LimeWire Music Blog

There may be songwriters in Nashville (Bob McDill, Hank Williams, Harlan Howard) that have enjoyed success equal to that of Bill Anderson, but nobody matches the Grand Ole Opry star when it comes to longevity. Over five decades since penning his first hit, Ray Price’s “City Lights,” the singer is still churning out material for some of country music’s top artists. In the past five years, he has taken home two “Song Of The Year” awards for hits such as “Whiskey Lullaby” and “Give It Away.” He currently has songs out by acts such as Brad Paisley and Joe Nichols, and he recently watched “Joey,” a song he co-wrote with Sugarland, climb the charts for the duo. The phrase “keep on keepin’ on” inevitably comes to mind, as Anderson continues to create music just as fresh as anything he has ever done.

The 2001 Country Music Hall Of Fame inductee still approaches everything he does (music, books, touring, his satellite radio show) with a sense of wonder, and his induction into country’s legendary class is something that he takes considerable pride in. “When (longtime WSM announcer) Keith Bilbrey would introduce me on the Opry as a member, I’d yell ‘He’s too young,’ and he would crack up. It’s something I never thought would happen during my lifetime. Everybody dreams that someday it might happen, but I thought my great-grandkids would go up and accept it for me, but to have it happen during my lifetime was special. It’s been eight wonderful years of being able to refer to myself as a member of the Country Music Hall Of Fame, even though I’m still too young for it,” he says with a twinkle in his eye.

LimeWire recently had the chance to venture backstage at the Grand Ole Opry to talk with Bill about many of the songs he has written and characters he has encountered along the way. While he has penned countless songs for many of Nashville’s legends (including himself), there are a few that stand out.

Take “The Tip Of My Fingers,” for instance. Originally a hit for Anderson himself, the song was carried back to the top by Roy Clark (1963), Eddy Arnold (1966), Jean Shepard (1975), and Steve Wariner (1992). In 1998, for Anderson’s album Fine Wine, all five artists participated in a recording of the song. It was special then, but since Arnold’s death in 2008, it has even greater importance now. “The passing of Eddy makes it even more special. I listened to it not long ago, and I was thinking as I was listening ‘Who would have thought my voice would be on the same record as Eddy Arnold?’ I grew up listening to him down in Georgia, and to think that he recorded that song and had a hit on it, and then came on and did that version. Of course, Steve Wariner produced that album, and did an incredible job on it. As you notice, we all sing in different keys, except Steve sings in the same key as Jean Shepard… We’re still trying to figure that one out! That’s a real treasure. I just wish that record could have gotten out, and more people could have heard it…because it’s a piece of country music history.”

“Everybody dreams that someday it might happen, but I thought my great-grandkids would go up and accept it for me, but to have it happen during my lifetime was special. It’s been eight wonderful years of being able to refer to myself as a member of the Country Music Hall Of Fame, even though I’m still too young for it.”

His presence has proved vital at certain points in the history of country music, such as when he penned “Once A Day,” a 1964 chart-topper for Connie Smith. Anderson discovered Smith while preparing for a concert date of his own. “I had gone up to this place called Frontier Ranch, a little east of Columbus, Ohio, to perform on a Sunday afternoon at an outdoor park, and they had called me and asked if I would help judge a talent contest between shows. I said I’d be glad to, so I went into the audience with two or three of the other judges, and had my long yellow tablet and my pencil to make notes. Boy, there were no notes to make after Connie Smith came on the stage, and that big voice came out of that little girl. The first thing I thought was she was pantomiming a record. I said there’s no way a girl that tiny can have a voice that big. She was doing one of Jean Shepard’s songs, “I Thought Of You,” and by the time she was halfway done, the rest of the contestants might have well gone home, as she had it wrapped up. A few months later, she came to Nashville, and I was able to help her get a recording contract and started writing songs for her.”

While Chet Atkins’ signing of Smith was an easy decision, the producer did have one issue, which he discussed with Anderson. “Well, what Chet said was ‘We’ve got Skeeter Davis, we’ve got Dottie West, we’ve got Norma Jean.’ He’s naming all the other female singers on the label. The problem is, we don’t have enough songs. If I sign her, and I really like her, where are her songs going to come from?’ I kind of raised my hand, and he said, ‘Will you supply her with good songs, and try to write for her?’ I said that I would sure try. I think she told me she has recorded thirty-nine of my songs over the years, including an entire album titled Connie Smith Sings Bill Anderson, so she’s more than paid me back for anything I ever did for her.”

“Once A Day” was the first of those songs, and it has become one of his best-known works. In 2005, Martina McBride selected it for her Timeless album, a fact which still makes Anderson beam. “I was thrilled when she did it some forty years after Connie had cut it,” he said. “The song had been recorded a lot of times — country, pop, male, female, a lot of different languages around the world, and I was thrilled when she brought it back, because as she did with the whole Timeless album, she took traditional country music and exposed it to a younger demographic that had never heard it before.”

