HOLLY IN THE HILLS

The songwriter and record producer BOB MONTGOMERY talks to Spencer Leigh about Buddy Holly, Elvis Presley, Patsy Cline and "Misty Blue".

This feature appeared in two parts in Now Dig This, February 2003.

Some people, but not many, have done it all – Bob Montgomery has been a performer, songwriter, record producer and music publisher and he has been associated with some of the biggest hits of the last 50 years. You will know many of the songs, but “Now Dig This” readers are likely to know him for his association with Buddy Holly. Buddy’s first performances were with Bob Montgomery and together they wrote “Wishing”, “Heartbeat” and “Love’s Made A Fool Of You”.

When his son, the singer and songwriter Kevin Montgomery, was in the UK, I asked him if I could contact his father and this is the result of my call to Nashville.

Can we check your date of birth first? Some books say 1936 and others 1937.
12 May 1937 I was born in Lampasas, Texas, which is in central Texas. We lived in quite a few different places as my dad did construction work and went where the work was. We moved to Lubbock when I was in the sixth grade, 12 years old.

Were you in the same school as Buddy Holly?
Not at first. Junior High is where we first met. We had a common interest in music and we were both learning to play guitars and whatever. Buddy had a musical family, his two brothers, Larry and Travis, both played, so it was a natural transition for him. When we started out, we were doing Lester Flatt and Earl Scruggs songs, and Buddy played banjo and mandolin for a while. There were a lot of duet harmony records we liked, bluegrass stuff. We started playing in school talent shows and we eventually had our own little radio show on KDAV through Pappy David Stone. Pappy featured local talent every Sunday afternoon, and Buddy and I ended up with our own 30 minute radio show every week.

And did you get paid for that?
(Laughs) Are you kidding?

How did the recordings come about?
Most of those things were demos that we did over in Clovis, New Mexico. There was also a little recording studio in Wichita Falls that we used. We would do some construction work or whatever we could to earn money and then we would go to Norman Petty’s studio in Clovis and record some demos.

Did you both have it in mind that you wanted to be professional musicians?
Yeah, we wanted to be stars, but we were only kids and really it was just a good way of getting girls. (Laughs)

It’s intriguing to find that you, and not Buddy, are doing the bulk of the songwriting.
Well, Buddy didn’t have that much interest in writing songs at that time. He didn’t start writing a lot until he got his record deal with Decca. Jerry Allison was very much a catalyst for Buddy’s writing. He became very prolific in the short time that he was songwriting. He wrote all those great songs in 18 months.

You and Buddy did write a couple of those early songs – “Baby It’s Love” and “I Gambled My Heart”.
Yeah, I think we did, though I had more interest in writing than he did. Quite frankly, I don’t think the songs are that good. We were just teenagers learning to write. When I was in music publishing, I never thought of passing them on to other artists. The best things about the records are Buddy Holly’s performances. I was doing the lead vocals but he was a great harmony singer. He had a lot of innate talent, much more than myself.

The song I like best from the Buddy and Bob sessions is “Flower Of My Heart”. Is there a story behind that?
No, it was just a song that I wrote. I don’t remember what the inspiration was. They had an original song contest at Lubbock High and it won the best song of the year, and that was when we were sophomores.

One song you wrote together is “Down The Line” which, when the Fireballs were added after Buddy’s death, sounds more like rock and roll.
Well, I never thought of it that way. I was dating my first wife who lived in Albuquerque, New Mexico, and I wrote that on the way to Albuquerque – “The white lines flashing on the road below” and all that.

Did you mind the tracks being issued with additional accompaniment?
Oh, they were better in their unedited form, but Norman wanted to use the Fireballs on them. The original tracks were just Buddy and myself on guitars or whatever, with Sonny Curtis on fiddle on a couple. We weren’t the most accomplished musicians.

A lot of talent came out of the area – Buddy Holly, yourself, the Crickets, Sonny Curtis.
That area of the world spawned a lot of talent because there wasn’t a lot to do in Lubbock. Roy Orbison came from Odessa which is about 100 miles north-west of Lubbock and that’s a pretty desolate area. There’s definitely not a lot to do there. We didn’t know Roy at the time but we heard people telling us how good he was. Later on he did one of my songs, but I can’t remember which one. (Editorial: “Two Of A Kind” which was also recorded by Sue Thompson.)

Did you play any gigs where you thought, “This is a terrible venue”?
(Laughs) All the time. We played a lot of honky tonks. It didn’t matter to us, it was wherever we could find a place to play. After I got out of the picture, they played some roller rinks.

