MOUNTAIN MAN

BILLY EDD WHEELER talks to Spencer Leigh

This feature appeared in two parts in Country Music People, July and August 2005.

Jackson, Coward Of The County and Reverend Mr Black are three of the hundreds of songs written by Billy Edd Wheeler. In this exclusive interview for Country Music People, Billy Edd Wheeler talks about his songwriting (and passes on many to would-be songwriters along the way). However, this feature could just as easily be about his plays, his novels or his paintings. In 2004 his latest novel, Star Of Appalachia, was published and his new play, Johnny Appleseed, received its premiere in Mansfield, Ohio. Billy Edd specialises in outdoor dramas and his most intriguing work is the folk opera, A Song Of The Cumberland Gap. He is working on his memoirs so perhaps I caught him at a good time as his memory is razor-sharp. This interview certainly augers well for those memoirs.

Billy Edd Wheeler is something of a renaissance man and you can find out more about him on his website www.billyeddwheeler.com. He is a fine painter and he will paint your portrait with no obligation to purchase it if you don’t like it!

Billy Edward Wheeler was born in Whitesville, West Virginia on 9 December 1932. “I call myself Billy Edd with two d’s. I started that when I was young, but I’ve no idea why.” Billy Edd grew up in West Virginia and moved to North Carolina when he was 16. He studied at the Warren Wilson College, near Swannanoa, and he was to marry the president’s daughter, Mary, in 1963.

After the Warren Wilson College, Billy Edd studied at Berea College in Kentucky and graduated in English in 1955. He learned to fly while he was in the navy and returned to Berea College as an assistant alumni director. In 1961 he wanted to study further and went to Yale University describing himself as “their token hillbilly”. He began performing in New York City and in 1963, he married Mary Bannerman, who was also working in New York City. They have two adult children, Lucy and Travis, and, although Billy Edd and Mary did live for a couple of years in Nashville, they have been based in Swannanoa, North Carolina for most of their married life.

Although primarily a songwriter, Billy Edd Wheeler has released an impressive number of albums over the years. His albums are USA (1961), Billy Edd And Bluegrass Too (1962), A New Bag Of Songs (1964), Memories Of America / Ode To The Little Brown Shack Out Back (1965), The Wheeler Man (1965), Goin’ Town And Country (1966), Paper Birds (1967), I Ain’t The Worrying Kind (1968), Nashville Zodiac (1969), Love (1971), The Music Of Billy Edd Wheeler (1973), My Mountains, My Music (1975), Wild Mountain Flowers (1979), A Song of the Cumberland Gap - A Folk Opera (1979), Asheville (1982), Gee-Haw Whimmy Diddle (1987), Laughter In Appalachia (spoken word, 1987), Songs I Wrote With Chet (1995), Songs And Legends Of The Outer Banks (1996) and Milestones (2001).

How did you come to be interested in music?
I was born in coal mining country in Boone County, West Virginia, and my first exposure to music was singing at church. We sang ‘Do re mi, re me fa, me fa so’, they call it shape note singing. I wasn’t exposed to a lot of country music growing up except by way of the Grand Ole Opry and I didn’t listen to the radio very much, and for a long time we didn’t even have a radio. One of my first influences was Eddy Arnold singing Cattle Call. (Sings) As you can hear, I can’t imitate that too well but there were guys in the coal mining community who played the guitar and sang and you wouldn’t know if was them or Eddy Arnold as they were so good.
Do any of your songs contain yodelling?
I’ve never had any yodelling songs. The first song I ever wrote – I was about 14 – was about delivering newspapers. I had to get up at 4.30 in the morning and it got pretty cold in West Virginia. I had to deliver the papers through the black section of town and all the way on up to the head of the holler through rain and sleet and snow. It’s like being a postman - neither rain nor sleet nor snow will keep us from our appointed round. I wrote a song about that called Paper Boy Blues.
You were conscripted and I presume that the navy helped your career as you would experience a wide view of life.
I was also an alumni director of one of the colleges I went to which meant I got to circle round the country meeting people by the thousands. Once people know that you are interested in folk music for instance, they will bring songs to you and they help you with your collecting.
And when did you know that you wanted to be a professional songwriter?
The songwriting came so naturally that I don’t know whether I have ever considered myself a professional songwriter. I just do it because I love it. It comes naturally and I have made a fairly good living writing songs, thanks to Johnny Cash and Kenny Rogers. I would have done it whether I made any money at it or not because I loved it.
