Chicken Soup for the Soul: Country Music: The Inspirational Stories behind 101 of Your Favorite Country Songs Read online

  According to many of the writers in this collection, the songwriting Muse often manifests at the oddest times and in the oddest places. Tom T. Hall finished “Old Dogs, Children, and Watermelon Wine” on the back of an airplane barf bag on his way home to Nashville from the 1972 Democratic National Convention in Miami, inspired by an old gentleman he met in the hotel bar the night before. Larry Henley finished “Wind Beneath My Wings” on a piece of scrap paper while sitting in a fishing boat. And the number of hits that have been written on bar napkins is legion.

  As far as what makes a song a hit, Jimmy Webb says in addition to the obvious factors, such as the quality of the melody, the lyric, and how well the song fits a singer’s voice, everything from the level of humidity in the studio to the way the song sounds in an automobile can affect how far a record makes it up the charts.

  The popularity of songwriters clubs like Nashville’s Bluebird Café, and television shows like PBS’s Austin City Limits and Legends and Lyrics attest to the fact that many music fans of all genres share my curiosity about the inspirations behind songs. So here are the stories behind 101 classic country songs, spanning five decades, by some of Nashville’s top tunesmiths. They are songs born of dreams, joy, pain, anger, love found, love lost, family, faith, courage, pity, compassion, and honor. They are, as many songwriters say, “life set to music.” Happy reading.

  I would like to thank a number of people in Nashville who went above and beyond the call of duty to help put me in touch with many of the songwriters included in this collection. They include Gerilynn Pearce at Universal Music Publishing, Aaron Mercer at Sony/ATV Music Publishing, Kissy Black and Dawn Delvo at Lotos Nile Marketing, and Vanessa Davis of Splash! Public Relations, and Taylor Lindsey.

  I would like to thank my wife Clare Rudder and daughter Abigail for being so supportive during this project, and my mother Jane Rudder, who has always been my biggest fan. I also want to thank Bob Jacobs and Leigh Holmes at Chicken Soup for the Soul Publishing for giving me this opportunity and for their tireless efforts in helping me assemble the manuscript, photographer Alan Mayor for coming through with so many photos, and all my friends at Joy Church International in Mt. Juliet, Tennessee. I am truly a blessed man.

  ~Randy Rudder

  16th Avenue

  Story by Thom Schuyler

  Song written by Thom Schuyler

  Recorded by Lacy J. Dalton

  I remember quite vividly where I was when I wrote “16th Avenue.” My wife and I had just settled into being married and had our first child. We had bought a little bungalow near the 100 Oaks Mall area in Nashville. It was late one Friday night and I was just picking around at home. I really didn’t even have an idea. It wasn’t one of those songs where I thought, “This is a great idea. I can’t wait to start writing.” I didn’t even know what I was doing! I just started writing the song.

  I scribbled down probably three verses and then I thought it was too much of an “industry” kind of song. It didn’t really have the structure of a commercial song. It didn’t even have a chorus. So I just threw it in the desk drawer.

  About three months later, I played it for my publisher, Even Stevens. He was working with Eddie Rabbitt then, and he had a publishing company on Music Row. He asked me if I was working on anything, and I told him yes, but I didn’t think it was very commercial. I played it for him and his eyes got as big as saucers. He said, “Where did that come from?” and I told him I didn’t know. He said, “Well, work on it some more.”

  I’m an absurdly practical guy. I was prepared to come to Nashville, and I had a little bit of money saved, so I never really stayed at any of the boarding houses on Music Row or lived in my car or any of the things mentioned in the song, but I would observe other people who did and listen to their stories.

  Once I had finished the song, we did a little demo of it. There was a guy named Jerry Smith, who has worked with a lot of new artists over the years to help them get their start. He was plugging some songs for Even Stevens and Eddie Rabbitt and he took “16th Avenue” and another song I had written called “My Old Yellow Car” down to producer Billy Sherrill’s office at Columbia. He came back and said that Billy liked them both, but “My Old Yellow Car” was his favorite.

