Buzz Cason Interview
Doug Burke:
Buzz Cason has led an incredibly storied musical life. He began his career in the 1950s in the band the Casuals, who are credited with being one of the first rock and roll bands in Nashville. The Casuals became Brenda Lee's backing band, and he toured with Jerry Lee Lewis and partied with Elvis. He moved to Los Angeles and wrote hit songs for Jan and Dean and many others in the 1960s. Then, he moved back to Nashville and formed the first recording studio in the Berry Hill neighborhood. There, he recorded with legends like Dolly Parton, the Oak Ridge Boys, Olivia Newton-John, Roy Orbison, Leon Russell, Merle Haggard, the Doobie Brothers, the Faces, and the legendary Elvis. In fact, he helped start and co-wrote the songs on Jimmy Buffett's first two albums. He has contributed vocal session work for Elvis, Kenny Rogers, Kris Kristofferson, Ronnie Hawkins, Roy Orbison, Levon Helm, John Denver, and he was the voice of Alvin on several Chipmunk records. A member of the Rockabilly Music Hall of Fame, he continues to write, record, and release great albums, including Troubadour Heart, Record Machine, and Passion in the last six years. Here to talk about the amazing stories of some of his songs, we are thrilled and honored to have the legendary Buzz Cason with us on Backstory Song.
Welcome to Backstory Song. I'm your host, Doug Burke, and today I have with me Buzz Cason, the one and only legend. Buzz, I've had the chance to read your biography, The Everlasting Love: Living the Rock and Roll Dream, and also watch your documentary, Berry Hill! From Creative Workshop and Beyond, and I have been blown away by your career and the amazing stories that you tell in your biography.
Buzz Cason:
Well, thanks, Doug. It's good to be with you, man. And like you say, I'm a legend in my own backyard.
Doug Burke:
Well, you started with the Casuals. You were the backing band for Brenda Lee. You were the original rockabilly band of Nashville when the rock scene was just starting: Jerry Lee Lewis and Elvis Presley and those guys in Memphis, just sort of across state. And you guys at the Casuals were the legendary group of Nashville, and I guess that's where you wrote your first song, My Love Song For You, or one of your first recorded songs.
Buzz Cason:
That's right. Well, Doug, I wrote my first poem in the first grade when I was five years old. I started out... I've been around so long, they didn't even have kindergarten in those days. My mother slapped me in school at five, and they had a poetry contest, and I wrote a poem that won. Do you want to hear it?
Doug Burke:
Yeah!
Buzz Cason:
Okay. "Once there was a bunny, and he was very funny. He found an egg in a nest, so he put it in his vest." And that got me the blue ribbon. I thought, "Hey, man, I may make it as a poet one day." But anyway, I grew up in a neighborhood, Inglewood, out in East Nashville, and hooked up with the Casuals. And Richard Williams and I wrote that first song for our first record. It was probably the first song that I finished. I had piddled around with writing a few, but I wasn't very good at guitar, and Richard played piano pretty well, so he came out there on Ardee Avenue and banged on my old upright piano, and we wrote that song for the Casuals.
Doug Burke:
Where did you record that?
Buzz Cason:
Well, we were mentored by a DJ, a very well-known DJ at that time, Noel Ball, who had a Saturday Showcase TV show, three hours every Saturday afternoon on the ABC affiliate, of all things. It was before the Wide World of Sports and everything. And that's where I met the guys in the band, and Richard was the singer already, and their manager... I kept saying, "Man, let me sing with them." He said, "Well, they got a singer. They don't need a singer." I said, "Well, we could do some duets and stuff." So anyway, I wormed my way into the band, and Noel Ball, who hosted the TV show, was also a top-rated nighttime disc jockey on WSIX here in Nashville. And he said, "Hey, why don't we go up in the studio and record?" And in those days, back in the '40s and '50s, radio stations of any size had a live studio, because they did church broadcasts, they did country and bluegrass and stuff like that. They did live shows. They still had their studio, and so we snuck in after midnight and recorded two sides: My Love Song For You and Help Me, which Richard and I wrote both of them and put it out on a label called Nu-Sound, which was owned by Noel and another Buzz, Buzz Wilburn. And then Noel got Randy Wood to pick up the master and put it on Dot, so we were on the same label with Pat Boone there briefly. And it was an original hit. We were becoming very popular with the kids in Nashville, mainly due to the television show and everything, so...
Doug Burke:
You were like the teen idols of your day, right? You guys were teenagers when you started this whole thing, and you caught the rock and roll buzz and...
Buzz Cason:
Yeah, I was 16 when I joined the band, and we were very popular. Our tavern was a theater called the Donaldson Theater, out in the outskirts of town. And that's where the screaming girls were and everything. That's where we got a taste of that. Then we got on tour with Jerry Lee Lewis, and we started opening shows for him. We went out on the road in summer of '57. I graduated from high school and went right straight on the road at age 17.
Doug Burke:
It's a pretty wild story. I highly recommend your book. If my listeners want a good read, Everlasting Love. My favorite part is not... You toured with The Killer, Jerry Lee Lewis. But you had a week in Hollywood where you partied with Sammy Davis Jr., the late, great Ricky Nelson, and the late, great Elvis Presley. That's like an amazing trio of parties that you guys...