Were you more concerned with being a songwriter than a performer?
Oh yes. When I had my first hit in 1964 with Ode To The Little Brown Shack Out Back, I was called upon to sing in different places but I never regarded myself as a recording artist. I do like to entertain and I do like to sing for people but I was never out on the professional tours. It’s a pity that I never got an invite to come to the UK: I’d like to have done the Wembley festival.
What was the first song you had recorded?
It was by Pat Boone when he was really hot back in the 50s. When I got out of the navy and went back to Berea College as assistant alumni director, I was into folk music and I used to play The Boll Weevil Song. I thought it might lend itself into a rock’n’roll song and so I picked up my guitar and it went like this

(Sings) “The boll weevil am a little black bug,
Comes from Mexico then what,
Come all the way from Texas,
Looking for a place to rock.
He had to Rock boll weevil, Rock boll weevil, Rock boll weevil, had to rock.
Lost my cotton crop, Lost that cotton crop, Cause that weevil had to rock.”

Pat Boone put a lot of saxophones in there and really jived it up. Roll Boll Weevil was my first recorded song.
How did Pat Boone get the song?
Pat Boone married Red Foley’s daughter, Shirley. Red Foley was a wonderful country music singer and he lived in Berea, Kentucky. Another of Red’s daughters, Betty was married to an acquaintance of mine called Bentley Cummings. I gave the song to Betty and Bentley who passed it to Shirley. That’s when I got my first taste of the greedy part of the music publishing business. Bentley wanted me to say that Betty had helped me co-write the song so that I could give her half of it, and then Pat Boone would record it. I said, “But that would be lying, Bentley. I wrote the song and I can’t do that.” I added, “Look, I’ll give you a finder’s fee. I will give you 15% and that’s my deal.” Then Pat Boone’s manager called me and wanted to publish the song. I had met a folk publisher in New York called Harold Newman and I had already told him that he could publish the song. I had to say, “I’m sorry, I’ve already promised it to somebody else.” Pat Boone’s manager let me have it, calling me a dumb hillbilly and all that stuff. I said, “I gave my word and my word is my bond. I cannot give you the song, sorry about that.” It was hard for me to say that as I wasn’t making very much money and a recording by Pat Boone would be big stuff but I had to stick by my guns. It turned out that they had already recorded it and they were just trying to tie up all the loose publishing ends.
What happened to the Pat Boone record?
It was a two sided hit. He had just written a book called Twixt Twelve And Twenty which was giving advice to teenagers, and he had a song based on that. Because of the popularity of the book, it got a lot of airplay, but my song on the other side got just as much play. It was a moderate hit, not one of his earthshaking great big hits. He had a great voice and he was about the hottest thing in show business for a while. I suppose my song might have inspired Brook Benton’s version, but it was fair game for anybody to base something based on that folk song.
This was in 1959 so what happened next?
I did a folk album for Harold Newman. It had only cost $200 to record 16 songs and it was released on Monitor Records. Their offices were in New York and they were a folk label. It was a stroke of good luck that Norman Gimbel, who is a world class lyricist, was married to a model and on her way to work she passed by Monitor Records and saw my album in the window. I’m not a good looking guy but out of curiosity, she picked it up and took it home.
I was in Harold Leventhal’s office trying to find work as a folk singer when Norman came up and introduced himself to me. He said, “My god, man, my wife’s in love with you. She brought your album home and really likes it. I like it too but Billy, don’t take this wrong: you’re a natural songwriter but you’ll never make money at it.” I said, “Why not?” He said, “Because I can tell you take songs as they come, the first draft and that’s it. You don’t shape your songs or edit them.” I said, “I’d like to learn to be better.” He said, “Let me take you to see Jerry Leiber and Mike Stoller as they write for Elvis Presley, the Drifters and the Coasters.”
Norman Gimbel took me to the Brill Building on Broadway, the House of Dreams, and I sang my songs for Leiber and Stoller and saw where Bobby Darin had a cubbyhole office. They told me I would have to become more commercial. I needed to listen to songs more critically. Jerry Leiber said, “You should always ask, ‘What is the song about?’ You should only have one theme in a song and some of your songs have two or three themes in them. Concentrate on what the song is about and then how are you going to introduce that idea. What are your first two or three lines going to be? Then you develop it and complete the song.” They told me that I should call them if I had a good idea and that was a gigantic leap for any wannabe songwriter.