  Two or three days later, Billy called me at the publishing house and asked me if I would come down to his office and visit with him, which was quite a thrill for a young writer like me. He was very generous with his time and he ended up recording both of those songs with Lacy J. Dalton, a singer he was producing then.

  They used “16th Avenue” to open the Country Music Association Awards Show in 1982. Lacy came out and sang it, and they did this really wonderful montage of downtown Nashville photos, and cats walking around with guitar cases and things like that on the screen behind her. It was a very nice piece, and then Columbia put it out as a single. It really had its run on big radio in the early part of 1983.

  From time to time, when I hear it, I’m reminded what a great recording it was, and how well it was produced and how great her vocal was. It’s only been recorded twice as far as I know. Maybe there are certain songs that need to be recorded only once and should be remembered in their original form.

  Honestly, to this day, if there is any one thing I’ve done in this town that I am associated with, it’s that song. I still think of it as an insider song. It did get into the Top 10, and it was a big record for Lacy, and it still gets played a lot, but I’ve had bigger hits. I’ve had number ones, but people don’t always remember them. But they remember this song. Some people call it “the songwriters’ anthem,” and that’s quite an honor.

  16th Avenue

  From the corners of the country, from the cities and the farms

  With years and years of livin’ tucked up underneath their arms,

  They walked away from everything just to see a dream come true

  So God bless the boys who make the noise on 16th Avenue.

  With a million dollar spirit and an old flat top guitar,

  They drive to town with all they own in a hundred dollar car,

  ’Cause one time someone told them about a friend of a friend they knew,

  Who owns, you know, a studio on 16th Avenue.

  Now some are born to money. They never had to say survive

  And others swing a nine pound hammer just to stay alive

  There’s cowboys, drunks and Christians, mostly white and black and blue,

  They’ve all dialed the phone direct to home from 16th Avenue.

  Oh, but then one night in some empty room where no curtains ever hung,

  Like a miracle some golden words roll off of someone’s tongue,

  And after years of being nothing they’re all lookin’ right at you,

  And they for awhile they’ll go in style on 16th Avenue.

  Hey it looks so uneventful, so quiet and discreet,

  But a lot of lives were changed there on that little one-way street,

  ’Cause they walked away from everything just to see a dream come true,

  So God bless the boys who make the noise on 16th Avenue.

  All-American Boy

  Story by Bobby Bare

  Song written by Bobby Bare

  Recorded by Bobby Bare

  (under the name of Bill Parsons)

  I grew up in southern Ohio, and I knew I had to go somewhere else to do something with my music. I couldn’t get anything going in Portsmouth, Ohio. I was too chicken to go to Nashville, because that was where all my heroes lived. I didn’t think there was room for me down there, so I decided to go to L.A. I was in Portsmouth one night and I saw a guy with a Palomino Club bumper sticker on his car with California plates and a Nudie suit who said he was going to L.A. So, my steel guitar player and I decided to go with him. I was always pretty loose like that. That was how I wound up on the West Coast. This was in 1954 and I was 19 years old.

  In 1958, I wrote “All-American Boy” about a rock and roll picker getting drafted into the
Army. I recorded it a few days before I went into basic training in Fort Knox, Kentucky. I was doing a demo on my old buddy, Bill Parsons, back at King Studios in Cincinnati. There were about fifteen minutes left in the session and I’d been working on this song. It was an old “talking blues” kind of thing. We spent most of the time doing a song on my friend and then I put it down real quick, left the studio, and went off to join the Army.

  This record label in Cincinnati, Fraternity Records, heard it and put it out and, within days, it was the biggest record in America, and here I was in the Army! And since Bill had booked the session, his name was on the record. It was my voice on the record, but my name wasn’t there!

