give Ronnie the opportunity to salute one of his all- time favorite performers – one who had also recorded for RCA years earlier.

Jim Reeves was destined for stardom since his introduction on KWKH’s “Louisiana Hayride” radio show in Shreveport, Louisiana. He had been hired as an announcer on the program, but what he really wanted to do was sing. He got that chance by accident one night when one of the scheduled performers didn’t show up (legend tells us that it was Hank Williams, but actually it was Sleepy Labeef who didn’t show), and manager Horace Logan sent Reeves out on stage to fill the time. The audience loved his singing, and suddenly he was on his way to success. He recorded an up-tempo novelty tune called “Mexican Joe” on the small, independent Abbott label. It shot to #1 nationwide and became one of 1953’s biggest selling records. RCA Victor signed Reeves two years later and by 1957 he had embraced the new, smoother “countrypolitan” technique that came to be known as “The .” Jim became its standard- bearer, notching a string of top hits that crossed over effortlessly into the pop market, and brought an entirely new and much larger audience to country music.

Just a few years later, at the peak of his career, Reeves’ life was suddenly snuffed out when he crashed his single-engine private airplane during a severe thunderstorm while approaching Nashville’s Berry Field on July 31, 1964. He was 40 years old. With that plane crash, “Gentleman Jim’s” career

51 transformed from highly-regarded and incredibly successful to iconic and legendary. He was unanimously elected to The Country Music Hall Of Fame just three years later (the “twenty-five year” rule had yet to be implemented).

After Jerry Bradley authorized the Jim Reeves tribute album project, Ronnie and producer Tom Collins immediately went to work on it. The finished result was “Out Where The Bright Lights Are Glowing,” its title drawn from the first line of Reeves’ 1957 classic “Four Walls.” Milsap covered that one, as well as nine more of “Gentleman Jim’s” hits, including “I Guess I’m Crazy,” (which was just beginning its chart run at the time of Reeves’ death), “He’ll Have To Go” (Jim’s all-time biggest hit), “I’m Beginning To Forget You” (a lesser-known Jim Reeves tune which originally reached only #17 on the charts, but my personal favorite from Ronnie’s album) and “Am I Losing You,” a song which made the Top Ten twice for Reeves during his lifetime. Milsap’s version of “Am I Losing You” was the only track from the album released as a single. It reached the summit of Billboard’s country singles chart on May 9, 1981, giving Ronnie his 17th of 35 number one hits (4th on the all-time list behind George Strait’s 44, Conway Twitty’s 40 and Merle Haggard’s 38). The tribute album even contained a couple of original songs in honor of Reeves: the title track, “Out Where The Bright Lights Are Glowing” (a song specifically written around the album’s already selected title), and “Dear Friend.”

With the release of “Out Where The Bright Lights Are Glowing,” Milsap contributed to something of a Jim Reeves revival. In 1979 and ’80, RCA gained a fair amount of mileage from its Reeves catalog when was commissioned to overdub her vocals onto some of Jim’s old tracks to create “duets” with Reeves. This project yielded three Top Ten singles: “Don’t Let Me Cross Over” (Carl and Pearl Butler’s mega-hit from ’63), “Oh, How I Miss You Tonight,” and Eddy Arnold’s chart-topper from 1950: Cindy Walker’s “Take Me In Your Arms And Hold Me.” Spurred by those successes, RCA dug even deeper in an attempt to uncover songs that both Jim Reeves and Patsy Cline had recorded in an effort to make duets out of those as well. This was a considerably tougher endeavor because the songs needed to be in the same key as well as similar in tempo, and only two suitable tracks were found. The voices of Reeves and Cline were electronically linked, and one of those duets “Have You Ever Been Lonely (Have You Ever Been Blue)” became a Top Five single in late 1981. The only other usable track turned out to be, surprisingly enough, Patsy’s #1 classic “I Fall To Pieces” but the overdub mix on that one didn’t come off as well and the Reeves/Cline duet version did not reach “hit” status. – JH

The Story Behind The Song:

“(There’s) No Gettin’ Over Me” (written by Tommy Brasfield and Walt Aldridge)

Ronnie Milsap (#1 country, #5 pop, 1981)

Mac Davis was in the middle of a major resurgence in his career after leaving Columbia and signing with the independent Casablanca label. He had notched four top ten singles in a row and by mid-1981, Davis and his producer were down in Muscle Shoals, Alabama working on a new album at the FAME Studio. Among the musicians working those sessions were Walt Aldridge and Tommy Brasfield. In addition to playing guitar, Aldridge also doubled as a studio engineer. The two men were also “closet” songwriters. They had been secretly writing songs in Muscle Shoals for over a year before coming up

52 with one that they felt was worthy enough to show a publisher. The guys called it “(There’s) No Gettin’ Over Me.” Aldridge and Brasfield had been working on the song between “takes” during the sessions, and at one point they got stuck and actually went downstairs at the studio to ask Davis if he would help them with it. Of course Mac’s mind was on the record he was making, so he didn’t turn out to be much help.

After about a week, Aldridge and Brasfield finally finished “(There’s) No Gettin’ Over Me” and they made a demo with Walt singing lead and playing guitar. Then Tommy took the finished product to Nashville to pitch the song. He didn’t have to wait long before finding a taker. The first artist he approached passed on it, but then he went to Ronnie Milsap’s office and played it for Rob Galbraith. The timing was pretty bad, as Milsap had just completed an album and turned it in to RCA, but Galbraith thought Ronnie should hear “(There’s) No Gettin’ Over Me” right away. After hearing it, Milsap and his producer Tom Collins immediately moved to get it cut quickly. Ronnie was a stickler for perfection and recorded the song some twelve times, trying to come up with the performance he desired. In the end though, the cut that they went with turned out to be the very first one. Both Milsap and Collins came to realize that the “magic” achieved on the first take subsequently diminished on each additional attempt.

RCA was already in the process of pressing copies of “It’s All I Can Do,” the first single scheduled to be released from the new album already turned in to the label, but Milsap was so enthusiastic about “(There’s) No Gettin’ Over Me” that he telephoned RCA division chief Jerry Bradley and asked him to stop the pressing. An incredulous Bradley initially said that it was too late, but after much pleading from Ronnie, Bradley finally agreed to let Milsap bring in the new song at 8:30 the next morning and he would listen to it, but Jerry warned, “It better be good.” When Bradley heard it the following morning, he immediately phoned RCA’s plant in Indianapolis to stop the pressing and within two weeks “(There’s) No Gettin’ Over Me” was pressed and shipped on yellow-colored vinyl.

Of Ronnie Milsap’s thirty-five #1 country hits (fourth most in history), “(There’s) No Gettin’ Over Me” ultimately became his all-time biggest single and yielded his third Grammy award. In addition to the record’s lofty #1 status (achieved August 29, 1981) on Billboard’s Hot Country Singles chart, it also spent five weeks at #5 on the Billboard Hot 100 pop chart and reached #2 on the adult contemporary playlist. By the way, most listeners (then and now) refer to the song by a grammatically incorrect title: “There Ain’t No Gettin’ Over Me,” which is completely understandable since that’s the hook line that Milsap used throughout the recording. At no time is the song’s official title, “(There’s) No Gettin’ Over Me,” ever used. – JH

The Story Behind The Song:

“Nobody Loves Me Like You Do” (written by James Dunne & Pamela Phillips)

Anne Murray & Dave Loggins (#1, 1984)

This one’s kind of personal with me, as it was breaking at about the same time that my wife-to-be Debbie Woods and I first met on October 5, 1984. Because of our budding relationship, “Nobody Loves Me Like You Do” by Anne Murray & Dave Loggins quickly became her favorite song. Although it climbed

53 to the #1 position on Billboard’s country singles chart by December 15th, surprisingly the record didn’t make the pop chart at all. Musical tastes were constantly changing, and despite most of Anne Murray’s earlier releases charting consistently on the pop listings, by the time “Nobody Loves Me Like You Do” was issued, her career on the pop chart was all but over. Anne’s final Top Twenty appearance on the Billboard Hot 100 had been her 1980 cover of The Monkees’ old ’67 hit “.”

Meanwhile, by 1984, Dave Loggins had a hot career going in Music City as a songwriter, turning out major hits such as Alabama’s “Roll On (Eighteen Wheeler),” The Oak Ridge Boys’ “Everyday,” Don Williams’ “Maggie’s Dream,” and the ’s “I Love .” Nonetheless, Loggins was little-known to the general public. His only hit as a vocalist had come ten years earlier when “” had gone Top Ten on Billboard’s Hot 100 pop chart. He was to gain his second vocal hit in a duet with Anne Murray.

At the time, Murray’s label (Capitol) was pushing her to cut a duet with someone possessing “marquee value,” someone on the level of pop superstar or perhaps former Beatle Paul McCartney, who had a top solo career going by then, but for some reason, Anne wasn’t drawn to the idea of recording with any of the artists Capitol recommended. She had been hearing Dave Loggins singing on demos for several years, and often expressed a special attraction to Dave’s voice in conversations with her producer Jim Ed Norman. He suggested that Anne might want to try singing “Nobody Loves Me Like You Do” with Loggins. Anne was instantly on board with Norman’s idea. Jim Ed called Dave and ran the idea past him. Loggins was surprised that Anne Murray or anyone else had ever paid any attention to his voice on those demos, but he did agree to do the project. “Yeah, that sounds kind of interesting,” he told Norman.

A couple of weeks later, Norman called Loggins again, catching him at MCA’s demo studio in Nashville, and told him to head to the airport. A ticket was already waiting for him, and Loggins flew up to Capitol’s recording studio in Toronto to work on the track that afternoon. He learned the song on the plane, and did a scratch vocal with Anne in the studio. Later, once Murray’s part was finished, Dave recorded his final vocal upon his return to Music City.

Despite Loggins’ lack of “marquee value,” as Capitol Records so quaintly put it, “Nobody Loves Me Like You Do” was an overwhelming success, reaching the summit of Billboard’s country chart on December 15, 1984. The following October, the Country Music Association named Murray and Loggins the “Vocal Duo of the Year.” Loggins thus became the only artist in CMA history to ever win a CMA vocal trophy without having an active recording contract. After the success of “Nobody Loves Me Like You Do,” Jim Ed Norman tried on several occasions to entice Dave into signing a record deal, but he never would saddle up. Norman finally came to the conclusion that he simply wasn’t interested. Apparently, Loggins was content just doing what he was doing. He continued for years to write songs and cut an occasional demo now and then. Obviously, that was all the stardom he desired. If I had been in his place, I like to think I would have felt the same way too. – JH

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The Story Behind The Song:

“Always On My Mind” (written by , & )

Brenda Lee (#45, 1972) Elvis Presley (#16 country, 1973) John Wesley Ryles (#20, 1979) Willie Nelson (#1 country, #5 pop, 1982) The (#4 pop, 1988)

Every once in a while, certain songs come along in country music that don’t just become hits, but take on a kind of appeal. “Always On My Mind” has, over the years, scored big for a varied assortment of performers. In 1972, pop artist Brenda Lee charted a country version of it first, then the following year, another country version appeared by the King of Rock ‘n’ Roll himself, Elvis Presley. His rendition was the song’s first significant chart entry, peaking at #16 (as the “B” side to “Separate Ways”). Country artist John Wesley Ryles, (whose biggest hit had been his classic recording of Hank Mills’ haunting “Kay” in 1969) nudged the Top Twenty with “Always On My Mind” in 1979. Three years later, the blockbuster version by Willie Nelson topped Billboard’s country chart and reached #5 on the pop listings, achieving “Song of the Year” and “Single of the Year” honors from the Country Music Association, a Grammy Award for Nelson and two Grammys (“Song of the Year” and “Best Country Song”) for co-writers Wayne Carson, Johnny Christopher and Mark James, and two Academy of Country Music trophies. “Always On My Mind” wasn’t done yet, though. In 1988, the British new wave group, The Pet Shop Boys, rocketed into the Top Five of the Billboard Hot 100 with another huge rendition of the song.

All songwriters have different methods in which they come up with their compositions. In Wayne Carson’s case, he would develop the chord structure and melody first. He reasoned that if the melody was “singable,” the words wouldn’t be that far away. In his mind, a song is just a story set to music, and what made “Always On My Mind” so magical and successful was that virtually everyone on the planet had . The song touched base with everyone who heard it.

Wayne wrote two verses to “Always On My Mind” at his home in Springfield, Missouri while commuting to Memphis as a session guitar player. He also was cutting some sides for the tiny Mongoose label, a branch of Fred Foster’s Monument Records in Nashville. One day at a session, Carson showed “Always On My Mind” to his producer, lifelong friend Tips Smallman, who said, “Wayne, I think this song needs a bridge” (Carson had purposely written it without a bridge because he didn’t think it needed one). Smallman suggested that Wayne go upstairs to his office (using the piano in there) and try to develop a bridge for “Always On My Mind.” While Carson was up there working on it, guitarist Johnny Christopher came wandering in and, noticing that Wayne was having difficulty, asked him if he needed a little help. Carson gratefully accepted the assistance. Then in walked Mark James, the composer of Elvis Presley’s 1972 pop mega-hit “.” James was there to pick up his mail at the publishing company (which was next door to the studio), and he asked, “What are you guys doing?” Wayne said, “Well, Tips wants a bridge for this song, and we’re trying to come up with it.” Between the three of them, they finally came up with the two little lines, the bridge needed to complete “Always On My Mind.”

They went downstairs and Wayne cut it immediately. Carson always used his buddies’ reactions as a “gauge” to determine how good a new song was, and judging by Bobby Womack and ’s

55 enthusiastic responses, Carson thought “Always On My Mind” could be big, and he and producer Tips Smallman couldn’t wait to get to Nashville to play it for head man Fred Foster. Foster, however, was totally unimpressed, saying “I don’t think the world’s ready for that,” and refused to release it. Well, both men were livid, and by the time they got back to Memphis, Carson remembers the last thing Tips said about the whole incident: “Foster’s going to rue the day that he turned that song down, because some day “Always On My Mind” is going to be a massive hit.”