I know Norman Gimbel wrote Killing Me Softly With His Song and The Girl From Ipanema. Did you write with him yourself?
Sort of. Every time that Norman had a song idea, he would put it alphabetically in his Rolodex, and he wanted me to be organised and do things like that. One night he was looking in the B’s and he said to me, Blue Roses. I said, “Have you not written that one?” When he said no, I asked him for the title. I wrote Blue Roses and Hank Snow recorded it so Norman was instrumental in me becoming a professional songwriter.
I think your first big hit was with Reverend Mr Black for the Kingston Trio in 1963.
I had been trying to write a song about a western gunfighter and it started, “He rode easy in the saddle, he was tall and lean.” About a third of the way into the song, I realised that I didn’t know a roan from a gelding from a stallion and I knew nothing about western culture. I almost threw the song away but then I saw a picture of an Appalachian preacher, John C Campbell, who had founded a school not far from here called the Brasstown Folk School. He was a minister who went to communities which didn’t have a regular preacher. He was on horseback with big leather boots which reached up to his knees and I thought, “Wait a minute and I soon had the first lines.” They were:
“He rode easy in the saddle, he was tall and lean,
At first you thought nothing but a streak of mean
Could make a man look downright strong,
But one look in his eyes and you’d know you was wrong.
He was a mountain man and I want you to know,
He could preach hot hell in the freezing snow.”
I called Jerry Leiber and I said, “I’ve got this idea and I’m getting chills up my spine.” I recited it as I’m reciting it to you, and when I got to the bit about the lonesome valley, Jerry said, “Oh yeah baby, bring that one in.” I had a song that was about eight minutes long by then, it was an epic. It had to be boiled down to about three minutes and a half minutes because nobody was going to record an eight minute song. It was a great songwriting experience for me because I found out that you can strengthen songs by making them shorter and still not miss any of the story. Jerry and Mike liked the song so much that when they had demoed it they put a guy on a plane to the west coast where Voyle Gilmore was producing the Kingston Trio. Their song plugger played it for them and the Trio recorded it that same afternoon and it was my first big hit. The Jed Peters on the record label with me is Jerry Leiber using a pseudonym.
And was it always your intention to have the verses half spoken.
Yeah, that influence came from Phil Harris and his talking type songs: “Phil Jackson was a poor old dub, Who joined the Darktown Poker Club, And he cussed the day he told them he would join.” I did a couple of those songs in a variety show in high school and it was ingrained in me. I liked the tempo, it was early rap.
And then you did Desert Pete for the Trio.
Yes, that was the follow-up. It did okay, but it was not a big hit like Reverend Mr Black which was in the Top Ten on the Billboard charts and got a lot of pop play. I love Desert Pete. I was reading the West Virginia Hillbilly, which was a weekly newspaper out of Richwood, West Virginia and I saw a piece about Desert Pete who built a well on the edge of a desert so people could get a drink of water. He cautioned them by saying, “To prime this pump, you have to pour in some water and pump like hell but have faith - there is water down there.” The idea was that you have to give in order to receive. I’ve met people who preached sermons on that song.
One of your early songs that has had a long life is High Flyin’ Bird.
When I was an alumni director, I would sometimes sit in my office at midnight and this particular night when the moon was really bright and I had the lights off, I had my guitar and everything was quiet. I started playing High Flyin’ Bird, remembering how I would sit down between those mountains in West Virginia looking up at the sky and seeing those birds flying up and over the mountains, going up to Appalachia out into America and across the ocean. It became a symbol of freedom for me. I wanted to get out of those mountains as I wasn’t happy with my stepfather and so that bird is a very personal symbol. I wanted to play a rocky bluesy type lick on the guitar and I faked it somehow and wrote the song. When Dave Guard left the Kingston Trio, he formed the Whiskeyhill Singers and Judy Henske was the lead female singer. She recorded it and put it out and it was the featured song on her album. Then Richie Havens picked it up and it became his signature song. Truthfully I didn’t like the way that he did it – it was too monotonous - although I was thrilled that he did it. I don’t care how you do my songs as long as you do ’em! It is flattering and it helps me to eat.
If you’d asked me a few years ago, how many people had done High Flyin’ Bird, I would have said, “About ten.” There was the Association, We Five, Gram Parsons and one or two others. Now there’s the internet and when I looked at www.allmusic.com, I found out that there were 50 different versions and I was overwhelmed.
