HM: So Allen, I know you've been writing songs for about forty years, but when did you first become interested in music?

AR: That long? (laughing). I've always loved music. My mother loved music. My father did too, but my mother had sung when she was young. She was in a trio on the radio and all that. We sang all the time. We sang when we did dishes. Music was just around me, you know. Nobody in my family was a great virtuoso, but an aunt of mine who is only a year and a half older than me had played the piano since she was a little girl. Music was just always part of our family life … always appreciated. It was human, folky, kind of casual. That's the way it was around our house. And I just always responded to music and always enjoyed singing.

HM: And when did you start writin' songs?

AR: As far as writing goes, in high school I was aware I had melodies running around in my head all the time, no matter what I was doing. I'd had distant thoughts about writing music, but I thought you had to be educated and schooled … able to write it down on paper, script form … so I didn't really try to write. And then I met Dickey Lee … and Dickey Lee wrote songs. He was just an ordinary guy, and that was the first revelation I had that real people could write music. I still hadn't heard of Woody Guthrie at that time. I don't know where I thought songs came from … there were people like Irving Berlin and all that … but when I met Dickey I thought, "Wow, I can do that!" And I started writing.

HM: So, Dickey was an inspiration?

AR: He was the guy that let me know it was possible. Yes, he was an inspiration.

HM: When and how did y'all meet?

AR: Well, I had a friend in high school who played upright bass, and I was nagging him to teach me to play bass 'cause I thought I could get some gigs, make a little extra money and have some fun. Anyway, I didn't have a bass, but I went to his house once, and he showed me some things on his bass. And then when I went back the second time, he showed me some more, and then he said, "I'm supposed to go to a rehearsal this weekend with the band I play in … why don't you take my bass and go sit in with them"? I said, "I don't know enough to do that!" And he said, "No, you do! You know enough. And it will be good experience for you. That's the way you learn… just jump in." So, I went to this rehearsal at Memphis State, and that's when I met Dickey. He was a student there, and when I first saw him, he was rehearsing on a stage in the auditorium. We struck up a friendship. He wanted to make records, and I volunteered that I could get a couple of my buddies to sing with me, and we could be his backup. We started working together, and that summer after my freshman year, we were at it hot and heavy all summer doing little shows around town and rehearsing all the time. Writing songs and rehearsing … that was our big thing.

HM: Were you writin' songs together at that time?

AR: We started writing together pretty soon after that, but at first, we were both writing solo. Back then you wrote songs to play for your friends and impress the girls … (laughing) … so the big thing was to write a snow song to snow the girls and say "I wrote this for you".

HM: So how did you guys get to makin records?

AR: There was this disc jockey, Dewey Phillips, at WHBQ (Memphis), who let us use the studio down at the radio station to rehearse. So we were down there every night. Dewey fought for us early on. He was a booster for us … and Jerry Lee Lewis. Dewy was a crazy guy … real colorful, and he loved us. So anyway, we were there every night rehearsing in the production room at the radio station, and one night he got Sam Phillips from Sun Records to come listen to us. Sam was real nice. He said, "Boys, that's good, but I don't think you're ready yet"… which wasn't what we wanted to hear! However, one of the songs we did for him was a song Dickey wrote called "Dream Boy", and pretty soon after Sam turned us down, some guy from California (?) -- that we didn't know from Adam -- came drifting through town. He had a little independent label, and he made a deal with Dickey. So we went down to the radio station and recorded "Dream Boy" and a B-side to go with it. Then this guy put the record out, and it went to #2 on the local charts behind Elvis' All Shook Up which was #1. So we had a kind of local "buzz" going. And then subsequent to that, Sam, in response to continued pressure from this disc jockey, Dewey, did sign Dickey Lee and the Collegiates to the Sun label.

HM: So, you were part of the Collegiates, signed to Sun Records and hangin' out at Sun Studio when you were maybe 19 or 20 years old?

AR: Yeah. And that's where we met Jack Clement and got to be buddies with him. He was engineer, producer, and songwriter at Sun, which was a cool place to hang out.

HM: This was before Dickey had his first hit, Patches?

AR: Yes. Dickey was on Sun for two or three years, and we worked real hard to come up with singles, but we never really got anywhere with what we were doing. And then right about the time I was finishing school Jack Clement left Sam Phillips and opened a little studio in Memphis. So we kept hanging with Jack, making tapes to amuse ourselves, and all that, in his little studio. During that time, Jack took a job with Chet Atkins in Nashville as his assistant. He didn't live up here, he was just commuting. Then he signed me to RCA in 1960 (?), and we came to Nashville and did some recording here … Jack got Chet to play on the session.