Even though “Always On My Mind” was released by such stars as Brenda Lee and Elvis Presley (as noted earlier), Willie Nelson had never heard of it until Johnny Christpher played it for him during sessions for the “” duet album with Merle Haggard. Nelson loved the tune, but Haggard didn’t quite hear it. In hindsight, the song probably wouldn’t have made a good duet anyway, and they were cutting a duet album. So Haggard was probably right in that respect, and hadn’t even realized it. Though Merle had nixed “Always On My Mind,” Willie cut a solo version in his new Pedernales Studio in Austin, Texas after he and Haggard finished their “Pancho And Lefty” album. The brand new studio wasn’t quite up to par yet, and the first tracks turned out unsuitable. According to session pianist Bobby Wood, it was so bad that, at first, the $70,000 piano in there sounded like a spinet, but the technicians put a lot of “highs” on the piano and it ended up sounding pretty good. Nelson’s wife Connie and his daughters persuaded him to make “Always On My Mind” the title of his new solo album as well as the first single, the biggest of Willie’s entire career.

Wayne Carson’s impressive arsenal of classic compositions runs the gamut of popularity in nearly all fields of music. In addition to “Always On My Mind,” here’s a listing of some of Carson’s most notable country hits: Eddy Arnold’s “Somebody Like Me” (#1 for four weeks in 1966) and “Soul Deep” (#22, 1970), Mel Tillis’s “Who’s Julie,” (#10, 1968), Waylon Jennings’ “Something’s Wrong In California” (#19, 1969) and “(Don’t Let The Sun Set On You In) Tulsa” (#16, 1971), ’s “No Love At All” (#15, 1970), Gary Stewart’s “Drinkin’ Thing” (#10, 1974), “She’s Actin’ Single (I’m Drinkin’ Doubles)” (#1, 1975) and “Whiskey Trip” (#16, 1978), Johnny Paycheck’s “Slide Off Of Your ” (#7, 1977), Ray Price’s “That’s The Only Way To Say Good Morning” (#18, 1979), ’s “Barstool Mountain” (#9, 1979) and Conway Twitty’s “I See The Want To In Your Eyes” (#1, 1974) and “The Clown” (#1, 1982). “Soul Deep,” and “No Love At All” also appeared on the pop charts for The Box Tops and B. J. Thomas respectively. Wayne’s song list is one that any country tunesmith would be proud of. He was elected to the Nashville Songwriters Hall of Fame in 1997. Carson also composed many more songs that appeared exclusively on the pop side, most notably for The Box Tops (their most famous hit, “The Letter,” was covered in country by Barbara Mandrell), Bruce Channel, , , Ike and , and , among others. – JH

The Story Behind The Song:

“Take This Job And Shove It” (written by David Allen Coe)

Johnny Paycheck (#1, 1978)

It’s ironic that a country music performer whose name was “Paycheck” would achieve his only #1 single with a song called “Take This Job And Shove It.” The song’s composer, David Allen Coe, had been asked

56 during an interview if he would ever want to be a fireman, and he responded, “They can take that job and shove it.” He wrote the tune initially as a joke, but the longer he worked with it, the more confident he felt that the thing might actually have some merit. Coe took the song to producer Billy Sherrill, who decided it was just what he needed for Johnny Paycheck, whom Epic had all but given up on. It was one of the easiest songs Paycheck ever recorded, and it became an anthem for working people everywhere. “Take This Job And Shove It” yielded Paycheck his second Grammy nomination (the other had come for 1971’s “She’s All I Got”) and became the title for a film.

Johnny Paycheck’s real name was Donald Lytle. He began his music career under the stage name “Donny Young,” but changed it again in 1965, taking his third and last handle from a former Golden Gloves boxer from Des Moines, Iowa named Johnny Paychek (spelled without the second “c”). Paychek’s claim to fame was that he once fought in Chicago for the heavyweight title (he lost). Most people incorrectly assumed that Lytle’s second stage name was a knock-off of “Johnny Cash.” Prior to his name change to “Johnny Paycheck,” Donald had been reasonably successful as a musician and supporting vocalist for such Nashville stars as , Faron Young, George Jones and Ray Price. As a songwriter, he composed “Touch My Heart” (as “Donny Young”) for Price and it reached the Top Five in 1966. As Paycheck, he co-wrote Tammy Wynette’s very first chart entry “Apartment #9” also in ’66, and a George Jones Top Five hit, “Once You’ve Had The Best,” in 1974.

In addition to his background vocal duties, Lytle (as “Donny Young”) began making solo records in 1959 for Decca without any success. A switch to the independent Hilltop label provided him with his first two Billboard chart entries in 1965 under his new name. One of those records, Hank Cochran’s “A-11,” was highly-acclaimed, but it didn’t turn out to be a hit, peaking at only #26. However, after signing with Aubrey Mayhew’s Little Darlin’ label, Paycheck landed in Top Ten territory for the first time with “The Lovin’ Machine.” Johnny logged a few more lesser-charting singles with Little Darlin’ through 1969, then he left Nashville for the West Coast, playing small clubs in the Los Angeles area where Billy Sherrill spotted him and brought him back to Music City to ink a contract with Epic. “She’s All I Got,” Paycheck’s first single with his new label, vaulted all the way to #2 in 1971, and Johnny was on his way to becoming a star. More Top Ten hits followed, including “Someone To Give My Love To” (#4), “Song And Dance Man” (#8), “Slide Off Your Satin Sheets” (#7) and “Mr. Lovemaker,” which locked onto the #2 position for three weeks, barely missing the summit. Observing the success of Waylon Jennings’ and Willie Nelson’s careers, Paycheck decided to “crash the party” and tie himself to country music’s “outlaw” movement, which was breaking wide open in the mid-1970s. Johnny adapted a more “shaggy” appearance to better fit in as a rebel, and he began to participate in various types of misbehavior to conform to his new “outlaw” image. “Take This Job And Shove It” was the perfect song to perpetuate that image, and it became Paycheck’s only chart-topper on January 7, 1978.

Johnny’s life and career might be best-described as a “roller-coaster ride,” with lots of ups and downs. The hits were the “ups,” of course, but his time in the spotlight contained more than a handful of “downs” as well. At least a dozen times Paycheck appeared in court on a variety of charges, everything from burglary to verbal abuse. His most serious offense was an aggravated assault charge stemming from a barroom shooting in Hillsboro, Ohio on December 19, 1985. This crime resulted in a nine-and-a- half year prison sentence, of which Johnny served just two years. At the time of the incident, Paycheck was recording for Mercury Records and while he served his sentence, the label released one of his most- revered songs: the autobiographical “Old Violin,” which made its chart debut on May 17, 1986. It had been cut a couple of months before the shooting, and while the record wasn’t a large hit (reaching only #21), Johnny delivered a heartfelt performance. Toward the end of his career, he was allowed to

57 become a member of the Grand Ole Opry in 1997. Johnny Paycheck died at only 64 from emphysema on February 18, 2003. – JH

The Story Behind The Song:

“Night Life” (written by Willie Nelson, credited to Paul Buskirk and Walt Breeland)

Ray Price (#28, 1963) Claude Gray (#31, 1968) Danny Davis & The Nashville Brass (with Willie Nelson) (#20, 1980) B. J. Thomas (#59, 1986)

Here’s a very innovative and unique type of song not found among the lists of giant hits of either the past or present, but it was quite unusual for its time. The song is Willie Nelson’s “Night Life,” mostly associated with Ray Price’s career, made during the time of Ray’s transition to a more urbanized, pop- oriented sound. In time, the tune came to be widely recognized and often recorded.

Willie Nelson had migrated to , Texas in the late 1950s. He played in clubs by night and worked at the Buskirk School of Guitar during the day. The man who would one day become Nashville’s hottest star made his spending money by teaching kids to play guitar. Ironically, the man who hired Willie, Paul Buskirk, realized when he hired him that Nelson didn’t know that much about the guitar and even less about teaching. When Nelson wasn’t working with a pupil, he became one himself, taking guitar lessons from the school’s owner. Over the period of a few months, Buskirk taught Willie scores of licks and chords. As the two of them worked to improve Willie’s playing, Paul began to sense that this young man possessed a lot of untapped talent as a songwriter.

During these long days and even longer nights, Willie saw little of his family. When he wasn’t at the school, he was driving across town to work five or six sets at one of several different local night spots. The smoky clubs, often filled with lonely drunks and aimless dreamers, quickly became as much of a home to Nelson as the address where he received his mail.

Nelson was developing his unique style of phrasing lyrics, hitting words off the beat, then pausing in a manner that was meant to prompt listeners to reflect on what the young man had just said. Yet, more often than not, the patrons couldn’t have cared less about Willie’s technique or his penchant for soft- touching ballads. They just wanted to hear a good ole Webb Pierce or Lefty Frizzell honky-tonk standard, so most of the time that was what they got. By and large, the only person who seemed to care what Willie was thinking was Paul Buskirk.

Because of the great potential Paul saw in the young man, Willie began to look upon Buskirk as a mentor. Over time, the fledgling songwriter even began to share some of his writings with the man. Paul assured Nelson that he liked what he heard, and encouraged him to keep at it. Willie did, using what little spare time he could find to scribble down lines of verse.

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One night, on the way home from playing in a club, Nelson began to reflect on his wild and crazy life. On the streets he noted the people that normal folks never see. There were winos and junkies, hookers and pimps, street workers and loners, cops and hoods, and lonely drifters who used the night to cover their sadness. With steam rising from the drain shafts and wastepaper blowing down dingy streets, the nocturnal Houston was a world unto itself.

The vivid portraits which Nelson observed in the late night hours served as the inspiration for a very unique composition. Written easily and with little effort, Willie told the story of his life. The lyrics Nelson came up with for “Night Life” transcended description and rose to life as images on the canvas of a simple and free musical score. Dark, foreboding, depressing and dramatic, the song presented the total scope of how the songwriter saw his and thousands of others’ lives. It also underscored how Willie had chosen this existence, that this eerie world had become his, and how he expected to stay in these surroundings for a very long time, possibly for the rest of his life.

As brilliant as Willie’s effort was on “Night Life,” the writer didn’t have the contacts to get it published or recorded. The tune may have been his best work at the time, but it could do nothing for him without those contacts. While Nelson might have thought that his latest composition had little “real-world” value, Paul Buskirk thought “Night Life” was luminous. Like its writer, he wasn’t sure if there was a market for the song, but he realized that this was a very special effort. When Willie inquired if Paul might be interested in purchasing the publishing rights to the number, the guitar school owner made an offer of $150. Through Buskirk’s attorney, Walt Breeland, a legal document was drawn up, the bill of sale was signed and the money changed hands. Willie got the $150 which he needed desperately at the time, thinking all the while that he had gotten a much better deal. Meanwhile, lawyer Breeland had sneaked a clause into the contract listing himself as co-writer of “Night Life.” Maybe he agreed with Buskirk that the song indeed had potential.

Over time, Nelson would finally make enough contacts to get to Nashville and begin writing for Pamper Music (Hank Cochran brought him into the fold). Soon after Willie left Houston, Buskirk (who had also purchased the publishing rights to Nelson’s “Family ”), would eventually interest others in Willie’s early compositions. In 1960 “Family Bible” became Claude Gray’s first of his five Top Ten hits, and a version by George Jones reached #16 the following year. In ’63, Buskirk would finally get a record deal on “Night Life.”

By then, Willie Nelson had become one of Nashville’s best-known song scribes. He had given Faron Young and Patsy Cline long chart rides with “Hello Walls” and “Crazy” respectively. Almost everyone in the music industry was aware that Willie had been the actual writer of “Family Bible” and “Night Life,” and that Buskirk had merely bought them from him. Nonetheless, Paul was officially in charge of “Night Life” and he finally convinced Columbia Records and one of its top artists, Ray Price, to cut the tune. Price’s voice was a perfect fit for the song’s bluesy sound, but neither he nor the label believed “Night Life” would have a commercial country appeal, so it was relegated to the “B” side of “.” Ray’s version of this Hank Cochran classic went to #3, but two years later Eddy Arnold’s rendition turned into a massive country and pop hit and vaulted Eddy’s career resurgence to stratospheric proportions and helped him win the Country Music Association’s very first “Entertainer of the Year” award in 1967.

“B” sides rarely chart at all, but while Price’s version of “Make The World Go Away” was climbing into the Top Five, “Night Life” was also racking up some numbers as well, eventually peaking at #28. Still,

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Buskirk was disappointed. While the royalties on the record more than paid for his original investment, it was hardly the payback which Paul had hoped. However, that wasn’t the end of “Night Life’s” story.

As mentioned earlier, “Night Life” was a strange kind of song. At first, people seemed to pass it off as just another of Willie Nelson’s quirky efforts, but given time, the tune began to work on people. While Ray Price’s recording hadn’t generated much heat upon its initial release, the song’s fire didn’t completely die either. Soon Ray found that fans would request it at almost all of his shows, and as he began to perform more live versions of the Nelson blues effort, other acts began to pick it up for both album and single cuts. Five decades after its poor first showing on the Billboard charts, “Night Life” has achieved results that almost match the scope and genius of the song’s innovative lyrics. More than thirty million copies of the song have been sold and over seventy different artists have cut it. The tune has floated out of country and become a standard in blues, pop, rock, big-band, orchestra and elevator music. The royalties generated by “Night Life” has made it one of country music’s biggest moneymakers. The song ended up making Paul Buskirk rich, but all Willie received for his work was what Buskirk originally paid him for it: $150. Looking back on what he had given up, Nelson reflected to a group of writers, “So what? I needed the hundred and fifty dollars a lot more then than I do the millions now.” That’s a logic and an attitude that only a person of the night would fully understand. – JH

The Story Behind The Song:

”For The Good Times” (written by Kris Kristofferson)

Ray Price (#1 country, #11 pop, 1970)

When Ray Price reached the top of Billboard’s country chart with “For The Good Times” in 1970, it ended a ten-year absence of #1 hits for a man who had experimented with several musical styles. Noted initially for the walking bass of his country shuffles, Price had later opted for a more urbane sound, enhanced by a bevy of strings. When that texture met Kris Kristofferson’s “For The Good Times,” the result not only reached the top of Billboard’s Hot Country Singles chart but also went to #11 on Billboard’s Hot 100 pop chart, marking Price’s only venture into the pop Top Forty.

