- [Announcer 1] "The Songwriters" is supported in part by... the Nashville Convention and Visitors Corporation, Rusty and Kacie Gaston, The Mike Curb Foundation, SESAC, BMI, and ASCAP, Rich and Charlotte Hallworth, Kerry O'Neil and Carla Wallace.

Additional support is provided by... (peaceful piano music) ♪♪ (peaceful piano music continues) ♪♪ (peaceful piano music continues) ♪♪ (mellow guitar music) ♪♪ (mellow guitar music continues) ♪♪ (mellow guitar music continues) ♪♪ - Welcome to "The Songwriters."

I'm Ken Paulson.

And today, we are shooting from a new location.

We are in Allentown Studios where so many folks who have had hits written by Nashville Songwriter Hall of Fame members have recorded.

Also, members of the Hall of Fame, with their own performing careers have done some of their best work here.

So, we're honored to be here, and particularly honored to have our guest here today.

Welcome, Kent Blazy.

- Thank you.

- It's good to see you.

You're prominent in my record collection.

I quote both the songs written for others, but also, I think you have about six albums yourself.

- Right.

I love doing my own thing.

- And you were doing your own thing as a young man, I think probably a member of a generation that... I mean, I think you probably picked up a guitar and started playing for other folks just as the singer-songwriter movement came along.

- Pretty much, yeah.

- And you love guitar.

I know that.

And you clearly have a fine voice.

Did you know then that you could write songs?

- I didn't, but I had... had lyrics, poetry published in like high school magazines and high school newspapers.

And so, the minute I got a guitar, of course I thought, well, I don't know anybody else's songs, so I guess I'll start writing my own songs with the lyrics that I had, and kind of started from there.

- And the beauty there, you can't do that wrong, right?

- Exactly.

And your mama likes it.

- Yeah.

There you go.

Especially if you mention her occasionally.

- Exactly.

- I'm always, you know, the world knows all these people who can sing and play guitar and this town, Nashville's, full of them and they all think they can write.

- Right.

- But that's wrong.

- That's wrong that they can write.

- And they're different, they're different talent sets.

- Right.

Exactly.

- And how did you figure out that you had the stuff to actually be a professional songwriter?

- I just kept studying everybody I could.

Bob Dylan was a big influence.

All the groups coming out in the '60s that were writing their own material.

And I would just read lyrics.

I would read novels trying to get better as a lyricist.

And just kind of kept at it all the time and not giving up.

And you know, if you told people in Lexington, Kentucky you wanted to be a songwriter, they wanted to lock you up.

But I just knew that was what I wanted to do from the very beginning when I picked up a guitar.

- And of course passion is everything and- - Right.

- What could be a less secure profession?

- Right.

Maybe an actor.

- Yeah, an actor.

A sculptor?

- Right.

A poet.

- Yeah, a poet.

Really.

Yeah, a songwriter has it made compared to a poet, but you know, your next meal depends on your next song being embraced by somebody else.

- Exactly.

That's right.

- You had pretty good success early on in this town with a song by Gary Morris.

- Correct.

- And it's also, it's both a story of success and a heartbreaker.

But let's start with the success.

How did you get your song to Gary Morris?

- I had a friend in Bloomington, Indiana where my wife had been going to school who called me one day and said, "I have a friend down in Nashville that's a music publisher.

Would you want to meet with him?"

And it was a guy by the name of Jim Dahl.

And so, I went down and played Jim some songs and he liked what he heard, but he really wanted me to be a tape copy guy.

And so I started out being a tape copy guy for him.

And then he figured out I could play guitar.

So I started playing on some of his sessions and finally he said, "Well, let's write together."

So we wrote some things and maybe like the fourth or fifth song was "Headed For a Heartache."

And he was playing softball with Gary Morris.

They were on the same Warner Brothers team and he took a cassette of "Headed For a Heartache" and gave it to Gary during the softball game.

And they ended up cutting it and it went to top five in the first maybe year and a half I was in town.

And about two or three weeks later, I got maybe five or six other songs cut and I thought, "This is really easy."

- Yeah.

- Wrong.

- Yeah, and then something unfortunate happened with your publishing.

- Yeah, I lost my publishing deal.

The company that he was with went out of business, so I was kind of on my own.

And you know, it's one of those things when you move to Nashville and you want to be a songwriter, you gotta have all the irons in the fire that you can.

So, I was writing songs.

I was playing in bands.

I was doing anything I could that was part of music just to keep going.

