COLUMN
FOR THE RECORD
COLIN
MOORE
bobby bare Still Picks, Sings and Fishes
“I
18
really like your magazine. It’s my
favorite. I read every one of ’em
two or three times until the
next one comes out,” he said.
Praise from Caesar is praise indeed;
the Caesar in this case being country
music great Bobby Bare, a fan of FLW
Bass Fishing magazine. We were sitting
at the same table a couple of years ago
on the occasion of Nina Wood’s induc-
tion into the “Legends of the Outdoors”
National Hall of Fame in Nashville. Bare
joined our party at the request of
Forrest Wood, an old friend of Bare’s.
Since then I hadn’t seen or talked to
him until it was announced in the
spring that he was issuing a new album,
“Things Change,” no small feat for this
82-year-old crooner who hit it big back
in the era of steel guitars and rhine-
stone-covered Nudie Cohn outfits.
We country music fans who grew up
in the ’60s and ’70s probably remember
Bare for such singles as “500 Miles Away
From Home,” “Miller’s Cave,” “(Margie’s
at) The Lincoln Park Inn,” “Marie Laveau”
and “The Streets of Baltimore.” He won
a GRAMMY Award for the Best Country
and Western Recording of 1963 with
“Detroit City,” his song about a homesick
farm boy who went to work in a car
plant. A timeless favorite that might be
regarded as his anthem, it’s included in
“Things Change.” The album is the 39th
of Bare’s career, which is among the
longest and most productive in an
industry known for one-hit wonders and
artists who are here today and gone
tomorrow.
Before outlawry became a market-
ing ploy, Bare was ranked among the
original “outlaws” of country music,
perhaps more for his independence
and the crowd he sometimes hung out
with rather than his own predilection
for honky-tonks and self-destructive
behavior. He’s been married to his
wife, Jeannie, for more than 50 years
and helped raise a passel of kids and
grandkids to successful adulthood.
He’s also admired for looking after
friends he made in the music business
long after their stars dimmed and their
fortunes waned.
Casual conversations with Bare have
a way of morphing into bass fishing talk.
Turns out he has more than a passing
acquaintance with FLW and its extend-
ed family. Back in the ’80s, Bare became
a spokesman of sorts for the Red Man
Tournament Trail, the precursor to FLW,
and it was during that time that he met
many of the past and current stars of
the circuit.
“Red Man paid me a whole lot of
money to go to sales meetings and
tournaments and host interviews with
the winners,” recalls Bare. “I went to a
bunch of All-Americans and always
enjoyed myself. Most fishermen are
really good sports and the kind of
down-to-earth crowd I like to be
around.”
Something about their upbringing
and exposure to the natural world
makes hunters and fishermen of a lot
of country musicians. Bare “got ate up
with fishing for whatever would bite”
when he was a youngster growing up in
rural Ohio. He’s lived in various places,
but was hooked on bass fishing back in
the ’50s when he lived in California,
recorded a few songs and appeared in
a couple of movies. Success came
quickly after “Detroit City” was released,
and he moved to the Nashville area in
the mid-1960s to take advantage of his
newfound celebrity.
Bare eventually became acquainted
with other performers who shared his
interest in bass fishing, among them
Mel Tillis, Jerry Reed, Little Jimmy
Dickens, Porter Wagoner, Waylon
Jennings, John Anderson and Tom T.
Hall. Bare has lived on Old Hickory Lake
at Hendersonville, Tenn., for several
decades.
“Jerry [Reed, who died in 2008] was
probably my best fishing buddy – him
and Little Jimmy Dickens,” says Bare.
“Every year Dickens and I would meet
Jerry at Lake Okeechobee in Super Bowl
week, cook some taters and beans,
watch the game, and go fishing for the
rest of the week. We had some real
good times.”
Bare has never recorded a song
about fishing for mass release, though
“The Great American Fisherman,” the
theme song for Roland Martin’s televi-
sion show, comes close. Bare wrote it
when Orlando Wilson had his own show
and was producing Martin’s. Originally,
Martin’s song was titled “I Want to Go
Fishing with Roland,” and Wilson’s was
“The Great American Fisherman.”
FLWFISHING.COM I OCtOber 2017