Kristofferson started the song in 1968 during a drive from Nashville to the Gulf Of Mexico where he piloted helicopters for offshore oil rigs. He hated the trip and on this particular drive he developed the first verse and chorus of a song about the final encounter of a man and a woman who were breaking up. Actually the storyline was personal. It was really about him and a former girlfriend.

In an interview with the Nashville Tennessean, given while Ray’s record was breaking through, Kristofferson talked about the development of “For The Good Times” during his drive down to the Gulf. He devised the melody first, believing it to be one of the best he had ever come up with. Kris couldn’t wait to get to a guitar. He wondered what the chords were and if he could even play it. Continuing his drive he assembled a portion of the lyrics, but it was sometime later before he finished it.

After the song was completed and sent to the publisher, Ray Pennington, a song promoter for Buckhorn Music (the publishing company Kris was writing for), thought “For The Good Times” might do well for

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Ray Price, who was touring at the time. For assistance in locating him, Pennington contacted Fred Foster at Monument Records who prepared a demo on the song, got hold of a copy of Price’s itinerary and found out that he was appearing at the Stardust Club in Odessa, Texas which was owned by an old friend of his. The Stardust had been one of Price’s favorite places to perform since the beginning of his career back in the early 1950s and he continued to frequently play there even after reaching stardom. When the demo on “For The Good Times” arrived, Price listened to it between shows and immediately decided to record the song just as soon as he got back to Nashville. As was usually the case, he nailed it on the very first take with all the musicians present. Very little overdubbing was needed. Ray much preferred recording that way, as did most of the veteran hit-makers in Nashville at that time.

Initially, Price’s label (Columbia) released “For The Good Times” as the “B” side of “Grazin’ In Greener Pastures,” despite Ray’s contention that “For The Good Times” would be the hit. It wasn’t until pop singer also recorded “For The Good Times” that the label changed its emphasis and began promoting Price’s version in earnest, which ended up selling a sensational 11 million copies.

In March of 1971, Price won his only Grammy award for the tune. That same year, the Academy of Country Music cited “For The Good Times” as Song of the Year and Single Record Of The Year. Additionally, the “For The Good Times” LP earned Album of the Year honors. Despite the enormous success of “For The Good Times,” Billboard Magazine actually cites five other Ray Price singles as better chart performers: “,” (which held the #1 position for an incredible 20 weeks in 1956 and ranks as the fourth biggest country hit of all time), “City Lights,” (#1 for 13 weeks in 1958), “My Shoes Keep Walking Back To You” (1957), “I Won’t Mention It Again” (1971) and “She’s Got To Be A Saint” (1972). Despite these statistics, “For The Good Times” will always be indelibly linked to Ray Price, and forever regarded as his quintessential masterpiece after his change of style in the mid-‘60s to a smoother, more pop sound, adapting to the changing musical tastes of the nation’s country music fans. By the time Price made his final appearance on Billboard’s Top Ten list with “Diamonds In The Stars” in 1982, (after making hit records for nearly 30 years), the pendulum had swung back to a more traditional country sound, and Ray had changed right back along with it. His versatility was amazing. He was able to give the public exactly what it wanted whatever the times called for, and that may be his most enduring legacy.

I would like to extend my appreciation to Jim Doran, a friend and colleague at Meyer Communications for his contributions to this story. Beginning in 1991, Jim served as Ray Price’s manager & booking agent during the latter part of Ray’s career, and he continued in that capacity until various health issues caused Ray to cut back on his show dates along about 2001. Price did continue to perform occasionally as his deteriorating health permitted, until almost the very end of his life. Ray’s last concert was given just a couple of months before he died of pancreatic cancer at age 87 on December 16, 2013. – JH

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The Story Behind The Song

”Honky Tonk Blues” (written by Hank Williams)

Hank Williams (#2, 1952) Charley Pride (#1, 1980)

The concept of recording an entire album of Hank Williams songs was hardly a new one when Charley Pride released “There’s A Little Bit Of Hank In Me” in 1980. Hank Williams Jr., Ray Price and Glen Campbell were among the performers who had previously saluted Williams in that manner, and Moe Bandy had already started his own Hank tribute album when Pride’s hit the market.

Since the field had already been mined quite thoroughly, Pride hoped to find material that hadn’t been covered as often as “Your Cheatin’ Heart” or “Cold, Cold Heart.” He and his producer Jerry Bradley (who was somewhat skeptical about the idea) made an appointment with Ronnie Gant at Acuff-Rose Publishing, the company that held the rights to Hank’s catalog.

As the three men looked over the material, Charley noticed “Honky Tonk Blues.” He was familiar with the tune (which had been a #2 hit for Hank in 1952) and started singing it right there in the office. It was then that Bradley thought, for the first time, that maybe the project could come to fruition, and perhaps be successful.

Several members of Hank’s old band “The ” were still active at that time, and were used on the sessions in a move toward authenticity. Pride’s goal was to get some of the original sound and feel, and after the final track had been recorded, Charley determined that this had been accomplished.

John Schweers was commissioned to write the title track to “There’s a Little Bit Of Hank In Me,” which tied the album together musically. Pride settled on such frequently re-worked classics as “I’m So Lonesome I Could Cry” and “Mind Your Own Business,” as well as less familiar titles as “Low Down Blues,” and “I Could Never Be Ashamed Of You.” The fast-paced “Honky Tonk Blues,” featuring The Jordanaires on back-up vocals, represented the album’s first single.

When “Honky Tonk Blues” by Charley Pride reached #1 on April 12, 1980, it was a historic occasion. It marked the first time that a of one of Hank’s songs had reached #1 on Billboard’s country chart. Linda Ronstadt came close in 1975, peaking at #2 with her rendition of “I Can’t Help It (If I’m Still In Love With You).” Of course, it was a different story on the pop side, as crooner had famously taken Hank’s “Cold, Cold Heart” for a six-week ride at the top even while Williams’ original version was still a mainstay on the 1951 country playlists.

Three months later, in July of 1980, the second and final single released from “There’s A Little Bit Of Hank In Me,” another lesser-known Williams song called “You Win Again” also reached the #1 plateau for Charley. Hank’s 1952 original had topped out at #10. – JH

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The Story Behind The Song:

“Drivin’ My Life Away” (written by David Malloy, Eddie Rabbitt and Even Stevens)

Eddie Rabbitt (#1 country, #5 pop, 1980)

In 1980, a horrendous movie called “Roadie” was released, starring some guy called “Meatloaf,” who was a well-known rap performer at the time. Academy Award-winning actor Art Carney was also in it. He must’ve needed a paycheck pretty badly to hook onto this dud. The movie was a predictable flop, but the soundtrack album, which contained several popular radio cuts, earned substantial attention. One of those tracks was Eddie Rabbitt’s huge crossover hit “Drivin’ My Life Away.”

Rabbitt, plus co-writers Even Stevens and David Malloy first got involved with the project after receiving a call from Steve Wax, a former Electra Records executive in charge of the movie’s soundtrack album. Wax needed the three men to come up with a song for the album, but he was very vague in his description of the film, and didn’t even provide an explanation on how the song would be used in the movie. Wax instructed them that it had to be “a ‘driving’ kind of song, not particularly a truck-driving song or a car-driving song, but one that was simply about ‘driving’ in general.” Talk about a tall order! It’s not easy writing a song about driving without mentioning a truck, a car or a bus.

Rabbitt, Stevens and Malloy took time out of work on Eddie’s “Horizons” album to fashion the song, using the roadies’ lifestyle as a guide. It took three days of intense effort at their 16th Avenue office in Nashville. The men discussed the roadies themselves, pondering who they were, what made them choose that kind of lifestyle, things like that. From there, they were able to form suitable lyrics for the tune. As they talked and wrote, they received inspiration for the melody by playing an old Bob Dylan cut called “Subterranean Homesick Blues,” from which they fashioned the basic guitar rhythm for “Drivin’ My Life Away.”

Co-writer David Malloy was also Eddie Rabbitt’s longtime producer, and was at the helm when “Drivin’ My Life Away” was recorded. There was magic in the air that day. All the musicians were at the very top of their game, and Eddie nailed the song on the very first take. It turned out so well that both Rabbitt and Malloy campaigned for Electra to issue the song not only on the “Roadie” soundtrack album, but on Rabbitt’s “Horizon” package as well. “Drivin’ My Life Away” effortlessly cruised into the #1 slot on Billboard’s country singles chart on August 23, 1980, and placed at #5 on the Billboard Hot 100, landing Eddie in the upper rungs of the pop chart for the first time. His two immediate follow-ups also reached the pop Top Five: “I Love A Rainy Night” (#1) and “Step By Step” (#5). – JH

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The Story Behind The Song:

“There Won’t Be Anymore” (written by Charlie Rich)

Charlie Rich (#1 country, #18 pop, 1974)

Here’s a very rare example of a ten-year old song (which had not charted at all upon its initial release) being re-issued and skyrocketing to #1. The song was “There Won’t Be Anymore,” written and recorded by Charlie Rich during his brief time at RCA Victor from 1963 to 1965. While at RCA, he made some really good records with legendary producer Chet Atkins at the helm. Unfortunately, RCA decided to release Rich’s material on the company’s newly re-activated subsidiary label “Groove” (probably because of Charlie’s rockabilly background). Most historians feel this was a huge mistake on RCA’s part, and that Charlie’s records should have been issued under the mainstream “RCA Victor” logo. Because they were released on the “Groove” subsidiary label, none of them appeared on any of the Billboard charts, although Atkins proclaimed Rich to be one of the greatest talents he had ever encountered. High praise indeed, from a man who had worked with the best that Nashville had ever produced. Chet’s assessment of Rich was clear evidence that RCA had marketed him all wrong during his brief two-year stint with the company. Further proof would come almost a full decade later.

The road to stardom was a long and winding one for Charlie Rich. He had recorded for several labels before and after his short tenure at RCA, with little success to show for it. He had notched only two minor hits on the pop chart: 1960’s “Lonely Weekends” on the Phillips label which rose to #22 and “Mohair Sam” that went to #21 in 1965 on the Smash label. So although his proverbial track record was less than stellar, to say the least, Billy Sherrill nevertheless signed Charlie to Epic Records in 1968. However, as fate would have it, widespread acclaim was still five years in the future.

Charlie Rich and Billy Sherrill had first worked together back in the late 1950s at ’ in Memphis (Sherrill had engineered some of Rich’s sessions there), and Charlie thought extremely highly of him. So much in fact, that he had a special “key man” clause drawn up in his Epic contract: If Sherrill left the company for any reason, Rich was free to leave as well.

Finally, in 1973, the big breakthrough came: Kenny O’Dell’s “Behind Closed Doors” propelled Charlie Rich to #1 on April 28, 1973, then the super-smash “” (co-written by Sherrill) topped both the Billboard “Hot Country Singles” chart (on November 24, 1973) and the “Billboard Hot 100” pop chart. At the age of 41, after years of frustration, Charlie Rich had finally arrived, and in quite spectacular fashion. It was then that one of his old labels developed an idea in which to capitalize on his newfound stardom.

The Charlie Rich material that had languished in the RCA vaults for ten years or so was about to be resurrected. An album was designed, packaged and shipped. “There Won’t Be Anymore” was selected to be released as a single. The old “Groove” label on which Charlie had been distributed all those years ago had disappeared for good by 1965, and his old recordings would now be released under the official “RCA Victor” banner. “There Won’t Be Anymore” wasted no time climbing to #1 by March 9, 1974, where it stayed for two consecutive weeks. Meanwhile back at Epic, Billy Sherrill was preparing a new album release for Rich called “Very Special Love Songs” and he decided to have Charlie re-record “There Won’t Be Anymore” for the album. The remake received a smattering of radio airplay, but most stations chose to stick with the “hit” version: the ten-year old RCA original. Both versions were fairly similar, the

64 primary difference being the types of licks provided by the different piano players----Floyd Cramer on the RCA record, and “Pig” Robbins on the Epic recording.

Rich was red-hot. People just couldn’t get enough of him. He scored six #1 hits in 1974 alone, three of them from the old RCA masters. On April 20th of that year, Charlie accomplished a truly remarkable feat: Three of his albums (“There Won’t Be Anymore” on RCA, and “Behind Closed Doors” & “Very Special Love Songs” both on Epic) occupied the top three slots on Billboard’s country album chart for six consecutive weeks. Also, the single release of “There Won’t Be Anymore” took Billboard’s prize for “Country Record of the Year” for 1974, not too shabby for a long-forgotten track, locked away in a vault for ten years. – JH

The Story Behind The Song:

“She Called Me Baby” (written by Harlan Howard)

Patsy Cline (as “He Called Me Baby,” #23, 1964) (#32, 1965) Candi Staton (as “He Called Me Baby,” #9 R&B, 1971) Dick Curless (#55, 1972) Charlie Rich (#1 country, #47 pop, 1974)

The “Dean of Nashville Songwriters,” Harlan Howard was hit with a genuine “blast from the past” in 1974 when one of his old songs that he had almost forgotten about came back on the scene for another chart run, and this time it went all the way to the top. Charlie Rich had recorded “She Called Me Baby” during his short tenure with RCA Victor from 1963 to 1965. None of his RCA records charted, and all of the masters were filed away in RCA’s vault. Then, ten years later after Rich became a national sensation with his two monster hits, “Behind Closed Doors” and “The Most Beautiful Girl,” some of the old RCA tracks were dug up and re-released and “She Called Me Baby” was one of the three that rode Rich’s tidal wave of momentum to number one (the other two were “There Won’t Be Anymore” and “I Don’t See Me In Your Eyes Anymore,” both featured here on Classic Country Music Stories).

