THE R&B ROOTS OF RONNIE MILSAP
- By Alan Richard
- 21 minutes ago
- 23 min read
Listen closely to Ronnie Milsap’s golden voice and you’ll hear a singer as close to the heart of American music as anyone who’s ever made the charts. He wound through the R&B nightclubs of Memphis and Atlanta, where he sang straight-up Southern soul and rock ‘n roll, before moving to Nashville at the urging of Charley Pride.
Milsap’s voice has always been one of my favorites. I was only about 12 when I first noticed his warm, beautiful tone, classy phrasing, and his way of bringing soul inflections into his hard-country and pop songs, hitting a sweet spot in music’s mainstream in the 1980s.
The first two singles I ever bought — vinyl 45s, perhaps at the Belk Simpson department store in Greenville, South Carolina (they had a little record department) — were Milsap’s classic “Smokey Mountain Rain” and Daryl Hall and John Oates’ “Kiss on My List,” if memory serves. Both songs wet my whistle for soul music, and I’d only later understand the many reasons why. (I also bought Earth, Wind & Fire's "Let's Groove" and Kool & the Gang's "Celebration" early on.)
In Milsap, I heard singing with a Carolina accent not unlike my own — with a twang, depth, and a touch of grit. Amid the 1980s pop arrangements and string sections, I heard Smokey Mountain soul.
For my money, several of his early 1980s songs that dominated the country charts and crossed over to become pop and adult contemporary hits are pitch-perfect, even with their slick production. These are stone classics that transcend country, pop, soul, and rock.
After I share the highlights from an in-depth conversation that Milsap had with my late friend, the writer and musician Peter Cooper, in 2015, you’ll find at the end of this article a few great moments of Milsap’s that you might be hearing for the first time, or that you can revisit with an open mind and ears to the influences within them.
I’d been wanting to write about Milsap for some time, and when I started my research, one of the first things I came across was Peter’s splendid, wide-ranging interview with him at the Country Music Hall of Fame and Museum. Much of the rest of this story is based on that interview. (Peter inspired so many of us with his knowledge and love of music, his great writing, and many great songs of his own. Learn more about him in this tribute and my story on the emotional memorial event for Peter held at the Hall of Fame and Museum.)
Milsap, now 83 years old and retired from performing, had bona fide roots in soul music, but he wasn’t the only massively popular country artist who leaned on soul and R&B influences for major hits in the late 1970s and 1980s. Hell, just about everyone did, sometimes tastefully, often not. Just as some “country” performers today infuse elements of hip-hop into country-pop songs (mostly to ill effect, sadly, sounding like auto-tuned robots and showing why many country music lovers like me haven’t listened to country radio much in the past 30 years).
I digress. Milsap’s first solo album was a straight-up rock ‘n roll affair. Ronnie Milsap, recorded mainly in Memphis and Muscle Shoals and produced by legendary songwriter Dan Penn, featuring songs by Spooner Oldham and others, a remake of Roy Orbison’s “Crying,” and Kris Kristofferson’s “Please Don’t Tell Me How the Story Ends,” which he later turned into a country hit.
Anyway, here’s Milsap’s story, based largely on that interview with Peter Cooper:
Speaking with a legend
“Today, the coolest building in the world is cooler for the presence of Ronnie Milsap,” Cooper said, introducing the singer for the joyful, wide-ranging conversation in 2015. “He is the piano-playing, country-soul singing, Braille-reading, radio listening, native North Carolinian and 42-year Nashvillian who is — along with Hank Cochran and Mac Wiseman — among the three newest members of the Country Music Hall of Fame.”
The singer’s accomplishments in popular music are staggering. He had 12 No. 1 singles in his first five years in country music, Cooper said.
Then came the 1980s. “He sang 35 No. 1 Billboard country singles… between June 1973 to March of ’92,” Cooper continued. “Every song he released was a Top 20 country hit. All but two were Top 10. All but six were Top Five.”