Buzz Cason:
Yeah, that was pretty crazy. We were on tour with Brenda on the West Coast, and Lamar Fike, who was one of the original Elvis mafia, he would work for Elvis until they would get mad at each other, and Elvis would fire him, and when he would, Dub Allbritten, Brenda's great manager, he'd like to have Lamar around because he was a big man, big guy. And he'd walk in front of the crowd and say, "Okay, move out of the way. Here she comes." And she'd be a little bitty girl walking behind this great big guy. And so anyway, Dorsey Burnette, who was also on the tour, and Lamar had a bet with each other that he couldn't introduce us to any stars while we were in Hollywood. He said, "Okay, we'll start out tonight." So we were coming down from... I think it was the tour that I turned 21 on. It had been about 1960, something like that. We were coming into San Francisco, and that's where we met Sammy Davis Jr., because we stopped at the Mark Hopkins Hotel, and he got on the house phone and called and said, "Sammy, got some guys down here would like to meet you." And they were having a big party up there. We went up, and Sammy was really nice to us. It was really a fun experience. And then the next night... This is all part of the bet, now. He took us to Ricky Nelson's house. Ricky was nice to us. He had a real small apartment up in Hollywood Hills or somewhere, and it was pretty much, I guess, at the peak of all his hit records. Very nice to us. And I always thought it was the second night, but Richard Williams reminded me, he said, "Oh, no, Buzz," said it was the same night. We went on out to Elvis's house for a later party, and we jammed with him. He played piano and said, "You ever think about how many songs go like this?" And he started playing from C to A minor to F to G, like Goodnight My Love and Sincerely. And we all joined in and sang parts, did some gospel songs, and had a big time. That was when he lived in Bel Air on Perugia Way.
Doug Burke:
You remember what gospel songs you were singing that night?
Buzz Cason:
Oh, I think I Saw the Light and Will the Circle Be Unbroken? Stuff like that. And what was funny was, Richard and I had a record in the charts under the name of the statues. We'd call it the Statues of Liberty because we were on Liberty Records. And we had a version of Blue Velvet that had hit the bottom of the charts, you know, and "I want you to sing that for-" I said, "Look, I'm not singing for Elvis Presley. I don't care what you say. Look, don't put us on the spot like that, man." Sure enough, he got in there, and after we had fun jamming, he said, "Elvis, the boys, they got a record out." He said, "Oh yeah, I'd like to hear it." So, man, we had to sing for Elvis, but it was a rare occasion. And then something very interesting. He said, "You know, I've been getting my songs from opera," and he played some opera version of Caruso or somebody. And then he'd play Return to Sorrento, and then he put the acetate, the dub on and played us his version of Surrender, which was, I think, a follow-up to It's Now Or Never, I believe. We were probably some of the first people outside of the record company to hear his next record. But he was very friendly, and it was quite a wild night.
Doug Burke:
Let's hone in on... Some of your first work was for Jan and Dean. You wrote two songs that were recorded and charted: Tennessee and Popsicle.
Buzz Cason:
Yes, well, there was a little studio downtown on Broadway. There's a famous bar, now called Tootsies. At that time, it was called Mom's, but there was a little old studio up above the bar. I was hanging out there. I don't remember what I was there for, and I met Bobby Russell. First time we had met. And he was from the other side of the tracks. He was from kind of the uppity part of town. I remember he looked real cool, and he had a black overcoat on, everything. He looked down at me. He said, "You write songs?" I said, "Yeah, I wrote." I figure I'd written one half of one song. Figured I qualify. He said, "Well, let's write something." So we went out to Green Hills area of Nashville, out near Hillsboro Road, and we liked Jan and Dean. You mentioned us being a rockabilly band, the Casuals, but we really were an R&B band. I told somebody, "We thought we were black till we looked in the mirror." We did almost all black music: Bo Diddley, James Brown, Hank Ballard and the Midnighters and all that. But anyway, Bobby and I, we wrote this silly song, and it was called Tennessee. And Gary Walker who was a wonderful gentleman, who was our mentor, he said, "Look, let's put this out." So Paul Cohen, who had been in charge of Decca Records before Owen Bradley took over, had started his own label after he left Decca called Todd. It was named after his son. And they called us the Todds on Todd Records, and we had this little demo of Tennessee. And Gary, some way or another, got it to Lou Edward and Snuff Garrett, who were producing Jan and Dean, and they cut it. So the first song we wrote hit the Billboard charts, and we thought, "Hey, man, this is easy." We wrote one song, and it hit. And then we followed it up with Popsicle...Popsicle wasn't released for a few years. It may not have come out till '63. I'm not sure what year Popsicle came out, but it did better. I think it got in the top 20. When I started out as a kid making my own living, I started out supporting myself from about 12 years old. I pushed a popsicle wagon out there in Inglewood, and I made enough money to buy my first car at age 14. I saved up $200 one summer. We had some experience in the popsicle world.
Doug Burke:
Well, is Popsicle a double entendre song?
Buzz Cason:
No.
Doug Burke:
No? It's a clean song?
Buzz Cason:
It's about my summertime job's got me working real hard, relax afternoon sitting out in the yard, just me and my baby and we're holding hands, and then Pop! Ding-a-ling, here comes the popsicle man. We always had to get the pa-pa-pa's in there.
Doug Burke:
Now, there is no sexual connotation in this song?
Buzz Cason:
No, unh-uh
Doug Burke:
That's wild.
Buzz Cason:
Get your mind out of the gutter, Doug.
Doug Burke:
I know. I'm in the gutter on this one. I apologize for that. I thought you guys had your tongue in cheek on this-
Buzz Cason:
Yeah, no, it was clean-cut, all-American rock and roll.
Doug Burke:
That went to 21 on the charts, Popsicle, and Tennessee peaked at 69. And that was Jan and Dean, and I guess... Unfortunately, they got in that car wreck, and their career didn't go as far as they would like.
Buzz Cason:
Yes, I became friends with Jan. I worked at Liberty Records from '62 to '64, helping Snuff Garrett out producing. And Jan and I, we would run into each other at the record company. One evening, at the United Recorders down there on Sunset Boulevard, we were in the hallway chatting, and this little girl comes up. I remember she had dirty feet and was kind of ratty-looking a little, but she was cute. She came up and she said, "Hey, guys. Guess what?" Said, "Sonny's going to record me." And it was Cher. Jan and I looked at each other like, "Yeah, sure," you know. Anyway, Sonny and Cher used to come up to the office and visit with Don Blocker, who was our A&R boss there. Kind of knew them just slightly.