I was in the Bahamas with my wife Mary and I was taking a shower and she said, “Billy Edd, you had better come and listen - there is a band by the pool doing your song.” I put a towel round me and went to the window and sure enough, they were doing High Flyin’ Bird but with lyrics that had been moved from the coal mining area to the sea: “I used to have an old man and he lived by the sea.” They had changed the locale to the Bahamas.
Lonnie Donegan did several of your songs. Was he first to record After Taxes?
I wrote that with Jerry Leiber, who was a workaholic. He and Mike Stoller would write and publish songs on Broadway during the day and at night Jerry would invite me to his house which thrilled me to death because he would give me a decent meal! We wrote that and Jerry and Mike produced a demo with me singing and the Coasters on background vocals and I think it came out on Kapp, but it could have been United Artists. That’s the version you hear on Milestones CD. So I had the first version and then Lonnie did it. Johnny Cash did it several years after that.
You had your own hit with Ode To The Little Brown Shack Out Back. Was that a song you had intended for someone else?
Again it’s autobiographical as I was 13 or 14 years old before I experienced indoor plumbing. That song was considered scatological as you didn’t write about people going to the bathroom. I was on Kapp Records by then and Dave Kapp was a sophisticated New Yorker and he looked down his nose at it and said, “No, Billy. We would like to have a hit song with you but not about outhouses.” Well, I sang it at a hootenanny in West Kentucky and I didn’t know that someone was running a tape recorder in the next room. I was there for an outdoor drama and when I returned the next year, this guy played me his recording. I don’t play the guitar very well so all the clunkers where I hit the wrong string were there but there was also the natural laughter and applause of the audience. It was a rural area and the song hit a chord with them. He gave me a copy and I sent it to Dave Kapp and told him that if he wouldn’t release the song, then he should allow me to record it myself. When he heard the tape, he wired me back and told me that he had changed his mind. Kapp Records released it and it was banned in Boston. There was a big station in Atlanta, Georgia that thought it was a good novelty to feature. The darn thing took off and it had taken six months. It was a minor hit, I suppose, but it was a major hit for me as it put me on the map. I’ve even written a book called Outhouse Humour. I never had a single that high again. I did try ballads and all kinds of things but I never did click. I got in 70s or 80s on the country chart from time to time.
How did Blistered come about?
I was living in Brooklyn Heights in a dinky little one-room apartment and Tom Paxton had introduced me to Dick Rosmini’s mother. She had a boarding house and she put up a whole lot of people, mostly folk singers. Dick was a fantastic guitarplayer and when I met him, he had been on the road with Bobby Darin and he hadn’t slept in two days. I played him a couple of songs and rather than going to bed, he picked up the guitar and started to accompany me and I was dumbstruck because he was so good. I went back to my little room and I was really inspired. I wrote three songs – one was Blistered, which Johnny Cash recorded, and another was Anne and there was a third song, but I can’t remember what that was. Do you know Anne? (Sings)
“I know I’ll never meet another hunk of woman like my Anne,
She makes me feel like a great big man.”
It has been recorded by Glen Campbell and a whole bunch of people. People for years thought my wife Mary’s real name was Anne.
The really big song you wrote for Johnny Cash was Jackson.
That song was inspired by Who’s Afraid Of Virginia Wolff by Edward Albee. I didn’t have enough money at the time to go and see it on Broadway but I had the script. It starts off with profanity and then the couple are going at each other the whole time, fighting back and forth. I thought that on a lighter level, there is a song there, but not as mean-spirited as Who’s Afraid Of Virginia Wolff. I based Jackson on that and Jerry Leiber once again helped me finish that song, although the other name on it is Jerry’s wife, Gaby Rogers. He sometimes did that. Jerry wrote maybe one line but his contribution was in making me rewrite the song. He told me that my four verses sucked. I should throw them away and start with the last verse which was “We got married in a fever, hotter than a pepper sprout.” I thought the last verse was the climax and that I couldn’t improve on it. He said, “Oh yes you can” and I did. He and Mike Stoller were great song doctors. They also fixed up that Drifters’ hit On Broadway by Barry Mann and Cynthia Weil.
I was invited to be one of the minor acts at New York Folk Festival at Carnegie Hall and Johnny Cash was headlining. He told me, “If I ever think I’m losing the audience, I whistle for June and she comes out and we do Jackson and it brings them right back up.” Normally a star will record your song and then go out and promote it, but he was trying it out on the road for at least a year before he got round to recording it.