You certainly did one good gig, supporting Elvis Presley at the Cotton Club in Lubbock in October 1955?
Yeah, he was very good but he affected Buddy more than me. After seeing Elvis, he changed direction and knew where he wanted to go. Elvis was on the “Louisiana Hayride” in Shreveport. It was making him a star and he told us that he could get us on that show. We went down there like he told us, but the Director of Programming said that Elvis didn’t run the “Louisiana Hayride”, he did, and he sent us back home. We were told that the show was hillbilly heaven and we couldn’t just walk in and expect to be on the bill.

When Buddy found fame, did you ever begrudge him his luck and wish it was you?
Lord, no. I did make a couple of recordings on my own so I suppose I wanted to be a star, but I soon realised that it wasn’t what I was supposed to do. It’s a tough life being a star. That lifestyle eats a lot of people alive.

Did you keep in touch with him?
Yes, the Crickets were on the road quite a bit, but he kept in touch whenever he came back to Lubbock. The Everly Brothers had asked him to write something for them and we had the Everly Brothers in mind when we wrote “Wishing” and “Love’s Made A Fool Of You”. Wesley Rose wouldn’t let them record the songs because he didn’t have the publishing. The things that have come out were the demos that Buddy put down to show the Everlys.

“Heartbeat” has a Mexican influence in there.
I guess so, there were a lot of Latin influences where we came from. I don’t like that line, “Why does a love kiss stay in my memory”, but that was Norman Petty’s line. I thought it was a kinda dipshit line, but what the hell, if it got the song recorded, let it go.

I thought you’d run out of inspiration with the “piddle de pat”. Couldn’t you have put some words in there?
Why? That’s the sound of the heartbeat.

Oh my god. I’ve known the record for 35 years and never realised that.
There you go.

And what about the day that Buddy Holly died?
I had driven down to a little town close to Lampasas, where my folks had a farm. I visited with them and I was coming back to Clovis, New Mexico which is where I was living. I was working for Norman Petty as an engineer at his studio. I stopped off in Lubbock and I called Echo McGuire and she said, “Isn’t it awful?” And I said, “What?” as I hadn’t had the radio on. She was the one who told me about the plane crash.

What do you think would have happened if Buddy had lived?
That is pure conjecture, there is no telling what Buddy would have done. I know he was trying to get more involved in the business end and he would have liked a little record label of his own. One of the last times we were together, he wanted me to come to New York. He was going to start a publishing company and he wanted me to run it. I didn’t want to go to New York and at that time I couldn’t even spell publishing, much less be a publisher.

You had your own success as a songwriter, notably with “Misty Blue”.
I was in my basement over in Madison around 1966 and Brenda Lee was a very hot recording artist, who was coming up to record in a few weeks. I was trying to come up with something for her and then I wrote “Misty Blue” in about 20 minutes. It was a gift and it was perfect for her, but she turned it down. (Laughs) Her producer Owen Bradley loved the song and as he couldn’t push her to do it, he cut it country on Wilma Burgess. I was disappointed at the time because Wilma wasn’t as hot as Brenda Lee, but it was a Number 1 country record so everything worked out fine. Eddy Arnold then cut it and he had both a Number 1 country single and a pop hit, and Joe Simon had a big R&B hit with it. Dorothy Moore cut the really big version and then it was a country hit again, this time for Billie Jo Spears. There are over 200 versions of “Misty Blue”. I don’t have them all but I’ve got a lot of them. Brenda Lee is a friend of mine but I’ve never asked her why she didn’t like the song. I’m going to ask her next time I see her.

Did you write “Back In Baby’s Arms” for Patsy Cline?
Patsy and her husband Charlie Dick were my next door neighbours when I moved to Nashville. She was struggling, trying to get started. She was recording for Four Star, a little small label. She was having some success but not the kind of success that she eventually had. She had moved twice by the time I had written “Back In Baby’s Arms”, but I still had pretty good access to her. I went to her house and played it to her.

Are you halfway there when you have got the title?
Yes, if you have a really good title, the song kinda writes itself and it leads you where you need to go. I usually know when I’ve got a good song, but it is amazing when a song like “Misty Blue” proves to have a life of its own. I’ve written other songs that I have liked as much but for some reason the public hasn’t latched onto them.

How did you come to write "Somebody Else's Girl" which was a UK hit for Billy Fury in 1963?
There’s no story to it. The idea came to me and I wrote the song, and that’s it. At the time I was producing records in the daytime as I had to make a living. I wrote the songs at night. It was published by E. B. Marks and I think Billy Fury was the first to record it. I thought Billy made a good record and I’m certainly happy to have it.”

In 1965 you wrote a hit for Cliff Richard, “Wind Me Up”. Was he the first to record it?
(Sings) “Wind Me Up And Let Me Go”, and yes he was. E.B.Marks was the publisher and they had probably had some connection with him. The A-side of the record was going to be a Burt Bacharach and Hal David song that everyone thought was going to be a huge hit, but, for whatever reason, the record was turned over, and “Wind Me Up” was the big hit. That song was a hit everywhere in the world except the United States.