In addition to the aforementioned hits, there are others that might not be so well-known. “Alpha And Omega” falls in that category. Recorded by the Browns, the song has developed somewhat of a legend of its own, due to airplay from WSM treasure Eddie Stubbs. “I don’t know what in the world made me write that song,” said Anderson. “When you’re sitting around the house with your guitar, and your mind’s wandering, you never know what you’re gonna come up with. It just came out one day. I think Jim Ed, Maxine, and Bonnie did a really great job of harmonizing on it, and they have all told me over the years that, though it wasn’t one of their biggest hits, it was one of their favorite recordings they ever made.”

“That’s the great thing about music and records — you record something, and you never know who’s going to hear it and what they might do with it. I keep thinking that one of these hot rock ‘n’ roll acts or movie producers [will] hear my songs and think ‘Hey, we need to do a movie about that.’ It may happen, you just don’t know.”

Sometimes, when a younger artist covers one of Anderson’s more obscure cuts, it surprises even him. On his 2001 album, 13 Hillbilly Giants, Americana king Robbie Fulks took a stab at “Cocktails,” which took Anderson completely by surprise. “I recorded it for my Bright Lights and Country Music album back in 1965. I didn’t know anyone had ever heard it. I asked Robbie when he came to the Opry one time, ‘Where did you hear that song? It’s so obscure.’ But that’s the great thing about music and records — you record something, and you never know who’s going to hear it and what they might do with it. I keep thinking that one of these hot rock ‘n’ roll acts or movie producers [will] hear my songs and think ‘Hey, we need to do a movie about that.’ It may happen, you just don’t know. Robbie is a great singer and he sings the fire out of it. He took a song that I didn’t know he’d ever heard and made a great record on it.”

If his success is to be lauded, Anderson’s range as a tunesmith cannot be underestimated either. He has had success with tender love songs, nostalgic remembrances of Mom and Dad, and a few novelty songs, but occasionally Anderson will write something that will chill you to the bone, such as “The First Mrs. Jones,” a track recorded by Porter Wagoner about a man who kills his cheating wife. “I was up at my publishing company…not long ago, and Troy Tomlinson, who’s the president of the company, was telling someone about the song, and he pulled the lyrics up on the computer and was saying ‘Listen to this…Listen to this,’ and I went around and read the lyrics off the screen to people, and their reaction was “Whoa, why did you write that? What were you trying to say? And it does seem strange that the same guy who wrote “Two Teardrops,” “Five Little Fingers,” and “Mama Sang A Song” could write “The First Mrs. Jones,” and “The Cold Hard Facts Of Life,” but Baskin Robbins has 31 flavors of ice cream, so maybe I’m the Baskin Robbins of the songwriting world, and I have 31 flavors of songs.”

With his impressive resume, it might strike some as odd that Anderson didn’t receive any CMA honors for his songwriting until 2005, when “Whiskey Lullaby,” recorded by Brad Paisley and Alison Krauss, helped him snag the award, along with co-writer Jon Randall. “They didn’t start giving out the CMA Awards until 1967, and I had songs like “City Lights,” “Still,” and “Once A Day,” that I think would have been in contention,” he offers. Those particular songs won awards from Billboard, Cashbox, and other fan-voted awards, but I missed the boat on the [CMA] awards until that one came along. It couldn’t have happened at a better time or a better place. A kid from Commerce, Georgia, sitting up at Madison Square Garden getting an award on network TV…That was pretty cool.”

Also pretty cool is the fact that Anderson is still a powerhouse on Music Row today. “Joey” is a prime example of this. LimeWire asked Anderson if, like other writers, he made a habit of checking the charts each week for its rank. His answer indicates how comfortable he is with his craft. “Well, I do and I don’t,” he admits. “I don’t subscribe to the magazines that print the charts and all, but every now and then, I’ll be at somebody’s office on Music Row, and I’ll just glance and pick up their copy and see what it’s doing. I was a little confused about this song — Sugarland has been so hot, and they’ve had several number one records right in a row, but this record has been so different for them that it didn’t move up the charts as quick as some of their others have. I don’t want to be known as the writer that killed Sugarland’s career. I think after people listen to the song a couple of times and hear what it’s about, they come away with a different feeling about it. It’s one of the two or three songs that gets the biggest response in their concert show, so I think it’s a case of people listening to it. It’s actually got a hidden message in there, if you take time to seek it and hear it out.” Just like the aforementioned songs by Porter Wagoner, Bill Anderson’s songs strum a chord of real life.