HM: Chet played on your first sessions in Nashville?

AR: Yeah, I was so excited. I thought I was starting at the top! Anyway, I had to deal with my military service, and I ended up joining the Air Force National Guard and went away to basic training about the time my record was coming out. It was five weeks before I had a chance to get to a phone and call Jack to see if my record was doing anything. The record wasn't doing much … there was only scattered response to it. And Jack was not so interested in talking about that as he was in talking to me about Beaumont, Texas. He was gonna move down there and build a studio with Bill Hall, and he wanted me and Dickey to move down there too. When I got out of basic training, I got a job teaching school in Memphis. Dickey was still finishing college and working part-time for Ryder Truck Line, but we both took some time off and went down to Beaumont, Texas and did some recording… that's where Dickey cut Patches. And an interesting thing, Patches, which was written by Barry Mann and Cynthia Weil (?) was one of the songs Jack had shown me as a potential thing to record with RCA. And I liked it okay, but it really wasn't my kind of song. However, Dickey just loved it! And so about a year and half later we were down in Beaumont recording … me as a solo act and Dickey as a solo act, and also we did some duet stuff … that was when Dickey recorded Patches. Which was always fine with me … it just didn't feel like my song. But he continued to love that song and recorded it. And we went back to Memphis while Jack finished up the tape and mastered it and all that. Then they put it out on Bill Hall's record label, and Bill loved it and believed in it and worked it and had a hit in Beaumont, Texas. Then it spread to Houston which was a big city and a good test … and it was a big hit there. And on the strength of that, Bill was able to lease that record to … I don't remember now … a bigger label … I think it was a Mercury Records sub-label … but anyway to make a long story short, the record went on to become a hit. By this time Dickey and I had decided to move to Beaumont, and the record was just taking off when we got moved in down there.

HM: So, when did you and Dickey write I Saw Linda Yesterday?

AR: I believe we actually wrote I Saw Linda Yesterday just before moving to Beaumont. Patches became a hit, then when that was gone I Saw Linda Yesterday was recorded as the follow up. It made it to the top ten on the pop charts.

HM: Was that your first major cut … other than the ones that you had recorded yourself?

AR: Yeah.

HM: Were you writin' a lot at that time? Were you a prolific writer?

AR: I was trying to write a lot. I was still new at it, and I was excited by it. I was learning, but I hadn't yet begun to learn the difference between a good idea and a mediocre idea. I mean I was just writing songs … trying to write something good. During that period the guy that was my publisher … the guy I was trying to get a reaction from … was Jack Clement who was also mine and Dickey's hero as a songwriter. He was like a model, so we were trying to write something as good as he could write … or at least something he would like …which he usually didn’t. (laughing) He was brutally honest in his opinions of our songs … sometimes it hurt, but it made us better writers.

HM: So how did Five O' Clock World come about?

AR: We were in Beaumont for a couple of years and had some success down there, and of course Dickey was still having success as a recording artist, but you know, that began to look like not the best place for us although we had loved it down there. The people in Beaumont were sweet people, but I decided … I mean I had a wife and child to take care of … and I needed to go somewhere I could make some money. So when our contract with Jack ran out about that time, instead of renewing with him, we moved back to Memphis and made a publishing contract with the Nashville office of Screen Gems. I got a small advance, you know a small weekly advance … it wasn't enough to live on, but my idea was to go back to Memphis which was the town I grew up in and a town my wife liked a whole lot. I thought I'd get a part time job to supplement my writer's advance and concentrate on writing songs. But it became pretty quickly evident to me that that wasn't gonna be the best way to do it. I had a songwriting partner in Memphis who was by day a consulting psychologist … industrial psychologist … and he offered to send me to some of his clients to apply for a job. One of them was First National Bank, so I ended up going there, liked it and took a job. And then I had enough money to take care of my family and started moonlighting songwriting and producing. I had positioned myself so I had access to a recording studio and started trying to learn more about it.

HM: Was that Sun Studio again?

AR: No, it was a studio owned by Stan Kessler and two silent partners. Stan had been part of the Sun Records thing as a musician and eventually as an engineer … a sweet guy … and we were involved in a partnership with Stan and his partner, a publishing company. Dickey and I were producing 'cause back in those days, you could produce a record … a single … and lease it to a record label. It didn't have to be a whole album. It was a lot more immediate kind of thing. So we were doing that … trying to learn stuff.

HM: And you wrote Five O' Clock World while you were workin' at the bank?

