Bobby Braddock Interview
Doug Burke:
Bobby Braddock has written number one songs in five consecutive decades, and has written 13 number one songs in total. He is a member of the Nashville Songwriters Hall of Fame, the Country Music Hall of Fame, and, in 2015, was inducted into the Songwriters Hall of Fame. Many of his songs have become country music standards covered by bands all over the world. He's been nominated for the Country Music Association Song of the Year six times, and has won it twice. Born in the citrus farm country near Orlando, Florida, he began playing piano in rock and roll bands before migrating to Nashville in the early '60s where he became the touring piano player in Marty Robin’s band. There he began writing songs that were recorded, and the rest is the stuff of legends.
Welcome to Back Story Song, and I'm your host, Doug Burke. And today I have the thrill and honor to have with me Bobby Braddock, who in 1981 was inducted into the Nashville Songwriters Hall of Fame. At the time, the youngest inductee ever. 2011, inducted into the Country Music Hall of Fame. 2015, the Songwriters Hall of fame. He's won countless awards, has had a number one song in five different decades. He has written three books, the first is Down in Orburndale: A Songwriter's Youth in Old Florida, about his childhood upbringing. The second, which I can encourage all the Backstory Song listeners to download at an Amazon store near you, called A Life on Nashville's Music Row, which really describes the history of songwriting and music in Nashville, over five, six decades, from 1964 when Bobby arrived there, on. And his newest book, Country Music's Greatest Lines. Bobby, welcome, and why don't you tell us about your newest book here.
Bobby Braddock:
Welcome, my pleasure to do this, appreciate you having me. The second book... people trying to find this... wasn't my idea, it was the publisher's idea, that the title actually includes my name. It's Bobby Braddock, A Life on Nashville's Music Row. The new book, Country Music's Greatest Lines, just came out past couple of weeks. I have a collaborator on this book, her name is Carmen Beecher and she's a world class illustrator. You open up the book, on the left side you'll see a narrative I've written about what I consider one of the great lines in country songs. And I write a narrative about the line or about the writer or about the song, sometimes about the artist. And then on the right page is an illustration, because each one of these narratives I had this vision for what I wanted to be there. And I'd tell her about it, I'd email what the next topic was, and specifically what I wanted her to draw. Sometimes I'd send along pictures from the internet to direct her towards what I wanted the drawing to be. And she blew me away every time, it always looked better when I saw it, even than it was in my mind, so.
Doug Burke:
The pictures are amazing, Bobby. She is really a gifted illustrator, and I had the joy and luck to get to see a preview copy. It was released this week and so it is available, Country Music's Greatest Lines. And Bobby, you're so humble. Of course, you didn't put any of your own greatest lines in the book, other than a song that you and one of your long-time songwriting partners consciously tried to write the worst country song ever, I believe. Is that right? That's the only song of yours that's in there?
Bobby Braddock:
Yeah, a lot of people said, "Well, you can't write a book like that without putting your own songs in there." My response to that is, "It would just look like a big ego trip if I had a book titled Country Music's Greatest Lines, and put my lines in there. I wouldn't do that." And I thought, one way I can put one of my songs in there is to put this song that is so bad that nobody would take me seriously. And I did that, and had some fun with it. And my co-writer and very good friend, Rafe Van Hoy... I did not send this picture along of him, I was afraid he would not want me to put it in there. That it had the same effect on him that it did on me.
Doug Burke:
I was trying to find the song on Spotify so I could listen to it, and include it in Back Story Songs discussion here, but I actually couldn't find a recorded version of it out there.
Bobby Braddock:
I don't know if it's the worst song ever written, but it sure is a contender. An avalanche of romance, the landslide of love. We got off our big rocks with one little shove. An earthquake for God's sake, a hurricane of heartaches, an avalanche of romance, the blindside of love.
Doug Burke:
Well Bobby, you know what I'd like to do, if you enjoyed doing this Back Story Song Podcast, I would love to do another podcast where we talk about the different chapters, or the different pages, and the different songs that you picked out. And maybe do a deep-dive discussion on those songs because they clearly inspired you, inspired your work. You admired the artist, the writers, and each song in its own unique way influenced you. And I think that would be really fun for our listeners, if you'd be up for doing that.
Bobby Braddock:
I'd love to do that.
Doug Burke:
Great, well then that's a date. But here on Back Story, we are only talking about songs that Bobby Braddock's written.
Bobby Braddock:
Before we get onto that I'll just say this, if you're interested in songs and songwriters, I think you might enjoy reading this book.
Doug Burke:
Absolutely you will, I did. And I can encourage all my listeners to buy it and download it. It's available on Amazon.
Bobby Braddock:
And the chapters are by decade, so this is something for those who like classic country, Hank Williams and people like that. And it goes right up to present day, with artists/writers like Taylor Swift and Eric Church, Alan Jackson. What I get back from most people is how it brought back old memories to them, and then finding out something about the songs, and the backstory on the songs that they love. So anyway, yes, I would love to do that sometime.
Doug Burke:
That's its own episode, or maybe multiple episodes for... and I would be over the moon.
Bobby Braddock:
Thank you, Country Music's Greatest Lines. That's the name of it folks, I think you might like it, all right.
Doug Burke:
So I did find your autobiography, Bobby Braddock, a Life on Nashville's Music Row, to be one of the best reads. I do read a lot of musical biographies, and it's one of the best I've ever read. It's got a ton of humorous stories and I'd like to use the framework of that, in part, for this discussion. Because in that, it became clear to me that so many of your songs were inspired by the women in your life. Your loves, your relationships, so many of your songs are about relationships with the opposite sex and I'd like to maybe use that as a framework. And, in particular, you spent a long time in the autobiography talking about four women. Your mother, your first wife, Sue, your second wife, Sparky, and most of all, throughout the book, is your daughter Lauren, who's nickname was Jeep, which was eventually changed to Beep in the book. So I would like to find out if any of your songs were inspired by those four key women, and I imagine... you were a bachelor for a while, or still are a bachelor, and there are some other women who inspired other songs. Women seem to have been the muse for you in so many ways.
