Producer: Ken Nelson

Born in 1911, Ken Nelson was an A&R (Artist & Repertoire) guy who rose to head up the country wing of Capitol Records. He had one foot in Nashville and one in California – so he liked both types of music: Country & Western – and he was pivotal in developing the career of Merle Haggard and Buck Owens. For good measure, he signed rockabilly star Gene Vincent too.

Nelson’s production career began in the early 1950s with Hank Thompson’s smash The Wild Side of Life. After he hired Owens as a guitarist, Nelson was so impressed with his singing voice that he signed him to a deal as an artist.

Owens complimented Nelson on finding players who wrote their own songs ‘and knew what they wanted to do. Then he sat back and let them do it.’ For his part, Haggard initially turned Nelson down but soon crossed over to Capitol and became one of the artists of his age. Periodically Nelson would take a bus to the Southern states and check out what was popular on jukeboxes and on the radio. This is how he discovered Faron Young, whose voice leapt out of a radio station in Louisiana. Despite all this, it is quite incredible to learn Nelson wasn’t really a country fan, although given that he was from Minnesota that might be unsurprising.

He died a few weeks short of his 97^th birthday. In his lifetime country had changed from front-porch entertainment to stadium-filling extravaganzas, from folksong collectors traipsing across the plains with a tape recorder to fans around the world having the ability to click on a track and download it from their laptop.

There is thus a direct line from the acts whom Ken Nelson helped have success and the millionaire country stars who benefit from today’s country music business.

Player: Pig Robbins

Born in 1938, Hargus ‘Pig’ Robbins got his nickname for being ‘dirty as a pig’ after sneaking out of class to play. Blind from the age of three, he became a session piano player in Nashville and made immortal contributions to country’s biggest hits.

That’s him on White Lightning by George Jones, I Fall To Pieces by Patsy Cline, I Will Always Love You by Dolly Parton, Behind Closed Doors by Charlie Rich, The Gambler by Kenny Rogers and Don’t It Make My Brown Eyes Blue by Crystal Gayle. Miranda Lambert called him in for the album The Weight of These Wings; you can hear Robbins’ piano stylings on To Learn Her.

Robbins played Live Aid as a sideman for Neil Young, and he was also the pianist on Bob Dylan’s Blonde on Blonde, which included Just Like a Woman and the number two hit Rainy Day Woman #12 & 35, aka ‘Everybody Must Get Stoned’. Robbins’s fellow session player Charlie McCoy complimented that ‘everybody else plays better’ when Pig is in the room.

Songwriter: Mac Davis

Born in January 1942 in Lubbock, Texas, Mac Davis became a hugely successful songwriter who went on to be a performer in his own right. Memories, In The Ghetto and A Little Less Conversation were all Davis compositions which were cut by Elvis Presley. The last of these became a UK number one single when it was remixed in advance of the 2002 FIFA World Cup.

Mac also had his own hits, including the number one Baby Don’t Get Hooked On Me, a song that has not aged well and which is less country than MOR ‘seventies pop’. He also enjoyed a two-year stint as host of his own show on NBC.

Another crossover hit, It’s Hard to Be Humble, has been covered by Willie Nelson, and Davis also wrote and sung on Addicted to You, a song by dance act Avicii. The chorus of the Bruno Mars song Young Girls also came from his head.

All Episodes can be found here

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