Doug Burke:
So you and Bobby Russell... Talk to me about that co-writing partnership. I mean, you were more than just co-writers. You actually became business partners in the music publishing business.
Buzz Cason:
Bobby was just coming into his own as a great lyricist, a great song crafter, a great writer. And from the moment we met, we had a dream of one day having our own publishing. We idolized Don Kirshner and Al Nevins, who had all the music: Neil Sedaka, Carole King, and all those folks up there then. We idolized them, the way they got cuts and had their own publishing. But Bobby was signed to a company, and we didn't co-write much for that. But later on, in '67, we had a brief period in there where we wrote for Bill Justis, the great arranger and the guy that recorded the great hit instrumental Raunchy. We worked for him for a while, and he moved to California to become an arranger out there. And he said, "You guys need to meet Fred Foster." So I went out, talked to Fred, and I had never met him. He produced all the Roy Orbison records, kind of discovered Dolly. He was a great, great record man. Had Monument Records. And we formed a company with him: Rising Sons Music and Records. Mac Gayden and I wrote... At that period of time, in '67, when we wrote Everlasting Love, which came out by Robert Knight on our label, on Rising Sons Records, we were kind of off to the races as publishers, but we still had partners. We had Fred Foster and Jack Kirby, his partner. The deal kind of fizzled out, and we asked for our release from there, and we formed Russell-Cason Music. We immediately had a hit. Bobby wrote The Joker Went Wild for Brian Hyland, which was... I don't know whether you can look that up or not, but it was a pretty good size hit record.
Doug Burke:
Yeah, top 40 in 1966.
Buzz Cason:
Yes. So we were kind of off to the races, had our own little office. And then, in '68, Bobby came. Within two weeks, he wrote two of the big standards of the '60s: Honey, which was a hit by Bobby Goldsboro, and Little Green Apples, which was launched by Roger Miller and was a huge pop hit by O.C. Smith. And over 200 versions on each one of those songs. And it was in those days where you sold a lot of sheet music and albums, and everybody would record the hits in those days. Everybody from Robert Goulet to Sinatra to whoever would cover if you had a big hit pop song.
Doug Burke:
Yeah, well, Little Green Apples was Song of the Year at the Grammys in 1968 and was a particular favorite of Frank Sinatra.
Buzz Cason:
That's right. What a wonderful song. I was the first person to hear it outside of... Bobby may have played it for his wife, if they weren't fighting at the time.
Doug Burke:
That was Vicki Lawrence, who recorded The Night the Lights Went Out in Georgia?
Buzz Cason:
Yeah, but that wasn't his wife at the time.
Doug Burke:
Oh, okay. That was before Vicki. Okay. And the Vicki didn't last too long, either.
Buzz Cason:
No. We had a hit record on Bobby called 1432 Franklin Pike Circle that he wrote. It was Roger Miller-sounding song. And so Bobby was doing a couple TV shows. In California, he met Vicki Lawrence, and they got married, so that kind of ended our partnership. So long about 1970 is when I moved out to Berry Hill and started Creative Workshop, and we started our individual publishing companies at that time.
Doug Burke:
Let's talk about Everlasting Love from 1967. This is obviously one of the most legendary songs of all time. Eventually went to number one for Gloria Estefan, but in '67, was done for the first time by Robert Knight.
Buzz Cason:
That's right.
Doug Burke:
And you wrote this with Mac Gayden?
Buzz Cason:
That's right, and when we had Rising Sons Records, we would request a budget from Fred Foster. He was our backer, and Mac had been acquainted with Robert. He was a young black singer from here in Franklin, Tennessee, where I'm sitting right now. He was in a band called the Fairlanes. And one night... We all played fraternity parties a whole lot, and he was up, I believe, at Sewanee, at that university up there. And he heard this voice sing, and he went down to hear Robert, and he said, "Man, one of these days, I'm going to write you a number one song." Mac said, "Man, we need to record Robert," so we got a budget for him. In those days, you recorded four songs on a three-hour session. That way, you would have two singles, A and a B side. And we needed one more song. Mac was over, it was out in West Nashville, where I lived at the time, and we sat down to write it. And Mac had these two distinct melodies, and I said, "Man, any way you can hook them together as one song? That would be cool." Because if you know anything about Everlasting Love, it's two separate hook sections. It's the "Hearts go astray," and then it's "Open up your eyes," and they're in two different keys. He said, "Sure, I can do that," and so I said, "Well, put it down." He said, "Well, I've got to go. Wife's got dinner waiting." I said, "Well, I'll put some kind of a lyric to it. Then we'll go for it tomorrow night." We had a 10 p.m. session that next night, and we put it on, and if I'm not mistaken, it was the last song on the session. When we started it, everybody just lit up. Everybody was worn out and tired and everything, but we had a great array of musicians. We had Norbert Putnam on bass, had Pig Robbins on piano. Mac Gayden was on guitar, and we had live horns, and myself and Carol Montgomery sang the backgrounds. And it was Brent Maher's first master session, who later on became the great producer of the Judds and was also the chief engineer at Creative Workshop later on. Robert's record just took a long time to break. I don't know what the sales figures on it were. I think something around 400,000 or something because it just sold on and on and would break in one area and then fall down and break in another one. That's why it never charted real high because the impact wasn't in unison with each other, so... And then it got covered in England by a group called Love Affair and went number one over there.