Bobby Braddock:
I find it's probably the easiest way to write a song, is to write from personal experience, or the experience of people whom I know. It's an easier way to write a song, you put your heart and soul into it and rather be in the situation. I think most songwriters are inspired by their own lives. Yeah, my second wife, Sparky, at the time she was a really big deal to me and I did write a few songs about her... not everything I wrote. When I wrote with Sonny Throckmorton, it was a number one record by TG Sheppard, I feel like loving you again. Sonny and I were trying to come up with something and Sparky and I had been apart for a couple or three months. It's like we had been seeing each other, but she went back to her ex husband and I was totally out of touch with her, and devastated. And I was writing the song with Sonny, and the front desk said, "Phone call for you. "Said, "It's Sparky." So of course I took the call, and she wanted to see me. So I hung up the phone, exhilarated. I told Sonny, I said, "I feel you coming back again." That's what we wrote, and the song, when we finished it was I feel you coming, I feel you coming, I feel you coming back again. And we were pretty happy with the song and then Sonny called me up, and he said, "Pudding." He called everybody Pudding. "Pudding, I was talking to my wife and she thinks nobody will record that, thinks it sounds pretty obscene."
Doug Burke:
Ha, it's too dirty?
Bobby Braddock:
Yeah, and I said, "Well, what will we do?" He said, "How about I feel like loving, I feel like loving you again." And I didn't like it nearly as much, but I thought that he and his wife... probably right, it would be hard to get recorded, so that's how we came up with that title.
Doug Burke:
Well that song, of course, went to number one. So I guess it was a good change. One of the things I love about that song, which is... I noticed a signature of a lot of your work is the introductions to the actual words, and this has a beautiful piano into. And I was wondering, did that come first, did that come second? A lot of writers write the melody first, and then the lyrics, and some write vice versa. And some say it comes to them in combination, and some say it depends on the song.
Bobby Braddock:
It's a little bit of all of that with me. Mostly, typically, if I get an idea, that germ, that seed planted, I'll sit there on the keyboard and I'll start playing something. I came to town as a piano player.
Doug Burke:
Yeah, you started in a rock and roll band in Florida. What was the name of the band? The untouchables was it?
Bobby Braddock:
Big John's Untouchables.
Doug Burke:
Big John's Untouchables, and so I guess you weren't Big John, you had a front man, right?
Bobby Braddock:
No, I wasn't Big John, I was Little Bobby.
Doug Burke:
And then you ended up getting a tryout to be Marty Robbins' piano player.
Bobby Braddock:
Yeah, I played piano for him, that was my first real gig in Nashville. I came to town thinking I can probably make a living as a piano player in Nashville, but can I really be a songwriter? And Marty liked my songs, and he could accompany my songs, so I thought huh, I guess I am a songwriter. And that gave me the incentive to really double down on that. So after a year and a half with Marty, I asked him if it was okay with him I'm going to hit the road and pursue my songwriting career.
Doug Burke:
I want to stick on the female-inspired, muse-inspired songs. And you mentioned Her Name Is, which is one of my favorite Bobby Braddock songs. And in this song the guitar is like a lyric, and it's a guitar sound that, like I say, I sort of never heard.
Bobby Braddock:
Yeah, it was actually a clarinet on the record.
Doug Burke:
Oh, it was a clarinet? Oh, okay.
Bobby Braddock:
The genius producer, Billy Sherrill. Probably 30% of the hits I wrote were produced by Billy Sherrill, he was a Godsend to me, I tell you.
Doug Burke:
Yeah, you talk about him a lot in your book and he was a fairly private guy, right?
Bobby Braddock:
Oh, very private. I was one of the few that was allowed into his inner sanctum. He was not a people person, he was pretty much of an introvert. He let me in, and well, I took advantage of it too. He sure cut a bunch of my songs, he was kind of a Don Rickles sort of guy. When he was inducted into the Country Music Hall of Fame they interviewed me on the way in there, and I said that Billy Sherrill hadn't been like the Don Rickles of Nashville, he probably would have gotten into the Country Music Hall of Fame a lot sooner. "Don Rickles." He said, "that's the guy that gets no respect." I said, "No, that's Rodney Dangerfield, he will respect you, Billy. Don Rickles is the guy who insults everybody." And Billy's wife said, "Isn't that the truth." Anyway, yes.
Doug Burke:
So did you, when you wrote Her Name Is, did you envision this instrument being part of the lyrics? Because it's such a-
Bobby Braddock:
Oh, yeah. That's the way I wrote it. The little shtick of that song was this guy was having an affair with someone who was married, and couldn't say her name. So the guitar would play whenever her name was mentioned, or any of her physical traits which might give her away, the guitar played that, her name is dun-di-dun, her eyes are dun, her hair is just like down-dun, then she measures da-da-down. Well that was Sparky, I had a long version for her she'd get a kick out of, her hair was just like seaweed, and she... that sort of thing.
Doug Burke:
You actually put in words for the dow-di-dow's, huh?
Bobby Braddock:
It was almost surreal, she was in town and we went down to George Jones' nightclub, Possum Holler. And he was in town and happened to be performing that night. And as we walked in the door, what was he singing, but Her Name Is, which was his current record. I introduced her to George and I said, "This is the girl I wrote that song about." And everybody thought “her name is Tammy”, they thought was about Tammy Wynette. Oh, people thought that He Stopped Loving Her Today was about Tammy, thought George wrote it about Tammy.
