A country way of life, Episode 41 (Larry Franklin, Kostas Lazarides & Rivers Rutherford)
Author: Jonny Brick.
Player: Larry Franklin
If it wasn’t Stuart Duncan or Mark O’Connor playing fiddle on a country record in the 1990s or 2000s, it was Larry Franklin. He is no relation to pedal steel wizard Paul, although both have been involved in the session musician supergroup The Time Jumpers.
Franklin comes from a long line of fiddlers down in Texas; his great-uncle Major and his dad Louis passed on their wisdom to little Larry, who fronted his own band before joining Asleep at the Wheel in the 1980s. Having kept the Western Swing flame lit, he then moved into the recording studio to add fiddle filigrees to fine hit songs.
You can hear him on music by Alan Jackson, Deana Carter, Brooks & Dunn, Kenny Chesney and Joe Nichols. His credits also include albums by Willie Nelson, George Jones, Billy Joe Shaver, Randy Travis and Hank Williams Jr. The millions of people who bought Come On Over by Shania Twain heard Franklin’s riffing on the title track, Honey I’m Home and Don’t Be Stupid.
In recent years, he has contributed fiddle parts to songs by Tim McGraw, Justin Moore and Luke Combs. Rather marvelously, in 2024 Franklin can boast of playing on a number one Hot 100 single, I Had Some Help by Post Malone and Morgan Wallen; his work is all over Post’s recent album F-1 Trillion.
Songwriters: Kostas Lazarides and Rivers Rutherford
There are very few European-born songwriters who make it big in Nashville, let alone one born in Thessaloniki in Greece. Kostas Lazarides moved to Montana as a child and, enraptured by rock’n’roll in the late 1950s and early 1960s, he fell into performing in various bands.
But an LA Times interview in 1995 opened with Kostas saying that by the mid-1980s he was ‘discouraged with life itself’. Then his song Timber, I’m Falling in Love was a hit for Patty Loveless, giving Lazarides a number one with his very first cut.
Patty also recorded The Lonely Side of Love and Blame It on Your Heart, the latter complete with a winding chorus co-written with Harlan Howard; incredibly for such an evergreen, Patty didn’t think much of it before she learned that someone else was preparing to cut it. ‘They recorded it on Friday and it came on the radio on Saturday!’ Lazarides marvelled before he played the song at one live performance which is available online.
Still working out of Montana, he provided hit songs for Dwight Yoakam (Ain’t That Lonely Yet), Travis Tritt (Lord Have Mercy on the
Working Man), McBride & The Ride (Love on the Loose, Heart on the Run) and the band then known as the Dixie Chicks (I Can Love You Better). The Mavericks titled their third album after the song What a Crying Shame, written by Lazarides and the band’s singer Raul Malo.
Lazarides, who is credited as Kostas, said he has always wanted to avoid writing ‘a piece of fluff’ and to that end he chooses to place ‘human integrity’ within his work. ‘In a lot of ways I was a loner,’ he says, ‘but music has always been a bridge between me and people.’
Melvern Rivers Rutherford II became a teenage pianist on a Memphis riverboat. He would use that grounding to write songs that became hits for the likes of Trace Adkins (Ladies Love Country Boys), Darius Rucker (Southern Style) and Gary Allan (Smoke Rings in the Dark). Raise Him Up, recorded by Randy Travis but not released as a single, was written at a time when Rutherford’s daughter was lying in a coma.
Several of his songs were driven by rock guitar riffs: Kenny Chesney recorded Living in Fast Forward, Tim McGraw cut Real Good Man, and Brooks & Dunn had a hit with Ain’t Nothing ‘Bout You, which Rutherford initially thought was a trifle. It became the most successful song written by both him and its co-writer Tom Shapiro, making the top 30 of the Hot 100 and staying at number one for six weeks on the country charts. For good measure, the pair also wrote If You Ever Stop Loving Me for Montgomery Gentry.
The ballad Where I Get Where I’m Going, meanwhile, was a hit duet for Brad Paisley and Dolly Parton. Rutherford has recorded it with an orchestra as part of the Music City Hit-Makers project.
All Episodes can be found here
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