  I was drafted about six months after Elvis went into the service, so when the song hit, everybody thought it was about him. When it hit #2 on the charts, Bill called me up, scared to death, and said, “What am I going to do?” I said, “Just ride it out. Buy yourself a car or something. It will be forgotten in six months anyway.”

  He said, “They want me to do the Dick Clark show in Philadelphia.” And I said, “Well, do it. You’re going to be lip-synching anyway. You can lip-synch me as well as I can lip-synch me.” So he went to Philadelphia and lip-synched my voice on American Bandstand, and then they had a big party for him in New York.

  That was about the only hit that Bill had, as far as I know. I think a lot of people knew it was me anyway. It was probably fortunate that my name wasn’t on the record though, because I would have been labeled a novelty singer and it might have killed my career. I never would have had big hits like “Detroit City.” I would have been a one-hit wonder.

  All-American Boy

  Gather ’round, cats, and I’ll tell you a story

  About how to become an All-American Boy

  Buy you a guitar and put it in tune

  And you’ll be rockin’ and rollin’ soon

  (recite) Showin’ off, hittin’ hot licks, and all that jazz

  Well, I bought me a guitar a year ago

  Learned how to play in a day or so

  And all around town it was well understood

  That I was knockin’ ’em out like Johnny B. Goode

  (recite) Hittin’ them hot licks, yeah number one

  Well, I’d practice all day

  And up into the night

  My papa’s hair was turnin’ white

  ’Cause he didn’t like rock ‘n ‘roll

  He said, “You can stay, boy

  But that’s gotta go

  (recite) He’s a square

  He just didn’t dig me, at all

  So I took my guitar, picks and all

  And bid farewell to my poor ol’ pa

  And I split for Memphis where they say “Y’all”

  Them swingin’ cats are havin’ a ball

  (recite) Sessions, hot licks.

  They dig me

  I was rockin’ and boppin’

  And I was getting’ the breaks

  The girls all said that I had what it takes

  When up stepped a man with a big cigar

  He said “Come here cat

  I’m gonnna make you a star

  (recite) I’ll put you on Bandstand

  Buy you a Cadillac

  Sign here, kid.”

  Well, I signed my name and became a star

  Havin’ a ball with my guitar

  Driving a big long Cadillac

  And fightin’ the girls off my back

  They just kept a comin’

  Screamin,’ yeah. They like it.

  Well, I picked my guitar

  With a great big grin

  And the money just kept on pourin’ in

  But then one day my Uncle Sam

  said, (knock, knock,, knock) “Here I am.”

  (recite) Your Uncle Sam needs you, boy

  I’m gonna cut your hair off

  Ah, take this rifle, kid.

  Gimme that guitar. . .

  Almost Home

  Story by Craig Morgan

  Song written by Kerry Kurt Phillips and Craig Morgan

  Recorded by Craig Morgan

  I was talking to my wife on the phone one day and she was complaining about me being on the road so much. I told her, “Just relax. It won’t be long. I’m almost home.” I thought that might be a great song idea, so I wrote it down.

  A little later, I sat down with Kerry Kurt Phillips and we started writing it. We beat it around for a month or so. We were taking it from the relationship angle. Then, I was driving into Nashville one day to try to write with Kerry some more, and there was a homeless guy standing on the Demonbreun Street Bridge near Music Row, holding up a sign. I told Kerry about it when I saw him. I said I felt sorry for the guy. He knew the guy, who was in pretty bad shape, and he said, “Yeah, that old boy’s almost home.” And we looked at each other and said, “That’s it.”

  It took us three or four sessions to get it down. Kerry is a pretty particular writer. We wrote it three or four different ways, trying to figure out exactly what we wanted it to say. The lines about running through the cottonwood trees and the Calico Creek came from him. Calico Creek is an actual creek near where he grew up. I wrote the lines about walking down an old dirt road, past a field of hay that had just been mowed, being chased by the honeybees, drip-drying in the summer breeze. I was reminiscing about my boyhood growing up in Kingston Springs, near Nashville. I can still smell that hay every time I sing that song.