Doug Burke:
So you have been writing journals and keeping a diary for most of your life, and you rate the songs on a 1 to 10 scale after you write them, I guess. Or shortly after you write them, in your journals. And He Stopped Loving Her Today, you gave a 7. I'm very interested in hearing about the songs that you gave a 9 or a 10 on this, but the world disagreed with your scoring on that one, on He Stopped Loving Her, and pretty much gave that song a 10.
Bobby Braddock:
You know what Doug, I think it's because I thought that it was a good song, I didn't think it was a great song. And I think Curly Putman, my co-writer, same way. I thought that both Curly and I had written better songs than that. I think George Jones' performance, and Billy Sherrill's production took that song up two notches. When I went in to hear it, I went in there with Curly, and Billy was going to play it. And I was more interested in hearing this other song that George recorded, it was a song of mine that a lot of people recorded, it's called Would They Love Him Down in Shreveport. And I was glad to get the cut on He Stopped Loving Me Today, it was not a song that was way up there on my radar. And when Billy played it for us, oh my God. I knew that there was something really special in it there, and I think there's something in the song that I wasn't seeing. But I think, more than anything else, I think the singer and the producer elevated that song. George's performance is chilling.
Doug Burke:
This one has an acapella intro, which is a different thing for you. Did you write it that way or did Billy Sherrill produce that?
Bobby Braddock:
That was Billy Sherrill, that was not one of my demos that sounds like a record that people went and did, that was just a little, simple, very, very... well, I played everything on it, except the drums, and it was just a little simple demo. And the song evolved a lot after that original demo, this was before their receiving a recitation. And that was Billy's idea, I think, just to start it out with. You said I'll love you, which became quite a signature.
Doug Burke:
Yeah, but I do think that your songs have signature starts to them whether it's a piano intro or the guitar lick that is laid down. Or, in this case, the archapello intro, when you hear it you're like, "That's the Bobby Braddock song that I love." It's just... I don't know if you ever thought of it that way.
Bobby Braddock:
Yes certainly, because I feel like... I think producers have different strengths and weaknesses. And as a producer I have my weaknesses, I think my strength is as an arranger.
Doug Burke:
So sticking on the theme of female inspired songs, you had three number ones with Faking Love, Texas Tornado, and D-I-V-O-R-C-E. And I guess those song titles sort of tell the story.
Bobby Braddock:
Now D-I-V-O-R-C-E, I was working on a song called I L-O-V-E-Y-O-U, do I have to spell it out for you? And I'd somehow stumbled across the D-I-V-O-R-C-E thing, and wrote it, went and cut a demo on it. Of course, I know you have a lot of songwriter listeners and they know what a demo is. For those who don't, it's a demonstration of a song, you're trying to make a song sound as much like a record as possible, to pitch to the ANR people or the producers or the artists themselves. So did a demo on D-I-V-O-R-C-E and had high hopes for it but nobody would record it. And I finally ask Curly. I said, "I wonder why we're not getting any takers on that." He said, "Bobby." He said, "Honestly I think Not All Over It just in a couple of spots there, the song sounds too happy for a sad song." Looking back on it, I think it sound like a soap commercial. So here's what I had, most of the song was okay. When I got to around the timeline and we had the same melody in the verse too. And it's the last line of the verse, and the last line of the chorus. On the chorus what I had was, "Oh I wish that we could stop this D-I-V-O-R-C-E." He said, "I think that sounds too happy." I said, "Well, what would you do?" So he picked up his guitar, he had the most mournful voice, he was a great singer, and oh boy, he was a sad singer. And he said, "Oh, I wish that we could stop this D-I-V-O-R-C-E." I said, "Let's get it on tape like that." So Curly with his guitar, me with the piano, and I sat at the piano and did the thing they used on the record, I went, "Bom, bom, bom, bom, bom, bom, bom." Yeah, and we did it with that new sad part. And Curly said, "Yeah, I didn't hardly do anything, I not going to take any part of this." I said, "Curly, you changed it and you made this a song probably that somebody would record, I think you should take half of it." So we compromised, and he took one fourth of it.
Doug Burke:
You describe in your book that Curly is one of the greatest song pluggers, and I didn't realize how important song plugging is until I read your book. Tell me what that is, and tell me what that means, and tell me why Curly Putman was one of the greatest song pluggers around.
Bobby Braddock:
Song plugger way, way, way, way back, before the days of radio, were... like in New York, the publishing companies would have a song plugger who would take the songs around to get the people to sing in the bars and cabarets, the word of mouth for songs to get around. In modern times a lot of things changed, but when I got into town song pluggers were the ones who got the songs and took them out and tried to get them recorded, and played them for the record label people or the producers or the artists. And that's still what they're called, they're still called song pluggers. A lot of times, songwriters turned into song pluggers. A lot of my songs eventually I got recorded myself.
Doug Burke:
You were the song plugger on them.
Bobby Braddock:
Yeah, I got Time Marches On recorded. I Want to Talk About Me, I got that recorded. But in the early days Curly got a lot of the songs recorded. And the publisher Buddy Killen, he was a great song plugger himself. And soon as Curly became a part of the song and elevated it, and then just made it a lot more cuttable. Before they had the Grammy shows in Nashville they used to... NARAS, which is the organization behind the Grammy's, used to have a dinner in Nashville. It was just a dinner, maybe had a little local awards. It weren't like the Grammy night, it was a local thing and I saw Billy Sherrill there. I didn't know him as well then because this is early in my career. I told him, I said, "I got this song that I think would be really good for Tammy." He had cut some of my songs so he knew who I was and he knew my songs. And we knew each other fairly well, but not nearly as well as we would eventually. And he said, "Get it to me. Bring it to me tomorrow." In the interview he says that when he heard that song, that he threw everything else in the garbage can. Curly and I went by there and we'd left it there with his assistant, and he called and told us that he's going to cut it on Tammy Wynette. That was my first number one record.