Doug Burke:
Yeah, it went all the way to 13 in the U.S. charts, 14 on the R&B, the Robert Knight version, and 40 in the U.K. And then the Love Affair, which, that video I highly recommend to my listeners. It's really fun to watch. And that went all the way to number one.
Doug Burke:
So tell me what it was like writing with Mac. He was young in his career then, right? Or you guys were both young, I guess, although you'd been in the business for a decade at this point.
Buzz Cason:
Yeah, I was already a veteran. But Mac had played on J.J. Cale's Crazy Mama. He played that wonderful wah slide guitar. He's known all over for his slide playing. But when we write, he plays a set of chords and maybe hums the melody, and the lyrics just jump out of him for me. And then we come up with counter-melodies, and it's wonderful writing with him. And in fact, let me fast forward to right now. We have out a record called Come Along, which myself and Parker Cason produced on Mac. And it's just out now, and it was like renewing an old friendship. We got together and wrote several new songs. But anyway, writing with Mac, it's just always been magical. Just been special. We come from the same R&B background. In fact, first time I met Mac was down at Ernie's Record Mart on Third Avenue in Nashville, which was one of the huge mail-order record stores in the nation, along with Randy Records and Buckley's. We had a communication musically, to begin with, so it's always made it fun for us to be writing together.
Doug Burke:
So Everlasting Love is one of the most incredible love songs. I think it's probably in the top 100 wedding songs, quite frequently played there. Great dance number. Covered by many bands. Tell me about the lyrics. Was this based on anything that was going on in your life?
Buzz Cason:
I was married at the time. There might have been some underlying problems. Later on, we did get divorced. "Hearts go astray, leaving hurt when they go. I went away just when you needed me so. Filled with regret, I come back, begging you, forgive, forget. Where's the love we once knew?" And then the chorus opens up to "Open up your eyes, then you'll realize, here I stand with my everlasting love." He's declaring his love for this person. And what's interesting is, on the second verse, when Mac left, I was pretty tired, and I worked on the lyric. I always say, "Well, maybe that hook came from the Bible, from my Christian ways of Jeremiah." Back in the Bible, where it says, "Yea, I have loved you with an everlasting love"? I don't know. We didn't write a second verse to it. We just ooh-ed it. Whenever I do it live at writer shows, I have the audience ooh along, and boy, it's a beautiful sound. And they just- But when Rachel Sweet and Rex Smith recorded it in the '80s, I think it went top 20, probably on CBS Records, I think. But they came up with a second verse, which we approved. Instead of ooh-ing it, they sang the second verse. And I don't know whether U2, later on, when they did it, I don't know whether they did a second verse or not. I know Bono had the words kind of messed up. I guess he was doing it from memory. But we sure didn't argue with him on that.
Doug Burke:
He didn't ask for permission to change lyrics? He just went ahead and did it?
Buzz Cason:
They just went on and did it, yeah.
Doug Burke:
And you were fine with it, huh?
Buzz Cason:
Oh, yeah. I think it's more like just going from memory of hearing the song, probably, over there in the U.K. somewhere.
Doug Burke:
Yeah, probably on the jukebox from the Love Affair version, would be my guess.
Buzz Cason:
Probably so, yeah.
Doug Burke:
What's your favorite version, out of all of them? Or are they like your children: You like them all?
Buzz Cason:
Well, it's still Robert Knight. There's just something magical in it. It's a slower version. The Carl Carlton version, of course, was the biggest single here in the states. Million-seller. It was recorded right here at Creative Workshop at my studio. I got to sing on it also. Papa Don Schroeder produced it. I still lean towards Robert's version being my favorite. We had elements in it that were neat musically, and his voice just was so tender and so soulful and everything. It was great. Later on, Mac and I had a hit with Robert in England in '74 called Love on a Mountain Top. I had the good fortune, if you want to call it that, of touring with Robert in England in those days.
Doug Burke:
So I always ask my artists if there's any song that they've written and any voice that they would like to sing that song, and I'm going to ask you that late in this episode. But I would love to hear a hip-hop version of Everlasting Love. I would love to hear a modern DJ update this song because this song has charted in four decades, and we need to get a fifth-decade buzz for you of Everlasting Love in the modern vernacular of hip-hop and rap because I think it would work.
Buzz Cason:
We have recorded once again. Me and my son Parker have produced a young man named Brooks Forsyth, who's from Boone, North Carolina. And he came up with the idea. He wrote most of his songs on... We did one album with him on our independent label. We've been working on this one for about a year, and he said, "Man, I'd like to take a shot at Everlasting Love." And I thought, "Well, gosh. He's more of an Americana-style artist." But we came up with a neat arrangement on it. I'll send it to you. It's not hip-hop, but it's got all the energy, all the elements, all the good features of Everlasting Love. And it even has a banjo and a fiddle on it, but they play into the arrangement just beautifully. It's pretty unique. We're hoping it will be the one that will breakthrough for this decade.
Doug Burke:
Yeah. No, it needs to be charting this decade. Gloria Estefan, of course, took it to number one on the dance chart in 1995.
Buzz Cason:
Yeah, Gloria just gave Everlasting Love a great boost, because her version of it hit in so many different countries. And she had a Spanish version, and she had... On the album, I think there were four different mixes that they did of Everlasting Love. So we got credit for four different cuts on that album. She had her cut, Emilio's cut, I think their son's cut, and then a radio mix. Got to meet Emilio. He and Gloria own a hotel in Vero Beach, Florida, and me and my wife were trying to find somewhere to sneak off to. She said, "Let's go to Emilio's hotel." So we went, and we got to meet him, and his daughter was there, and it was a great place. Don't ask me the name of it, but Esto Villa, I don't know. Whatever. Anyway, it's in Vero Beach, but a great, great beachside hotel. But he said, "That's Gloria's favorite song."
