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 ongwriter
Harlan Howard has absconded to eternity, leaving behind the great
"I Fall To Pieces" (a hit for Patsy Cline) plus many other
country classics, including "Busted" (for Ray Charles),
"I've Got a Tiger by the Tail" (written with Buck Owens),
and "Heartaches by the Number," which lifted him out of
a California factory and landed him in bucolic Nashville.
His was a great American story. He came from nowhere, climbed high,
and helped other songwriters and crooners make their way in the
world. One of those he assisted was Jackson Leap, who has been my
songwriting guru and sometime collaborator. I rang Jackson the other
day for his memories of HH.
Jackson was 35 when he met Harlan, 62. The grand old man had summoned
him to a Nashville barroom after his wife had heard one of Jackson's
demo tapes. Harlan drank White Russians; Jackson is a beer man.
Despite that obstacle, the two hit it off and Harlan soon created
a publishing company to promote his and Jackson's work.
This was a big break for Jackson, an echo of HH's big break in
the late 1950s. The place was California. HH taken to songwriting
but had little hope of making money at it, and so supported himself
as a forklift operator. He did make some good contacts, however,
and one day handed a few songs to Johnny Bond and Tex Ritter.
One day, the phone rang. HH was summoned from his forklift and
discovered, much to his surprise, that he was talking to Charlie
Walker, a star at the Grand Old Opry. "It's a hit!" he
was told. "What's a hit?" responded HH. "Heartaches
By The Number." HH thanked him and went back to work. Reality
didn't set in until a bit later, when he received a royalty check--a
large royalty check. He was inspired to abandon the forklift and
head for Nashville.
"He was on fire in the early 1960s," Jackson recalled.
"Sometimes he'd write six songs a day." In 1961, he had
15 songs on the country charts--simultaneously. That record still
stands. All told, he had more than 100 songs on the Billboard Top
10 country list.
"He was a morning writer," Jackson adds. "We'd get
together at 6:30 or 7. He wrote from titles. If he could imagine
seeing a title I brought in on one of those paper title slips on
a juke box, he'd go after the song." One such song they wrote
together was "I've Got a Funny Feeling," which they knocked
off in about 20 minutes and which was later recorded by George Strait.
These short bouts of inspiration can result in a serious cash blizzard.
Jackson, for instance, woke up one morning with a title in his head:
"I Want You Bad and That Ain't Good." The song was five
minutes in the writing, and the proceeds covered the cost of a very
nice house. It must be said that this anecdote is what drew me to
country music.
Of course, one never knows when and if inspiration will strike.
For HH, it struck often and sometimes in somewhat unusual places.
Jackson told how HH came to write "I've Got a Tiger by the
Tail." The place was Texas. HH and Buck Owens, the singing
sensation, were on tour. Owens had come up with the Tiger title,
which HH didn't like, no matter how much Owens pushed it during
long drives between gigs. "One day," Jackson says, "Howard
was sitting in the back seat while Buck was up front. Harlan got
bored and so he grabbed a piece of paper and wrote the lyrics. He
threw them over the front seat and said 'There's your song.' He
just wanted to shut Buck up. Buck of course took the lyrics and
turned out a huge hit."
HH and Jackson were a team for five years. Like most people who
write for a living, HH had his eccentricities. "He was sort
of superstitious about guitars," Jackson recalls. "He
would say that the songs came out of the guitars, and he'd keep
one until he thought he had squeezed all the songs out of it. Then
he'd give it away." HH gave Jackson a 12-string Martin. "He
said, 'Here kid, see if you can find any songs in this one."
A few lurked therein, though the instrument now hangs on his office
wall.
After writing sessions Jackson might head home, and Harlan might
go chasing a few Russians and "regale the juveniles,"
as he put it. That is, he held court, giving advice, praise, and
precious little damnation to struggling writers and singers. This
had been his habit for many years. At one point, he convinced Conway
Twitty to stop singing rock 'n' roll and turn to country. He also
had practical advice for writers. "A lot of the songs you write
are nothing but pencil sharpeners," he was fond of saying.
"They might not be any good but by writing them you prepare
yourself for the time the great idea comes along. Throw your turkeys
in a drawer. You can pick the bones later on." He had a ready
definition of what country music should be: "Three chords and
the truth."
The last years were hard, both because of illness and because old
pals died, including Roger Miller and Chet Atkins. When Waylon Jennings
reached his end a few weeks back, the blow was especially hard.
Jennings recorded over 40 of Harlan Howard songs, says Jackson,
and so the bond was especially close. On his last day, Harlan had
called a friend over, shared a beer, and seemed to be rallying.
After the friend departed, his wife left the room for a brief moment.
In her absence, HH died. "It wasn't a bad ending," said
Jackson. "Sort of like out of a story book."
How will country music remember Harlan Howard? "He was our
Irving Berlin," says Jackson. So a fond farewell to an American
original, who rode those three chords a long way--and took many
others along for a very pleasant ride.
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