Doug Burke:
Do you remember it rising in the charts, and the day it was number one? And do you remember your number one party? I imagine a lot of those number one parties you might forget by the end of the evening.
Bobby Braddock:
That was pre-number one party.
Doug Burke:
They didn't do them back then, yeah. When did those things start?
Bobby Braddock:
Actually, they started in the '70s. Yeah, I'd say they started in the '70s because I don't recall a number one party for D-I-V-O-R-C-E. I do recall my first wife and I were with at least two other couples in our age group eating at a meat and three place over in Nashville, and that came on the jukebox. And I said, "This is a song I co-wrote, and I think it's going to be a really big hit." I remember that. I had Tammy Wynette's biggest hit of all time until her follow-up record was Stand by Your Man, so I always had her second biggest hit. My favorite Tammy Wynette song, and I wrote about this in the book, and that was... `the one that I chose was Keep on Falling in Love Till I Get it Right. And my story about that song was how I happened to stumble into a room while Red Lane and Larry Henley were writing that song. And Larry says, "Hey Red, what do you think about this?" And he sang that, and I said, "I think I need to get out of here and let you guys finish that song." And then the illustrator, Carmen, I had her draw a picture of a coffee table, supposedly at Tammy Wynette's house, and it had about seven or eight pictures on it. And it was Tammy and all her husbands, plus her famous lovers, like Burt Reynolds. Anyway, but D-I-V-O-R-C-E and you mentioned Thinking of Love, and there was another one you mentioned, what was that?
Doug Burke:
Texas Tornado, which was about a girlfriend of yours, I read. You went out with a lot of volatile women I would say. You had tumultuous women, and maybe that led to tumultuous relationships.
Bobby Braddock:
I think a lot of times I was the volatile one myself. We dated for a couple of years and we're still very good friends. It's not literally about her, but she inspired the song because she was born in Texas, and she had a big thing about tornadoes. She always said she would have loved to have been a tornado chaser.
Doug Burke:
Oh, my goodness. I thought you said she was afraid of them, now she'd like to chase them.
Bobby Braddock:
Oh, no, she loved them. A lot of times when you split up with somebody, you do but you don't completely, it takes a while. You still kind of hang on to each other, and hang out. And she came by my house and I sang it for her. And she was always very direct, she loved something she would be enthusiastic about it, if she wasn't she would let her feelings be known. I sang the song for her and she said, "I think people maybe won't like that song." Maybe it was because it was about... she knew it was sort of about her. When they had the number one party, the ANR guy told me that Tammy came up to him and said, "Hi, I'm the tornado." That was it, I think she liked it better.
Doug Burke:
I think some guys are attracted to that and that would scare some guys off, I think. (singing) Yours, you started off with Ruthless, and You Can't Have Your Kate and Edith Too, a bunch of these in that vein. And actually, my favorite in all of those is the one that Nancy Sinatra and Lee Hazlewood did. Which went to number two in the UK, but didn't chart here. Did you ever?
Bobby Braddock:
It was like a almost hit by Charlie Louvin and Melba Montgomery. And Lee Hazlewood who was Nancy Sinatra's producer and sometimes duet partner, heard that on the country station in LA, so they recorded that, pretty much same arrangement as the Charlie Louvin and Melba Montgomery record. And when I wrote it, I did a little whistle thing. And on the Charlie Louvin and Melba Montgomery thing, they used the flute playing my whistle, and then Nancy Sinatra cut it, they did the same thing. Nothing in the US, but it was a big hit in the UK. And when I met Paul McCartney my publisher was reading off the titles to the songs I'd written, Paul was being polite, and said, "Uh-huh, yeah." I could tell he didn't recognize any of the titles, and I said, "I had a thing, it was a hit in the UK, did you ever..." He said, "Bobby, you wrote that? You wrote that?" And I was thinking here's this guy who's written more hit songs than anybody in the world, and how could he possibly be impressed with that silly little song? But it was, it was a big hit in the UK.
Doug Burke:
It's a clever song, and you met Paul and Linda. And they stayed at Curly Putnam's farm?
Bobby Braddock:
Yeah, my publisher, Buddy Killen, his attorney... or the attorney for Tree was not a Nashville attorney, it was Lee Eastman in New York. And that's Linda Eastman McCartney's father. So when Paul decided he wanted to come to the US and wanted to hang out in Nashville and get to know Nashville a little better, he asked his father-in-law. He said, "Can you set me up with somebody there." And he said, "Well a client of mine is the biggest publisher in town down there." It so happened that Curly Putman and his wife, Bernice, and her kids, they were planning a trip to Hawaii, and they were also going to go to Japan. I don't think they actually did go to Japan but that was part of their plan. And they'd planned to be gone for a few weeks. Buddy said, "How would you feel about leasing your house out to the McCartneys?" And that's what happened. Curly's name was Claude Putman Jr so Paul started calling Curly Junior, and he referred to house they were staying in as Junior's farm, and he wrote the song Junior's Farm, which was one of his big hits, with wings. So he wrote that about Curly's house.
Doug Burke:
I actually put this in the comedy genre for you, is I Wanna Talk About Me, which Toby Keith took to number one.
Bobby Braddock:
Funny thing about that song is there were two inspirations. One, I started producing Blake, and he was going around doing this dirty little rap song. And to this day I don't know if he wrote it or if it's something that he heard on the radio.
Doug Burke:
Do you remember the lyrics he was singing?
Bobby Braddock:
Yeah, but talk about obscene, oh my God. It was dirty, but hearing Blake with his white boy Oklahoma twang doing a rap thing was hilarious. I thought I need to write a rap song for... I kind of like a lot of raps. Not kind of, I'm a big Eminem fan. He's got a lot of anger in him, but that anger goes into energy in those songs. And he's a musical rapper, he raps melodies too. At that time I was just very much into Eminem.