“Ronnie Milsap isn’t great because of his hits. He’s a hit because he’s great, and he’s great because he chose to be… (as Country Music Hall of Fame CEO Kyle Young had put it) one of the most upbeat human beings on earth,” Cooper said. “Ronnie Milsap’s life is defined, enriched and illuminated by love — by his love of music, his love of radio (he still listened every night to Eddie Stubbs’ show on WSM-AM 650), and also by his love of his family and his sweetheart wife” of nearly 50 years at the time.
Abandoned by his mother, who perhaps was mentally ill and believed her child’s blindness was a curse from God, Milsap was raised by his maternal grandparents.
They sent him to the Governor Morehead School for the visually impaired in Raleigh, where he was both praised and humiliated, Cooper said. Even then, the singer “was a non-conformist whose unceasing creativity did not sit well with all.”
Milsap “could have been an angry person… born without sight, without comfort, without much,” Cooper continued. “In the wake of it all… he chose positivity and humanity and empathy. He decided to share, to connect, to laugh, and to smile and to sing.”
After attending college in the north Georgia mountains, Milsap started venturing down the road to play nightclubs in Atlanta, where he and his new wife Joyce soon would move. Milsap’s favorite hangout was the Royal Peacock on Auburn Avenue, one of the hottest nightclubs for Black patrons in the South.
“I got to see all the great R&B stars of the day and shake hands with Jackie Wilson and Marvin Gaye, (and) Little Stevie Wonder when he was 13,” Milsap told Cooper.
“I remember talking with Ben E. King,” Milsap continued, mentioning that King’s song of that era, “I Who Have Nothing,” was one of his favorites. “I just thought he was so good, and I was so enthralled by being around him. He called me on stage to sing with him, and I did that quite often (with different visiting artists).”
Milsap was born in a town called Robbinsville in the western North Carolina mountains.
“That was a very humble cabin,” he said in the conversation with Cooper. “I grew up with my grandparents, and you know, it was a very loving environment. My grandmother cooked that great breakfast every morning. Only thing that comes close to that is Cracker Barrel.”
“My grandmother was Phineas, (and she) was just like my mother. I called her Mother,” Milsap said, “and Homer Frisby (his grandfather) was one tough character” but a caring man. “I remember Homer Frisby teaching me how to count to a hundred.”
“I never hated my mother, anyway. I don’t hate anybody. Don’t know how to do that. I think love is what gets us all through,” he said.
Milsap was only 6 when his grandparents sent to him to the Morehead school for the visually impaired. “That date was Sept. 6, 1949,” offered Milsap, who has an incredible memory of dates and names, one of his many gifts.
He studied classical music at the school. He loved it. “I remember meeting a person on that first day (at school). He was my best friend all the way through high school, named Larry Atwell. And it’s a shame he passed away when he was like 22 years old, and I miss him to this day.”
One day, a houseparent at the school “knocked one of our friends (who) was partially sighted” in the head, Milsap recalled. “He hit him and knocked the glasses off his face and broke his glasses. And I questioned him. I said, ‘You should not have done that.’”
“So, he proceeds to slap me in the face. And I had some light-vision at that time — I could tell when the light was on and when it was off. But after he struck me, I never had that light-vision anymore. I remember standing in the bathroom and turning the light on and off, and I couldn’t tell the difference,” Milsap said.
In February 1958, his injured eye was surgically removed at the school’s infirmary. It was “a pretty lonely time around there” at the time.
Music was a lifeline for him, and it always would be. “Even as a child, I could hear songs on the radio and mimic those songs, you know, sound just like Ernest Tubb or Red Foley,” he said.
He began to learn Braille at the age of 6, the violin at 7, and piano when he was 8. “Mostly that school was very positive for me,” he remembered. “And eventually, I wanted to go and become a professional musician, but all my counselors at school said I’d fail. ‘You shouldn’t do that… You’ll wind up out on the street… You will embarrass all of us at the state of North Carolina,’ so I didn’t want to do that.”