“She Called Me Baby” had appeared on the country charts three times before. Two of them, by Carl Smith in 1965 and Dick Curless in 1972, had both missed hit status by a country mile and made absolutely no impact at all. At the time Howard wrote the song in 1961, he met with quite a lot of resistance from record executives, who not surprisingly thought that “She Called Me Baby” was way too over the top for the early ‘60s market due to what they considered its risqué subject matter. Even some of Harlan’s usually open-minded songwriting buddies determined “She Called Me Baby” as “dirty,” and most artists refused to touch it. Ferlin Husky briefly considered recording the song but quickly changed his mind. Others did the same. One of the few performers who didn’t shy away from the tune was Patsy Cline. She recorded it at her very last session on February 7, 1963 (she had less than a month to live) and her version, (titled “He Called Me Baby” with the obvious lyrical adjustment for the gender change), released a year and a half after her death, did manage to edge up to #23, but you couldn’t really consider that a major country hit. However, in 1971, the song went into the Top Ten of the Billboard

65 rhythm & blues chart, performed by soul singer Candi Staton. Rumor had it that Harlan loved Staton’s version.

Harlan Howard always pointed out “She Called Me Baby” as a prime example of how musical tastes and acceptance changed dramatically over a mere ten-year period. His song was considered “dirty” in the early ‘60s, yet just a decade later Kris Kristofferson was writing things which were much more intimate (such as “For The Good Times” and “Help Me Make It Through The Night”), but were met with no resistance at all. There was only a smattering of complaints about Conway Twitty’s “You’ve Never Been This Far Before.” All of these titles landed at #1. The “free love” movement of the ‘60s had hardened America’s cultural stance to make songs like this not only acceptable, but huge hits as well. Harlan had to wait over thirteen years for “She Called Me Baby” to be embraced by a nationwide country audience, but it finally happened when Charlie Rich’s long-forgotten track reached #1 on Billboard’s Hot Country Singles chart on December 7, 1974, ending the year on a high note for Rich, marking his fifth number one hit in 1974 alone, three of them re-releases from his RCA days.

Rich began drinking heavily during this period (possibly being simply unable to handle success) and the addiction led to his downfall at the Country Music Association awards telecast on October 13, 1975. His infamous meltdown on live, national television began with a rambling, almost incoherent speech after he was brought on stage to present the award for “Entertainer of the Year.” The audience sat silently in stunned disbelief as Charlie continued his drunken mumblings for three or four minutes. A couple of smatterings of nervous chuckles could be distantly heard in response to some bizarre comment Rich would make (such as asking nominee Loretta Lynn if “she would like to go out tonight,” with Loretta’s husband Mooney sitting right there!), but other than that, stone silence from the crowd. He somehow managed to get all the nominees’ names announced, but had trouble opening the envelope with the winner’s name inside.

Then the jaw-dropping culmination of, far and away, the CMA’s most embarrassing incident: Rich took a cigarette lighter from his coat pocket and torched the winning certificate announcing as the “Entertainer of the Year.” Denver was on tour in Australia and appeared from there via a satellite hookup. It seemed that John was unaware of what had just taken place in Nashville. He apparently wasn’t watching the proceedings live and had been given only a cue from his technicians telling him that he had won the award and that he was on the air, because his short acceptance speech was heartfelt and to the point, and reasonably graceful under the circumstances. After Denver conveyed his thanks, hosts Glen Campbell and Charley Pride clumsily ended the segment and went to a commercial break, but the damage was done. Charlie Rich’s career, just that quickly, had pretty much self-destructed. He apologized several days later via a letter to his fan club, claiming that his behavior had been caused by doctors who had prescribed improper medication for an insect bite. At any rate, he limped along after the incident with an occasional chart hit during the remainder of the ‘70s, but he was literally finished and quit the entertainment business soon afterward.

Most historians are of the opinion that Rich was protesting John Denver’s winning of the 1975 CMA “Entertainer of the Year” award when he set the envelope on fire. Nashville was swirling at the time with much controversy regarding just what country music is and what it’s supposed to sound like, and many native Music City performers were disgruntled about pop and rock stars (such as John Denver) coming to town and transforming the music. After they started picking up CMA awards just made the old-timers all the more livid. A couple of ironies here: Charlie Rich’s “countrypolitan” sound that had made him a mega-star was one of the styles that the traditional artists were complaining about.

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Additionally, Rich himself was an active voting member of the CMA and had voted for Denver for “Entertainer of the Year.” So I don’t believe he was protesting. I think he was just drunk. – JH

The Story Behind The Song:

”El Paso” (written by Marty Robbins)

Marty Robbins (#1 country, #1 pop, 1960)

Marty Robbins observed many times that if he had just been born a little earlier, he would have spent his life as a cowboy. He loved horses and guns, camping out and driving cattle. He was an outdoorsman who loved to challenge himself and nature. Yet, by and large, the native had not revealed his love for the open range during his first seven years on the national music scene. Marty’s hits and his songwriting reflected more modern concerns, an example being his 1957 chart-topper “ (And A Pink Carnation).” It was only when he sang the theme to a 1959 Gary Cooper movie “The Hanging Tree” that he first delved into a western sound.

Later that same year, as a result of riding down the road listening to the car radio, Robbins began to consider writing lyrics and music to a western story. His inspiration had come from ’s runaway smash “The Battle of .” This -penned composition seemed to prove to Marty that the public had a craving for finely-crafted historical odes. If this formula could work for a song about a war that few people even remembered studying in history class, then maybe it could be used to tell a tale of the Old West. After all, most people knew a lot more about Billy the Kid’s escapades than Andrew Jackson’s military service.

In a sense, Marty’s timing couldn’t have been better. More westerns were a part of network prime-time than at any period in television history. “Gunsmoke” was the nation’s favorite program, with a dozen other horse operas galloping not far behind. Even the kids tuned into cowboy shows each day after school, as well as on Saturday morning. Willie Nelson would later write that “his heroes had always been cowboys,” and this generation of baby boomers was echoing his thoughts each day by the toys they bought, the shows they watched and the games they played. The kids of the late fifties were completely caught up in Annie Oakley, Roy Rogers, the Lone Ranger, , Hopalong Cassidy and many other cowboy stars. To Marty Robbins, it seemed only logical that every generation would love a song about the Old West.

Robbins had driven through El Paso, Texas several times during his tours. He often stopped in the community, getting to know its people and its history. While visiting, Marty had fallen in love with the mix of American and Mexican cultures which gave the area such a unique atmosphere. So it was not surprising that, as he began to write his western answer to “The Battle of New Orleans,” he placed the Texas border city and its musical sound at the center of his tale. For the story line inspiration, Robbins reached back to his youth. His grandfather had been a cowboy. He had lived the life of a rover and cowpuncher. As a child, Marty had heard the stories of range wars and cantina fights firsthand. Sorting through his memories, the songwriter began to work out a tale of a cowboy, a beautiful Mexican maiden, and a mean gunslinger. By the time he finished, Robbins had composed a tragedy of

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Shakespearean proportions. As he was soon to find out, he had also written a song that few people wanted to touch.

In both country and pop music, there had long been an unwritten law which said: “No record company will release a single that is any longer than three minutes.” executives and producers had always felt that a long song simply would not gather an audience. They were convinced that the public wouldn’t sit still and listen to anything that ran over the three-minute limit. Furthermore, if a release had too many lyrics, the audience couldn’t and wouldn’t care to follow the story line. The rule for both ballad and up-tempo releases was to keep it short, keep it uncomplicated, and make it repetitious enough that the tune and words could be learned in a matter of a few quick plays. Marty’s latest composition broke all the established rules. The singer probably wouldn’t have fought to have the song recorded and released at all if Johnny Horton hadn’t done so well with “The Battle of New Orleans.” That song, complete with banjo (courtesy of noted “A-Team” member Harold Bradley, who normally played guitar on sessions), was tearing up the country and pop charts (eventually landing at #1 on both). Fans of every age were buying it. Using the success that Horton had garnered as his springboard, Robbins finally convinced his label, Columbia, to give “El Paso” a try (Horton’s record had also been issued on Columbia). With this hurdle cleared, Robbins was faced with an even larger stumbling block.

Marty’s cut sounded like nothing he had ever recorded before. Accompanied by very simple Spanish- flavored guitar instrumentation (provided by another famed “A-Teamer,” Grady Martin) with Tompall and the Glaser Brothers providing the harmonies, “El Paso” seemed to fly in the face of two things which were driving country music hits at the time: rockabilly and shuffle-beat honky-tonk music. Besides that, the song was four minutes and twenty seconds in length. To many disc jockeys, this was an eternity. It was simply too long to program. And lastly, the story was depressing (the cowboy dies at the end). Robbins argued that his live crowds loved it, and that the story line was tragic, but not depressing. He believed that audiences would strongly identify with the cowboy and his undying love for his sweetheart. Marty pleaded with country radio programmers to just give it a chance. He believed that if they aired the song, it would draw in new listeners to country stations.

Columbia shipped “El Paso” in the fall of 1959. It reached stations just as “The Battle of New Orleans” was losing its grip on the #1 positions of both Billboard’s pop and country charts. In country, the Johnny Horton single was being replaced at the top by another historical ode called “Waterloo” by Stonewall Jackson. Robbins again felt this worked to his advantage. If Jackson could score with a song that traded off a European war, then Marty knew that the market was ripe for his cowboy ballad.

Just after Christmas, “El Paso,” the song which Marty Robbins had been told would never find a home on radio, reached the top of Billboard’s country singles chart. It would hold the summit for seven weeks, well into the first couple of months of 1960. Even more remarkably, the record was also soaring up Billboard’s Hot 100 pop chart. It soon made the #1 position on that playlist as well (as “The Battle of New Orleans” had done), and proved to be one of only four records to top both the Billboard country and pop charts during the 1960s (the others were Jimmy Dean’s “Big Bad John” in 1961 and Jeannie C. Riley’s “Harper Valley PTA” and Bobby Goldsboro’s “Honey,” both in 1968).

Back in the studio, Robbins recorded another cowboy ballad, “.” It too would enter the top ten later in the year, but the new single couldn’t match “El Paso’s” numbers. Over the course of his long and remarkable career, Marty would have three records which would have more successful rides on the country chart than this western classic, but none would be so identified with the singer as “El Paso.”

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In 1976, Robbins wrote a follow-up to his most famous hit. After viewing El Paso from the air, he scribbled the words to “,” in which the twist was that the narrator of the new song could possibly be a reincarnated version of the cowboy who dies in the original. Reuniting with his old friend Grady Martin, who had played guitar so memorably on the 1959 record, Marty recorded “El Paso City,” and on June 19, 1976 notched his first number one hit in six years. He had re-joined the Columbia label after a five-year absence and upon his return, found himself working for the first time with legendary producer Billy Sherrill, who had helmed dozens of the classic hits of George Jones, Charlie Rich, Tammy Wynette, David Houston, Tanya Tucker, Johnny Paycheck and many others. For “El Paso City,” Sherrill brought in a special horn section, which gave the production more “depth.”

The original 1959 release of “El Paso” has grown into more than a song. It is now a part of history. Like Bob Nolan’s western classic “Tumbling Tumbleweeds,” Marty Robbins’ ballad has come to represent the West itself. The fact that the song’s events were fictitious is no more important than the fact that the tumbleweed was a Russian thistle that didn’t even arrive in the American West until the final decade of the nineteenth century. Robbins’ epic captured the romance of the range like no other song ever had or probably ever will. With its unique story line, “El Paso” conjured up images of how people wanted their West to be, and continued the solid connection that has always existed between cowboys and country music. – JH

The Story Behind The Song:

”Coward Of The County” (written by Billy Ed Wheeler & )

Kenny Rogers (#1 country, #3 pop, 1980)

Billy Ed Wheeler earned a brief bit of glory in 1964 by hitting #3 on the Billboard country chart with “Ode To The Little Brown Shack Out Back.” Though he continued his recording career, he has been much more successful as a songwriter. In 1963, picked up a pop hit with Wheeler’s “Reverend Mr. Black,” in ’67 his song “Jackson” delivered a Grammy award for Johnny Cash & June Carter, and Elvis Presley scored with “It’s Midnight,” a 1974 Top Ten record.

By ’79, Wheeler was writing with Roger Bowling, and they came up with an interesting idea for a song which they targeted for Kenny Rogers from the outset. The idea began during a drive along a mountain road, as Bowling hummed a chorus he had titled “The Promise.” It was a pledge from a son to his father with religious overtones. Wheeler felt that a story with an underdog theme might work, and he and Bowling tried to fit that idea with “The Promise.” It proved to be a difficult task, and they wrote three different versions before they finally created a storyline they were happy with. In fact, they continued making changes just before Kenny Rogers recorded it for the album “Kenny.”

“Coward Of The County” caused problems for singer , who performed with his two brothers Steve and Rudy as “Larry Gatlin and the Gatlin Brothers.” The song implicated three fictitious Gatlin boys in a rape sequence. “It was really a great song,” remembers Larry, “but after it came out, we started getting accused of being rapists. Even my mother came home one day and said she heard a song that

69 accused her boys of rapin’ somebody. It kind of made me mad. I think they could have showed a little good taste and used somebody else’s name.”

None of the three major players connected with the song (writers Wheeler and Bowling and singer Rogers) claim to have considered the implication, but I must confess that I instantly thought of Larry, Steve and Rudy Gatlin when I first heard this song upon its release in late ‘79, and I’m with Larry in thinking that they could have and should have used a different name. Especially after it was later revealed that Larry Gatlin had once dated a girl named Becky (the name of the girl who was violated in the song), and had earlier written a song about her! That, of course, tied together the already tense situation even closer.

The writers claim that other names were considered (such as “Barlow”) but “Gatlin” was the one that had the best-sounding ring to them, and which was deemed “more gritty” (whatever that means). Well, Larry didn’t buy that explanation, and once confronted Kenny Rogers about it on live television. Rogers exclaimed “Don’t blame me, I didn’t write it!”