Doug Burke:
Wow. That's news, that's real breaking story on Back Story Song, that Bobby Braddock is into Eminem. This is widely considered the first, or one of the earliest country rap songs.
Bobby Braddock:
Well, there were two country rap songs that were big hits. That was one, and then the other was Dirt Road Anthem which I loved. I think it was real rap, it was about the hood, albeit rural hood, but it was still about the hood. And mine, I was just using rap as a vehicle to write a funny song, so I don't know if mine was really rap or not. Toby swears that it's not, he said, "So you say that's a rap song, the guy who wrote that wrote He Stopped Loving Her Today." But it's rap in its presentation. So I wanted to write a rap song for Blake and I had a very close friend, and I don't know, she's probably my best friend. We're just very, very close.
Doug Burke:
What's her name, Deborah Allen?
Bobby Braddock:
No, no. This is Kathy Locke, she is a therapist and clinical counselor. She has a pretty large practice there, and several people working for her. So it's always good to have a friend who's a shrink. At the time, this is before she was doing that, she was working for... it was like an ad agency. And she had someone in her office who had been laid off or fired or something. It was her assistant, so that doubled her workload, and that's all she could talk about. It's like when she focuses on something, she focuses on that one thing. And in a way it's an endearing thing, but at that time I was wanting to tell her about something, but all I could get out of her was about her assistant not being there, and her workload. And that's all she'd talk about. So after that phone call I sat down and started to write I want to talk about me, for a change. And it turned into the rap song that I wanted to write for Blake. I called up Kathy and played it for her, and she didn't say anything. And she called me the next day and she said, "That song yesterday, did you write that about me?" I said, "That's right." So I cut it on Blake and the label there got pretty excited about it, and then they did "research" and the research came back that not only would this not be a good single, it shouldn't even be on an album. Nobody liked this song, that song had become persona non grata around the label. Blake started out on Giant, he didn't stay there on Giant , his first hit single was racing up the charts. He had a hit racing up the charts and no label because they shut down about the time that the record came out. Fortunately Warner Brothers picked him up and so his career has been with Warner Brothers ever since. So since Blake wasn't going to cut this song, they didn't want to use what I did on Blake. I knew I was going to have to pitch it and the song plugger at the publishing company had played it for an ANR person at Toby's label. She passed on it, she denies this, this is the way the song plugger told it to me. But the ANR person said that not only am I passing on this song, I hate this song. Toby cut a song called Guess Your Song, which is kind of a rap. So I thought he would be a natural for this, and I knew if I was going to get it to Toby,~ I couldn't do it through the ANR person. And his producer, James Stroud, at that time he produced so many people he absolutely would not listen to songs, he had his ANR people do that. I thought Stroud will not listen to a song, I ran into him at a convenience store, a 7-eleven market, and I had him in the corner.
Doug Burke:
Just trapped.
Bobby Braddock:
James, if you can give me about three or four minutes. I got a song that I think you'll like for Toby. And he sighed, got out his flip flop. Polished his citizenship, finally five minutes somewhere, said, "You're Bobby Braddock song." I went and played for him, he came over his desk. He actually jumped over his desk and grabbed me. He said, “man”, he said, "This is a monster." And he called up Toby, played it for him over the phone, just hearing it over the phone. Toby says, "I'm going to cut this son of a bitch." And he did, and it was number one for five weeks. And at the number one party I have to say that the ANR person had a lot of integrity, and I had a lot of respect for this person. That this ANR person signed it up next to the song plugger, he pitched the song which was turned down, and the ANR person told the song plugger, "Terry wait, we don't sit, I still hate it."
Doug Burke:
So what did you give that on your 1 to 10 scale when you wrote it?
Bobby Braddock:
I would have given it more than a 7, I would have given-
Doug Burke:
This is another 7 for you? So your research is no better than the ANR research, it sounds like.
Bobby Braddock:
No, I said I would have given it more than a 7, I would have given it probably... and by this time I don't think I was rating songs anymore. I would have given it probably a 9.
Doug Burke:
You were bullish on this one. I love hard rock guitar intro on this, because that's like part of your evolution. Your songs, at least how they were produced, the lyrical content has evolved. But here it still has your comedy and it's a really funny song. I can understand why someone might get pissed and find it offensive, because it's about an ego. I want to talk about me.
Bobby Braddock:
Well, the people at my publishing company all, except the guy who was pitching it all the other ANR people said, "Nobody's going to cut a song has a line like your medical charts and when you start. Said, "They're not going to play a song about a miserable period, they're not going to do that." Yeah, and then it was a big hit. But Blake, he used to tell people, he said, "What you're hearing comes out of Bobby's brain. But there was one exception, for years and years and years from demo sessions I used Brent Rowan on guitar. And when I started producing I used him on those sessions, I used him on everything Blake did... everything that I did with Blake rather. And I left a blank spot for Brent, sometimes I'm going to have a suggestion, but he was so great at ear candy and coming up stuff I left a blank spot. Think, well Brent will come up with something here. The signature lick on Time Marches On, dum, dum, dum, dum, dum, do, do, de, which I think is important as any line or a melody that I wrote in that song. That was Brent Rowan, and when Tracy was going to cut it, my very close friend Don Cooke, he produced a lot of people, Rixandun, Alabama, and Tracy was going to cut this off. And I said, "Cooke, you got to get Brent Rowan to play that signature guitar thing." He says, "Oh, he's Brent Mason." There were these two Brents in Nashville, and I think they were pretty competitive, and both of them were guitar geniuses, they're both great. And my Brent was Brent Rowan, Cooke's Brent was Brent Mason. And I said, "Brent Rowan played this." He said, "Brent Mason can play anything." Well he did, he played it just like Brent Rowan, then he added his own little thing to it too, he slid that on the string and did it just a little bit differently. And I Want to Talk About Me, same thing. Brent Rowan played it on my demo session, and Stroud used Brent Rowan. So he just went to the Master Session, played exactly what he'd did on the demo.
