Bob McDill, Country Music Star You've Never Heard Of

February 14, 2018 10:17 PM

He explored the complicated South by reflecting it with detail, heart, and a work ethic that kept him aiming to write a song a week for 30 years. Over three decades, he wrote 31 country songs that went to No. 1. He worked songwriting like a 9-to-5 job and saved every legal pad he ever wrote on. Now, those 217 legal pads are in the collection of the Country Music Hall of Fame, teaching young writers how he made those hits. He wrote a song a week, at least. And then he stopped.
posted by MovableBookLady (5 comments total)

Lord, that man wrote most of the soundtrack of my childhood. Unreal.
posted by Alvy Ampersand at 1:45 AM on February 15, 2018

“Who would have thought,” he says, “that cleaning out the basement would make so many people so happy?”

This is possibly the finest self-deprecating boast I have ever seen. Calling it a humblebrag is a disservice, as it's very much meant to make you laugh, which I did.
posted by Kattullus at 1:49 AM on February 15, 2018 [1 favorite]

Great article! Thanks for posting. Lots of other good stuff on that site- I had not come across it before.
posted by I_Love_Bananas at 4:05 AM on February 15, 2018

A wonderful songwriter. He also wrote several of Crystal Gayle's big hits; "I'll Do It All Over Again" is a personal favorite. There's another good interview with him in V.S. Naipaul's A Turn in the South, in which he says, of country songwriters in general, "We do big things with little words."
posted by texorama at 5:26 AM on February 15, 2018

<3
posted by tilde at 5:56 AM on February 15, 2018