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

by Jack Canfield

To a bar called the Green Frog Café

  There were old men with beer guts and dominos

  Lying ’bout their lives while they played.

  I was just a kid, they called his “Sidekick”

  Like desperados waitin’ for a train

  Desperados waitin’ for a train.

  One day I looked up and he’s pushin’ eighty

  And there’s brown tobacco stains all down his chin

  To me he was a hero of this country

  So why’s he all dressed up like them old men

  Drinkin’ beer and playin’ Moon and Forty-two?

  Like desperados waitin’ for a train

  Desperados waitin’ for a train.

  The day before he died I went to see him

  I was grown and he was almost gone.

  So we just closed our eyes and dreamed us up a kitchen

  And sang another verse to that old song

  Like desperados waitin’ for a train

  Like desperados waitin’ for a train.

  D-I-V-O-R-C-E

  Story by Bobby Braddock

  Song written by Bobby Braddock and Curly Putman

  Recorded by Tammy Wynette

  I had written a song called “I-L-O-V-E-Y-O-U, Do I have to spell it out for you?” and I kind of laid it aside. That inspired “D-I-V-O-R-C-E.” It’s interesting because I eventually did finish the first song and Tammy Wynette recorded it on an album years later.

  I finished “D-I-V-O-R-C-E” but there were no takers. I asked Curly Putman one day why he thought nobody had wanted to record it. He said, “Well, there’s that one line in the chorus, ‘I wish that we could stop this D-I-V-O-R-C-E.’ That melody is too happy for such a sad song.”

  I said, “Well, what would you do?” He grabbed a guitar and started playing it and sang a new melody for that line. He changed the melody around and made it a lot sadder and a lot darker sounding. That’s about all Curly did, but it made the difference, I think, between being recorded and not being recorded.

  I think that really closed the deal. My melody sounded more like a detergent commercial than a song about divorce. I wanted to give him half the song, but he didn’t want any of it. We compromised and he took a fourth of it. When we sat down to do the demo, Curly was playing guitar and I was playing piano, and I came up with that deep piano lick at the beginning of the song — “Bom-bom-bom-bom-dumda-dum.” Billy Sherrill later decided to keep it on the record.

  They used to have a local Grammy banquet here in town and I saw Billy Sherrill there and told him about the song. He said, “Well, bring it over tomorrow.” So I did. He later told me he was looking for one more song for Tammy and said when he heard it he threw all the other stuff he had for her in the garbage can. He instinctively knew that was going to be a big hit for her and it was. It went to #1 in 1968.

  There were other songs of mine that were inspired by divorce, but I don’t think this one was. I had a daughter who was about a year old then and I always thought it was cute the way parents spell things out for their children when they don’t want them to know what they’re talking about, so I just wrote it. There may have been other reasons or inspiration behind it at the time, but if there were, they escape me now. I think I just wrote it for the money. But Tammy had a lot of heartache in her life, so it seemed she really related to the lyrics.

  By today’s standards, it almost seems like a corny song to me. But Tammy just sang the hell out of it and Billy Sherrill did a great job producing it. They made a great record.

  D-I-V-O-R-C-E

  Our little boy is four years old and quite a little man

  So we spell out the words we don’t want him to understand

  Like T-O-Y or maybe S-U-R-P-R-I-S-E

  But the words we’re hiding from him now

  Tear the heart right out of me.

  CHORUS:

  Our D-I-V-O-R-C-E becomes final today

  Me and little J-O-E will be goin’ away

  I love you both and it will be pure H-E double ‘L’ for me

  Oh, I wish that we could stop this D-I-V-O-R-C-E.

  Watch him smile, he thinks it’s Christmas

  Or his fifth birthday

  And he thinks C-U-S-T-O-D-Y spells fun or play

  I spell out all the hurting words

  And turn my head when I speak

  ’Cause I can’t spell away this hurt

  That’s dripping down my cheek.

  CHORUS

  Everlasting Love

  Story by Buzz Cason

  Song written by Buzz Cason and Mac Gayden

  Recorded by Robert Knight, Carl Carlton, Louise Mandrell, Narvel Felts, Gloria Estefan, and others

  Mac Gayden and I were producing Robert Knight, a young black singer from Franklin, Tennessee, on my label, Rising Sons Records. I owned it with Bobby Russell and it was distributed by Fred Foster on Monument Records. We had cut three songs and we had room for one more. Mac came over with two songs that had real nice riffs and grooves. I asked him, “Could you hook those two songs together in one song somehow?”

  He said, “Yeah, I could, but I’ve got to go right now because my wife’s got dinner at home waiting for me.”

  We were going to finish cutting the next day so I put a lyric to it that night. It was kind of a rush job actually. The original version we cut did not even have a second verse. It just had a bunch of “ooooh’s” in the song. The “girls” sang that part, the girls actually being Carol Montgomery and me! Then we added a second verse and Carol and I did all the high background vocals on the Robert Knight version and the Carl Carlton version. Carl’s is the version that most people recognize on the oldie stations. He cut his in 1974, and they really upped the tempo for his version.

