![]() You grow, you gain things and lose things. I hit a truck and my nose hit the steering wheel! Hopefully, in some ways, it’s better - though in some ways it’s not. My voice really changed when I had a really bad wreck one time. ![]() Music Row doesn’t look like Music Row anymore there’s some music, but there are more apartments and businesses in that area now. Well, it’s certainly changed because I can go in one week, and then the next week it’s like: where am I? There’s so much building going on. But Bob had me sing as high as I could because, he said, it cuts through the radio - he was right! I always liked to have a note I didn’t use under my song, and a note above it, so if I had a bad day I could still reach them. He wanted it to cut through the one speaker like the West Coast did, it was brighter and you could hear it really good. The first time we recorded, Bob turned up the treble on Weldon’s amp because there was no stereo, only mono. Hargus ‘Pig’ Robbins played piano on all my records, and steel guitarist Weldon Myrick also helped create the “Connie Smith sound”. Yes, people still around from that era talk the same language. You must’ve had a real shorthand working together? It was a total collaboration between the producer – the boss – then me, then the musicians. If somebody played something I really didn’t want on the record I’d say so, and they’d do something different. In the studio, would play a song, the musicians made their number charts, and we all threw in our ideas. Then together we’d pick songs we both agreed on. He’d get some in, and I’d go from publishing company to publishing company looking for songs – and if I saw something I liked I’d take it. But he’d just signed a wonderful new producer called Bob Ferguson, and he would produce my first record – my first everything. I was very fortunate to sign to RCA records Chet Atkins signed me but didn’t have time to work on my career because he had so many other great artists, from Skeeter Davis, to Hank Snow, to Jim Reeves. All I ever wanted was to hear myself one time on the radio! ![]() ![]() I was coming back and forth from Southern Ohio when I cut my first record in ‘64, then moved here in April ‘65 and I’ve been here ever since. Well, I was going down this four-lane street called Franklin Road, where Earl Scruggs and Martina McBride live, and I thought this is the biggest road in the world! It was huge to me back then - and now it’s just a road. When you moved to Nashville, what did you expect – and how did it differ? Their friendship blossomed into romance and eventually marriage, and their songwriting partnership created numerous songs. He dubbed her “the world’s greatest finisher, polisher and helper”. Soon she was collaborating with Marty Stuart, initially just writing and recording. But after a decade, she made the decision to step out of the limelight and quit the music business to raise her five children – though she never stopped singing.Ĭut to the late 1990s, with her kids all grown up, Smith found that she’d caught the country music bug again. Smith worked with the best producers, writers and musicians, performed at the Grand Ole Opry, acted in country music movies and continued her top ten streak. She moved to Nashville the following year, equipped with an essential ingredient: emotion delivered with conviction. She was talent-spotted at 22 by country star Bill Anderson, and her 1964 debut single ‘Once a Day’ topped the charts for eight weeks. Sitting and chatting from her smart office in Hendersonville, north of Nashville, she smiles with pleasure at what they’ve achieved.īorn in Indiana in 1941, Smith spent her early life in West Virginia and Ohio. The rest of us are only pretending.”Īs I talk to the real deal herself, Smith and her co-writer/producer/guitarist husband Marty Stuart are celebrating the release of The Cry Of The Heart – their third album together and her 54th in total. According to Dolly Parton, there are really only three real female singers: “Streisand, Ronstadt, and Connie Smith.
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