GORDON KENNEDY
Gordon, let’ s begin with your beginnings. You have enjoyed a certain advantage, being born into a magical Nashville music tradition. reel-to-reel tapes and play for us what he had done that day. And it would be all these guys, Roger Miller and a host of others. It’ s kind of amazing.
It’ s true. I’ m a second-generation music person, on both sides. My parents met on the Louisiana Hayride show when they were teenagers, performing a duet of We Wear Short Shorts. They started dating, married at 17 and had me when they were 19. We moved to Nashville when I was just 15 months old, my dad thinking he’ d give it a month to see if it would work out for him. At the end of that month, they had packed the U-Haul to return to Shreveport when Shelby Singleton, who also hailed from Louisiana, called and offered him a job with Mercury Records, where he had taken the helm of the new Nashville office. That allowed him to stay in town and well, you know, the rest is history.
You literally grew up around the likes of Jerry Lee Lewis, Roger Miller, Jerry Reed …
Oh, yeah. And my dad would come home with
Shelby Singleton had a gift for seeing what others couldn’ t. Chet Atkins, one of the most respected ears in Nashville, once confessed to me that passing on Roger Miller was one of the biggest mistakes he ever made. Hard to believe, considering he’ d called“ King of the Road” the dumbest song he’ d ever heard. You’ re no stranger to those dynamics.
Oh, that happens all the time. You just never know. I remember a guy at RCA Records telling us he“ didn’ t hear the hit” when he listened to Change the World. Then Wynonna recorded it. We were told it was going to be her single, but two and a half years went by. Her album came out and the label released three other singles.
One day, I ran into her producer, Tony Brown, who told me the label had decided against releasing our song, saying,“ The radio will never play this song.”
“ IT REMINDS YOU THAT DECCA TURNED DOWN THE BEATLES. YOU HAVE TO BE PATIENT AND TRUST THE PROCESS. YOU MIGHT THINK YOU KNOW EXACTLY WHAT’ S SUPPOSED TO HAPPEN, AND IT CAN FEEL DEVASTATING WHEN IT DOESN’ T. MEANWHILE, A GREATER PLAN IS UNFOLDING.”
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