their parents’ or their grandparents’ generation – something that they learned to love. I didn’t forsake that degree. It all ties together. Not counting all the songs you’ve written for others, what has been the biggest hit you recorded? Lone Star Beer and Bob Wills Music, and the one next to that was a western swing version of Somewhere My Love in 1973. Other than your biggest hit, what is your personal favorite? That’s a tough question. I don’t know that I have a favorite. Some of the records I am most proud of didn’t make the top 10, but I love storyline songs. I love the things that I am writing now and have been for the last 30 years – the cowboy songs. I love to tell cowboy stories. Let’s shift just a little bit. In addition to your own celebrity, there are others you have had a hand in helping. One was a little redhead singing the national anthem at a rodeo?
Reba (McEntire) is probably the only person I have really had any influence in their career. Glenn Sutton and I loved trains, and we wanted to ride a train and write songs. On a lark, I wrote the president of Rock Island Railways, asking if we could ride a caboose; he wrote back and agreed. We flew into Amarillo, got on that train, and wound up in Memphis. We couldn’t write, because we couldn’t stay awake! The sound and the rhythm of that train put us to sleep. We would sit in those little bay windows on either side, watching what was going by, and it would just put us to sleep. We only wrote one song on that trip, I’m Not Your Kind of Girl. Reba just blew me away when I heard her sing that night at the National Finals in December 1974. Her mother brought her up to the Justin® room where we were picking and singing, and she sat down beside me and started singing harmony. She just blew me away because she had perfect tone and total control. I had been wondering what I was going to do about a demo for that song Glenn and I wrote, so I said, “Why don’t you come to Nashville, and we’ll cut a demo and see
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what we can get done?” Her mother brought her in January, and we cut that song and one other. We pitched that demo all over Nashville for months, and nobody wanted another girl singer. At the time, girls didn’t sell records, and they didn’t sell tickets. If a girl was really going to sell and reach another level, they had to be coupled with a guy. That’s the reason you had so many acts like Johnny and June, George and Tammy, and Conway and Loretta. Reba changed all that. A guy who was working for me in the publishing company had taken the demo over to Mercury for Glenn Keener to listen to the songs. Glenn wasn’t interested in the songs, but he heard something in Reba’s voice he didn’t often hear that made him want to sign her. We finally got her a contract with Mercury in October. Reba did things for girl singers that nobody had ever done before. She made the difference for the next girl singer coming down the line, including Dolly. Her shows were different; they weren’t just standing there singing in front of a microphone. The other thing she did was television. In my day, the only way you knew what a singer looked like was to buy a ticket and go to a concert. You
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