And getting little cuts along the way, but you know, they didn't pay like they pay now.

Like, even a Tom Jones cut or something, which you think would make a lot of money, really didn't garner a lot of money back then.

- Do you have a Tom Jones cut?

- I do have a Tom Jones cut.

- What is that song?

- It's called "TLC", "Tender Loving Care."

And it was the title of his album that he did with, I think, Steve Popovich.

And he actually performed it on "The Tonight Show," which was- - Wow.

- Which impressed your relatives, you know?

You could say, "Well, I've got a song by so-and-so," but if Tom Jones did it on "The Tonight Show," then maybe something was really big.

- Well, that, and was that in the era, the mid '70s when he was- - Probably mid '80s.

- Oh, okay.

- 'Cause in the '70s, he was flirting with Country, as was Tina Turner.

- And I think he, that's what he did.

He kept with Steve and they did some Country records.

And then Steve kept working with him when he went back more Pop, 'cause this was more of a Pop song.

But it was just an honor because "Green, Green Grass of Home" by Norbert Putnam, I mean, Curly Putman was one of the first songs I learned on guitar.

So, it was an honor to have Tom Jones doing a song.

- You know, it's funny, you and we'll talk about this.

You worked very closely with Garth Brooks.

No one could be bigger in Country music than Garth Brooks.

But I found that all kinds of Country songwriters, their real thrill is getting that Dusty Springfield cut or that Tom Jones cut that, you know, it's like- - It's just out of nowhere cuts, you know?

- Yeah.

The cuts that fall outside of the genre that you never dreamed you would have.

- Exactly.

- Well, that's, that's a very cool cut.

And I am confident I have that on vinyl at home and that's my first stop.

- Well, and that was Paul Warley's very first thing that he got to produce, and he did such a great job.

He came up with that guitar lick, which to me made the song.

And, you know, these Nashville musicians don't really get the accolades that they deserve for what they do to create the music that we hear on the radio.

- Well, you know, you talk about all the irons in the fire.

So, you know, you're a survivor.

You do all kinds of things.

You have a lot of talent.

And what's interesting and just tells you that being a successful songwriter requires a long view.

Your greatest success is still a ways off.

- Right.

- You know, more than a decade until you explode as- - Exactly.

- The Nashville Songwriter Hall of Fame inductee you are.

And so, I assume you got a lot of modest hits and... - Mmm hmm.

Well, what it allowed me to do is start a little recording studio.

I started with four tracks and I would do demos for other writers.

And then I kept getting eight track, you know, and building up.

And so, if you sing like me in Nashville, you need demo singers.

And so, I had to have a stable of demo singers and I had Faith Hill and Martina McBride, Joe Diffie, Randy Travis, Trisha Yearwood.

And so, that's how I met Garth.

He wanted to sing demos for me 'cause he was cleaning churches and selling boots.

- Wow.

- And he came over with Bob Doyle and played me a cassette of six songs.

And I loved his voice.

And I said, "I'll be glad to start using you on some stuff."

And when they were leaving, Bob turned to me and said, "Well, Garth writes a little bit too."

I'm thinking, "Okay, this guy's cleaning churches and selling boots.

I'll write with him."

And so that's the first thing we got together to do before he even sang a demo for me was write.

And the first thing we wrote was "If Tomorrow Never Comes."

- And did the genesis of that come from Garth or from you?

- It came from him.

When I get together to write with other writers, I try to have a list of titles and ideas and musical ideas I can run by 'em.

So, I was on the couch working on some stuff and I had no idea who this kid from Oklahoma was cleaning churches and selling boots.

And he came through my front door and he walked up to me and he was looking down on me and I was up on the couch and he said "I've got this song I've run by 25 writers and nobody likes it."

I looked up at him and I said, "Well, gee, thanks."

And he kind of got testy and he said, "Well, don't you want to hear it?"

And I said, "Yeah, play me what you got."

And he played me what he had.

And I said, "I love this.

This is what my mother used to tell me.

Tell the people you love how you feel about 'em while they're still alive."

And he said, "Well, what's wrong with it?"

And I said, "Well, you're killing somebody off in the first two lines of the song and there's really nowhere to go.

It's like killing the star of the movie off in the first three minutes."

So he said, "What would you do?"

And I told him, and we did it.

And at the end of the day, we had a song.

And what's so funny is, you know, Garth keeps saying, "Well, he just spit the first verse out."