Down to Georgia
Academically inclined but unable to enter a state university — the University of North Carolina wouldn’t admit a sight-impaired person — he enrolled at Young Harris, a junior college in the hills of north Georgia. “The class that I just couldn’t wait to get to was political science with Zell Miller,” Milsap said of the future Georgia governor. “What a great teacher he was.”
“But I started playing in a band… and I decided maybe this is a lot more fun (than studying),” Milsap said.
In 1964, he met Joyce Reeves, who became his wife and lifelong love. “She was very supportive of my playing music, and you know she loved music so much (that) it inspired me,” Milsap said.
That’s when he began traveling down to Atlanta and performing in the city’s Black nightclubs.
Then he and Joyce moved there, and Milsap met the record-label owner and producer Huey Meaux, who’d sit in on local disc jockey Patrick “Aloysius” Hughes’ shift at WQXI radio. “Just being around him and being around the records, being around the music, always excited me.”
Milsap recorded a single for Meaux, but the timing wasn’t right. President John F. Kennedy had just been assassinated and Milsap remembered “the A side (of his single) was ‘Total Disaster,’ (and) the flip side was called “It Went to Your Head” — so try to get that played on the radio (at that time).”
Until that point, Cooper noted, Ronnie had gone by his given last name, Millsaps. When his name was misspelled in a newspaper article in Georgia, it stuck. “I said, that’s my new name, so I went and legally had it changed to that.”
In 1965, Milsap signed with Scepter Records of New York and had his first hit — on the soul charts, that is. “Never Had It So Good” was written and produced by Nicholas Ashford and Valerie Simpson, the talented songwriters and performers who’d bring the world “Ain’t Nothin’ Like the Real Thing Baby” sung by Marvin Gaye and Tammi Terrell, “Ain’t No Mountain High Enough” by Diana Ross, and others, including their own No. 1 soul hit, "Solid" ("as a rock. The thrill is still ha-ha-ha-ha-ha-ha-ha-hot") in 1984.
Milsap’s single made the top five on Billboard’s R&B chart. “Didn’t I sound a lot like Jerry Butler on that?” he asked Cooper after they played the song.
“Not a lot of people can do Ernest Tubb and Jerry Butler,” Cooper remarked.
Milsap’s soul bona fides were later endorsed by Sam Moore of the legendary duo Sam and Dave, who’d sung “Soul Man,” “Hold On (I’m Coming),” “When Something Is Wrong with My Baby,” and other classics for Stax Records in Memphis.
Moore later spoke at Milsap’s induction into the Country Music Hall of Fame. “I know you’re wondering why I’m up here,” Moore told the audience. He explained that one of Milsap’s early gigs was opening for Sam and Dave at the legendary Howard Theater in Washington, D.C.
Before that show in the 1960s, Moore had shown up for rehearsal and saw that it was a young white man who’d sung “Never Had It So Good.” “I said, ‘Dave, he’s a white boy in a colored theater! He ain’t gonna make it,” Moore recalled.
Instead, Milsap brought the house down. “When he got through, I sloshed in my shoes,” Moore once reportedly said.
“I loved having a chance to play the Howard Theater in Washington, D.C. I got to meet a lot of people there when I was an R&B singer,” Milsap told Cooper. He and Joyce had the dressing room next to Sam and Dave, he added.
“We kept hearing things they would say, and it was the most ungodly thing I ever heard,” said Milsap, who laughs about it now.
But Milsap’s R&B career would be short. “That didn’t last as long as I thought it might,” he said.
His career turned westward in the early 1970s. “We lived in Atlanta, and Chips Moman, a record producer in Memphis, wanted me to move to Memphis. So, Joyce-ee (as he called her) and I moved to Memphis.”