  I got the title from the Old Testament. In the book of Jeremiah, there’s a verse that says, “Yea, I’ve loved you with an everlasting love.” That always stuck in my mind, so I thought it would make a good title for a song one day, but that was just the title. The verses talk about a guy who splits up with his girlfriend: “Hearts go astray leaving hurt when they go / I went away just when you needed me so.” The singer in the song is obviously not married because there is another verse that says “Need you by my side / girl to be my bride. . .” I was married at the time, but wasn’t thinking of anyone in particular. It wasn’t about an old girlfriend or anything like that. It’s a pretty simplistic little lyric. Like I said, it was a rush job so we knocked out the lyrics in about 20 minutes. The next day when we were doing the session, we almost ran out of time to put it down.

  We cut it at Fred Foster Sound Studio on 7th Avenue downtown in Nashville. It was the first master session for Brent Maher. Ten years later, Brent would be the chief engineer for Creative Workshop, my studio. He also later worked with The Judds and tons of other acts.

  It was also a Top 40 song in four consecutive decades: Robert Knight in the 1960s, Carl Carlton in the 1970s, Rachel Sweet and Rex Smith in the 1980s, and Gloria Estefan in the 1990s. In the 2000s, U2 covered it on an album. The biggest single on it was a singer named Sandra who released it in Europe in the late 1980s. Hers was a huge hit in several countries — Germany, Spain, Italy, France, and the Netherlands — and sold three million records. And Jamie Cullum’s version was in the movie Bridget Jones’s Diary. It’s been in five or six movies.

  Louise Mandrell and Narvel Felts released their country versions of the song at the same time about 1979. Narvel was on ABC/Dot at the time and it was a Top 20 hit for him on the country charts. People didn’t think twice about getting in a cover war back then. They would just jump right in.

  My favorite is still the Robert Knight one. It was done with a slower, Motown beat. It also had some different sounds on it that, for the time period, were kind of innovative. The string sound is actually an organ and we used a lot of echo. This was before all that crazy dance junk came in during the 1970s and, later, disco. I just think Robert’s was the one that had the magic in it.

  Everlasting
Love

  Hearts go astray, leaving hurt when they go.

  I went away just when you needed me so.

  Filled with regret, I come back begging you

  Forgive, forget, where’s the love we once knew?

  Open up your eyes, then you’ll realize.

  Here I stand with my

  Everlasting love.

  Need you by my side.

  Girl to be my bride.

  You’ll never be denied everlasting love

  From the very start, open up your heart, be a lasting part of

  Everlasting love.

  Ohhh, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. . . .

  When life’s filled with woes

  No one really knows

  ’Til someone’s there to show

  The way to lasting love

  Like the sun that shines

  Endlessly it shines

  You always will be my mine

  It’s eternal love

  When other loves are gone

  I will be strong

  We have our very own

  Everlasting love

  Open up your eyes, then you’ll realize.

  Here I stand with my everlasting love

  Need you by my side.

  Girl to be my bride.

  You’ll never be denied

  Everlasting love.

  From the very start

  Open up your heart

  Be a lasting part of

  Everlasting love.

  Everything Is Beautiful

  Story by Ray Stevens

  Song written by Ray Stevens

  Recorded by Ray Stevens

  The lyrics to the song really speak for themselves. You have to try to overcome prejudice and be open-minded about people in the world. I think Americans are by and large that way. At least I think they are now more so than they were back in 1970 when I wrote the song.

  I had just signed a new recording contract with Barnaby Records, Andy Williams’ new label. It was going to be distributed by CBS, so it was basically the same thing as being on Columbia Records. We had all the power of a major label and, at the same time, I was one of just a few artists, so there were a lot of resources to promote us. I was really excited about that, and I really wanted my first record to be a big hit.

  I had also been signed to host The Andy Williams Show that year, 1970, and I wanted to write a song that would be the theme song for that show. So I sat down at the piano at my house in Nashville and started writing. I would start one song, and think, “No, that’s not right,” and start another. I was just not going to take “no” for an answer, so I sat there until I hit upon an idea that would work, and this was it.

  I also had a little book that summer that I was reading. It was a book of wise little sayings and Chinese or Indian proverbs and things like that. There was one that said, “Everything is beautiful in its own way,” or something like that. And I thought, “That’s a great idea for the song I’m working on.” I wrote it pretty fast once I got the concept, and it sure did fit the bill as far as being a hit as well as the theme for the show.

  After I finished the song, I got the idea to record some little kids singing the intro. So I went over to my daughter’s school in Nashville — Oak Hill Elementary — and I took a portable recorder with me and recorded her second-grade class singing, “Jesus loves the little children, all the children of the world / red and yellow black and white / they are precious in his sight. . .”

  I won a Grammy that year for the Best Contemporary Vocal Performance, Male. It was released as a pop song and hit #1 on the pop and AC charts, but it got a lot of airplay on country radio and I think a good bit on gospel stations as well.