And I was looking at the lyrics when the Hall of Fame thing came up and "If Tomorrow Never Comes" title, it's at the top of the page.

And then below it's the chorus and then the second verse.

But at the bottom, in Garth's handwriting is the very first verse.

So I must have spit it out and he wrote it down.

But the funny thing is he's never written another lyric down of anything we've ever written.

- Right.

- He's just got a mental trap up there.

But it's kind of funny to see that, that that actually must have been what happened.

And it was one of those things where we wrote it and we thought it was a really good song and we pitched it around town and pitched him around town and nobody was interested in either thing.

And finally one night he got to play one song at the Bluebird and for somebody else who'd canceled, and he played "If Tomorrow Never Comes."

And Lynn Schults, who was at Capitol at the time, had passed on him for the third time that week, but he came up after the show and said, "Hey, maybe we missed something.

Why don't you come back in?"

- Wow.

- He went back in, got a record deal, and "If Tomorrow Never Comes" was his second single and his first number one, so... - So this song, in addition to being one of his biggest hits, was really the igniter of his career.

- Pretty much, yes.

- Can we hear this?

- Sure!

- Please.

(Kent plays intro to "If Tomorrow Never Comes") ♪♪ ♪ Well, sometimes late at night ♪ ♪ I lie awake and watch her sleeping ♪ ♪♪ ♪ She's lost in peaceful dreams ♪ ♪ So I turn out the light and lay there in the dark ♪ ♪♪ ♪ And the thought crosses my mind ♪ ♪♪ ♪ If I never wake up in the morning ♪ ♪♪ ♪ Would she ever doubt ♪ ♪ The way I feel about her in my heart ♪ ♪♪ ♪ And if tomorrow never comes ♪ ♪♪ ♪ Will she know how much I loved her ♪ ♪♪ ♪ And did I try in every way ♪ ♪ To show her every day ♪ ♪ That she's my only one ♪ ♪ And if my time on earth were through ♪ ♪♪ ♪ And she must face this world without me ♪ ♪♪ ♪ Is the love I gave her in the past ♪ ♪ Gonna be enough to last ♪ ♪ If tomorrow never comes ♪ ♪♪ ♪ 'Cause I've lost loved ones in my life ♪ ♪♪ ♪ Who never knew how much I loved them ♪ ♪♪ ♪ Now I live with the regret ♪ ♪ That my true feelings for them never were revealed ♪ ♪♪ ♪ So I made a promise to myself ♪ ♪♪ ♪ To say each day how much she means to me ♪ ♪♪ ♪ And avoid that circumstance ♪ ♪ Where there's no second chance to tell her how I feel ♪ ♪ And if tomorrow never comes ♪ ♪♪ ♪ Will she know how much I loved her ♪ ♪♪ ♪ And did I try in every way ♪ ♪ To show her every day that she's my only one ♪ ♪♪ ♪ And if my time on earth were through ♪ ♪♪ ♪ And she must face this world without me ♪ ♪♪ ♪ Is the love I gave her in the past ♪ ♪ Gonna be enough to last ♪ ♪ If tomorrow never comes ♪ ♪♪ ♪ So tell that someone that you love ♪ ♪ Just what you're thinking of ♪ ♪ If tomorrow never comes ♪ ♪♪ - Just beautiful.

- Thank you.

- There've gotta be 25 songwriters out there who are doing this every time it comes on the radio.

- Well, there were a lot of people that were friends of mine that told me they'd been asked to write with him and they didn't.

And it's like, well, I'm glad you didn't.

- I find it interesting that that Garth Brooks was that confident, you know, and 'cause you were highly successful for quite a long time.

And he's saying, "Well, what's wrong with it?"

It's like, you know, that's somebody who believed in their art, if you will.

- Well, you know, after that day, I thought, this guy's 50 going on 25, you know?

It's like, where did he come from to be able to write that stuff?

And it's just interesting when you hear what people that are 25 are writing now compared to the depth that he brought into all those songs back then.

- And that's it.

I mean, there eventually will be a "Beer Run" and there will be, I mean, "Low Places."

- Right.

- But, that's, that is profound.

It is.

- It really is for somebody 25 years old.

And he grasped that back then.

And the other thing about him that was very interesting, because I was working with so many great people.

Billy Dean was another one.

We had a band together, great singer, songwriter.

But Garth had a vision of what he was gonna do and where he was gonna go that just kept unfolding the longer I was with him.

Like, one of the first songs that Kim Williams and I wrote with him was a song called "Cold Shoulder."