Doug Burke:
Oh, really? That's her favorite? That's wonderful.
Buzz Cason:
Yeah. That album was recorded by... Turn the Beat Around was her favorites of the '70s. It was a playlist of her favorite songs, and then that was one of them. So we got extremely lucky on that.
Doug Burke:
So I want to talk about another song that you wrote, which is called Soldier of Love, and this was recorded by the Beatles in July of 1963. And it was on Pop Go the Beatles on the BBC over there in '63 and was, I think, for our contemporary listeners, recorded by Pearl Jam on, I guess, sort of a B-side. No one does an A and B side of the last Kiss album, where they kind of covered some songs from the earlier era that has this romantic emotionalism to it. But your version was recorded by Arthur Alexander. Tell me about Soldier of Love.
Buzz Cason:
Well, the DJ I mentioned a while ago who was the mentor of the Casuals was Noel Ball. And we had a guitar player, Tony Moon, who was quite a songwriter himself, and he was a guitar player for the Casuals. We had met Tony at the Brooklyn Paramount when Richard and I and Bobby Watts had gone up to sing at the Paramount with Brenda for one of Murray the K's Christmas shows. And Tony was in a group called Dante and the Evergreens, who had out a version of Alley-Oop. And he said, "Man, I'm starving in this band." He said, "We're not working." I said, "Well, we're looking for a guitar player, if you want to come to Nashville," and he moved down there. Anyway, Noel Ball came to us, and he said, "Hey, if you guys want to write a song for Arthur..." He always talked very proper all the time. He said, "If you want to write a song for Arthur, I'll record it." And so we went out to Belle Meade, which is a fancy section of Nashville, but Tony had rented a guest house out there, little small room. And we got together out there and wrote... We called it Lay Down Your Arms to begin with, and we presented it to Noel. He said, "Yeah, I'll cut it," and they cut it over at Quonset Hut, the most famous studio on the Music Row, which became Owen Bradley's studio. It was more like a B-side, because there was a Barry Mann song called Where Have You Been on the flip side. And neither one of them really charted very well, but there was a lot of respect for the song, and it became just kind of an underground cult type song people would know. And Marshall Crenshaw recorded it on his Warner Brothers Album. I think it was the only outside song that Marshall did. We didn't realize that the Beatles had recorded it at the BBC. The kids were bootlegging those shows on cassettes. And that's what led Capitol Records to buy all those songs and all those cuts and...
Doug Burke:
It was released in the aftermath of John Lennon's murder in the 1980s, and that's when people kind of discovered it. Because it was just a bootleg, I guess, off of the BBC prior to that.
Buzz Cason:
Yeah, and John Lennon sings lead on it, which kind of gave me chills when I heard it.
Doug Burke:
So the first time you hear it, Buzz, where were you? When was it?
Buzz Cason:
Tony Moon, my co-writer, called me, and he said, "Listen to this." And I heard this scratching record, and he put it on. It was Arthur Alexander: Real laid-back, Southern voice. I said, "Well, that's just Arthur singing our song. What's the big deal?" He said, "Yeah, man, but listen to this." And he played the Beatles singing it. I said, "Can that be who I think it is?" He said, "It sure as hell is." What had happened, there was a young country singer who collected all kinds of music, Melinda Kay Lance, who now works for the great Ray Stevens in merchandise and everything. But anyway, she had found this cut on a cassette, and that was in 1980, when we heard it for the first time.
Doug Burke:
That's wild.
Buzz Cason:
But it had been around since '62, floating around, and we never heard it.
Doug Burke:
So Arthur Alexander is someone who a lot of people don't know, and he recorded the first version of this. That correct?
Buzz Cason:
That's right, yeah. Arthur had the first hit to come out of Muscle Shoals called You Better Move On. And recorded Rick Hall and Fame studios. He was our godfather, man. He was a laid-back, nice, sweet person. Noel Ball helped get the record on Dot, and so he got his foot in the door to produce Arthur, and that's how the Soldier of Love session came about. He also wrote Anna, which the Beatles had recorded. Anna's a great song. And Need a Shot of Rhythm and Blues... I don't know whether the Stones cut that or the Beatles. I'm not sure.
Doug Burke:
Yeah, I went on Spotify, and I listened to Arthur's version of Soldier of Love, and I just was so captured by his voice that I just let a whole Arthur Alexander station play for me for the whole afternoon. I encourage everybody to listen to this.
Buzz Cason:
What a great voice.
Skipping way ahead, Tom Douglas and I wrote Love's the Only House. We were working on a singer-songwriter album for him and coming up with some songs, and we had this one idea, and I can't even remember what it was, but we kept kicking it around and kept beating it to death. Finally, we were just frustrated one day, and he started just playing this kind of Mexican beat thing, and I said, "Man, I love that." He said, "I don't know what I'm doing." I said, "Well, let's put it on tape, man, and write something to it." So we wrote Love's the Only House, and we couldn't get it recorded at first. Well, first of all, I said, "I think it needs a bridge," and actually recorded it and inserted it into the demo. We had one producer that sort of liked it, but Tom went down to the Sony Tree of Music down on the Row, and they have the fire hall, which a lot of folks write songs in. It's an old fire hall. It's been converted to writer rooms and a little studio. And he cut the demo with Rick Schnelly down there. And man, I said, "If we pick the tempo up on this thing, I believe we can get it cut." And sure enough, it came out magical. It just came out wonderful. Tom always sings his demos. He said he's never had a cut he didn't sing on, so...
Doug Burke:
But Martina McBride turned it into a hit, right?
Buzz Cason:
That's right.
Doug Burke:
Off the demo?