  Everything Is Beautiful

  Jesus loves the little children

  All the children of the world

  Red and yellow, black and white

  They are precious in his sight

  Jesus loves the little children of the world

  CHORUS:

  Everything is beautiful in its own way

  Like a starry summer night or a snow covered winter’s day

  Everybody’s beautiful in their own way

  Under God’s heaven the world’s gonna find a way

  There is none so blind as he who will not see

  We must not close our minds. We must let our thoughts be free

  For every hour that passes by, you know the world gets a little bit older

  It’s time to realize that beauty lies in the eyes of the beholder

  CHORUS

  We shouldn’t care about the length of his hair or the color of his skin

  Don’t worry about what shows from without, but the love that lives within

  We’re gonna get it all together now and everything’s gonna work out fine

  Just take a little time to look on the good side, and straighten it out in your mind

  CHORUS

  Gentle on My Mind

  Story by Betty Harford

  Song written by John Hartford

  Recorded by John Hartford, Glen Campbell and others

  In 1966, John and I were living in a little mobile home near Lebanon Pike on the east side of Nashville; our son Jamie was a year old. My mother babysat him one night so we could go see the movie Dr. Zhivago. John was very impressed with the movie, as was I. When we came home, he said, “I need to go write down a few things,” which was not unusual for him. Our second bedroom was always his music room and he spent much of his time there.

  John had been in his room for about thirty minutes while I was putting Jamie to bed. He came out with his guitar and said, “Let me play you this song I just wrote. Tell me what you think about it.” He had it completely written. I think it was the romantic relationship between Dr. Zhivago — Omar Sharif — and Julie Christie’s character — Lara — that inspired him. It was a movie about wartime Russia and finding love. Maybe it just awakened the wanderer in him. When I heard the song, I liked it, but of course I said, “Wait a minute. You’re talking about ‘not being shackled by forgotten words and bonds and ink stains that have dried upon some line,’ and ‘leaving some woman crying to her mother cause she turned and you were gone.’ Is that me?”

  He said, “No. You’re like the Julie Christie character for me.” Of course that was the right thing to say. When you listen to the song, it sounds like this guy wants to be out of there, and not entangled with a relationship. But John quickly assured me this was “artistic license” that he was taking. We did divorce, however, a few years later, so I’m not so sure....

  He said the song was just a “word movie;” that’s what he called it. It doesn’t have a chorus, and it’s like free verse poetry. He never believed a song had to rhyme or have perfect form to be good.

  I worked for the Glaser Brothers’ publishing company, John’s publisher, as their administrative assistant, and sometimes did vocals for their demos. John was a staff writer for Glaser and moonlighted as a disc jockey at WSIX from 4 p.m. to midnight (he went by John Hart). Every weekday, we would take Jamie to his babysitter and then both of us would go down to Music Row to work at the publishing company. We were quite poor, but those were really good times.

  John made a quick demo of “Gentle on My Mind” the day after he wrote it. He always had a little cassette tape recorder with him and would put songs down immediately. He played this tape for Chuck Glaser the same morning. I expect they probably did a little better demo; then Chuck took it right over to Chet Atkins.

  Chet was very positive and subsequently signed John with RCA Records based on that song. Chet was also the one who persuaded John to change his stage name from John Harford to John Hartford. John cut this first record with RCA, produced by Felton Jarvis, with “Gentle on My Mind” on the A side and “Washing Machine” on the B side. It had only been out a few weeks when Glen Campbell heard John’s version on the radio in California and went into Capitol and covered it. The rest, as they say, is history. It was a little unusual for a song to
be covered that quickly, but I think everybody who heard it recognized immediately that the song was really special.

  When we first married, in 1963, we lived in St. Louis, where John had a bluegrass band, the Ozark Mountain Trio. Since they didn’t work often or get paid very well, we both had to have other jobs. In 1965, we moved to Nashville, which was the best decision he had ever made for his career. That was when John stepped out and performed solo for the first time. He always told interviewers that “Gentle on My Mind” was the song that bought him his freedom. He didn’t have to be a disc jockey anymore; he became a full-time songwriter and musician. And I believe he became much more than he ever could have imagined.

  Gentle on My Mind

  It’s knowin’ that your door is always open

  And your path is free to walk

  That makes me tend to leave my sleepin’ bag

  Rolled up and stashed behind your couch

  And it’s knowin’ I’m not shackled

  By forgotten words and bonds

  And the ink stains that have dried upon some line

  That keeps you in the back roads

  By the rivers of my memory

  That keeps you ever gentle on my mind

  It’s not clingin’ to the rocks and ivy

  Planted on their columns now that binds me

  Or something that somebody said because

  They thought we fit together walkin’

  It’s just knowing that the world

  Will not be cursing or forgiving

  When I walk along some railroad track and find

  That you’re wavin’ from the back roads

  By the rivers of my memory

  And for hours you’re just gentle on my mind

  Though the wheat fields and the clothes lines

  And the junkyards and the highways come between us

  And some other woman’s cryin’ to her mother

  ’cause she turned and I was gone

  I still might run in silence

  Tears of joy might stain my face