Milsap landed a regular gig at TJ’s nightclub and joined the stellar studio musicians who played at Moman’s American Sound Studios. Soon after, Moman began working with Elvis Presley in the studio, “and I got to play on 'Kentucky Rain' (and sang) with Elvis,” Milsap said.
Elvis also hired Milsap to play piano at his parties.
“What a great thing, and to get to meet Elvis Presley,” Milsap said. “He was the voice of my generation… I remember at a New Year’s Eve party at TJ’s, I worked up enough nerve to say, ‘Elvis, you want to sit in with us tonight? We know all your songs.’”
The King politely declined, saying he preferred to listen and hang out with his friends that night.
Still, Milsap recalled “having the chance to sit and talk with Elvis about how he did certain things in the studio… and how did he meet Priscilla, and you know, all of the fun things you want to ask Elvis, I got to ask him a lot of those things.”
Milsap later connected with the great Ray Charles. “I sure did. I actually had met Ray Charles when I was trying to” decide whether to become a professional musician.
A video clip from a 1983 TV program shows Charles and Milsap playing together at a concert for President Reagan. “You are sitting next to me, aren’t you Ray?” Milsap asks.
“Ray, it doesn’t matter that I’ve never seen you. You’re beautiful,” he told Charles.
“Oh Ronnie, you’re beautiful yourself,” Charles responds, before the duo sang a country harmony together on two Don Gibson songs, including “Oh Lonesome Me.”
“We’re going to do it without sheet music or cue cards,” Milsap jokes in the clip.
“That was 1983,” Peter Cooper said after showing the clip, asking Milsap if he felt like he had to compete with Charles while performing with him. “I don’t want to compete with anybody, but you do,” Milsap confessed. “I mean, you’re playing with Ray Charles. You better come off of it!”
Milsap was at home in Memphis on Oct. 16, 1972, when the Country Music Association awards came on TV and Charley Pride won the award for Male Vocalist of the Year. It started Milsap to thinking. “I saw that, and I thought — more than that, my wife Joyce-ee started thinking about Nashville,” he said.
In fact, he credits Joyce as the brains behind everything he’s done. “She said we need to move to Nashville. I said, ‘How we are we going to do that? I don’t have a job there.’”
They headed to Music City and Milsap landed a weeklong gig at The Villa, a little club near the Anchor Motel on West End Avenue. Don Davis, an artist manager and musician who'd played with Hank Williams, came in and offered the singer a better opportunity, which allowed Milsap and his wife to move to Nashville permanently.
“I want you to play the King of the Road hotel,” Davis told Milsap.
The King of the Road Motor Inn, owned by the great Roger Miller himself, had a showroom on the ninth floor. (The place is now a Holiday Inn, just east of downtown Nashville. The old ninth-floor lounge is a ballroom you can rent. It has a great view of the nearby, ever-expanding Nashville skyline.)
Up on the roof
After celebrating Christmas in December 1972 with family in Georgia, the couple moved to Nashville so Milsap could play regular shows at the rooftop club. “It was just electric,” he said. “There was a whole lot of people that showed up, and I had a good band with me.” He’d play five nights a week and earn more than he had for a whole week in Memphis.
Some of Nashville’s movers and shakers would hang out at the nightclub. There aren’t many photos because some musicians and executives would show up with guests other than their wives, Milsap suggested.
Charlie Rich came in one night. Another transplant from the Memphis music scene, the soulful Silver Fox had recorded on Sun Records after Elvis left the label, then had a string of country hits in the late 1960s and early '70s. Joining the band one night at King of the Road, Rich sang his hit “Behind Closed Doors.”
“All of a sudden, he falls off the stage,” Milsap said. “His head wound up in the kit drum, and we were playing ‘Superstition’ (by Stevie Wonder)… and we had to roll him off stage.”
Another night when Faron Young was in the audience, Milsap decided to have a little fun. “Faron, I love that blue jacket you got on,” Milsap remarked from the stage.