Controversy notwithstanding, “Coward Of The County” slammed into the #1 position on Billboard’s country singles chart on January 5, 1980, where it remained for three weeks (Kenny’s ninth of twenty- one chart-toppers). The record went on to reach #3 on Billboard’s “Hot 100” pop chart, a sensational showing for a country release. In fact, this was Rogers’ third biggest showing on the Hot 100 behind his two number ones: “Lady” (written and produced by ), plus his million-selling duet with Dolly Parton “Islands In The Stream.” On the pop chart “Lucille” peaked just a bit lower at #5, Rogers’ breakthrough hit “Ruby, Don’t Take Your Love To Town” reached #6 and “The Gambler” came in even farther down the list at #16. – JH

The Story Behind The Song:

“Devil In The Bottle” (written by Bobby David)

T. G. Sheppard (#1 country, #54 pop, 1975)

In the early 1960s, a young man named Bill Browder arrived in Memphis, Tennessee eager to make his mark in the music industry there. He got a job as a backup vocalist and guitarist in a local band, and later managed to sign with a tiny recording company, Sonic, making records under the name of “Brian Stacy.” All the releases failed, but the exposure led to a contract with Atlantic’s Atco division, where he released the rock ‘n’ roll single “High School Days” in 1966. Though it didn’t break nationally, it was a hit in the South, and soon he was opening for the likes of The Beach Boys and The Animals, while cementing his friendship with Elvis Presley, whom he had first become acquainted with in 1961.

Instead of leading him toward a performing career, the minor success of “High School Days” made Browder decide to work behind the scenes in the record industry., and later in 1966 he became a record promoter for Hot Line Distributors, initially working for Stax Records but quickly becoming the Southern regional promoter for RCA Victor, where he helped push records by his friend Presley and the other big

70 names on RCA’s roster. While working for RCA, Browder also founded his own company “Umbrella Promotions.”

In 1973, a very unusual song came to Browder’s attention. A Nashville publishing representative named Dan Hoffman brought “Devil In The Bottle” to his office and Browder was quite impressed with the lyrics, which handled the subject of alcoholism in an uncharacteristically serious manner for its time. Most country songs up to that point (almost since the genre’s inception in the 1920s) had addressed the topic either with a nonchalant attitude, or for comedic effect. “Devil In The Bottle” was different, and Bill Browder was an immediate believer in the song. His company, Umbrella Promotions, was also affiliated with a publishing firm, and it was there that “Devil In The Bottle” and Browder’s career as a significant recording artist, began to take shape.

For the next year and a half, Browder pitched the song to nearly every record company, first in Memphis, then Nashville, but no one showed any interest. Music industry personnel all deemed the song as “not commercial enough,” but Browder was still so enthusiastic about “Devil In The Bottle” that he decided to cut a demo on it himself, using his own money to pay for the session. Janie Fricke (before she reached stardom) was one of the backup singers, and Browder somehow managed to secure the services of one of Music City’s busiest steel guitar players, , to play on the record. His rich steel guitar fills added a “mournful” sound, perfect for the subject matter.

So Browder had the demo in hand and proceeded to shop it around town, but still got no takers. He had already received a total of 12 “thumbs down” responses on the day he was in the offices of playing the demo for them. As it turned out, Barry Gordy’s label had recently formed a country branch called “Melodyland Records” and the company’s headquarters were in the same building as Atlantic. Melodyland’s executives were in the office next door, and just happened to hear Browder playing his demo for the Atlantic people. Atlantic promptly handed him his 13th rejection, but as Browder was leaving the premises, someone from Melodyland caught up with him and said “wait a minute, that’s a hit.”

Now, at long last, Browder had a company that was willing to license and release his record. Knowing that the odds of making it in the music industry were slim, he decided to use the performing name “T. G. Sheppard” in case the record flopped, and keep his $200,000 a year promotion job under his real name Bill Browder. He continued to call radio stations as Browder, promoting records like he always had, and almost all of his contacts didn’t realize that he was the singer of “Devil In The Bottle.” This went on for a few more months, even after the record reached #1 on Billboard’s Hot Country Singles chart on February 15, 1975. Browder then feared of becoming a “one-hit wonder” and only after his follow-up release “Trying To Beat The Morning Home” also reached #1 on June 28th did he give up his day job to devote full attention to his new career as a recording artist. As previously mentioned, he had been personal friends with Elvis Presley since 1961, and it was only with the second hit that Browder admitted to The King that he was T. G. Sheppard. Contributing to Sheppard’s new-found career, Presley presented his friend with two gifts: a Silver Eagle touring bus and a diamond “TCB” pendant, signifying one of Elvis’s favorite phrases: “takin’ care of business.”

After Sheppard scored two more good-sized hits (although not number ones), Motown was sued by a Los Angeles church over the rights to use the name “Melodyland.” The church won the case, and the label was forced to change its name to “Hitsville.” Sheppard released four more singles under the Hitsville moniker before Motown decided to shut the label down. By the time Hitsville collapsed, Sheppard was on his way to becoming a star. Cash Box Magazine named him “Best New Male Artist” of

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1976, and he was immediately snapped up by Warner Brothers Records. T. G. became a genuine country star at Warner, partly because the label promoted him correctly, and especially because his sound – a smooth fusion of R&B rhythms, pop production and country songwriting – became the blueprint for the Urban Cowboy movement that materialized into the most popular facet of country music from the late ‘70s to the mid ‘80s. Sheppard’s career lasted into the early ‘90s, and he finished with a total of 28 Top Ten country hits, 14 of those reaching #1 on Billboard’s country chart. Seven of his singles also appeared on the “Billboard Hot 100” pop chart, the most successful being “I Loved “Em Every One” which peaked at #37 in 1981. T. G.’s debut “Devil In The Bottle” had also reached a respectable #54 on that chart, not too shabby for a Nashville-based production, released on a small, subsidiary label. – JH

The Story Behind The Song:

“Uncle Pen” (written by )

Porter Wagoner (#14, 1956) Ricky Skaggs (#1, 1984)

Country music bluegrass legend Bill Monroe never managed a #1 hit on any national chart. By the time the hillbilly charts were spun off the pop playlists in 1944, Monroe and his Blue Grass Boys had already been members of Nashville’s Grand Ole Opry for five years, so it was too late for many of Bill’s classic songs to have a chance to claim anything but a regional audience. With music moving from the straightforward hill forms of expression to dance music, swing, honky-tonk, smooth ballads and rockabilly, it’s amazing that Monroe’s beloved bluegrass survived at all. Yet, a small circle of performers and fans continued to embrace the style that Bill himself had invented. Those chosen few managed to keep bluegrass alive, even if it had been pushed way out of the spotlight.

Former Monroe band members and has scored country music’s first #1 bluegrass hit in 1963. Yet, in all honesty, “The Ballad of Jed Clampett” was more of a novelty record than a true bluegrass standard. Written strictly as the theme song for CBS’s wildly successful “The Beverly Hillbillies,” the number would never have become such a huge hit without the television show’s support. While “The Ballad of Jed Clampett” did open up a small pocket of interest in the traditional musical form, it failed to generate a large trend that would bring bluegrass consistently to either the top of the charts or the center of the country music stage. By and large, except for a later brief surge created by the movie “Bonnie and Clyde,” , fiddles and dobros had given way to drums, electric basses and hot Fender guitar licks. In the minds of most performers under the age of fifty, bluegrass was an ancient musical style that was little more than a reminder of the roots of country music. For all practical purposes, it was dead.

Traditional country music had become such an unimportant part of the industry that by the mid-1970s, some of Nashville’s most influential musicians were extremely concerned. They acknowledged that with so few youngsters becoming interested in the old hill music, instruments such as the banjo and the dobro might become a part of the past. There just didn’t seem to be anyone in the current generation taking the time to learn them. However, unbeknownst to the traditionalists in Music City, deep in the hills of Kentucky, a youngster was growing up in the bluegrass tradition, and his hero was none other

72 than Bill Monroe. This young man would come to town in the late seventies and find himself looked upon as an old-fashioned picker awash in a Nashville that was enraptured with middle-of-the-road music. Facing tremendous odds, this man would not just create a resurgence in bluegrass music, but would also become one of the biggest and brightest stars in the industry.

Bill Monroe’s recording career was pretty much history by the time Ricky Skaggs was born in Cordell, Kentucky on July 18, 1954. Yet, this small boy was so hooked on the sounds created by Monroe that he was already on stage singing traditional mountain-style country songs at the age of eight. He went on to perform with Flatt and Scruggs as well as ’s Clinch Mountain Boys while in his teens. It was while working with Stanley that he first met . They formed a friendship that lasted to the end of Keith’s life in 1989. Both young men eventually reached stardom, Ricky somewhat earlier than Keith, as major label Epic (a subsidiary of the mighty Columbia Record Company) signed Skaggs in 1981. It took just three singles for him to find the #1 spot with a cover of an old fifties honky-tonk tune, “Crying My Heart Out Over You.” The success of this release surprised even the representatives of his own label! In the midst of the “outlaw” movement of Waylon and Willie on one side, and smooth pop production on the other, Ricky was traveling straight down country music’s long dormant traditional road. Many thought Skaggs was driving the musical equivalent of a Model T Ford, but he would quickly prove them wrong.

Ricky followed his first #1 with six more hard-country chart-toppers. In two brief years he had become a star of major proportions. Modest, straightforward, and at peace with himself and his sound, Ricky seemed completely unaffected by fame or fortune, and continued to record songs which reflected his own rural roots. His unbelievable back-roads journey to superstardom was completed when he reached back almost fifty years to pay tribute to the man who had invented the music which Skaggs so loved.

Though he was a product of his bluegrass roots, up until this time Nashville had labeled Ricky’s music more of a new honky-tonk sound. Thus, Bill Monroe had failed again to receive any just due from the new powers which governed Music City. Therefore, it should have been expected that when Ricky picked out Monroe’s “Uncle Pen” as his next release, the record company balked. Epic’s executives claimed the market wouldn’t support a song that sounded so old-fashioned. To beat their argument and to emphasize just how much he believed in the number, Skaggs pointed to his live crowds’ enthusiastic reactions to the old Monroe classic.

Ricky had filled out his “Don’t Cheat In Our Hometown” album with “Uncle Pen,” and without any prompting whatsoever, disc jockeys had begun playing the song off the album as if it were a single (radio stations could still get away with such unbridled misbehavior in those days). Soon, requests began to build for the number. Slowly, from one region of the country to another, “Uncle Pen” was generating an audience. People were buying the album just to get a copy of the song.

Although still unconvinced, Epic bowed to Ricky’s new star power and released “Uncle Pen” as a single. It debuted on Billboard’s country chart on July 21, 1984 and reached #1 by October 13th. The record label was shocked, Ricky was pleased and, for both public and private reasons, Bill Monroe was extremely proud. Except for the aforementioned “The Ballad of Jed Clampett,” Ricky Skaggs’ version of “Uncle Pen” marks the only other time that a bluegrass tune has made it to #1 on any national playlist. In all honesty, though, I have never considered Ricky’s rendition of this tune to be a bluegrass cut. It spotlights a super-charged fiddle performance by Bobby Hicks, sure enough, but ’s hot guitar licks don’t sound very “bluegrassy” to me. To illustrate my point, Skaggs was initially worried that Monroe might disapprove of his high-energy, modern-day treatment of “Uncle Pen,” but whether Bill

73 liked the new version or not, he collected a boatload of royalties from it. Reportedly, Monroe told Skaggs, “Son, anytime you want to record and release any of my old songs, you have my complete permission to do so.” – JH

The Story Behind The Song:

“I’m Movin’ On” (written by Clarence E. Snow)

Hank Snow (#1 country, #27 pop, 1950) (#14, 1960) Emmylou Harris (#5, 1983)

Chet Atkins once credited Hank Snow with having a “special quality that makes him sound good, even on a bad jukebox.” Snow displayed that quality on forty-three Top Ten singles for RCA, spanning four decades. Hank was born in and his parents divorced when he was just eight years old. His mother remarried, but his stepfather beat him and abused him daily until Hank left home for good at age twelve. During the next few years, the boy supported himself by selling newspapers and Fuller brushes. Eventually, he earned six dollars unloading salt from a freighter and used it to purchase his first guitar. By age fifteen, he was singing in the streets for pocket change, by then having discovered and embraced the music of Jimmie Rodgers. Snow was honing his craft and in short order became good enough to land his own daily radio show on radio station CHNS in Halifax called “Clarence Snow and His Guitar.” This seemingly insignificant local program led to an audition with the Canadian branch of RCA Victor in 1936. He cut two records for the label under the name “Hank, the Yodeling Ranger.” These sides demonstrated just how much the young Canadian idolized Jimmie Rodgers, as Hank at that time was singing very much in the “Blue Yodeler’s” style.

Snow set his sights on a career in the United States and by the mid-1940s he started playing live dates in America, eventually drifting into Texas where he was befriended by deejay Fred Edwards who worked at KRLD in Dallas, then one of the Southwest’s most-influential country music radio stations. Edwards helped Hank land a singing job on the station and by 1949, Snow had developed a reasonably strong Texas following and was even selling some records, in fact he had a #1 song on the local playlists around Dallas. It was then that Hank became acquainted with Grand Ole Opry star Ernest Tubb, who liked the young Canadian’s singing and offered to get him on the Opry. Unfortunately, Hank’s first brush with the big time didn’t go well at all, and if it weren’t for the powerful Tubb standing by him and putting pressure on Opry management, Snow might not have ever been invited back for a second chance. What Hank really needed in order to mesh with the Opry crowd was a hit record. His first American release for RCA Victor, “Marriage Vow,” had made little impact, having stayed on the Billboard chart for just a single week. However, based on his success in Texas, RCA’s U. S. division decided to put the full weight of the company behind Snow, now known as the “Singing Ranger.” Another recording session was arranged, and Hank suggested that they cut and release one of his own compositions, “I’m Movin’ On.”