Over the past few years, Anderson’s work has been showing up in outlets other than mainstream country. He has enjoyed success in the gospel field, with cuts like T. Graham Brown’s “Which Way To Pray” and the legendary Oak Ridge Boys’ performance of “Jonah, Job, and Moses,” which netted Anderson his first Dove Award. For Bill, it’s a natural path for his writing to take. “I grew up with a grandfather who was a Methodist preacher,” he recalls, “and the songs of the church were the first songs I ever heard or learned to sing. I think every country singer will tell you the first time he sang in public, he sang in church. So, gospel songs have always had an influence on me. I love to write them. I don’t really know a lot about the gospel field, and I’ve not written a lot of gospel songs, but I’ve been fortunate enough to write several more inspirational-type songs… I just recorded a song for my new album titled “Some Kind Of War,” and while it’s not a gospel song per se, it’s got a strong social message, and I like doing that kind of thing. I think in “Jonah, Job, and Moses,” which I wrote with Tia Sillers, and it was her idea…we were just trying to say that those three men from the Bible had their own way of coping with life, and it’s kind of like a prayer — ‘Lord, let me be like Jonah, Job, and Moses for the good things that they did.’”

“I don’t want to be known as the writer that killed Sugarland’s career.”

Good things are still happening for Anderson. In addition to the Sugarland song, Paisley has “No” on his latest, Kenny Chesney recorded “Demons” for his last studio album, and in just a couple of weeks, Joe Nichols will release his new album, Old Things New, which Anderson is excited about. “The title song of the album is one that I wrote with Paul Overstreet and Buddy Cannon. People say to me all the time ‘Why don’t they make country records and write country songs? We miss traditional country music.’ When you hear Joe Nichols sing “Old Things New,” you’ll be saying ‘that’s country music.’ It’s reminiscent of some of the old Merle Haggard things in the ’60s, when he was doing the “Today I Started Loving You Again”-type stuff. I’m so proud of it. He also did a song I wrote with Jamey Johnson and Buddy Cannon called “Cheaper Than A Shrink,” so I’m a Joe Nichols fan, and happy for his success. I’m happy for his play on Broadway with “Pure Country,” and I’m thrilled to be a part of his new album.”

However, one gets an idea of what great songs mean to Anderson when he talks about “An Old Friend Of Mine,” another cut off the Nichols disc — albeit one that he didn’t write. The song, about Nichols’ battle with the bottle, is one that is making a lot of people stand up and take notice — including Bill Anderson. “Well, it’s a very honest song, because the outline in the song is ‘Today I said goodbye to an old friend of mine,’ and you don’t really get it until halfway through the song. He’s putting the bottle down and walking away from it, and he’s discovered there’s more important things in life than that. It’s just Joe and a piano, and it’s absolutely incredible. It will give goose bumps to your goose bumps. It’s that good.”

So the beat goes on, as Anderson continues to write and tour. There’s a new album due out soon that represents somewhat of a departure for the singer. “When you’ve been making records and writing songs for as long as I have, you have to reach deep to try to find something you haven’t done. You don’t want to copy yourself. [The new album] is going to be called Good Time Gettin’ Here. I wanted to have the cover be a picture of me in front of the Country Music Hall Of Fame — I had a good time getting here, you know, but we couldn’t make the artwork come together. The album is full of fun songs. A lot of people who don’t know me well or know me from the records I’ve made think I’m a pretty serious guy, and I do take what I do seriously, but I don’t take myself seriously. I have what I think is a good sense of humor. I love to laugh and love songs that make me laugh and smile, as well as songs that make me cry and feel the other emotions. I’ve never showed that side of myself on an album, and while there are two or three serious songs, there’s a lot of foolishness on the album.”

All this, as Anderson prepares to celebrate his birthday in just a few days. While joking about his age (”I’ve actually forgotten,” he says), he turns serious when talking about a person who was largely responsible for his development as a writer — longtime Tree Publishing exec Buddy Killen. Ironically, Killen died on Anderson’s birthday (November 1) in 2006, a fact that is not lost on the singer. “That made for a bittersweet day,” Anderson says sadly. He also points out that Killen deserves a spot in that hallowed place of honor where Anderson is a member — The Country Music Hall Of Fame. “Well, fortunately, they have named the roundabout at Music Row as Buddy Killen Circle, but he did so much for this business, and so much for so many people basically behind the scenes — but there’s a lot of behind-the-scenes people in the Hall Of Fame, and I hope someday his name will be added to that. He was the first publisher in town that ever took Bill Anderson seriously as a songwriter. He worked with me, helped me craft songs to make them commercial. He taught me so many little things that you would have never learned unless it was from someone who had been there and knew about it. We were not only writer and publisher, but also good friends. We socialized together, we went to ball games together, and had a lot of fun together.”

Part of that fun was writing together, which they did on the 1979 Conway Twitty chart-topper “I May Never Get To Heaven.” The story behind the song, which was written twenty years earlier, is one that proves every song has its day. “The original record of that was made in 1959 — right after we wrote it — by Don Gibson. He cut a wonderful record on it, but it happened to be on the back side of a song called “Just One Time,” and all the disc jockeys played that one and never really listened to “I May Never Get To Heaven.” Over the years, it was recorded by all kinds of people, but it never became a hit. Then when Conway cut it in 1979, it was like ‘Finally!’… He was very hot as an artist, and people liked whatever he was cutting in those days. So we finally got our just due on this song. I’m glad it happened for Conway, because he was a good friend, as well.”

For all things Bill Anderson, log on to his website, billanderson.com.