“I told you that sumbitch wasn’t blind!” Young allegedly shouted.
The club was the perfect launch point for Milsap. “It wasn’t long before Tom Collins and Jack Johnson were up there at the King of the Road, and Jack Johnson said (with Milsap doing a gruff voice), ‘I want to manage you,’ and he was Charley Pride’s manager.”
Milsap remembers that he signed with Johnson on Jan. 3, 1973. “He financed the demos that I recorded over at Jack Clement’s studio,” the singer said.
“So, you’d been in town a week” and landed a big-time manager, Cooper marveled, soon leading to a major record deal.
Making memories
Milsap’s first album would be backed by a roster of incredible session musicians: Charlie McCoy on piano and harmonica, pedal-steel guitarist Lloyd Green (who played on The Byrds’ Sweetheart of the Rodeo), and many others.
“I had met Pig Robbins before. He was the best session piano player in town,” Milsap said. “Charlie McCoy was leader on the session, and he was playing organ on that stuff, and I said, ‘Is that what you’re going to play?’”
“He said, ‘I just played it on 'Easy Loving' for Freddie Hart,” Milsap recalled. “I said, ‘Oh, well, let’s go!'”
One of the songs they recorded was called “I Hate You.” “It was a Monday, ‘cause I had Monday off” from the club, Milsap said. At that point in the interview, Cooper paused as a clip of “I Hate You” played.
“Well, there you sound like Ronnie Milsap,” Cooper said.
The singer responded: “I listened to the radio every night, and I knew pretty much when I came to Nashville (that) I wanted to be a country singer. I mean it was a dream, and to actually make that come true was way beyond what I could imagine.”
Jerry Bradley signed Milsap to RCA Records in March or April, just two or three months after he’d landed a manager, but the label executive wasn’t entirely convinced the singer could muster good country vocals. “He thought I was a rock ‘n roll singer, a blues singer,” Milsap recalled him saying.
Then he heard Milsap’s first recordings in Nashville. “He said, ‘You know what? That sumbitch can sing country!’”
“I Hate You” made the country top 10.
Earlier, Milsap had told Tom Collins that country music was where his heart was. “He said, ‘That’s the name of the album.’”
Cooper recalled that Milsap cut seven more sides for Where My Heart Is, his first country album, at RCA Studio B. “The recording cost about $8,500,” Cooper noted.
Bradley told him they’d press about 40,000 records in the first run. “I thought, ‘Oh no, we’ll never sell that,’ but we did,” Milsap said.
Award winner
One of Milsap’s next singles was “Pure Love,” written by the young songwriter and future star Eddie Rabbit. It became Milsap’s first No. 1 hit.
“Milk and honey, and Cap’n Crunch and you in the morning,” he sings on the chorus. “Ninety-nine and forty-four of 100% pure love.”
The same day he cut “Pure Love” — Jan. 8, 1973, on “Elvis’ birthday!” as Milsap proclaimed — he also recorded “Please Don’t Tell Me How the Story Ends,” the Kristofferson song that would hit No. 1. (By my count, and this is stunning, 36 of Milsap’s 46 subsequent singles, into the 1980s, would also hit No. 1 on the country charts.)
Milsap’s drummer at the time was Steve Holt, who sported an Afro and had previously backed the Memphis soul singer William Bell. Holt later became Milsap’s band leader and tour manager.
Beginning in January 1974, “all of a sudden, I’m going on shows with Charley Pride,” Milsap said. “I’d sit on the wings of the stage and listen to Charley Pride, the way he paced his show,” he recalled. “I asked him certain nights (if) he (would) include a certain song.”
When Milsap said he liked the tune “Crystal Chandelier,” Pride replied, “You like that?”
“He’s a real class guy,” Milsap said, “and someone I dearly love. And he gave me a tremendous amount of help in the beginning.”