The singer believed that his chances of recording the song he had written five years earlier were slim. Hank had previously tried to get the label interested in “I’m Movin’ On,” and they had turned him down flat. Now, with Hank’s Opry status hanging in the balance, he offered it to them again. He assumed that

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RCA would reject the tune a second time, and he was prepared to point out the strong response he was getting with it at his shows. Ultimately, though, Hank didn’t have to put up a fight because the label agreed to let him go ahead and record “I’m Movin’ On.”

Probably no one understood “I’m Movin’ On’s” message any more than Hank. He had been on the move since childhood, running from a past that was too painful to think about, and trying to find a future where he would be loved and accepted on his own merit. This train song thus spoke volumes about Snow’s gypsy-like lifestyle. After all, it seemed that Hank had spent his entire life moving on. Yet the song reflected a bit more too. “I’m Movin’ On’s” message and music were an updated tribute to the style of his idol, the late Jimmie Rodgers. Snow had used the themes and concepts of the music pioneer, then developed a story that was so energetic and catchy that listeners seemed to immediately respond to it. In spite of the fact that the song’s message was all about an unfaithful love, it somehow made people feel good. Finally, and maybe most-importantly, not only did it showcase Hank’s smooth baritone voice, but “I’m Movin’ On” was also a very easy tune to sing. After hearing it only once, crowds left shows humming and singing it. Hank’s record debuted on Billboard’s country singles chart on July 1, 1950 and reached #1 on August 19th, holding the top position for twenty-one weeks, making “I’m Movin’ On” by Hank Snow country music’s all-time biggest chart hit. It remained on the playlist for forty- four weeks total, and even made a decent showing on the national pop chart, topping out at a very respectable #27.

Using “I’m Movin’ On” as a base, Snow went on to place over eighty chart singles for RCA through 1980, including seven #1 hits. He was with the label for forty-four years, the longest active contract in music history. Hank was inducted into the Country Music Hall of Fame in 1979. More than fifty artists have recorded “I’m Movin’ On” through the years, including Don Gibson and Emmylou Harris who had their own high chart placements with it. Even Elvis Presley did a cut on it. The song stands as not only one of the best traveling numbers ever written, but the original Hank Snow version from 1950 remains the definitive all-time king of the country charts. – JH

The Story Behind The Song:

“Do You Know You Are My Sunshine” (written by Don and Harold Reid)

The Statler Brothers (#1, 1978)

Hailing from Staunton, Virginia, the Statler Brothers had to wait more than a dozen years after their first appearance on the Billboard country chart before they finally earned their first #1 single. “,” written by founding tenor Lew DeWitt, provided their initial chart entry in September of 1965 (I tell the backstory of this song at length in one of my earlier writings). At that time the group was travelling as part of the Johnny Cash Road Show, and didn’t even realize their first record was a hit until someone brought copies of Billboard’s country and pop charts to them, showing that “Flowers On The Wall” was sitting at #4 on the Hot 100 and #2 on the country playlist. Further hits didn’t come the boys’ way however, until they signed with Mercury Records in 1970. It was then that the group started landing in the high rungs of the chart pretty consistently with hits such as “Bed Of Rose’s,” “,” (a 1972 Grammy winner which spent four weeks at #2), “The Class Of ’57,” “I’ll Go To My Grave

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Loving You,” “Thank God I’ve Got You,” “The Movies” and “I Was There.” These all went Top Ten, but the #1 spot was still eluding the foursome.

Finally, the Statlers topped the charts with a song whose inspiration came from routine interaction with a fan from the bandstand. Concertgoers would approach the stage to make requests, and one particular girl caught the attention of bass vocalist Harold Reid when she came up to the stage and asked, “Do you know ‘You Are My Sunshine’?” Of course, the group was indeed familiar with the old classic from 1940 made famous by Jimmie Davis, although the song wasn’t part of their repertoire. After the show, Harold mentioned to his comrades about the girl’s request and thought that she might have inadvertently given him an idea for a song. So he and his brother Don (who wrote most of the group’s hits) went to work on it, finishing “Do You Know You Are My Sunshine” just one day before it was recorded. The record made it to the top of Billboard’s Hot Country Singles chart on May 27, 1978.

“Do You Know You Are My Sunshine” holds a small footnote in history as the only single to ever reach number one featuring the title of another song within its own title. It’s also the only chart-topping release to feature the original Statler line-up: brothers Don and Harold Reid, Phil Balsley and Lew DeWitt. Illness forced DeWitt’s retirement from the group and he was replaced by Jimmy Fortune in 1983. – JH

The Story Behind The Song:

”Let’s Fall To Pieces Together” (written by , Tommy Rocco & Johnny Russell)

George Strait (#1, 1984)

When an artist accumulates a record 44 Billboard #1 hits during a course of a 33 year career, some of those songs are remembered more than others. I would speculate that George Strait’s fifth chart-topper “Let’s Fall To Pieces Together” would not place on anybody’s list of his “signature” songs, but it figured prominently in one of the early turning points in his career, which I’ll describe later.

The song came partially from the pen of Johnny Russell, who became a very wealthy man from writing an earlier song that very few people ever knew anything about. On the morning of October 15, 1959, Jim Reeves (in a rare 9:30 AM session) had finished laying down the track on what was to become his biggest hit “He’ll Have To Go.” Everyone took a break for lunch, then they came back for the afternoon’s work. Jim recorded “In A Mansion Stands My Love,” written by Russell, only 19 years old at the time. This song was selected by Reeves’ label, RCA Victor, to be his next single. It was released as the “A” side, with “He’ll Have To Go” designated as the “flip” or “B” side of the record. Trouble was, the radio disc jockeys wanted no part of “In A Mansion Stands My Love,” preferring instead to turn the record over and play “He’ll Have To Go,” and the rest is history. Although Johnny’s song was forgotten, he still received the same amount of royalties as Joe and Audrey Allison collected for writing “He’ll Have To Go,” an enormous sum due to the record’s world-wide success.

Russell’s first composition of notoriety was Buck Owens’ #1 smash “Act Naturally” in 1963. Russell continued writing songs through the ‘60s and into the ‘70s, by then obtaining a recording contract with

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RCA Victor. All told, he placed 28 singles on Billboard’s country chart (mostly on RCA and later Mercury) including several Top Ten hits, his biggest being “Rednecks, White Socks and Blue Ribbon Beer” which peaked at #4 in 1973. After several more reasonably successful years at RCA, Russell signed with Mercury Records in 1978 but it proved to be a frustrating association, as Mercury didn’t promote him very much and in some cases even refused to release his material. One of Russell’s most disappointing moments came when Mercury chose not to issue one of his albums that he strongly believed in. Among its ten tracks were the original recordings of “Song Of The South” (later a #1 hit for Alabama), “You’ll Be Back (Every Night In My Dreams)” which turned into a successful single for the Statler Brothers, and “He Stopped Loving Her Today,” the first version of what was to become George Jones’ most revered classic. Mercury deemed the material as “too weak,” so the album was scrapped! Now, admittedly, Johnny Russell was no George Jones when it came to singing, but the “material was too weak??” You’ve got to be kidding!

Well, fortunately, Johnny didn’t miss out with “Let’s Fall To Pieces Together.” Songwriter Tommy Rocco had suggested that title to four or five writing partners, but all had passed on it. One day at the Welk publishing offices in Nashville, Rocco heard Russell and Dickey Lee (who had his own #1 hit with “Rocky” in 1975) writing in another office and decided he wanted to work with them right then and there. Tommy “crashed in,” sang three lines of the chorus (the only part of the song he had written thus far), and Russell chimed in with a fourth line. Russell and Lee then dropped the song they had been working on and set to work on the new idea.

Russell said that writing with Dickey Lee was always a challenge, because no matter what song they happened to be working on at the time, Lee would always call for rewrite after rewrite. Rocco and Russell were satisfied with “Let’s Fall To Pieces Together” pretty quickly, but after working with it and polishing it up over the next several days to the point where Lee was happy, the three sent the song over to Billy Sherrill’s office in hopes that George Jones would cut it, but Sherrill turned it down. Next, they approached George Strait’s then-producer Blake Mevis about recording it with Strait, but Mevis also dismissed the song. Then fate stepped in. Strait had decided to change producers for his next album, and he selected Ray Baker for the project. Undeterred by Mevis’ rejection, the three songwriters again decided to try to get the song to Strait, and this time it worked! Baker loved “Let’s Fall To Pieces Together,” and George recorded it at the first session for the new album. It shipped as a single soon afterward and reached #1 on Billboard’s country singles chart on September 1, 1984. - JH

The Story Behind The Song:

“Delta Dawn” (written by Alex Harvey and Larry Collins)

Tanya Tucker (#6 country, #72 pop, 1972) (#1 pop, 1973)

Tanya Tucker was just thirteen years old in 1972. A little girl blessed with a woman’s voice, she was already a show business veteran who knew Las Vegas as well as the small towns that dotted much of the New Mexico, Arizona and Nevada deserts where she grew up. Tanya loved to sing and would tell anyone who would listen that she was going to be a big singing star, although her first voyage into the

77 professional world of entertainment found her filling a small role in the Robert Redford movie “Jeremiah Johnson.”

When her father Bo first brought Tanya to Nashville, no one knew what to do with her. In Music City a female vocalist meant someone between the ages of twenty and forty. Loretta Lynn was already a grandmother in her mid-30s but was still regarded as a “girl singer” by most industry personnel. Child stars were something that country music didn’t particularly want or need at that time. The city’s tunesmiths weren’t interested in writing songs for kids, and logic proclaimed that bible-toting women and beer-drinking men weren’t going to buy tickets to watch a teenager perform. The record executives, talent scouts and producers who met Tanya admitted to her father that his daughter was good, but there just wasn’t any place for her in country music.

Tanya and her family didn’t give up. Back home in Nevada they worked the local talent shows and talked their way onto country music bills. The blond dynamo impressed both Ernest Tubb and Mel Tillis, but neither of these stars could do much more than give her a guest shot in their road shows. Tanya was impatient for fame and fortune, but every move she made seemed to be blocked by Music City insiders saying, “No kids wanted here.” Finally, one of Tanya’s demos came to the attention of Billy Sherrill, a top producer at Columbia Records. He was very impressed with her voice and thought she could perhaps be the country version of what Brenda Lee had been in rock some fifteen years before. Billy signed her to the label.

Sherrill soon found that Tanya Tucker had not only a strong voice, but an equally-strong will too. She didn’t want to sing songs about “little girl” things, instead preferring more adult-sounding material, something Loretta Lynn might sing. Before finding this out, Billy Sherrill had initially planned to have Tanya’s first Columbia release be “The Happiest Girl In The Whole USA,” but she turned that song down instantly (it later became a huge #1 hit for twenty-seven year old ). So now that the producer and artist knew each other a little better, the challenge would be to find a song that both agreed to. If it hadn’t been for the work of a very spiritual songwriter, they might never have uncovered the right tune to launch what was to become one of country music’s remarkable careers.

Alex Harvey had grown up in Haywood County, Tennessee. His father owned a small country store on an old dirt road way back in the sticks. Alex had often played around the old building and he knew all the folks by name who came to purchase groceries and dry goods. The boy intermingled with a host of characters nearly every day, but there was this one woman who really stood out. Her name was Molly Deberry and her family had owned the land around the Harveys’ store since the Civil War. Young Alex was fascinated with Molly, but frightened by her at the same time. He would closely watch her as she walked down the dusty road, wearing many layers of clothing both summer and winter and talking or singing to herself in a language Alex couldn’t understand. As Molly walked, she dragged a large bush behind her. Most of the locals considered her to be rather spooky.

When Alex got older, he became inquisitive and asked some of the older men about Molly, wanting to know why she acted the way she did. It seemed that Molly had once swelled up with a tumor. The doctor removed it, but Molly felt that somehow during the operation evil spirits had settled inside her. She would walk away from her home each day to try to lead the spirits away. She would talk or sing in tongues so the Devil couldn’t understand her and the spirits would be driven out. The bush she dragged along behind her wiped out her tracks so that when the evil spirits began to look for her again, they wouldn’t be able to find her trail.

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For as long as Alex knew Molly, she never got rid of her spirits. By the same token, he could never shake her image out of his mind. Then as the boy grew older, his father fell ill and Alex helped his mother take care of him. He remembers that after his dad got sick, his mother became very despondent, to the point that Alex wondered if there was someone in her past who she thought she should have married instead. It appeared to him that his mother adopted a “day-dreamy” attitude following his dad’s illness and was just waiting for someone to come along and take away all her problems. The images of the two women, Molly Deberry along with his unhappy mother, haunted Alex Harvey for years. Long after he had gotten into music and begun to write songs, he would often pause and reflect on the hot summer days of his youth back in Tennessee. Yet, never in all that time did he try to put his personal experiences to music. Then one night in California, the past revisited him in a very special manner.

Alex was at a “guitar pull” with a songwriting friend of his, Larry Collins, and five or six other musicians in a hotel room, just passing a guitar around and singing songs. After a while most of the guys either fell asleep or left, and soon Alex was the only one still awake. He was sitting there strumming the guitar and began to reflect back on his early years. He thought about his mother’s childhood home in the Mississippi Delta, and how her favorite time of day was dawn. From there, Alex combined her story and Molly’s, writing a song around a melody based loosely on one of his favorite church hymns, “Will There Be Any Stars In My Crown.” The first person to hear Harvey’s new song “Delta Dawn” was his friend Larry Collins, who thought it was a great piece. However, Alex didn’t think it would amount to anything, so on a whim he threw Larry’s name on it as co-writer, giving him half of any royalties the song might generate.

Much to Alex’s surprise, “Delta Dawn” instigated some immediate interest. The first major performer to take note of the tune was Bette Midler. She was so moved by the song’s passion that she performed it several times on ’s “Tonight Show.” was the next singer to be caught up in “Delta Dawn’s” spell. She went so far as to lay down the instrumental tracks, then backed out of recording her vocal after finding out that Midler had already cut it. Barbra should have gone ahead, because Bette’s version was issued as the “B” side of her cover of ’ “.” With Streisand’s instrumental tracks already in-house, another pop singer, Helen Reddy, would eventually step up to record Harvey’s passionate ballad and score a chart-topping hit, but that wouldn’t happen until months after Billy Sherrill brought it to Tanya Tucker for her debut Nashville release.