  “Almost Home” was the 2003 Nashville Songwriters Association Song of the Year, and it is still one of the most requested songs. A gentleman told me at a show once that before his father-in-law passed away he had requested the song be played at his funeral.

  Kerry and I never discussed what was meant by “almost home,” but, as I found out later, we might have looked at it differently. To me, I just thought he was going back home in his dream, but in Kerry’s mind, he was ready to pass on. But that’s what’s great about co-writing: two different writers bring two different perspectives to a song.

  It got pitched around. George Strait had it on hold for a while. I hadn’t planned on cutting it myself. Then one day, I called my producer and said, “We just wrote a great country song.” And I read him the lyric over the phone. At the time, he had some land over in Hickman County, forty-two acres of which I wanted. He told me he would trade me those forty-two acres in exchange for publishing on that song. I said, “Well, if you think it’s that good, maybe I’ll just hold onto it.”

  Trace Adkins and I almost got into a fight about it at the Opry one night. I was there in my dressing room and he came and stood in the doorway. He filled it plumb up, of course, since he’s about 6’6”. He said, “I want to know how the hell you got that song, ‘Almost Home.’ I should have cut that thing.”

  I said, “Are you kidding me? How do you think I got it?”

  He said, “Do I look like I’m kidding?”

  I thought we were fixing to come to blows there for a moment. I said, “I wrote it.”

  He said, “Well, I’ll be damned.” But we got over it. We’re good friends now.

  Almost Home

  He had plastic bags wrapped ’round his shoes

  He was covered with the evening news

  Had a pair of old wool socks on his hands

  The bank sign was flashing “5 below”

  It was freezing rain an’ spittin’ snow

  He was curled up behind some garbage cans

  I was afraid that he was dead

  I gave him a gentle shake

  When he opened up his eyes

  I said, “Old man, are you ok?”

  CHORUS:

  He said, “I just climbed out of a cottonwood tree

  I was runnin’ from some honey bees

  Drip dryin’ in the summer breeze

  After jumpin’ into Calico Creek

  I was walkin’ down an old dirt road

  Past a field of hay that had just been mowed

  Man I wish you’d jus
t left me alone

  ’Cause I was almost home...”

  Then he said, “I was just comin’ round the barn”

  ’Bout the time you grabbed my arm

  When I heard momma holler, “Son hurry up.”

  I was close enough for my old nose

  To smell fresh cobbler on the stove

  And I saw daddy loadin’ up the truck

  Cane poles on the tailgate

  Bobbers blowin’ in the wind

  Since July of ’55

  That’s as close as I’ve been

  CHORUS

  BRIDGE:

  I said, “Old man you’re gonna freeze to death”

  Let me drive you to the mission

  He said “Boy if you’d left me alone

  Right now I’d be fishin’”

  CHORUS

  American Honey

  Story by Hillary Lindsey

  Song written by Hillary Lindsey, Shane Stevens, Cary Ryan Barlowe

  Recorded by Lady Antebellum

  I was on a trip to Gatlinburg in the Smoky Mountains with Shane Stevens and Cary Barlowe. While we were there, we saw a sign for American Honey whiskey, so that’s where we got the title.

  We started writing it while we were still there in Gatlinburg. We wrote the lines, “She grew up on a side of the road/where church bells ring and strong love grows.” We all grew up in the South. Cary is actually the son of a former preacher. Shane is from North Carolina, and I’m from a tiny town in Georgia, so we had a lot in common as far as our upbringing.

  As the story unfolded, we realized that it was a story about all three of us growing up and missing our innocence and wanting to get back to that. There are a lot of metaphors. It’s not really a straight-ahead kind of song. It’s more allegorical, which is kind of cool because it lets the listeners read into it whatever they want.