A country way of life, Episode 40 (John Hughey, Dennis Linde & Bob DiPiero)
Author: Jonny Brick.
Player: John Hughey
Born in Elaine, Arkansas, John Hughey was one of the steel guitar players called up by Nashville producers to make country music sound even more melancholy. Elvis Presley once asked for Hughey to replicate his part when he covered a Box Tops song; at the time, he says, he was ‘the only steel player in Memphis’.
Hughey was a long-serving lieutenant of Conway Twitty, with whom he was friendly before he became a superstar. Hughey then spent 20 years on the road with him, many of which were alongside his brother Gene, who played bass, and Loretta Lynn took him out with her for 18 months at the beginning of the 1990s.
‘I didn’t even know who Vince Gill was!’ Hughey said of the man who next offered him work on record and for his live shows. His pedal steel caresses songs like Look at Us and Go Rest High on That Mountain. It was, he told an interview for the Musicians Hall of Fame, ‘the greatest job I ever had. Everything was first class with him.’
Songwriters: Dennis Linde and Bob DiPiero
In 2022 Ashley McBryde invented a town called Lindeville for a charming concept album. It was based on a map of a similar town and the characters who populate it that hung on the wall of Dennis Linde. Unlike the team who wrote songs for Ashley’s project, most of Linde’s own work was written alone.
He preferred doing the work to the showbiz side of the industry; because he did not even attend award shows, he was called ‘a publicist’s nightmare’. He also married the daughter of the man who signed him to his publishing company when Linde had first come to town.
Born in Texas, Linde (pronounced ‘Lindy’) wrote and recorded Burning Love, which was a hit for Elvis Presley. On the country side, the cinematic Goodbye Marie was recorded by Kenny Rogers, but Linde is best known as the writer of the perky revenge song Goodbye Earl, one of the biggest hits for the band then known as the Dixie Chicks.
Other beloved songs from the 1990s include Bubba Shot the Jukebox and It Sure Is Monday, both sung by Mark Chesnutt, while John Deere Green and Queen of My Double Wide Trailer respectively became pillars of the catalogues of Joe Diffie and Sammy Kershaw. Several of Linde’s copyrights were recorded by multiple artists: Callin’ Baton Rouge by both the Oak Ridge Boys and Garth Brooks, What’ll You Do About Me by Steve Earle and Randy Travis.
Alan Jackson had The Talkin’ Song Repair Blues on hold for a few years before finally releasing it in 2005. It showcases Linde’s humorous writing style where he compares working on songs to working on cars (‘this song’s got a broken hook…running on verbs that are way too weak’).
Bob DiPiero is just as beloved as Linde, and he too has written his share of evergreens: Blue Clear Sky for George Strait, Daddy’s Money for Ricochet, The Church on Cumberland Road for Shenandoah and Take Me As I Am for Faith Hill. Born in Youngstown, Ohio, DiPiero started out as a teenage rocker before becoming first a session musician and then a songwriter.
Reba McEntire gave him his first hit with I Can See Forever In Your Eyes, and she also topped the chart with Little Rock. The Oak Ridge Boys had taken American Made all the way to number one, DiPiero’s first as a writer; three decades later, Easton Corbin did the same with Lovin’ You is Fun.
DiPiero was briefly married to Pam Tillis, whose song Cleopatra, Queen of Denial he wrote. Their separation inspired Worlds Apart, a hit for his co-writer and fellow divorcé Vince Gill. DiPiero has named this song and Sentimental Ol’ You, a tribute to his mum which was a hit for Charly McClain, as his most cherished songs.
His copyrights have also been recorded by Tim McGraw (Southern Voice), Montgomery Gentry (Gone) and Toby Keith (Drunk Americans). DiPiero also features in the documentary It All Begins with a Song, which is available to watch on Amazon Prime; he is shown working on a song with Caitlyn Smith in a candlelit room, trying to recapture the magic which created Tacoma, which was cut by Garth Brooks as well as by Caitlyn herself.
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