Tanya was not very impressed with “Delta Dawn” upon hearing it for the first time, but after a while it began to grow on her. When Tanya recorded the song, she was about the same age as Alex Harvey was when he lived through the experiences which inspired it. In a sense, it was one child’s gift to another. Released in the spring of 1972, Tucker’s first single made Billboard’s Hot Country Singles chart on May 13th. For the next seventeen weeks it fought its way into the top ten (reaching #6), and crossed over slightly onto the pop playlist. With “Delta Dawn’s” hit status under her belt, Tanya, already seasoned with years of stage work, was ready and willing to gain new fans on the concert trail. Over the course of the next five years, Tucker would become one of the most successful acts in country music. Then after a brief fling with rock styles and a bout with booze and cocaine addiction (which she beat), Tanya returned to Music City with a new contract from Capitol Records, and a subsequent string of top hits from 1986 into the mid-nineties.

Alex Harvey never knew whatever happened to the spooky woman from his youth named Molly Deberry who was largely responsible for the story of “Delta Dawn.” She might have just wandered along that old dirt road dragging that bush until she died. Everyone in Haywood County, Tennessee has forgotten

79 about her. Yet, “Delta Dawn” kept the old woman alive at least in Alex’s mind. When he passionately sang his song or talked about its success, he was transported back to days of childhood innocence and curiosity. It was a trip the writer never tired of taking. – JH

The Story Behind The Song:

”Fifteen Years Ago” (written by Raymond Smith)

Conway Twitty (#1, 1970)

Conway Twitty picked up his fifth #1 country single “Fifteen Years Ago” through an interesting turn of events. The song’s author, Raymond Smith, first started writing country songs in his early teens, but by 1969 he was managing a “beautiful music” radio station in the small town of Greenville, Tennessee. He decided to return to writing when he attended a Jack Greene concert. “I stood up on the hill, listening to Jack sing,” remembers Smith, “hearing that steel guitar moan and that pure-bred country, and thought ‘Gosh, that sounds good’ and that’s when I started working on ‘Fifteen Years Ago.’ Most of it was written the following day. I just got inspired by the good melody and the good storyline. Where all that came from, I don’t know.”

Smith paid for his own recording session, and released “Fifteen Years Ago” as a single on , an independent label that was new then, and is still around today, now associated mostly with bluegrass artists. Smith’s record performed well in a handful of markets, including Dallas, Philadelphia and Knoxville, Tennessee, where one of the nation’s premier country music stations, 50,000 watt WIVK- AM, played it.

When Conway Twitty performed at a Knoxville nightclub, one of WIVK’s disc jockeys (and friend of Smith’s) approached him and suggested that he listen to Raymond’s recording of “Fifteen Years Ago,” which had failed to chart nationally. The deejay then offered to send a copy to Conway’s office, but Conway insisted that they call the radio station right then and get somebody to bring it down there. Twitty later noted: ”usually when you let something like that go, it never happens. I got the record that night at the club, found a record player and listened to it, and that’s all it took.”

In fact, Twitty was so impressed with “Fifteen Years Ago” that he called Smith at home later that night to tell him how much he liked the song and to ask for permission to record it. Smith didn’t really know what to make of this late-night phone call, but he gave the okay for Conway to record his song, which Twitty did a few weeks later at “Bradley’s Barn,” a state-of-the-art studio that legendary producer Owen Bradley had built twenty miles east of downtown Nashville, in Mt. Juliet, Tennessee. Smith attended the session, which found Conway backed up by his usual group of top musicians including guitar ace Grady Martin (a member of Nashville’s celebrated “A-Team” and the newest inductee to the Country Music Hall of Fame), pianist , steel guitarist John Hughey and background vocalists The Jordanaires. Twitty delivered the goods, as always, and “Fifteen Years Ago” topped Billboard’s “Hot Country Singles” chart on November 21, 1970. – JH

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The Story Behind The Song:

“I’d Love To Lay You Down” (written by Johnny MacRae)

Conway Twitty (#1, 1980) Daryle Singletary (#43, 2002)

In 1980, America’s premier radio commentator Paul Harvey spoke at Nashville’s annual Country Radio Seminar, exclaiming that much of the country music in circulation at that time was what he considered to be “porno-country.” One of the then-current hits he pointed to as an example of this was Conway Twitty’s “I’d Love To Lay You Down.”

Harvey wasn’t alone in his assessment. Several country stations refused to play the record despite Conway Twitty’s defense. He emphatically claimed that “I’d Love To Lay You Down” wasn’t risqué at all, nor was it a cheating song. He further elaborated to Nashville Banner columnist Bill Hance that he would never release any material that was dirty or without class. Twitty thought of “I’d Love To Lay You Down” as strictly a simple love song about a long-time married couple. Conway was of the belief that women who listened to the song recognized that fact, but the male listeners looked at it from a more sordid standpoint and since the majority of radio programmers were men, that was why the song failed to get played in some important markets. It didn’t matter anyway. The record still went to #1 on March 29, 1980.

When songwriter Johnny MacRae was in the process of writing “I’d Love To Lay You Down,” he and frequent collaborator Bob Morrison had been trying to write a song for Johnny Duncan, who had earned his biggest hits with songs that contained suggestive titles and lyrics, such as “Thinkin’ Of A Rendezvous,” “She Can Put Her Shoes Under My Bed (Anytime),” and “It Couldn’t Have Been Any Better,” (all number ones). Because these writers were familiar with the style of material that fared best for Duncan, it indicates that they were purposely trying to come up with something considerably less- innocent than what Twitty considered “I’d Love To Lay You Down” to be. At any rate, MacRae developed the first verse and chorus of the song while driving home one evening, and created the remainder of it the next morning while jogging. He suggested that Morrison add a new melody, but Bob insisted he should keep what he had.

When Johnny Duncan was presented with the song, he took one look at the explicit title and politely said, “no thanks.” It was then that MacRae thought of Conway Twitty, who was certainly no stranger to controversial subject matter, with past #1 hits such as “You’ve Never Been This Far Before,” “I See The Want To In Your Eyes” and “I Can’t Believe She Gives It All To Me,” to name a few. So “I’d Love To Lay You Down” was sent over to him and he embraced it quickly.

Conway’s treatment of “I’d Love To Lay You Down” features an extremely unusual series of key changes. The song progressively lowers in key instead of the musical standard of changing keys upwards. At the time, the record gave Twitty the all-time lead when it became his 29th single to top Billboard’s country singles chart (passing Eddy Arnold’s 28). Conway ended up with 40 number ones in his career (second most in history), but in time, his tally was passed by George Strait’s “Give It Away” in 2006.

Twitty may have enthusiastically insisted until the day he died that “I’d Love To Lay You Down” wasn’t in the least bit off-color, but he had to be intelligent enough to realize that the audience reaction

81 whenever he would sing that song in concert was highly unorthodox – he would be pelted with women’s underwear thrown upon the stage by his female fans! So I think Paul Harvey indeed made a good point. – JH

The Story Behind The Song:

“I Don’t Know A Thing About Love (The Moon Song)” (written by Harlan Howard)

Conway Twitty (#1, 1984)

With a songwriting capability that propelled him for nearly 40 years, Harlan Howard was the dean of Nashville songwriters (notice I didn’t say “country” songwriters, because Howard wrote several pop tunes and even a couple of rhythm & blues hits as well). Born in Detroit, Michigan, Harlan began writing songs as a boy by listening to the Grand Ole Opry and creating new lyrics to the melodies coming over the radio. He got his big break in 1958 when Charlie Walker’s recording of “Pick Me Up On Your Way Down” became his first top ten hit as a composer. This was followed quickly by the super-smash “,” a #2 country hit for Ray Price and a #1 pop hit for . These two songs launched a long line of famous compositions that stretched into the next five decades. Along the way, many of Harlan’s tunes would be re-discovered by the younger artists and new versions would make their way up the national playlists.

Even while his old classics were being revived, Howard continued to write new material as well. Songs such as “Somebody Should Leave” by Reba McEntire, “Why Not Me” by , and “Somewhere Tonight” by Highway 101 all made their mark on the modern-day charts. Conway Twitty was actually the first to re-introduce Howard’s music by recording “I Don’t Know A Thing About Love (The Moon Song)” during the summer of 1984. The two men had been friends from the mid-1960s, as Harlan had been extremely helpful in getting Conway established and accepted in Nashville when he decided to switch his career’s focus from to country. Twitty had demoed some country songs at a studio in Muscle Shoals, Alabama, and it was Howard who brought the tape to the attention of Decca’s A & R chief Owen Bradley, who liked what he heard and immediately signed Conway to the label. In the ensuing years, Twitty included many of Harlan Howard’s compositions on his albums, but he had never released one as a single before.

Howard wrote “I Don’t Know A Thing About Love” while fishing at night on Center Hill Lake, a man-made reservoir near Nashville. He found it very easy to write songs while fishing, because, as he put it, “Fishing is kind of an automatic thing. You don’t have to think about it, so your mind kind of drifts away.” On this particular night, Harlan started contemplating the moon and how incredible it was when the astronauts landed up there, those thoughts then transitioning to the old Tin Pan Alley love songs, which seemed to give the moon so much power and influence in the emotion of love. He got to playing around with those ideas in his head, found a writing pad and pen which he always kept handy for times like this, and fashioned a large part of “I Don’t Know A Thing About Love” right there in the boat. He continued to doodle with it after he got home, but he didn’t take the song too seriously until he came up with a key line toward the end when the moon says, “Don’t ask me, there’s somebody above me that you need to

82 talk to.” The slightly religious connotations inflected into the piece with that addition caused Harlan to step back and say, “Wow, this song just might have something.”

Howard had a “Don Williams fixation” at the time, and envisioned Don to be the one who would cut “I Don’t Know A Thing About Love (The Moon Song),” but Williams never recorded it. Instead, it ended up in the capable hands of Conway Twitty and reached the #1 plateau of Billboard’s country singles chart on October 20, 1984, marking Twitty’s 37th chart-topper. He went on to notch three more over the next two years, finishing his career with a record-setting forty, at the time the most #1 hits by any artist in all fields of music. Conway’s achievement stood for twenty years until George Strait surpassed it on September 23, 2006 when “Give It Away” became his 41st number-one country hit. Strait currently maintains the record with forty-four (the accurate, authentic and official Billboard count). – JH

The Story Behind The Song:

”Cold, Cold Heart” (written by Hank Williams)

Hank Williams (#1, 1951) Tony Bennett (#1 pop, 1951) Jerry Lee Lewis (#22, 1961)

The inspiration for the song which would really open Hank Williams’ music to the entire world was born in a hospital. Hank’s wife Audrey had been fighting illness for some time when she took a turn for the worse. Ultimately, she was confined to a hospital bed for several days. Lonely, as well as remorseful for some of the harsh words he and his wife had exchanged, Hank decided to make a peace offering. Without first consulting Audrey, Hank went shopping and bought her a mink coat. He then gathered up the children and happily headed down to the hospital. Hank felt sure that his expensive gift would tear down the wall that had come between the couple.

When they got there, it was immediately obvious that Audrey was happy to see the kids, but she didn’t even acknowledge Hank as he walked into the room. Even after he presented her with her first mink coat, she continued to ignore him. During the entire visit, Audrey never spoke to Hank, nor did she act as if she’d heard his apologies. She treated him as if he weren’t even there, and his expensive gift went completely unappreciated. Hank soon left the hospital room defeated and dejected.

As Hank rode home that day, he was filled with both anger and pain. He realized that a lot of what was wrong had been his fault…that his drinking was driving a deep wedge between them, but he thought he made it clear that he loved her even more than he loved his vices. In his mind he was willing to give up whatever it was that was keeping them apart, but to Hank, it seemed that his wife was unwilling to do anything that would end their feud.

The family housekeeper, whose first name also happened to be “Audrey,” Audrey Ragland, accompanied Hank and the kids to the hospital that day. Hank rarely drove, and on this particular day, Mrs. Ragland acted not only as the children’s nanny, but as a chauffeur too. While she was driving through Nashville on the way back from the hospital, she silently observed the brooding man sitting to her right. After

83 several minutes, Mrs. Ragland finally asked Hank how he thought Mrs. Williams was doing. Looking over to her, his eyes sad and mournful, Hank replied “she’s got the coldest heart I’ve ever seen.” Then he turned his head back to watch the road, and seemed completely lost in thought. He said nothing more for the remainder of the trip.

That night, long after everyone else had gone to bed, Hank took a piece of paper and a pen and jotted down some of his random thoughts. As was often the case, his words quickly fell together into a song. Each of the new song’s lines was drawn from the most important relationship Hank had ever known. He must have realized as he wrote “Cold, Cold Heart” that he had no chance of ever melting Audrey’s anger or healing her heartache. Nevertheless, this expression of his desire to do so would become his personal favorite of the more than one hundred songs he wrote.

Hank Williams recorded and released “Cold, Cold Heart” during the early part of 1951. It debuted in Billboard March 17th and reached #1 on May 12th. Although “Cold, Cold Heart” held the top position for only a single week, Hank never had a release which endured so long on Billboard’s country charts.…ten and a half months! The tune also caught the attention of an up-and-coming pop singer who would go on to achieve legendary status.

Tony Bennett had noted with great interest Hank’s latest chart appearance. Bennett absolutely loved the country star’s new song, and felt that “Cold, Cold Heart” could easily be transformed into a classic piece for his own style. Tony had no problem convincing Columbia Records chief for the green light to record the song, and Bennett’s release of “Cold, Cold Heart” effortlessly sailed into the #1 slot on Billboard’s pop chart, where it stayed for six weeks. Many historians credit this single with fully establishing Bennett as a star. “Cold, Cold Heart” remains one of Tony’s three all-time biggest hits. Joining the parade, a host of other pop acts cut their own versions of the country song in 1951. Four of those recordings also landed on the chart. Hank Williams’ response to Tony Bennett’s version of “Cold, Cold Heart” was one of great satisfaction. He loved the lush string arrangement on it, and according to Jerry Rivers (a member of Hank’s band the “Drifting Cowboys,”) Hank would play Tony’s record constantly whenever he found it on a jukebox somewhere.