And he didn't even have a record deal at the time.

And when we finished it, he said, "That's gonna be on my third album."

And I thought, "He doesn't even have a first album."

But third album came out and there it was, so.

- Amazing.

No one could have anticipated what would happen with Garth Brooks.

But it was an awfully good relationship to have as he became sort of the Elvis Presley of, you know, Country.

- Really.

- And it probably is somewhat emboldening too in knowing that, that this kind of an artist who is ambitious is gonna listen to your ideas.

- Right.

- You can be, you can push it and do songs that you would think would never be recorded by anybody else, but maybe this guy.

- Right.

And you know, I listen to some of these songs and I know they would never be recorded by anybody else.

And I know Tony Arata feels the same way, but he just has a depth of what he sees the possibilities are in a song.

And it's pretty amazing to be around him.

- Yeah.

So beyond the profundity, there's some things that are just fun, "Ain't Going Down 'Til the Sun Comes Up."

- Right.

- That's yours as well.

- Mmm hmmm.

- And... what was the inspiration for that?

- Well, Garth a lot of times has an idea that he knows when he comes in that this is what he wants.

And he called me one day and he said, "I want to write a song with machine gun lyrics.

Call Kim Williams."

So I thought, "I don't know what that means," but I called Kim and told him.

He said, "What's that mean?"

And I said, "I don't know, but it's Garth."

So he came over to this house I just moved into and it had sat vacant for a year and a half and needed all kind of work.

So, we went out on the back porch and we wrote machine gun lyrics all day on legal pads and just laughed and had a great time 'til we were so sunburned that we had to come back in the house.

And so Kim, he was kind of the secretary.

He got all the lyrics together and Garth said, "I want to do a demo of this."

And so I didn't have a lot of my studio set up, but he said, "If we get a good demo on this, I'm gonna cut it on my next album.

It's going to be the first single, and I'm gonna fly across the stage in Dallas singing this song."

And I'm thinking, "He's, once again, he's delusional," you know?

But he had it all planned out in his head.

So I got a little bit of my studio set up and he wanted a drum machine on it.

And usually when we did demos, we just did guitar vocals.

And I said, "Well, you know, drum machines aren't real good, but if you have a guitar player program under drum machine and it sounds like a guitar player's playing drums, that's not a good thing."

So I started the drum machine and Kim and Garth were standing behind me and I was working the controls.

And I heard one of them go, "Oh my God."

And I turned around and there were termites coming out of the floor, the ceiling, the walls.

I guess the drum machine made 'em mad.

And so I was kind of freaked out 'cause I have a letter that there's no termites in my new house.

And Kim, with his great sense of humor, he says, "Oh man, don't worry about it.

When Garth and I wrote "Papa Loved Mama," there were cockroaches crawling all over my apartment, and it was a number one song, so this will be too."

And he was right.

And then when Garth did tell us he was going to Dallas, of course, we had to go down there and see him do it.

And we were backstage before that.

And he said, "I just want to let you guys know the rope broke yesterday."

And I'm going, "Okay, thanks."

But it was so exciting to see him flying across the stage singing your song, you know?

- That's fantastic.

- But you never know what he's got going on in his brain.

- That's right.

- With "Beer Run," - Mmm hmmm.

you got George Jones added to the mix.

- Right.

What a, you know.

I always wanted a George Jones cut and I'd come very close.

And who would've think in a roundabout way that it would come because of Garth?

And it was just so exciting to hear those two voices together.

- How did George Jones get involved?

- You know, I think, they had kind of a funny relationship because Garth was so enamored of George because George was like his hero, that anytime George would come in the room, Garth would leave.

And so George thought that Garth didn't like him.

But it was just Garth, he was such a star in Garth's mind.

So when we wrote this song, he said, "I'm gonna see if I can get George Jones to come sing on this," which surprised me.

But I guess he approached him, called him up, and George said he would do it.

And what a thrill.

I mean, the sad part about that song is it came out as a single, and it was the fastest rising single Garth had ever had happen.

And then the Monday morning after it came out the week before, 911 happened.

And so he pulled the single because he didn't think it was the appropriate song for the timeframe we were in.

- Yeah.

- But I love the cut.

- Yeah.

Well, and you will always have a George Jones cut.

- Exactly.

- I mean, who gets that?

And throw in Tom Jones.

You've got every Jones, legendary Jones.

- Yeah, I'll take any Jones there is, you know?

Norah Jones would be nice, you know.