AR: I wrote Five O' Clock World while I was working at the bank. It was right out of my feelings for my life at that time. I had a conversation with my supervisor … my boss in the department I was working in … he was explaining to me as I moved up in the bank, I would be changing my lifestyle some, and he pointed out that he had a separate bedroom or beds from his wife because he was committed to his job and his schedule. And he said, "You'll do that too". And I said, "No I won't, Cliff, because the price would be too high." And I knew that wasn't going to be me, you know… not for that job anyway. And Five O' Clock World was reflecting my feelings: It's a five o'clock world when the whistle blows, no one owns a piece of my time. And so that's where that song came from.

HM: Cool. So, you quit the bank?

AR: No. For five and half years I was working for the bank and moonlighting in music. Dickey was always fulltime. We made enough money from our production efforts and our publishing efforts to keep him employed, and I worked in the bank and moonlighted in music… had a lot of fun.

HM: Didn't Five O' Clock World top the pop charts?

AR: It went to number 3 and stayed in the top 10 for quite a few weeks. I'd go straight from the bank and buy a Billboard every week to see what the record was doing and go back to the bank with it.

HM: It's hard to believe it didn't make enough money for you to quit the bank?

AR: No, it didn't do that, but it made some money.

HM: Most people don't realize it, but songwriters didn't make much back then. And they weren't paid very often either.

AR: No, they didn’t. And I didn't make hardly any money from the sale of that record because it was out on an independent label, so mechanical royalties didn't come. I was getting an advance from Screen Gems anyway… so whatever did come was eaten up… but not very much ever came. Back then BMI paid their most successful writers and publishers big bonuses, and people like me were way down the totem pole, so I didn't make a whole lot of performance money either. But I make some. And it was a whole lot of confirmation … that was the biggest thing. And what I did make I saved some of it, so a few years later when I was ready to make my break from where I was to Nashville, that money… what was left of it… helped me make the move up here, you know.

HM: So when did you move to Nashville?

AR: Along about 1969. I just woke up one day, and I had loved Memphis and was loyal to Memphis, but I thought, "I've got to leave". For a songwriter … it was always going to be the boondocks. And so I came to Nashville to see Jack who was my buddy. I had kept in touch with Jack 'cause he published mine and Dickey's songs. We'd had to write him a couple of times a year asking: where was our statements? We rarely got statements in those days. (laughing) He would always say, "Well, what do you need?" And send us an advance! But anyway, we'd kept in touch, and when we moved to Nashville, we started working with him again.

HM: After you got to Nashville, you wrote and co-wrote a lot of songs and had a lot of cuts … do you have any favorites?

AR: No, not really.

HM: Well, I've got a couple favorites … one is Ready for the Times to Get Better. How'd that come about?

AR: Actually, I wrote that at my friend Sandy Mason's house. Sandy was out of town, and I was watering her plants. I was going through some hard times … just the business, you know … and I was ready for some better times. Anyway, I sat down at the piano … for about an hour … just noodling, and I found this neat minor thing with a 9^th in it. It felt good, and when I got up to leave, that song just hit me … I sat back down and wrote Ready for the Times right there.

HM: And the times did get better?

AR: Yes, they did.

HM: One of my all time favorite songs is Dreaming My Dreams. As I've told you before, the Waylon Jennings version of that song helped me through a tough divorce. I can remember singin' the second verse every day for months.

AR: Yeah, that song helped me through some tough times too. My wife and I were having trouble, and I'd written the first verse and chorus. And then one weekend I just had to get away, so I was driving to the East Coast … to the ocean … in this VW bus I had at the time, and I wrote the second verse. And an interesting thing … I sat on that song for about a year before I pitched it.

HM: Why'd you do that?

AR: I didn't want the wrong person to record it. Then one day, Cowboy (Jack Clement) had a pickin' over at his studio … Waylon was there, and Cowboy asked me to play it for Waylon. I did, and he liked it and started singing it and learned it right there. Then I knew he was the right one.

HM: Wow! Do you have any tips for songwriters?

AR: Yeah, check out Pineapple Jack Clement's Ten Tips for Songwriters!

You can click on the following links to learn more about:

Allen Reynolds … Nashville Songwriters Hall of Fame

Dickey Lee … Nashville Songwriters Hall of Fame

Jack Clement … Nashville Songwriters Hall of Fame (You'll also find Pineapple Jack's Tips there.)

Sun Recording Studio in Memphis http://www.sunstudio.com

To learn more about any of the folks (or companies) mentioned in this conversation, just go to www.google.com and type in the appropriate name.