Buzz Cason:
Yeah. Everybody wanted it. Tim McGraw's producer had called me and wanted it. I said, "Well, it's too late." I said, "They've already put a hold on it, Martina McBride has." And Paul Worley was a big Tom Douglas fan. He had recorded his first hit, called Little Rock. He produced that record. They actually wanted me to sing background on it, but I was out of town. I couldn't make the session. But Tom played the harmonica on it, which is just a two-note thing. They had called Delbert McClinton in to play on the record, and Paul, the producer, said, "Something's just not right. It just doesn't sound like the demo." He said, "Get whoever played on the demo in here. Let's try him." It turned out it was Tom, so he played on the demo, and then Martina on... It's just a two-note solo. So she pulls out a little harmonica and plays it. I don't know whether she still does, but she did. But a very moving song. It went number two in the country charts. Seemed like there was one station that held out on us, but had a beautiful video to it.
Doug Burke:
Well, the song tells a story, and the video tells a story. It's a really good combination of storytelling, songwriting, which lends itself to a better video. Is this story at all based on personal experience, or just someone you knew? Or is this just you being a generalist songwriter?
Buzz Cason:
It really just came out of our minds, out of our sensitivity and care for the human condition. That's pretty much what it's about: Love's the only house that can take away all the pain in the world. Which is true. And it was kind of a spiritual experience.
Doug Burke:
Yeah. It's a great song. You write great love songs, Buzz, I've got to say.
Buzz Cason:
Thank you.
Doug Burke:
Another one is Timeless and True Love.
Buzz Cason:
Yes. I'm really pleased with that song. That was recorded by the McCarter Sisters for Warner Brothers. There were two great songwriters, friends of mine, Austin Roberts and Charlie Black. When we set out to write, we wrote these traditional-feeling songs. They weren't really the commercial, bro-country, whatever you call it, rocking country things that were happening. And once again, the producer, Paul Worley, comes into play, and he loved Timeless and True Love. And I think it may have gone to number five or something. They had three little girls came down from East Tennessee from up in Sevierville. McCarter Sisters. And they had the big hair. They were cute girls, and everything was moving into kind of more of a slick era in the country field then. And they might have been a little too country for Nashville; I don't know. But they didn't last too long around here. But they were charming and sang that song beautifully.
Doug Burke:
Yeah, the song has a beautiful fiddle in it, which I guess wasn't as contemporary, but it stands out to me.
Buzz Cason:
Yeah, it's got a great sound. And then, later on, Jeannie Kendall, who was part of a father-and-daughter duo, the Kendalls, was doing her solo album. This has probably been 10 years ago, but she was reaching out to different artists to do duets with her. And so she had contacted Alan Jackson, and Alan said, "Sure, Jeannie. I'd love to cut with you," he said, "and I've got a song I'd love to do with you," and it was Timeless and True Love. They did a great job of it, a duet. Alan recorded his version of it, and then she did her version of it. His never came out. I begged Joe Galante. I tried to get RCA to put it out, but he really sang it nice. It wasn't in that, just that straight country feel. He had kind of a folk feel about him. But anyway, it's a special song. When I do my songwriter shows, it goes over real well.
Doug Burke:
I love this one line in this: "My love is no less tender born of fire and steel, and the world could never change the way I feel."
Buzz Cason:
Yeah, I've got to give that to Charlie Black. I'm pretty sure Charlie came up with that line. That always blew me away.
Doug Burke:
Oh, really? You're writing with a guy like Charlie Black, and he comes up with that. Is it like, you just know that's going in the song? You're like, "That's it"?
Buzz Cason:
You know it right away. Yeah. There's no turning back on that.
Doug Burke:
So Buzz, you wrote a song, A Million Old Goodbyes, which Mel Tillis recorded, and this is a breakup song. So tell me about where this one came from, because it's different than your love songs.
Buzz Cason:
Well, this was written as kind of a little mini-project with my co-writers, Bobby Russell and Steve Gibb, both who have passed on since then. Of course, Bobby Russell, we talked about before, had written Honey and Little Green Apples and The Night the Lights Went Out in Georgia. And Steve Gibb was a kid that I discovered with the help of some other songwriters who wrote She Believes in Me, the biggest song I ever published or recorded, of course, by Kenny Rogers. And we had talked. We said, "Well, let's us three try to write." So in those days, in Brentwood, Tennessee, out at the corner of Franklin Road and Old Hickory Boulevard, there was a restaurant. It was kind of a nightclub-ish kind of a restaurant. I can't remember the name of it right now. But anyway, we met out there, and both of these boys were healthy drinkers, and they could put it away. I mean, I couldn't keep up with them. So we went through a couple of bottles of wine, and I said, "Hey, guys, we're supposed to be writing tonight." Said, "Well, let's go on down to the studio and see what happens." And so I thought to myself, "Man, this is going to be a fiasco." We got into my office, and I had a little Wurlitzer piano in there. Steve Gibb was an excellent piano player. He was a classically trained pianist and taught music. And he sat down, and him and Russell... I mean, it was like these two very large egos going at each other. Not in a combative way, but in a friendly kind of a...
Doug Burke:
A one-upmanship?
Buzz Cason:
Yeah, kind of jousting. But anyway, Russell said, "Okay, Gibb, play me one of those fine classical melodies." And Steve, without missing a beat, played this nice, classical-sounding intro. I said, "Well, we've got the intro, that's for sure." And it turned out to be the melody of the verse which starts out with: "There's a plane out tonight, and I swear to you I'm going to take that flight. Don't you come to see me cry? You've seen it in a million old goodbyes." And so we were off, man. That launched us. The lyrics just flowed out of each one of us. We all had our shot at it. Steve was pretty much carrying the melody. Then I said, "Man, we need a bridge." We sat there, and Bobby just... I think he had little havens of lyrics living in his mind and his soul that would just come out at a certain, appropriate time. And he said, "I don't know the melody. I think I came up with the melody of the bridge." But he said, "Breaking up some time is more loving than the staying up, crying nights, and trying how to patch it up, knowing it was something needing giving up." And boy, I fell over the chair. I thought, "Oh, man, we got a bridge now." So I put that little melody to it. It's a very melodic song. I think I pitched it to Martha Sharp, who I mentioned before. She got Mel to cut it, or I think Jimmy Bowen was producing him. I think it went number five in the country charts. It was a good song for us, and Mel told me how much he loved it. I had known Mel from way back, and he said, "Buzz, I do that in my show every night." Said, "I love that song."