For years, country performers left Hank Williams’ original material alone. While many of the day’s best- selling songs were recorded by several different acts in direct response to chart movement by another act using the same song, most artists felt that Hank nailed his songs so well that no one else could cut another version that would be accepted. Jerry Lee Lewis was one of the first to not be intimidated by the Williams mystique. Jerry Lee had already scored a big hit with a rockabilly version of “You Win Again” in 1957, so it was with great anticipation that the singer recorded “Cold, Cold Heart.” Lewis saw this 1961 Sun release rise to #22. It would be his final hit for the famed Memphis record label. The following year (1962) saw Ray Charles cover a total of five Hank Williams tunes (although not “Cold, Cold Heart”) for his highly-acclaimed landmark album “Modern Sounds In Country And Western Music” and its follow-up “Modern Sounds In Country And Western Music, Volume Two.” Two of the five (both from the second album) were issued as singles: “Your Cheatin’ Heart” and “Take These Chains ,” the latter reaching #8 on Billboard’s Hot 100 pop chart, and both making the Top Ten of Billboard’s adult contemporary chart.

Since his death, Hank’s “Cold, Cold Heart” has remained one of country music’s most beloved songs. A multitude of people have learned its words and felt its message. Countless fans have come to know Hank Williams because of this classic. Others of Hank’s songs may have sold better upon initial release, but “Cold, Cold Heart” remains one of just a handful of true Williams classics. Lyrically, I personally rate

84 it as the second greatest country song ever written (my top choice is Bill Anderson’s “City Lights”). “Cold, Cold Heart” is the one particular narrative which reveals not only what Hank wanted most, but how helpless he was in trying to obtain it. In that song, one finds the essence of Hank Williams displayed for all the world to see. – JH

The Story Behind The Song:

“Honky Tonkin’” (written by Hank Williams)

Hank Williams (#14, 1948) Hank Williams, Jr. (#1, 1982)

Hank Williams, Jr. was only three years old when his father passed away, yet three visions of Hank, Sr. remain in his mind. Hank Jr. says he can remember him just as plain as day lying on a couch watching TV, also sitting in an airplane (all legs and hat), and performing on his early-morning WSM radio program. Hank, Jr. remembers those three visions of his dad and that’s all.

For years, country fans had wanted the younger Williams to be a living snapshot of his father, but he deliberately shunned life as a die-cast copy. Thus it proved ironic when Hank, Jr. remade some of his father’s songs including “Move It On Over,” “Kaw-Liga” and “Honky Tonkin.’”

His manager Merle Kilgore used to say that “Hank, Jr. doesn’t play by the rules, so you can’t judge him by the rules.” He wanted to do things his own way, and when he discovered that he could, that’s when he went back and covered some of his dad’s old material. He didn’t plan it that way, but when it happened, Hank, Jr. would get a kick out of saying, “This’ll really knock ‘em off-guard.”

The elder Hank recorded “Honky Tonkin’” at his second recording session in 1947 on the Sterling label (before he signed to MGM). The tune was re-released by MGM the following year when it climbed to #14. His breakthough hit, “,” was still about nine months away.

Hank, Jr. originally intended his new version of “Honky Tonkin’” to be a duet with Tanya Tucker. Unhappy with her performance, he saved the instrumental tracks and did it as a solo record. It brought new life to his father’s old classic, and Hank paid further homage to his dad by ad-libbing a couple of lines from “Hey, Good Lookin’” in the tune’s chorus. It became his sixth number one single on August 7, 1982, although it could have easily been the seventh. His prior release, “A Country Boy Can Survive” had stalled out at #2 on April 24th.

However, Williams set a record that week when “” entered the Billboard country album chart. As a result, eight different Hank, Jr. albums were on the chart simultaneously. That achievement didn’t last long – on October 30th “Hank Williams, Jr.’s Greatest Hits” became his ninth album listed. Hank owns this mark for living entertainers. Elvis Presley was the first performer with nine albums on the chart, attaining that level on January 21, 1978 because of the buying frenzy that followed his death on August 16, 1977. – JH

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The Story Behind The Song:

”Stand By Your Man” (written by Billy Sherrill and Tammy Wynette)

Tammy Wynette (#1 country, #19 pop, 1968)

Hardly a story is written about Tammy Wynette in which her association with “Stand By Your Man” isn’t mentioned. Following a three-week run at #1 on Billboard’s country singles chart beginning on November 23, 1968, the song became her second Grammy winner on March 11, 1969. It was so closely linked with Tammy that it was used as the title of her 1979 as well as the title of the 1981 TV- movie based on that book. In the film, Wynette was portrayed by Annette O’Toole.

The idea for “Stand By Your Man” belonged to Tammy’s producer Billy Sherrill, the man who had discovered her and signed her to Epic Records two years earlier. Sherrill had carried the title in his pocket on a piece of paper for more than a year. He put it to good use at a Wynette recording session at Columbia’s Studio B on August 26, 1968. After cutting two songs, Sherrill gave the musicians (including The Jordanaires and steel guitarist Pete Drake) a 20-minute break, and went upstairs with Wynette to write one more tune, which was needed to fill out the session. Billy suggested “Stand By Your Man,” and Tammy had an instant affinity for the concept.

“We sat down, and after a couple of lines, it just came to us,” Tammy recalled. “It was one of the fastest songs I ever worked on. It was almost as if it was meant to be.”

The antagonistic response from the nation’s feminists actually helped gain publicity for the song after its release. In Dorothy Horstman’s book “Sing Your Heart Out, Country Boy,” Sherrill even admitted that he intended “Stand By Your Man” as a song for the women who wanted no part of the women’s movement. “I wanted a song for the truly liberated woman” he explained, “one who is secure enough in her identity to enjoy it. Even though, to some skeptics it may hint of chauvinism, “Stand By Your Man” is just another way of saying ‘I love you – without reservations.’”

“Stand By Your Man” was the standout track in a quintet of Wynette songs used in the 1970 Jack Nicholson movie “Five Easy Pieces.” The notes from the tune’s melody were also used in the design of the “burglar bars” on the windows of Tammy’s Nashville home, purchased in 1974.

According to Tammy, Billy Sherrill told her that the melody to “Stand By Your Man” was actually borrowed from a public domain work created by classical composer Richard Strauss. “I guess we steal from everybody” she confessed. “There aren’t a whole lot of original melodies left.”

Twenty four years after its release, “Stand By Your Man” was thrust into the spotlight once again through an unlikely avenue: politics. During the 1992 presidential campaign, accusations had surfaced about candidate Bill Clinton’s philandering, and he and wife Hillary appeared on the CBS Newsmagazine program “60 Minutes” to address the controversy. At one point during the interview, Hillary snapped: “I’m not some little woman standing by like Tammy Wynette!” Say what? That’s EXACTLY what she was doing, so I could never understand her convoluted logic behind that statement, but as Bruce Williams used to say: “that’s another program.”

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In 2003, “Stand By Your Man” was ranked #1 on CMT’s list of the “100 All-Time Greatest Country Songs,” (“He Stopped Loving Her Today” came in second on the list). Tammy Wynette’s original recording of “Stand By Your Man,” created on August 26, 1968, achieved the ultimate acclaim when it was selected by the Library Of Congress for induction into the National Recording Registry in 2010. – JH

BONUS FEATURE:

“Old Tige” (written by Ross and Mildred Burke)

Jim Reeves (flip side of “Distant Drums” - #1 country, #45 pop, 1966)

Back in the days of 45 RPM records (which contained two songs per disc), it was standard practice for a record label to designate which song would be the “A” side (sometimes referred to as the “plug” side) and which would be the “B” (or “flip”) side. Rarely have “B” sides made any impact at all. In some cases though, the song that was supposed to be the hit turned out to be ignored and the radio deejays would turn the record over and play the “flip” side, which would go on to become the hit. In very few instances, both songs would score well on the charts. One of the best examples is Elvis Presley’s double- sided 1956 release “Hound Dog”/”Don’t Be Cruel.” Both of these titles landed at #1 for multiple weeks on both the Billboard pop and country charts. However, such an occurrence is extremely rare. Still, one wonders how much of an impact some of the “throwaway” songs on the “B” side actually generate toward making a record into a top seller. My backstory today is about one such number, a recitation, that I feel contributed greatly to the success of one of Jim Reeves’ biggest hits.

Country superstar “Gentleman” Jim Reeves had perished in the crash of his private plane that he was piloting on July 31, 1964 as he approached Nashville’s Berry Field during a severe thunderstorm. Not an instrument-rated pilot, Reeves became disoriented during the storm and nosed the plane straight down into a wooded area just a few miles from the airport. At the time of the crash, Reeves was at the peak of his power, and RCA Victor elected to continue issuing material on him, which the label did for the next twenty years (the final release being a Harlan Howard composition “The Image of Me” in January, 1984).

There were many songs “in the can” and ready for release which Jim had cut not only at the RCA facility in Nashville, but in his home studio as well. Such a song was the Cindy Walker-penned “Distant Drums.” The song had a “war-time” theme to it and since the Vietnam war was in full-swing at the time (1966), RCA decided to remix Jim’s home studio recording and issue the song as a single. Reeves’ former producer and chief of the label’s Nashville operation, Chet Atkins, thought that “Distant Drums” wasn’t a strong-enough song to warrant a single release (which I happen to agree with) and voiced his skepticism, but he was voted down by RCA’s New York executives.

An even bigger surprise though, was the song that RCA selected as the “B” side of “Distant Drums.” It was “Old Tige,” a five-year-old track from Reeves’ 1961 album “Talkin’ To Your Heart,” a collection of recitations. Although Jim did no actual singing on this package, it was highly successful due to Reeves’ wonderful speaking ability in addition to his singing prowess. What made the choice of “Old Tige” to back “Distant Drums” so unusual was the age and obscurity of the track. At the time it was selected, “Old Tige” had long since been forgotten on a five-year-old album which hadn’t produced any hits.

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Generally “B” sides are new cuts, in fact most are recorded at the same session as the designated “plug” side. Nonetheless, “Old Tige” was chosen and “Distant Drums” entered Billboard’s country singles chart on April 2, 1966, destined for a #1 landing.

The story about how “Old Tige” came to be written is a fascinating one. Its storyline about a “ghost” dog saving its master was conceived around a strange, real-life occurrence that happened to Jim Reeves late one night in 1955. Reeves was driving back to Nashville from a show performance about a hundred miles away. He was in the remote, mountainous area east of Nashville. It had been raining quite a bit. Suddenly, a person in white clothes appeared in front of Jim’s car. Reeves slammed on the brakes, thinking he had struck the person. He jumped out of the car and started looking all around, but couldn’t find anyone. Jim thought that maybe the person ran down the road, so he started driving very slowly looking for the person he believed surely must be injured. Then he came upon a bridge that had been washed out by a raging river. Because he had been going slow, looking for the “person in white,” Reeves was saved from driving his car off the road and into the river. He genuinely believed that he had been saved by his guardian angel.

Jim related this story to family members for years afterward, and eventually told it to a couple of songwriting friends of his, Ross and Mildred Burke of Springfield, Missouri. Reeves had become acquainted with the Burkes through his association with the “,” a nationally-televised country music show broadcast live from Springfield every Saturday night on the ABC Television Network. On several occasions during the show’s six-year run, Jim filled in for regular host Red Foley. Using Reeves’ account of his mysterious story as a guide, Ross and Mildred fashioned a unique tale about the ghost of a beloved dog which saves its master from a flood created by the construction of a new dam. They called it “Old Tige,” and Jim eagerly accepted the piece for his 1961 album of recitations, “Talkin’ To Your Heart.” Then it reappeared in single form as the “B” side of “Distant Drums” five years later.

The record wasn’t a double-sided hit and although “Old Tige” didn’t chart in its own right, I’ve always felt that Jim’s superb rendering of the beautifully written story greatly helped “Distant Drums” become the huge hit that it was. “Distant Drums” spent four weeks at #1 on Billboard’s country singles chart and reached a respectable #45 on the Billboard Hot 100 pop chart. It was far and away the biggest of the thirty-two Jim Reeves singles issued after his 1964 death. I believe that many people bought “Distant Drums” just to get a copy of Jim’s wonderful recitation of “Old Tige,” my all-time personal favorite spoken-word narration by any artist. – JH

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How to obtain copies of this booklet Through special arrangements with the Hendersons, THE FOUNDATION, Council of Churches of the will mail a copy of this book for a donation of $20 or more. If you would like multiple copies, please contact us at: THE FOUNDATION, Council of Churches 3000 E. Chestnut Expressway, Box 3 Springfield, Missouri 65802 Email: [email protected] Please include your name and mailing address with your check (no cash, please)! THE FOUNDATION MISSION STATEMENT The mission of THE FOUNDATION, Council of Churches is to financially support the programs of The Council of Churches of the Ozarks in providing support for those who are most vulnerable in our region. Annual earnings from investments provide a “margin of excellence” for the various Service Agencies of the Council. THE FOUNDATION, Council of Churches is a 501(c)(3) charitable foundation. Contributions are tax deductible in accordance with the limits of the IRS Code. SUPPORT PROGRAM DESCRIPTIONS OF THE COUNCIL Ambassadors for Children – for abused and neglected children in the Ozarks Child Care Aware – training for early childhood professionals Child Care Food – healthy meals in home-based daycare Connections Handyman – home repairs for low-income seniors Crosslines – food pantry and services for families in crisis Daybreak Adult Daycare – medically monitored daycare for elderly and developmentally disabled individuals Ombudsman Long Term Care – advocates for long term care patients in nursing homes Retired Senior Volunteers – Reading Buddies volunteers for school age children Safe to Sleep – overnight shelter for homeless women

Be sure to check out John Henderson’s Facebook pages frequently:

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