That year, Milsap won the Country Music Association award for Best Male Vocalist — less than two years after coming to Nashville. “It was hard to believe. When they called my name, I didn’t know what to do,” he told Cooper. Guitarist-singer Jerry Reed presented him the award.
“It was stunning, Peter. It was just beyond belief.”
Milsap was just getting started. The singer would record 48 consecutive Billboard top 10 country singles, Cooper noted. Through 1976, some of his hits had more of a hard-country sound, with steel guitar and the works, although some songs also leaned countrypolitan.
Then the singer’s musical tastes began to shift, just as country and pop music were also changing. Milsap’s “It Was Almost Like a Song,” a No. 1 country hit for three weeks in 1977, had a notably sophisticated string arrangement, Cooper reminded Milsap.
“I just remember Cam Mullins… had done strings on (Kris Kristofferson’s) ‘For the Good Times,’ for Ray Price,” Milsap said, recalling that record executive Joe Galante had told him to consider strings and other lesser-used instruments in country music at the time.
Milsap remembered Galante saying he could become a multiformat artist. “‘Then you could cut anything.’ And I started to believe that,” the singer said.
“Some disc jockeys got to saying that (the) ‘Almost Like a Song’-trend is over and Ronnie needs to get back to recording country music — and I heard that, and I didn’t want to disappoint anybody,” Milsap said. By then, he had his own recording studio and could work on songs at all hours.
Country rockin’
About that time, he “stumbled into a writer that really changed my life — a guy named Mike Reid,” Milsap said.
A classically trained pianist, hit songwriter, and former Penn State All-American who’d played professional football for the Cincinnati Bengals, Reid would later write Bonnie Raitt’s “I Can’t Make You Love Me” among other hits.
Milsap remembered recording Reid’s “Stranger in My House.”
“Good Lord,” the singer said.
Joe Galante had succeeded Jerry Bradley at RCA in 1983, Milsap said, and wanted to release “Stranger” as a single, even with its electric guitar solo. “Well, it got a lot of resistance at radio because of the guitar solo. (It) sounded a lot like Led Zeppelin to somebody,” Milsap said, as some in the Hall of Fame audience laughed.
“Some stations refused to (play) it, but I sat in the conference room at RCA and called radio stations and tried to convince them to play ‘Stranger in My House.’”
It became a huge hit on the American pop and country charts and spent 13 weeks at No. 1 in Australia. “I could not believe it,” Milsap said.
“I loved that whole thing of making records, and I wanted my own studio,” Milsap decided. He brought in Roddy Brewer from Los Angeles. “He had built Fleetwood Mac’s new studio, our consultant to build Groundstar (laboratories).” (The studio had been owned by Roy Orbison, but Milsap bought it and turned it into Ronnie’s Place, his main musical headquarters for years.)
“I was just thrilled to death getting in the studio and having my own place to work,” Milsap said, “many nights staying up all night long, me and Rob Galbraith. We were in publishing together,” and they started making records together, too.
“Some of ‘em turned out to be really good,” Milsap said.
During his incredible run in the 1980s, Milsap had 24 songs reach No. 1 on the country charts, “one of the most remarkable runs this music has seen,” Cooper noted. (See the video links at the end of this article.)
“Oh Peter, I’m very thankful for all the people who’ve helped me over the years, and there have been many, many of them — and most of all I thank my wife Joyce-ee, ‘cause she’s kind of orchestrated everything that’s happened,” Milsap responded.
Lost in the ‘80s
A few years later, Milsap would bring home the mix of another future smash, “Lost in the Fifties Tonight,” and played it for Mrs. Milsap. “She kind of liked it, but she said something was missing in it.”
“Can’t you go in, in the end, and do a high note?” she asked.
“I called the studio manager and said I needed the studio” to add the finishing touch on his vocal. Milsap recalled someone saying that producer Jimmy Bowen (who worked with George Strait and many others) would be using the studio the next day. “Just tell him I’ll only need like 10 minutes,” Milsap said. “So, they let me in, and then I had to get to my next show date.”