Doug Burke:
Time Marches On I think is one of your most evolved songs. Obviously went to number one, the world loved this song. The line that is in your book and is perhaps reflective of the maturation and evolution of Bobby Braddock as a songwriter, from where he started in the '60s to today. The only thing that stays the same is everything changes, everything changes.
Bobby Braddock:
Yeah, and actually that's my favorite line in that song. People say, "Well, what's your favorite song you wrote?" And one you discussed with me in an email, which I thought was maybe the best song I wrote, a song called The Nerve, that George Strait recorded. It was never a single but Time Marches On, that's my favorite hit.
Doug Burke:
And tell me why, tell me what it is that you love about this song.
Bobby Braddock:
Well it's within two minutes and 40 seconds, it's the story of someone's life and their observations and the changes going on around them. There were a couple of things inspired this, I come from a little town in Central Florida. When I was growing up there it was strictly Southern culture. Everyone there... the kids I went to school with, if they weren't born in South Georgia, South Alabama, or in the rural area of North Florida, their parents were. They was very, very, very deep Southern. While I was growing up segregation, I mean it was pretty much deep south culture. By the time I wrote Time Marches On... this is true in all of the South, a lot of the people in the Southern towns would move up North and work, maybe go to Detroit and work in the cars or something. Or around Chicago, work in steel mills. So by the 1990s a lot of people from up north were moving down and retiring, especially since Disney World popped up about 30 miles from my hometown. Some of those people from the north were moving in down there, it spilled over into my rural town. And then a lot of the people in that town had moved out to go up north to find work. The line... the south moves north and north moves south, a star is born, a star burns out. The only thing that stays the same is everything changes, everything changes. So that's where that came from, so the song started really from a line in Bridge. There's another one where sister calls herself sexy grandma. My first wife's sister had a tag on the back of her car that said sexy grandma. And I remember thinking that was funny, I just stuck that in there.
Doug Burke:
I thought you were talking about Betty White there.
Bobby Braddock:
Why did you think I was talking about Betty White?
Doug Burke:
I'm just... because she's the sexy Grandma today.
Bobby Braddock:
Betty White is a sexy great, great, great Grandma, she's pushing 100 and still doing good.
Doug Burke:
I love how it starts with Hank Williams and goes to Bob Dylan. I love the ham in Oregon that comes in on the Bob Dylan line.
Bobby Braddock:
Did that on the demo session, then Don Cooke included that on the record. One thing that didn't end up on the record, I had it on the demo. But when Williams came in there I had the steel guitar, I played Don Hensley. I'm kind of a steel guitar aficionado, I love steel guitar. I'm glad to see they're coming back.
Doug Burke:
I'm glad it's coming back, I love that sound.
Bobby Braddock:
Tracy Lawrence perfect artistry that song. Just something about the character of this song that just fit Tracy Lawrence to a T. He's a great interpreter.
Doug Burke:
I imagine you grew up listening to Hank Williams, and then you were in Nashville when Bob went there and recorded Nashville Skyline. And the nitty-gritty dirt bin famously showing up, the rock and roll long-haired crowd showed up and it took a while for everybody to understand they had the same musical vernacular, this invisible language in common.
Bobby Braddock:
And that the main lingo of the two, there's a good example of that, is... we were talking earlier about Matraca considering me her mentor and writing a hit when she was 18. And she is married to the voice of Mr Bojangles, the voice of the The Nitty Gritty Dirt band, named Jeff Hanna. And you mentioned Dylan, guy who came close to Dylan was steel guitar player named Pete Drake. Pete playing the steel on Lay Lady Lay, they became pretty close. And Pete had... he had a pretty active publishing company called Window Music, and Dylan told him... he said, "I like to write with a Nashville songwriter." And he has some really good writers, but he decided the ideal person for Dylan to write with would be Nate. Oh, I loved Pete. He died of emphysema a long, long, long ago. But he was premier steel guitar player, played simple but wonderfully effective steel guitar, he was great. So he said, “He wants you to write with." I said, "Oh my God." I said, "I'll be scared to death." He said, "Well, he wants to write with you." And then I was just all juiced up about that. And he said, "Bob says that..." I never co-write much, it's probably a mistake me co-writing. He'd decided not to co-write.
Doug Burke:
He was doing just fine on his own. Still writing, still came out with an album this year.
Bobby Braddock:
He wrote one of the few songs, I think, that actually had an impact on society. That rarely happens, that was Blowing in the Wind. That actually had an impact on society and how they became involved in politics. And another one, of course, is We Shall Overcome. That wasn't only him, but Pete Seeger came up with his own version of it. And he actually sang it for Martin Luther King, and Dr King said, "You know, that's a good song." Everything just fell in place. He said, "That's a good song for the movement." And it became the theme song of the civil rights movement. So there are a few songs that have an impact on society. God knows, none of mine... and very, very rarely do songs have that kind of effect. One of the songs that you wrote that is also part of your mature statement, story telling phase. It's not the novelty song, comedy song. And it's not, per se, woman inspired is the nerve. And you got Blake Shelton to sing this at your beloved daughter's wedding. Yeah. Blake wasn't working much at that stage when he did pretty much anything I asked him to do. And he came there with his mullet and sing that song beautifully at her wedding.
Doug Burke:
Well I know Brad Paisley's in love with his songs, George Strait recorded it and I think a Blake Shelton/Gwen Stefani duet on this would be out of this world. If you want me as a song plugger, but that's not my job here. And I don't know what you think of that idea, if that's just crazy or dumb, because I do have dumb ideas.