Doug Burke:
I really like the line in the song: "There was me, there was you, but there never was an us to hook onto."
Buzz Cason:
Yeah. That was a closer. It's really a powerful song.
Doug Burke:
It's a very simple but powerful lyric, you know?
Buzz Cason:
Yeah, and Mel was a great ballad singer, a great crooner himself, and he really delivered that song. He really sold it very well.
Doug Burke:
Buzz, tell me how you got around to starting the Creative Workshop.
Buzz Cason:
Well, back in '69, Bobby and I wanted to move our little office out off of Music Row. There were a bunch of break-ins going on over out there, and we didn't particularly like our landlord where we were. We had a friend, Leroy Norton, who worked at the First American National Bank out in Hundred Oaks, which is right across from the Berry Hill section of town. He pulled us over there, and he kind of whispered, he said, "Hey, they're getting ready to go commercial over in Berry Hill. You guys ought to buy you some property over there, one of those little houses or something." So we went over on Bransford Avenue and bought two houses back to back, one on Bransford and one on the street behind it. But about that same time, Bobby had fallen in love with Vicki Lawrence on the Carol Burnett Show, and he planned to move to California. So we broke up our partnership, and I sold him my part of the one of those two lots we had bought and moved around the corner onto Azalea Place, and there's where I set up my studio, and I recruited Travis Turk, who had been over at Spar Studios. We had worked together doing soundalike records over in a studio close to Vanderbilt, a basement studio. And that's where we actually cut the first Jimmy Buffett album, which was really a demo album, but Barnaby wanted to put it out anyway.
Doug Burke:
So the Creative Workshop was this totally different vibe of a recording studio back in the day, and it really is well-covered in the documentary that you made about it, how you guys really fostered a collaborative musical environment, and it wasn't "Cut four songs in a two-hour period. 30 minutes, 30 minutes, 30 minutes, 30 minutes. Four songs and you're out." It was very different vibe. And it was in that scene you more or less discovered or championed the first sound of Jimmy Buffett.
Buzz Cason:
Yes. It was actually the second collection of songs. The first one, like I mentioned, was recorded over at Spar Studios, and it was a bunch of demos. And Jimmy Buffett, myself, and a DJ named Captain Midnight and a couple other guys, Dave Conrad, we played tennis together. Now, the only one of us out of the four that could play tennis was Mike Sheppard, who was running Barnaby Records for Andy Williams down on the Row. I mentioned to him one day after tennis, I said, "You know, Buffett's a singer, a songwriter." He said, "Oh, is he really?" I said, "Yeah." He said, "Bring me something." So I took his collection of songs, and he said, "Hey, I want to put it out." I said, "No, wait a minute, Mike." I said, "We need to go to a real studio and cut these. This is just done in our little basement place down here." He said, "No, I want them like they are." So he gave us $2,500 for the whole album. And I asked Buffett, I said, "You think we ought to do it?" He said, "Well, I need something to sell on the road anyway, so..." He was starting to play colleges and touring around. And so we did it, and Buffett jokes, he says, "I think we sold 300 records or something." I said, "Yeah, if we sold that many." As a follow-up, Jimmy and I had this concept album idea called High Cumberland Jubilee, about a couple that lived up in the Cumberland Mountains, east of Nashville, and they were having some problems and stuff and drug problems and different things. We wrote these songs, and we actually started recording in Creative Workshop before it was even finished. I mean, the floors weren't in, and the walls weren't done, and Travis and I couldn't wait to turn that machine on and get to recording, so… The album was pretty good. We brought Bergen White in to do some strings, and once again, I did voices with him, and Jimmy and I wrote most of it. The problem was, it didn't tickle Barnaby's fancy. They didn't care for it, so they didn't put it out. So it didn't come out till later on, Before the Salt, and then it came it out on Jimmy's Margaritaville label, called Before the Beach, and did quite well.
Doug Burke:
You know, his fans... It's before he moved to Key West and created the so-called gulf and western sound and the Parrothead sound. It's got a very different style to it, and so his fans don't like it. It reminds me a little bit of Bruce Springsteen's first albums and Bob Dylan's first album. It's just a different style of music than what took him to the big time. But I really enjoyed listening to it, and I really enjoyed listening to High Cumberland Jubilee. Tell me about writing that song.
Buzz Cason:
Yeah, well, that's kind of the theme... Well, it is the theme of the story, and we used kind of a rocking bluegrass beat to it. I think we used Bobby Thompson, who was the great banjo player at the time, and we had Randy Goodrum on keyboard. I played a little keyboard on part of the record. We had outstanding musicians on it, and there was kind of an instrumental interlude in it that's very good. Then there's two pieces to the song High Cumberland Jubilee. There's High Cumberland Jubilee, and then High Cumberland Jubilee Reprise, or something we called it. It's filled in with just regular commercial songs, but it's a fun project. Buffett says it was a time of music when there was concept records. He said, "So we did a concept record. It may not have been a good concept, but we did one."
Doug Burke:
It's so funny to see him in those dashiki shirts instead of the sort of Caribbean multi-colored shirts. He was in a different place at that point in time, and musically, he was in a different place than where he got to later. It's really an interesting time capsule.