- So, I do want to talk about some of your more recent cuts.

There's a Chris Young song that I definitely want to touch on.

- Okay.

- But I am curious, how is it different writing for a Chris Young this century?

- Right.

- As opposed to, you know, I mean, you've been there for the formative years of commercial Country songwriting, you know, the last 40 years of that anyway.

Is it different now?

- It is different now.

And I think the "Gettin' You Home" thing, which was I think 2009, then right after that "Bro Country" hit.

And it just changed the whole thing about Country music.

And it's kind of progressed where now they have track guys, you know, writing the songs with the songwriters and stuff.

And everything's kind of the same, you know, the same beat and the same four chords or whatever.

But back then, there was a freedom to do whatever you wanted to do.

- I think that's one of the most remarkable things about songwriting.

The same sentiments over and over and over again said differently.

- Right.

Well, that's the fun part is trying to find that universal theme, but still say it differently from what anybody else said.

And you know, that came about because one of my great friends and great songwriters, Cory Batten, which I worked with all the time, he sang into my refrigerator.

♪ All I can think about is gettin' you home ♪ I was fixing him lunch and I said, "What is that?"

And he said, "Well, I don't know."

And I said, "Well, sing it into my phone."

So we got with Chris to write for the first time, and it was what songwriters dread.

Nobody liked anybody else's ideas.

And so we just sat there and I said, "Well, let me find something that's on my phone."

And I had that little thing that he sang into the refrigerator and I played it for him.

And both of 'em said, "Well, let's write that.

We don't have anything else to write."

And I kind of had an idea where I wanted it to go.

And like you said, I wanted it to be, had that sexy thing in it because I'd had good luck with "Somewhere Other Than the Night" about standing in the kitchen with nothing but an apron on.

So I thought, "Well, how could we make this work?"

And so what's funny was when we got to the chorus where it goes.

♪ Walkin' through the front door ♪ None of us could come up with something that rhymed that was clean.

And so I said, "Well, how about seeing her black dress hit the floor?"

And they hated it.

- Really?

- Both of 'em, they turned on me like snakes.

- Really?

- And- - That is the line of the song.

- Yeah, exactly.

And so I said, "Okay, you guys come up with something different."

And I gave them about a half an hour and they didn't.

And so I fixed 'em lunch and Cory said he was looking around the room and he saw like, "Midnight Cinderella," "Ain't Goin' Down," "Somewhere Other Than the Night," it's a little risque.

And he said, "You know he's had luck with risque songs."

So they put that in there, and Chris took it down.

We did a vocal guitar thing at my house.

He took it down to RCA and they called me up and said, "We love this.

We want to cut it next week."

And so I said, "Hey, that's great."

You know, we never trust record labels.

So sure enough, next week they called up and said, "We cut it.

We love it.

We want it to be the next single.

And we want to change one thing."

And I said, "What do you want to change?"

And they said, "Well, we like the title "Gettin' You Home," but in parentheses, we want to put 'Black Dress Song.'"

So I felt like the dirty old man got his line in the song.

And then when it became a number one, people knew it as "The Black Dress Song."

- This has been a joy.

And unfortunately, we're very close to being out of time.

Please play that song.

- Okay.

[Intro to "Gettin' You Home (The Black Dress Song)"] ♪♪ (upbeat music) ♪♪ ♪ Tuxedo waiter, black tie ♪ ♪ White tablecloths and red wine ♪ ♪ We've been plannin' this night ♪ ♪ Looking forward to it for some time ♪ ♪ Well, honey, I know you love gettin' dressed up ♪ ♪ And you know I love showing you off ♪ ♪ Watchin' your baby blue eyes ♪ ♪ Dancin' in the candlelight glow ♪ ♪♪ ♪ Well, all I can think about, is gettin' you home ♪ ♪♪ (mellow guitar music) ♪♪ (mellow guitar music continues) ♪♪ (mellow guitar music continues) ♪♪ ♪♪ - [Announcer 2] For more information on "The Songwriters," visit SongwritersShow.org ♪♪ - [Announcer 1] "The Songwriters" is supported in part by... the Nashville Convention and Visitors Corporation, Rusty and Kacie Gaston, The Mike Curb Foundation, SESAC, BMI and ASCAP, Rich and Charlotte Hallworth.

Kerry O'Neil and Carla Wallace.

Additional support is provided by... (gentle piano music) ♪♪ (gentle piano music continues) ♪♪ (bright music) (dramatic music)