And why Jackson?
Because it is snappy and they are hard consonants. I tried more mellifluous titles like Nashville at first but I didn’t need a pleasant sound, I needed something snappy. (Sings) “Jackson, Jackson, Jackson.” That’s the way Nancy and Lee do it at the end of their version and I love that. I have heard a Scandinavian version of the song and because no one will know Jackson, they sing, “I’m going to town.” (Laughs) That song really built our house – it’s The House That Cash Built. (Laughs)
How well did you know Shel Silverstein as I would think you two would get on well?
I met Shel at an ASCAP party in Nashville when I got an award for something or other and Shel gave me a big hug, and said, “When I decided to write songs, I started studying every song you ever wrote.” He could sing me songs that I had forgotten myself.
About a year later, I took two musicians from Nashville, a guitarist and a feller who played viola, and we went to the Quiet Knight in Chicago and I followed a rock act. I am very soft spoken, I don’t play loud and I don’t sing loud and I was as nervous as an outhouse rat. My mouth was dry and right in the middle of the first show, I heard this voice, “Hey, Billy Edd, tell them about Edsel Martin,” and it was Shel who was with Dr Hook. He was trying to get them started.
I took my break and before the second set he spoke to me. He said, “Billy Edd, you are pushing too hard. You don’t have to race. You want to walk and if you want to walk, the audience will walk with you. Walk – and talk, tell them about Edsel Martin. They want to hear these colourful stories as it helps them realise who you are and it will relax you. They will laugh and be with you.” Boy, what great advice. I went out for the second set and I started telling them about this wood-carver I knew, Edsel Martin and from then on, the gig was really fun.
Elvis Presley did a couple of your songs. Let’s take the ballad It’s Midnight, the B-side of Promised Land. Was he the first to record that song?
Yes. My co-writer Jerry Chesnut was close friends with Lamar Fike, one of Elvis’ go-fers, and it was he who took my demos of that and Never Again to Elvis. I remember Jerry calling me one day and asking if I wanted to play a round of golf with him and Lamar. I said, “No thanks, Jerry. I’ve seen Lamar hit the ball and it seldom goes much farther than eighty yards, sometimes barely getting out of his considerable shadow.” “Well, you know he’s taking our songs to Elvis, don’t you?” Jerry informed me. “Like I said, Jerry,” I quickly replied, “I don’t want to play unless our pal Lamar is going.” We all went out to the golf course. On one hole, I asked Lamar what he shot so I could write his score down. He said, “13.” “Wait a minute, Lamar,” I said. “I counted at least 15 strokes. Remember, you whiffed the ball twice.” “Well, God almighty!” he exclaimed. “I didn’t know we were playing PRO rules.”
But he got the songs to Elvis.
When Elvis first heard them, he looked at Lamar and said gruffly, “Are these about me and Priscilla?” Supposedly, Lamar replied, “Elvis, not every song I bring you is about you and Priscilla.” On Elvis’ initial take of It’s Midnight, he stopped after the first verse and said to Lamar, “I can’t sing this thing like the demo.” Lamar said, “Well, cut it the way you feel it.” He then did the song in one take and did it exactly like my demo! I’ve also got a live concert recording of It’s Midnight. Elvis is pretty high, criticizes the décor and sings only a verse and chorus of some songs.
Did you see Elvis yourself?
In 1975 Elvis came to Asheville, NC, which is about 10 miles from here, to play a concert at the Civic Auditorium, but the tickets sold out so fast they booked him for two more days. Elvis stopped one of the shows bring J. D. Sumner downstage. He made a short but touching speech to J. D. about how long they'd been doing shows together and presented him with a large diamond ring. The Asheville Citizen-Times reported the diamond as being worth $35,000. Elvis also tossed a guitar into the audience, so they did a big story on the guy who caught it.
Lamar Fike invited me to hang out in Elvis’ dressing room. We could step from the room and walk up under the stage on either side--a great vantage point to observe women of all ages handing things up to Elvis as he handed out scarves...dolls they’d made, flowers, candy, all sorts of items. When Elvis introduced It’s Midnight, he said, “Here’s a song written by a local boy, a good friend of mine, uh - (He reached into his pocket, pulled out a piece of paper and read from it) - Billy Edd Wheeler.” I said to Lamar, “What’s that all about? He knows my name.” Lamar said that he could not remember names and he’d even do that if it was Liza Minnelli.
