MORNING COMES, AND LORD, MY MIND IS ACHING, Sunshine standing quietly at my door....Just like the dawn, my heart is silently breaking...with my tears...they go tumbling to the floor.......Mickey Newbury 1960's.

Nothing tells it like a country song, man it just talks to you, moves you, wrings you out, and after you get through singing it, if you do it right, you just feel emptied out inside. A Mickey Newbury song always has done that to me.

I have always been attracted to the creators of the music, the songwriters. Hank was one, Lefty was another, Don Gibson, Marty Robbins and Mel Tillis all had it, along with Hank Thompson and Bill Monroe. There is just something special about a person singing the songs that come out of his or her own mind and heart. Loretta had it, Haggard was full of it, what about that Whispering Bill Anderson, sorta got a funny voice, but who cares, he communicates the emotion of his songs, and he can sure write, and Bob Wills, he might only say Ah-Ha, and play some fiddle, but look at the songs.

Yeah, the saga of the singer-songwriter has always been an integral part of Country Music, but the real, unsung heroes of this business, as far as I'm concerned, are the great songcrafters that kinda stay behind the scenes, pouring out their hearts in every song they create, letting that spotlight shine on someone else, singing their songs.

Now, it's not that these songwriters aren't good singers, on the contrary, some that you probably never heard of, are the best singers I've ever heard. No, it's just that the songwriting gift, is so strong in some people, they don't have the desire to chase the Entertainer/Star elusive dream.

There are two distinct categories, I've noticed, that these people fall into.......the singer/songwriter and the songwriter/singer...Marty Robbins, for instance, I would call a singer-songwriter because he lived to perform...it was his passion. He was a great songwriter also, but there was no way you could hide his talent under a bushel. He just had to shine. Newbury is to me the perfect songwriter/singer, even though he has one of the best singing voices I've ever heard.....but, his passion was songwriting. He could have probably been another Superstar if he had wanted it bad enough, because he could always mesmerize a crowd, but one thing is for sure, he is a Super to anyone that appreciates great writing.

In the 60's a migration of unusually talented songwriters started settling in, and around, the Nashville area, drawn by the changing musical climate, and the ever evolving sound of the modern Country Music. There were new Artists coming in, with new influences, and new ideas of how they wanted to do their particular brand of this music. The folk music boom, starting in the late fifties, and on into the sixties, certainly had its impact, along with the political and social unrest, and just the gradual change in the world we lived in. Songwriters and singers felt a new restlessness and experienced a new freedom, unafraid to say things just a little different, and to use subject matter that had been taboo just a decade before.

The epitome of this new breed of songwriter was, and is, Mickey Newbury. He lived on a houseboat, part of the time, out on Old Hickory Lake, in Hendersonville, Tennessee, just a few miles north of Nashville, at other times in a log cabin at the edge of this lake. Mickey was a Houston, Texas boy, with music born in the Texas honky tonks, and there never has been another like him, and probably never will again.

I first became aware of Mickey, and the creeping change that was coming to our music, when I listened to a Mercury Album that Bob Beckham had given me, one day in 1964, when I came by his office. It was Mickey, and it was titled "Looks Like Rain." It forever changed my musical tastes and preferences, and made all three chord songs, the norm at the time, sound real thin. Mickey had a way of poetically describing normal, everyday happenings, and turning them into something beautiful. His one, big commercial hit, the compilation of Dixie, All My Trials and Battle Hymn of Republic, which he called "American Trilogy", and has been recorded by just about everyone, including myself, stands as a monumental recording event, while his "San Francisco Mable Joy" should be required listening for anyone even thinking about getting into this business. It's been a joy to be able to set in a room with Mickey, and just listen.

Mickey Newbury was the most talented person I ever met, and I love him, but he has had his devils to conquer, just like so many others with the extra helping of talent. It's almost like they bare their souls, minds and spirits so much, and reveal so much of what's inside them, in their music, that they have to resort to a deadening substance, just to stand this constant emptying out. Hank was that way, Lefty Frizzell, Red Foley, Don Gibson and so many others of their like. Addictive personalities were running free in Music City, and how most of us survived is still a mystery to me. Mickey Newbury passed away a short time ago, but what a legacy in song he left the world...and what memories to those who called him friend.