Bobby Braddock:
No. Blake knows that song, that's for sure. I want to just write him and just float that idea. I wouldn't have to play him the song because he knows the song well.
Doug Burke:
So this is a song about legacy, lineage, family trees.
Bobby Braddock:
You the one inspiring that song?
Doug Burke:
What?
Bobby Braddock:
A book, no person inspired that song. A song plugger named Walter Campbell gave me a book. It's called Einstein's Dreams. So what does a physicist dream about? His dreams were like that, in a way. It was actually about Einsteins dreams, it was a fiction and I was so inspired that The Nerve really is, in a sense, is about physics in sort of an abstract way.
Doug Burke:
It's a what-if song. Or a what-if-not song.
Bobby Braddock:
I think a lot of critics didn't like it. I don't care, it's one of my favorite movies and what does it matter. Gwyneth Paltrow was in it and it's called Sliding Door. And this girl in London, she's going for a job interview and she missed her bus because she didn't get to the door in time, it slid shut. So she knew she missed the appointment and she came back to her flat, and found her lover there in bed with someone else. They split up and it was a movie of alternatives. Side-by-side plots, if she had gotten on the bus in time and hadn't come home and found him with the girlfriend... and the other plot was her coming home and finding him. And, to make it easier, she was going to be independent and she split up with him and she cut her hair real short. So you knew which plot it was by the length of her hair. And it's what would have happened if she hadn't caught him in bed. And her life was different every way except two things that happened in both lives. That has such an impact on me, I thought wow, a broader thing would be what if I had not come to Nashville? If I had not played in Big John's Untouchables I would not have met my first wife, there would not be a Jeep, my daughter. And what would my life have been without her. I actually think that, if you have sex with somebody, maybe an hour later and that person gets pregnant, that would be a totally different child born from that. Because the chances of any others being here are minuscule. The chances of any of us actually making it from the sex act to the delivery room are so infinitely small. And so we're privileged, you and I, to be inhabitants of this planet. If being here is a privilege then we are among the privileged. That's set this what if thing going in my mind.
Doug Burke:
And it really helps me understand, and I'm glad he had the nerve, while staring into space, to give this universe a time and a place. With one tiny atom, or an Adam and an Eve.
Bobby Braddock:
However, you look at it, whatever you believe. I took in the agnostics and I took in the Evangelicals too. I had something for everybody.
Doug Burke:
Yeah, such a very, very spiritual and contemplative verse.
Bobby Braddock:
It was funny, that Tony Burton... Don Cookes had... at this time he was like a vice president, truly. My friend Don Cooke. He said, "We've got to play that for Tony Brown." So we took it over there and Tony said, "Song of the Year, Song of the Year." We just had a fit over it. Tony Brown cut it on a straight, this one's be the first single. Then they thought well, the first single should be an up-tempo thing, anyway put this up. And then I thought, well this is so different, we need... finally it's going to be the last single of the album, and then it never even became a single. Fast forward, Bob's producing Blake, we're talking about some record or something where you cut. And the promotion man for Warner Brothers at that time said, "This reminds me of when I was doing promotion at MCA and we had this song on George Strait, it was called The Nerve. I just let him talk, he said, "Boy, we effed up, bad." He said, "That's already the best song I ever heard, it should have been a single. It should have been a single then." And he said, "We kept putting it off, and it never made it out." So then I said, "And I wrote that song." He said, "Are you serious?" I said, "Yeah, that was mine."
Doug Burke:
It's still not over, Bob. We're going to get you a number one out of this one.
Bobby Braddock:
As my Jewish friends say, "Your mouth to God's ears."
Doug Burke:
Your daughter Lauren, Jeep. She's been instrumental in keeping you going and inspired. Did you ever write a song about her?
Bobby Braddock:
One. One called Baby Blue Eyes. I wrote about her when she was 12. And it's a little video, made a little movie. I don't think it was really something I thought was of commercial value. I didn't write it to go out and get it recorded. I wanted to write a song about her and that's... and I hadn't heard that song in ages. I need to get that out, we'll listen to it.
Doug Burke:
Right, well you send me a demo on that one. And your book says you used to take videos of her.
Bobby Braddock:
Well what I was doing was like videos, and I would take songs that were already out and actually what they were doing in videos. And the head of all the sun bloggers at the publishing company, was the creative director. He said, "We need to do those and you produce them. And if you get a professional, a cinematographer to do these, and we'll sell them to record labels to put out with their songs." So this was probably about a year or two before MTV or CMT. And that was an idea he had, he was way ahead of his time. He couldn't get anybody onboard with it, they thought eh. But he was a visionary, and that's what I was doing then.
Doug Burke:
And so did you do a video of this song about Lauren?
Bobby Braddock:
I did.
Doug Burke:
Okay, I can't wait to see that. We've got to get that up on YouTube.
Bobby Braddock:
Oh I wish, I wish. It's-
Doug Burke:
We'll get that edited up and we'll get it out there on YouTube.
Bobby Braddock:
I don't know where it is, it's gone. It's disappeared. But I do have the recording of it, it's a demo and it's in the catalog at my publishing company. It's an actual song, I can get that for you.
Doug Burke:
Thank you Bob. So we haven't talked about your number one, Golden Ring. We probably should cover that, don't you think?