The next day, I was in Lamar Fike’s motel room with Felton Jarvis and a couple of his bodyguards. The phone rang and since Lamar was out, I picked it up and effected the tone of a stuffy butler, saying, “Lamar Fike’s residence. May I be of assistance?” A voice said, “This is Elvis. Where’s Lamar?” I told him that Lamar had stepped out and continued, “Elvis, this is Billy Edd. I want to thank you for recording my songs.” His voice changed from the clipped, business-like voice to one of warmth and sincerity. He said, “Thank you for writing them. Just tell Lamar to call me when he gets back.”
David Briggs played keyboards for Elvis but he got burned out living on the road and playing the same stuff over and over. He opened a studio called House Of David and he arranged most of the songs on my Asheville album, using some horns from Memphis and playing piano himself. He is a fantastic player, who can always come up with some sort of signature lick.
I’m part of a trio of Elvis imitators who have fun now and then imitating Elvis impersonators. We call ourselves The Elvi. Our leader is Doug Orr Jr., president of nearby Warren Wilson College and the other guy, Richard Bellando, owns with his wife an upscale hand-weaving loom house in Berea.
You wrote Coward Of The County with Roger Bowling.
Yes, Roger wrote Lucille and Blanket On The Ground and he was a wonderful songwriter. He didn’t have a lot of formal education, I don’t even think he finished high school, but he was a natural and he was a professional editor. He wouldn’t settle for a line unless it contributed to the song. Sometimes I would throw in an arty line and he would say, “Old Folksinger, that sounds pretty good, but what does it mean?” I’d say, “Well, if you don’t know what it means, I think we should throw it away.” Like me, he was disillusioned with Nashville because it was so crowded. It took me 20 minutes to drive to work but that would be nothing today – it is much much larger today. I’d got out of town and he came over to North Georgia which is not too far from where I live. He called me as he wanted to meet someone who was in the business and we started writing together. I had an outdoor drama ready to open up near the Cumberland Gap in Pine Mountain, Kentucky, so we rented a little cabin at the State Park there.
How did you get the idea for Coward Of The County?
Roger said that my forte was writing story songs and he said, “I think mine is too, so let’s write a story song. I have a title ‘The Promise’.” He hadn’t an idea to go with the title but he said, “I’ll start working on the song, go and mix us a drink.” I went into the kitchen and poured him half a glass of Jack Daniel’s: well, there was no mixing to it, he drank it straight. I came back and he said, “Hey, old folksinger, listen to this, ‘Everyone considered him the coward of the county.’” I said, “Hey, I like that.” He said, “Okay, what’s the next line?” I said, “Give me a minute, I need to mix myself a drink.” And then whenever we got stuck for a line, he would say, “Go mix us up a line finder.” (Laughs) We’d have a drink and come up with a few more lines.
And what about that story?
I had always liked My Fair Lady because here is a little girl that they are trying to make over. She is the underdog and people love it when she slips into her Cockney accent and says, “Move your bloomin’ arse.” Everybody is pulling for that girl to have her comeuppance on those highbrow guys and I said to Roger, “Maybe the guy is like that and you want to root for him.” We didn’t call him a coward because we didn’t want to write a song about a coward. Look at the opening line. He is not a coward: it is just that everyone thinks he is because he won’t fight and won’t defend himself. Why? Remember we were going to call it The Promise. He had promised his dad that he wouldn’t fight because his dad is in jail and getting ready to be executed. We changed the title to Coward Of The County in the end, which is catchier but it isn’t correct as he isn’t a coward.
Did you think Coward Of The County would be just right for Kenny Rogers?
Absolutely because Roger’s best friend Larry Butler was producing Kenny Rogers at the time. Roger could take it straight to him which was very convenient. The big battle in songwriting is getting the song to the producer or the artist without going through all the middle people.
And the three rapists in that song are the Gatlin boys? Is this some sort of in-joke?