He chartered a Lear jet to make his show that night. “That high note cost me 10 grand!” he said.
The song became a smash, adding a borrowed doo-wop chorus right in the middle of a country song, which looking back, seems right as rain. Milsap won two Grammy awards for the performance.
“It was definitely worth it,” he said, crediting Joyce for her partnership in music and life. “She knows what is commercial and what’s not.”
After his 1980s country-pop drifted back toward soft rock and shades of soul, Milsap’s final hit of the decade was a stone country song. “Don’t You Ever Get Tired (of Hurting Me)” was written by country legend Hank Cochran, who told Milsap that he preferred his version over those by Ray Price, Willie Nelson, and others, Cooper said.
Milsap said it made sense for him to record it. “It is the root of the whole thing for me. I loved to get caught up in a real good country song,” he said. “Tom Collins said, ‘When you sing country like that, you go to a place that nobody knows where you are.’”
“I’d love to cut another (country album)… and I will!” Milsap said, the Hall of Fame audience whooping and hollering with approval. After the 2015 interview with Cooper, Milsap did record more albums.
Cooper pointed out Milsap’s continuing love for country music, new and old. “You really do listen to (former WSM radio announcer) Eddie Stubbs every night and sit there and cry to George Jones songs.”
A major influence on the many soul-inflected country singers who followed, Milsap shared what one of those artists, Keith Urban, told him: “He was talking one time about a Jim Reeves tribute album, Out Where the Bright Lights Are Glowing” that Milsap had recorded in 1981.
“He said that was the only record (in his house)” when Urban was growing up in Australia. “They kept me on the turntable, and that really knocked me out.”
Milsap mused that the album, recorded at Woodland Studios in East Nashville, is “my favorite album that I did for RCA.”
After all, Jim Reeves had been a major influence since the first time Milsap had heard him on the radio. “I heard it on the old Philco radio — ‘Am I Losing You?’,” Milsap remembered. “I said, ‘God, what a singer. What a voice. And I had a real nice jumbo Gibson guitar… and I started singing that (song) myself. I didn’t know I was going to have a hit on that someday. What a thrill.”
Even with all his success, Milsap worried he’d never make it into the Country Music Hall of Fame. “In 1977, when I won Entertainer of the Year (at the CMAs), I was talking to Jerry Bradley at RCA,” Milsap remembered, asking the label executive how he could ever top winning at the CMAs.
“One day, you’re going to be in the Country Music Hall of Fame,” Bradley told the singer. “He said, ‘Just keep doing what you’re doing, and you’ll get there.’ And he was right.”
That day came in 2014. “Tom Collins and the ladies from CMA came over to the house and told me,” Milsap said. “I could not believe it.”
As always, he credited Joyce for everything. “I would be nothing without her. I heard about a song yesterday, ‘I’m Running Over New Things,’ that I want to record with Katherine Marks, a pianist,” who was still playing with Milsap on every session.
“How do you take care of a woman?” Milsap recited from the lyrics, noting that he’d been married to Joyce for nearly 50 years at that point. “Love her, love her, and love her.”
“She’s a real treasure,” he said of his wife.
In closing the conversation with Milsap, Cooper noted how far the singer had come from his humble roots, essentially orphaned back in Graham County, North Carolina.
“A lot of people may wonder, what else do I want to do? Well, I want to keep doing what I’ve been doing,” Milsap said. “Making hit records.” He credited his manager Bert Stein for keeping him going. “We’re going to keep moving together until we get everything done that we want to do.”
I was hoping to see Milsap at Nashville’s stunning Schermerhorn Symphony Center some years ago but missed out. Milsap ceased touring after that. Cooper’s interview at the Hall of Fame is a fitting tribute, even though it was years before Milsap’s last show.
