Before nighttime talk shows turned all serious and uncomfortable, there was “Nashville Now” on TNN — The Nashville Network — a variety show that featured the Johnny Carson of country TV — that would be Ralph Emery — and a cavalcade of current stars and newcomers to the business.
This was 1983-1993 in primetime, and what a glorious era it was. Ralph, easy-going and a great listener, the deejay voice, there in his sport jacket and necktie, smooth talking with Ronnie Milsap or Jeannie Seely, and then Jeannie would sing, “If You Touch Me, You’ve Got to Love Me,” and someone would tell a joke or two and a puppet name Shotgun Red would have a bit and all was right with the world.
This all happened at the Gaslight Theater in Opryland USA where, in town for a basketball game at Vanderbilt, I stumbled in one night, quite by accident, backstage to a bunch of “howdies” and handshakes and a table filled with cookies and a coffee pot. I played dumb, shook Mr. Emery’s hand like we’d known each other for a long time, and watched from the wings.
It was heaven, is what it was.
The main guest “star” that night? A young John Anderson, in the middle of his 12-ish years of hits. Seems like he sat on a stool that night and sang “1959” and some other song that was either about a broken heart or a broken dream or a broken carburetor.
Until he passed at home in his sleep last week at age 71, I hadn’t thought of how much I’d grinded John Anderson. Or how long he’d been out of the spotlight, his last Top 10 tune having been around 1994. Crazy. We hear these singers and bands and the songs seem as if they were yesterday but they were actually hits yesterYEARS ago.
Though you might not have favored his distinguished, note-bending voice, a sort of warble and deep twang, you had to love John Anderson. Big Ol’ John, cowboy hat or trucker hat, looking as if he’d just trucked in with a load of appliances and was backing up the diesel to another trailer filled with whatever.
When he sang, his head moved as if he were trying to get a crick out of his neck. Or maybe he was trying, in slow motion, to shoo a fly or find an infield popup in the sun.
This bureau feels he was underappreciated. But when the smoke cleared, there was John Anderson in the Country Music Hall of Fame and the Nashville Songwriters Hall of Fame.
Stud. I loved the guy.
We’ve left out “Wild and Blue” and “She Just Started Liking Cheating Songs” and “Down in Tennessee,” all fine tunes. But we had to slice some chicken off the bone to get down to The Top 10 John Anderson Songs According to Me. Discuss amongst yourselves …
10. “1959” — “Cigarettes were a quarter then” and all John and his gal needed was gas in the pickup truck.
9. “I Just Came Home to Count the Memories” — Would make the eye of a needle cry.
8. “Let Go of the Stone” — John asks a girl he has eyes for to forget her no-good boyfriend so he can, I suppose, “help” her.
7. “Straight Tequila Night” — A No. 1 in 1991.
6. “Seminole Wind” — Haunting piano and guitar.
5. “I’m Just an Old Chunk of Coal” — Sure he is now. But he’s gonna be a diamond someday. There’s hope for us all.
4. “She Sure Got Away With My Heart” — The word play is that she’s got a way of talking and a way of walking and “she sure got away with my heart.”
3. “Swingin’” — In 1983 and much of 1984, if your name was Charlotte Johnson, your life was either a living heaven or a living hell. Charlotte was on the front-porch swing with the singer of this song, and this song was playing EVERYwhere. Seems like we even sang it in Sunday morning church at least twice. Couldn’t escape it. It could easily get on your nerves — except that it was John Anderson singing it, and if you visualized him on the porch while his future mom-in-law was cutting chicken up to fry, somehow, it made everything OK. John Anderson always said that if all else failed, he could sit on a barstool on some little honky tonk stage and sing this and still make the rent.
2. “Who Got Our Love” — Criminally underrated, this up-tempo tune made it to only No. 67 on the U.S. Country charts. Hurts me. It was part of John’s last big push, along with “Seminole Wind” in the early 1990s.
1. “When It Comes to You”— Sad guitar. Sad song. Also, like “Who Got Our Love” and John himself, criminally underrated. Until now.
Contact Teddy at teddy@latech.edu
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