Not for me. We tried the Shelton boys and other names, but they sounded too soft. I didn’t realise it, but Roger had crossed swords with Larry Gatlin in Larry Butler’s office. Roger was sitting there and Larry Butler said to Gatlin, “I suppose you know Roger Bowling?” Larry Gatlin replied, “No, but I’m sure he knows me.” Roger Bowling was quick witted. Instantly he said, “Gatlin, Gatlin? Uh, is your family in guns?” Supposedly, it pissed Gatlin off a bit. After the song was a hit, Larry Gatlin did the Johnny Carson show with Kenny Rogers sitting in as host. Gatlin confronted Kenny: “Why did you use our names in your song?” Kenny said, “Hey Larry, I just sang the song, I didn’t write it.” It turns out that Larry Gatlin had a girlfriend named Becky. Roger might have known that, but I didn’t.
What else did you write for Kenny Rogers?
He did Long Arm Of The Law and Roger’s natural affinity for songwriting came into play here. I had heard that Daniel Boone in his older age ended up in the Ozarks and because of his popularity as a pioneer and a discoverer, the Governor made him a justice of the peace, and he was like the law in a 200 square mile area. The deputies would bring criminals before Daniel Boone and he held court under a big American elm that became to be known as the Justice Tree. They may have stolen a hog or beaten their wives or whatever. His favourite punishment was eight or nine lashes of the whip, they would strip you down and whip you, and once he was whipped he was okay to go back into society. People would ask, “How did you make out in Daniel’s court?” and the reply would be “Whupped and cleared.” That intrigued me and I thought The Justice Tree would be a good title. I wrote “You can outrun the long arm of the law, But you can’t outrun your conscience.” Roger said, “I can’t get involved in Daniel Boone as it happened so long ago. Why don’t we make him a modern day judge?” That was a great idea and so we started out,
“In Cumberland, Kentucky on a cool autumn evening,
Billy lay in love with Marianne.
She was a rich judge’s daughter, he was the son of a miner,
But that night their love was more than they could stand.”
She’s pregnant and they know that they are in deep trouble because her father is a hanging judge and he is going to track the boy down. It was never released as a single but Kenny did put it on his Greatest Hits.
You have an album out, Songs I Wrote With Chet. He presumably would suggest changes in the melody that you wouldn’t think of.
Oh yeah, I can hardly play any of the songs that he and I wrote together! He held the guitar and he plays chords that I can only dream of: my fingers won’t make them. I could suggest a melody and he would take it and improve it. Sometimes I would sing something and he would feed off that. He put some beautiful chords in there. He had one premise for the lyrics, “Keep it simple”. His changes might make me change the words but the words and music were written at the same time and I let the song go where it wanted to go in the master’s hands.
I love the playfulness of Music City News.
That was Chet’s idea. It’s about a guy on the morning show in Nashville and he is saying, “Nothing’s changed here, I am still doing this and still doing that, and still in love with you.” Incidentally, Chet told me that his favourite song of mine was The Coming Of The Roads, a song about the devastation caused by strip mining which was recorded first by Judy Collins and then by Peter, Paul and Mary. Judy was accompanied by a cello and it’s a lovely arrangement.
I know John D Loudermilk is one of your close friends, so have you written with him?
John D and I sat down to write a song once, but it didn’t happen. He kept making notes and putting them away in one pocket or another for future reference. We finally gave up and started talking about women, politics and the military-industrial complex - one of his favorite themes - and forgot about trying to write a song.
Do you still write songs?
Yes, but it is a young world and unless you know somebody well, it is hard to get them recorded. Mostly I write songs to go with my outdoor dramas or the plays I am writing. My novel Song Of Appalachia is about songwriting: it’s about a publishing house that is as corrupt and crooked as anything in John Grisham. Billy Ray Cyrus has read it and he would like to star in a movie version. I’m also working a children’s book and CD called The Cat On The Roof and the songs are sounding snappy and exciting. The singers include T Graham Brown, Dania McVickers and Sandy Mason, who wrote When I Dream. Dania also does a great Jackson with me when I go on stage.
And Songs And Legends Of The Outer Banks is a themed album.
Yeah, once I had that theme, I knew we had an album. All these places like Kitty Hawk and South Nags Head have legends. That was a fun album to write with Paul Craft, who had been teaching on a songwriting seminar with me in 1994. We rented a house in South Nags Head the next year and wrote the songs. Chet Atkins helped on a song or two and so did Ken Mann, the feller who lived out there and played in a group called the Captain’s Crew.
Billy Edd Wheeler, thank you very much for your time and such great anecdotes.
Thank you Spencer, it’s been fun. Remember to plug the website! There are CDs, books and cassettes for sale and anyone who contacts the website will get a reply.