After Cooper thanked Milsap for the interview, the legendary singer returned his gratitude with tremendous grace. “Peter Cooper, you are a true friend, and it’s always an honor to be around you,” Milsap said.
I know that Peter felt the same way.
A few highlights from Milsap’s career:
Milsap hosted a podcast into 1985, interviewing musical peers like Larry Gatlin.
“Smokey Mountain Rain,” 1980
A tale about someone crossing the country to find his love — endlessly catchy, melodramatic, and marvelously delivered. It was written by Kye Fleming, one of country music’s leading women songwriters in the 1980s, and Dennis Morgan. “I made my way from L.A. down to Knoxville, I’d heard she was goin’ as far as Gatlinburg,” Milsap sings. When the narrator hitches a ride with a trucker, you can really feel it: “I climbed up in the cab all wet and cold and lonely. I wiped my eyes and told him about her. I’ve got to find her. Can you make these big wheels burn?”
“I Wouldn’t Have Missed It for the World,” 1981
One of my favorites from Milsap’s catalogue, I marvel at his soulful delivery and phrasing on this admittedly sappy country-rock hit, which reached No. 1 on the country and top 20 on the pop charts. It was written by Fleming, Morgan, and Charles Quillen.
“Any Day Now,” 1982
Full with country-soul and with a gospel-inflected chorus, this near-classic was written by Burt Bacharach and Bob Hilliard. It's Milsap’s remake of R&B singer’s Chuck Jackson’s 1962 pop and R&B hit.
“Stranger in My House,” 1983
Writer Mike Reid’s rockin’ country-soul classic began a streak of rather dark songs (compared to most hits of the day) that catapulted Milsap from country legend to pop-radio mainstay alongside Dolly Parton, Kenny Rogers, and Barbara Mandrell. This is the one with the guitar solo that Milsap mentions in the interview that some country DJs laughably compared to Led Zeppelin. (See video within the article above.)
“There’s No Gettin’ Over Me,” 1981
Creepier and darker than Smokey Mountain Rain, this one has a light R&B groove. The music video made the song seem much more inappropriate as Milsap’s face stalks a young woman.
“Lost in the Fifties Tonight,” 1985
While a few years removed, this No. 1 country hit, borrows directly from The Five Satins’ 1956 hit “In the Still of the Night,” which may seem like appropriation, but it also helped me appreciate the original. The songwriting credit for this track goes to Fred Parris of The Five Satins and country songwriters Mike Reid and Troy Seals. It was the title track from Milsap’s album, which also featured his covers of Motown’s “I Heard It Through the Grapevine” and “Money (That’s What I Want).” (See video within the article above.)
A few more of my favorites:
The following four tracks are from Milsap’s spirited 1991 album Back to the Grindstone, produced by the singer and Rob Galbraith, on which Milsap also dueted with Patti LaBelle, covered the standard “Since I Don’t Have You,” and featured guests like Mark Knopfler and John Hiatt:
“True Believer” (written by John Hiatt)
“Old Habits (Are Hard to Break)” (written by John Hiatt and Marshall Chapman)
“All is Fair in Love and War” (written by Muscle Shoals songwriter Robert Byrne, who co-wrote Shenandoah’s “Two Dozen Roses,” and Tim Nichols, who’d later co-write Tim McGraw’s “Live Like You Were Dying” with Craig Wiseman.)
“Make No Mistake, She’s Mine” (a super-slick pop ballad written by Kim Carnes, but it’s cool to hear Milsap sing with Kenny Rogers.)
While Milsap’s 2019 album The Duets was well-intended, the autotuning goes overboard on these songs Milsap cut with younger artists (who I’m sure were in awe of their singing partner). These recordings might’ve sounded better au natural, but they're still worth a listen:
“No Getting Over Me” with Kasey Musgraves
“Houston Solution” with George Strait
“Smokey Mountain Rain” with Dolly Parton
“Misery Loves Company” with Leon Russell
“A Woman’s Love” with Willie Nelson
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