Buzz Cason:
It was kind of the end of the folk era for Jimmy. His songs were pretty much folkish when he came to us. I tell everybody when he came, we fell in love with the person more than his music, because he didn't really have any, what you call hits, when he came up from Mobile. But he had that spirit and that drive about him and that personality. But he was totally un-Nashville, so he didn't fit into the Nashville scene at all. He wound up cutting several hit records there when Don Gant took over producing him. In fact, Don and Bergen White and myself sang on five of the first albums. Did background vocals for him. But he found his niche, that's for sure.
Doug Burke:
Yeah, the gulf and western sound. You know, Creative Workshop became legendary after that. You had Dolly Parton, Jerry Reed, Merle Haggard, the Judds, the Doobie Brothers, Emmylou Harris, Olivia Newton-John. She's in the documentary, all recording there. It's pretty interesting history.
Buzz Cason:
A lot of artists pass through those doors, and it's been 50 years. It was 1970 when this started out, and we just recently unveiled a fence, a wall, we call it. We call it our wall of stars. There's a great artist, Scott Guion, who had done some murals for the House of Blues down the street from us. I commissioned him to do this painting. It starts out from the left with just Travis and Jimmy and me pictured, and then it goes on up through Leon Russell, the Doobie Brothers. The Gatlin Brothers recorded five number one records there, and it has the portrait of Fred Foster, the great producer who produced them. And then Olivia Newton-John and Kenny Rogers and Dottie West and Dan Penn, the great songwriter. Just did his new album, which is called Living on Mercy, which is just out. Sugarcane Jane, husband-and-wife duo that we produced two records on them. Good friends. And it shows Parker, my son, and his studio dog, Ollie. He had a Jack Russell that was the studio dog. We had a nice crowd there for the opening, and there's been a lot of talent. Of course, Merle is on that wall. Merle loved that old studio.
Doug Burke:
Hey, so you and your two sons have some new music out. You have not stopped, Buzz, at all, creating music since you started. Two songs you wanted to talk about: Montana and Why. I just love these songs. You're still doing it.
Buzz Cason:
Yes. I had written Montana with the idea of having the guys come in on harmony. And also, the story relates to a trip that we took with their mother back in, I guess, the late '80s, out to Montana, to a ranch. Just had a great time, and we were near Jordan, Montana. And at that time, they had the Freemen up in the hills, protesting the government about something or another. We spent the week there and just fell in love with the place, and it's kind of a story surrounding that. But the guys, we blend real well together. We don't sing that much together, but they fell right in on that. Taylor had sung lead. I failed to mention, his version of Soldier of Love is cut 10 on the album, which is kind of a special arrangement that's never been done before on Soldier of Love. Taylor, my older son, has a tremendous R&B-style voice that really cuts through on that version.
Doug Burke:
What's it like playing with your family?
Buzz Cason:
Oh, there's nothing like it. It's fun. We very seldom do anything live together. Parker's been real aggressive about being in the business, and Taylor, I don't think could quite put up with it. They both are music-degree graduates, Parker from Belmont University and Taylor from Middle Tennessee State, and they both went through the music business programs. They know about the business, but we enjoy what time we have together, singing together, that's for sure.
Doug Burke:
The song Why, I think, is one of your real most mature songs as a songwriter. It really is a reflection on life in some ways. It's just a beautiful, beautiful song.
Buzz Cason:
Thank you. That song came down from heaven or wherever. It just floats on out, and it didn't have to struggle with it. And I had a friend I mentioned before, Brooks Forsyth, who cut a couple of albums with us. He's a great acoustic player, and he helped me work out this little guitar lick on it. In fact, he plays on the session. Then we had Sadler Vaden on guitar, who is an outstanding guitarist and plays with Jason Isbell and the 400 Unit. Some good musicians on it. I never got the vocal really like I wanted it, but I felt that the vocal was sensitive-feeling enough to fit the song. We went in and did the harmonies, and it really kind of put it over the top, I thought, on the chorus. They come in with a real high "why" sound. It's kind of a reflection on life. It's a little deeper than most of my songs.
Doug Burke:
Right. What are you trying to say here?
Buzz Cason:
It says, "Why do we ask why anyway? Why don't we ask God to give us another day?" Or just, "Why not ask why, but thank God for giving us yet another day." That's kind of the crux of it.
Doug Burke:
We don't always get the answers why.
Buzz Cason:
That's right, we don't. Yeah.
Doug Burke:
Well, I have to thank you, Buzz. Can I ask you a few questions, do you remember where you were the first time you heard one of the songs you wrote on the radio?
Buzz Cason:
That's a good question. Probably, when I heard My Love Song For You on the air with the Casuals, because Noel Ball, as they used to say, played the grooves off of it in the vinyl days. I'd probably be driving around in my old '46 Dodge when I heard it first time. There's nothing like that for a songwriter, and I've heard many of them say there's just nothing like hearing your music on the radio. You can get the record and put it on a record player or play a tape of it or something, but it's nothing like when you hear it on the air, and somebody has taken the time to listen to it, like it, and spin it or put it on the air. It's a thrill like... Well, it never gets old.
Doug Burke:
Well, I've got to thank you, Buzz Cason. This has been fantastic. Thank you for joining Backstory Song, and thank you for the gift of your songwriting and your performance gifts and your recording gifts and your publishing gifts and everything you've done for all the musicians and songwriters and producers that you've worked with. You are really a real giver to the industry, and we're very, very grateful for everything you've given us.
Buzz Cason:
Well, thank you so much. It's been an honor to be with you, Doug, and just a real privilege, and I appreciate your research and your care and your interest in songwriters and what you do for us, and you really do your homework, and it's just a pleasure to be with you.
Doug Burke:
Thank you.
Buzz Cason:
Thank you.
