Jim McBride, the Grammy-nominated nation songwriter who partnered with singer Alan Jackson on songs together with “Chattahoochee” and “Chasin’ That Neon Rainbow,” died Tuesday. He was 78.
“Jim was a great man and a fantastic and real songwriter,” Jackson wrote on Thursday in an Instagram story. “He understood nation music and touched many together with his songs. Jim and I wrote a few of my favourite songs collectively and I don’t know if my profession would have ended up fairly the identical with out his assist, inspiration, and encouragement in my early years. Thanks Jim, relaxation in peace.”
Jackson’s photograph confirmed him and McBride as youthful males, smiling and holding ASCAP certificates. In 1994, “Chattahoochee” gained the Nation Music Assn.’s award for music of the 12 months and so they have been nominated for the Grammy for nation music of the 12 months as effectively.
“I’m in shock. I’m devastatingly unhappy. My cellphone has been ringing and dinging all day, so I hope my pals will perceive I’m simply not capable of speak proper now,” songwriter and shut pal Jerry Salley wrote Wednesday on Fb, noting that McBride died after a fall on Monday. McBride had texted Salley simply hours earlier than falling, the latter mentioned.
“I’ll by no means know why he took an opportunity to write down with me” once they met in Nashville within the early Eighties, Salley wrote, “however man, we hit it off, turned on the spot pals, and cherished being within the writing room collectively. He all the time introduced out the perfect in me.”
Although greatest remembered for his Jackson collaborations, McBride’s songs have been additionally recorded by artists together with Conway Twitty, Johnny Lee, Johnny Money, George Jones, Reba McEntire, Alabama, Willie Nelson, Charley Delight, Kris Kristofferson, Randy Travis, Toby Keith and Dwight Yoakam.
“We are going to drastically miss Mr. McBride — might his legacy dwell on eternally,” the Alabama Music Corridor of Fame mentioned Wednesday on Instagram. The corridor remembered the songwriter as a “beloved Alabamian, songwriter, pal, mentor, and a lot extra.”
Born Jimmy Ray McBride in Huntsville, Ala., on April 28, 1947, he started writing songs a baby, however didn’t get one recorded till a lot later.
“The songs simply began coming in my head and after some time I made a decision to strive it,” he mentioned in an interview printed by American Songwriter on the finish of 1997. “I simply thought I’d write some songs and produce them to Nashville and see what occurred.”
He mentioned he was all the time drawn to something about music and discovered early on that “that little bitty title beneath the music was the one who wrote the music.”
McBride’s first bid sending songs to Nashville didn’t lead to on the spot success. He knew just one man on the town, songwriter Curly Putman, who served as a mentor.
“Curly gave me good recommendation and he was all the time very sincere. He informed me, ‘Until I’m sincere I can’t enable you,’” McBride informed American Songwriter. “I’d play him a music and he’d inform me what was mistaken with it and he was all the time proper. But when there was one thing there, he would make certain and let me know that I had completed one thing proper. And he all the time inspired me to get one other opinion, however I by no means did; his opinion was all the time adequate for me.”
He noticed a number of of his songs carried out within the early Nineteen Seventies on the present “Hee Haw,” however within the mid-’70s he wound up tucking his goals away and staying at his job with the U.S. Postal Service. Even then, he stored writing songs with Roger Murrah, who can be a Grammy nominee within the early Nineteen Nineties for “Don’t Rock the Jukebox,” recorded by Jackson.
He promised Murrah and others that he would return to Nashville if he obtained “that massive lick.” Then got here Conway Twitty, who wished the music “A Bridge That Simply Gained’t Burn.”
“Roger referred to as me one night time and mentioned, ‘I suppose it’s good to pack your luggage, we’ve obtained Conway’s subsequent single,’” McBride informed American Songwriter. “I stop the publish workplace the day after Christmas, 1980, after which began work the primary of January with Invoice Rice and Jerry Foster. The one different author that they had was Roger Murrah.”
Occasions at the moment have been bittersweet for McBride, whose mom — his greatest musical affect rising up — died of most cancers in 1981. She was buried the identical day he was imagined to get his first music award, for “A Bridge That Simply Gained’t Burn.”
That September he had his first No. 1 hit, “Guess Your Coronary heart On Me,” with singer Johnny Lee. And he fine-tuned his songwriting.
“I don’t assume I’d ever had a bridge in a music till I moved right here,” he informed American Songwriter. “One other factor I needed to unlearn was that I wasn’t Kristofferson. I in the reduction of on the poetic stuff. I used to be writing a variety of stuff the place each line needed to be good. By means of the years, I discovered to write down conversational traces.”
McBride didn’t have successful single once more for six years, till Waylon Jennings recorded “Rose in Paradise,” his final No. 1 observe, in 1987.
“I had songs on 14 albums and couldn’t get a single,” McBride informed Huntsville’s News19 in 2023. “Randy Travis kinda kicked the door open and Waylon.” After that, McBride mentioned, “Issues began selecting up.”
That’s when he met Alan Jackson, with whom he would have 4 No. 1 hits, “Chattahoochee” being the largest of them.
“He mentioned, ‘Will you write with me?’ And I mentioned, ‘Yeah, let’s get collectively,’” McBride informed News19. “So, we obtained collectively and hit it off similar to that. It was like writing with myself, actually.”
McBride was inducted into each the Nashville Songwriters Corridor of Fame and the Alabama Music Corridor of Fame in 2017 and was a previous president of the Nashville Songwriters Assn. Worldwide.
However for greater than 30 years, that hit music “Chattahoochee” was part of his life — particularly the one line in the beginning the place it talks about it getting “hotter than a hoochie coochie” down on the Chattahoochee River, which borders Alabama and Georgia. Everybody wished to know what that meant, apparently.
“Alan obtained uninterested in everybody asking him,” McBride informed News19. “He informed all people to name me, and so they did. When the county honest would come to city, there was all the time a facet present with the hoochie coochie ladies. In order that’s what I used to be considering. And the deal was should you have been a younger man, you’d attempt to get in there earlier than you have been 18.”
And why, pray inform?
“They’ll present you somewhat bit,” he mentioned, “however you’re going to must pay should you see any extra.”
McBride is survived by his second spouse, Jeanne Ivey, and sons Brent and Wes from a earlier marriage.