You have done a lot of music publishing yourself.
Yes, publishing and producing have been my best areas. I produced “Honey” with Bobby Goldsboro, which was a huge hit all over the world. That was written by Bobby Russell and I thought it was a great song, an incredible song. Songs are only good songs if they stir an emotion in people, and I look for songs that raise the hair on the back of my neck. “Honey” certainly did that and it was helped by the dynamics of the record as it was a very emotional record. The critics who said it was too syrupy were wrong. That record really touched people.

The trick is to tell a story in a few words.
Exactly. Some of the huge copyrights don’t use a lot of words. There aren’t many words in “White Christmas” and I could draw up a very long list of songs like that.

What were your biggest songs as a publisher?
“Behind Closed Doors” by Kenny O’Dell and “The Wind Beneath My Wings” by Larry Henley and Jeff Silbar. We had a lot of really, really big songs but those are two monster ones. As soon as I heard them, I knew they would do well.

How did you get “Behind Closed Doors” to Charlie Rich?
Charlie Rich had had some rock and roll hits on Sun but even they were pretty country oriented. He had been several years without a hit and Billy Sherrill had made seven albums with him on Epic that hadn’t even scratched the surface. We had got Charlie his first hit on Epic with “I Take It On Home” and so it was easy to get “Behind Closed Doors” to him. He also had a huge, huge album out of it – it sold four million copies and it had been Billy Sherrill’s last shot. “The Most Beautiful Girl” and another of our songs, “Why Don’t We Go Somewhere And Love”, were on that album.

And “The Wind Beneath My Wings”.
The very first pitch I made was to Kenny Rogers. Brent Maher and Randy Goodrun were producing him and they loved the song. They beat Kenny up to cut the song and he absolutely refused. I knew he was making a mistake – his career was in a lull and that song would have put him right back on top. It could have become his signature song. I got records by Lee Greenwood and a bunch of others, but the lyrics really demand an artist with name power to record it. Gladys Knight and the Pips did it and since then, it has become huge.

You produced your friends, the Crickets, on an album, “Bubblegum, Bop, Ballads And Boogies”, in 1973.
Oh, that was a fun project. We did it in London and Albert Lee was with them. They live close to me in Nashville and so we are often in touch. I also loved the album that I did with Buddy Knox. I loved his voice. I thought he had one of the most pleasant, listenable voices in the whole world.

You have produced some country legends.
The album that I love was with Waylon and Willie, “If I Can Find A Clean Shirt” - it didn’t do anything commercially but it was a really good album. Merle Haggard is probably the greatest country singer who has ever lived. He is just incredible. Unfortunately, the album that I got to do with him was a live album. I didn’t have much input into it. It was an okay album but not one of Merle’s best.

What about Marty Robbins?
Marty Robbins was a sweetheart, he was one of the nicest guys in the world and what you saw is what you got. He was a great human being. Around 1982, he hadn’t had a hit in five years, so Rick Blackburn asked me if I would produce him. Marty wanted to produce himself but the label told him that it was this or nothing. It was a rocky beginning as he wasn’t too thrilled with me to begin with. He was blasé about it and thinking, “Well, I will just do whatever they tell me to do”. He didn’t think that he was going to like it but then we had fun and he got to liking what we did. We ended up having a good time. We made two albums, his last two albums, and I also had the last hit with Marty, “Some Memories Just Won’t Die”.

You must be proud that your son, Kevin, is carrying on the family name in the business.
Well, I am not surprised. He always had a great voice and he picked up harmonies very naturally. He had one album with A&M which didn’t work out entirely and since then, he has been developing his talent through the internet, making his own albums and arranging his own concerts. I like several things of his, he has got a song called “Tennessee Girl” that I like very much. We cut “Wishing” with him and Mary Chapin Carpenter for a Buddy Holly tribute album and that worked out great. Kevin works a lot in Europe and he has quite a following where you are.

Well, I’ve never met an American who hasn’t liked coming to England.
Exactly, I love England myself. Paul McCartney does the Buddy Holly shows every September on Buddy’s birthday and I did one of them for him. It was the first time I had been on stage in 25 years and it was kinda nerve-racking. I was up half the night trying to make sure I got the chords to the songs right. I had to perform a couple of songs at the Odeon, Hammersmith. The British fans are the best in the world as they were shouting out songs that I’d forgotten about.

Bob Montgomery, thanks very much. It’s self-evident that you’ve really enjoyed your career.
It’s been a lot of fun and if something comes along that sounds exciting, I will do some more, but I haven’t heard anything lately that interests me. Country music has gone to hell in a hand-basket and the business is not what it was. I would hate to be starting out in the music business.

This is unfortunate. I was hoping to end on a positive note.
It may be negative but it’s the truth.