Bobby Braddock:
Usually I don't write something for an artist specifically in mind. But in that case, I did. I thought... there was an old gospel group called the Chuck Wagon Gang that I really liked. It was very churchy-sounding, like old fashioned country churchy-sounding. I thought about writing a song like that for George and Tammy, something that just had that old fashioned Southern Gospel sound to it. I got hung up on it, and I called up Curly Putman and it's just, "So I got this song." And I said, "it's not a lot to write, it's just not finished." And Curly said, "I just want to hang around the farm today." About that time Rafe Van Hoy came in the front door, Tree Publishing Company. I said, "Hey Buddy, I got this song story, do you want to finish it with me?" He said, "Yeah." And it was late Friday afternoon and wrong time to put anything together for a demo session. So I told Rafe he was a great musician. I said, "Why don't you put together a little demo of it." I said, "And you know what the Chuck Wagon Gang sounds like?" He said, "Yeah, I've heard some of that." I said, "Well, make it sound like that, let them do a group sing and your base with it, sing your high tenor part. Give it that old country gospel sound." And he did. And boy, his little demo he put together, it is amazing. It's almost as good as George and Tammy's record, it is so good. And he cut this great version of it, and that thing was on the radio about a month after that. That's the quickest a song ever went from the pen to the radio, that would never happen now.
Doug Burke:
What I like about that song is this incredible guitar run intro, that lick.
Bobby Braddock:
Well, Sherill produced a great record on that because he knew how to do that. Because his father was a baptist preacher, he was brought up with church music so that was a natural for him to produce. And George and Tammy, oh my God, they just sang it so great on it, what talent. Billy Sherrill, he would change my songs. If somebody changes your song they have permission, that's what Sherrill did, he just changed it anyway. If you didn't like it, it didn't matter. And usually, it was to the better, but I'd disagree with him on Golden Ring.
Bobby Braddock:
What we had was a small studio room apartment as they fight their final round. The way we wrote it was you won't admit it, but I know you're running around. Billy told me, he says, "You can't rhyme round with around." I said, "One is final round, the other is running around." He said, "It's still the same, it sounds like the same words." And he wanted to put, I know you're leaving town. I said, "Billy." I said, "On an emotional scale, leaving town is maybe a 5, I know you're running around is a 10. She's out there screwing around on it, and it's killing them." When you're leaving town and that sounds like maybe you're going down to Louisville to make a sale or something. The amazing thing about it is I have never cheated on someone myself, and anybody I've ever told that I was in a committed thing with them, I was always true to it. The only time I ever ran around was my first wife. She was already running around, she and I had no physical relationship anymore. And I would say, "Okay, well you're having an affair, I'm going to have one too." "No you're not." And she'd-
Doug Burke:
Ha, that's not fair. How is that fair?
Bobby Braddock:
She was a husband abuser. She used to beat the shit out of me, and so to keep the family together I had to be secretive with her. So I was running around on her, but not cheating on her because she and I hadn't... there was nothing between us. It was gone, it was a bad marriage, a bad, bad, bad marriage from which we got a wonderful child.
Doug Burke:
You got a wonderful child, Lauren.
Bobby Braddock:
But I'd do it all over again. Anyway, what I was saying. I have never cheated on anyone, but I have been with people who cheated to be with me. I've had friends tell me, say that's hypocritical, and I'm starting to think well, she's probably right.
Doug Burke:
Did that inspire Golden Ring? Someone cheating on you? Or do you see that as part of life, people do that?
Bobby Braddock:
I don't think I wrote any of me into that song, it was just... the idea came from, I saw there was a mate from TV Movie, it was a biography of a gun. It was a handgun, I think it belonged to a cop, then a bad guy got it and it ended up in a pawn shop. And the last thing in the movie, the people had hid the gun up on the mantle in the house, suddenly it showed a little three-year-old kid standing on a chair reaching up to get the gun. And that was the last scene in it. But I thought why not do a song that's a biography for a wedding band. The history of it, and it starts out and ends up in a pawn shop in Chicago?
Doug Burke:
I love that, because a pawn shop is where there is stuff that people didn't want anymore, and then someone finds it and wants it. And the song is so well structured, it's this ring of life, this ring of marriage, and ends up back in the pawn shop.
Bobby Braddock:
And I was wanting to put together a musical at that time, and it's going to be about a family who moved up from the South, or from Appalachia to Chicago. These poor country people from... I thought this should be ideal song for my musical which never came around. A musical, I think in me, was the vehicle to write songs. And that was the important thing. But I won't regret that if I wrote a musical. I'd rather write books than write a musical.
Doug Burke:
Well, you're a good book writer, Bobby. And so why don't we close out by one last plug for your new book.
Bobby Braddock:
Country Music's Greatest Lines, by Bobby Braddock, illustrated by Carmen Beechard.
Doug Burke:
These Carmen Beechard illustrations are just incredible. Each one tells a story, just like the songs that they're about. You look at the pictures, you're like, "Oh my God, that's what the song is about."
Bobby Braddock:
They're life-like. I went to her web, She sells her art, her paintings. And I saw a sketch that she did, she put on her Facebook page, and ironically she did it four or five years ago. It's of John Lewis, a civil rights' leader who got bashed up the other day. And I'd never seen a photograph of him that captured the determination, the integrity, the righteous indignation. Everything is in that picture. There are pictures of songwriters that were Australian in there. There were some characters that were made up that I had her draw. But there's quite a few pictures of celebrities too. There's a template for her to draw the pictures of the celebrities, rather than her draw just one picture, and it could have violated a copyright thing. I would give her several, and she would see these several pictures, and draw her picture from those. And anybody who sees these pictures, they immediately know in a nanosecond who it is, because they're very life-like. Anyway, thanks for letting me plug my book.
Doug Burke:
And thanks for sharing the back story of your songs with us Bobby Braddock. We're really grateful to have you, and thank you to our listeners. And special shout out to my social media director, Cameron Grace, and my recording engineer, Wyatt Schmidt. You can find Wyatt's music on his new YouTube channel, DJ Wyatt Schmidt. And I encourage everybody to go listen to that.
Bobby Braddock:
You are a great interviewer, a great interviewer makes the interviewee.
