I happen to know the guy who wrote this song, Sonny Throckmorton. As I recall he was somewhere around thirty-five or forty when he wrote it. Sonny was a songwriter here in Nashville who also wrote Middle Aged Crazy (Jerry Lee Lewis) and The Last Cheaters Waltz (T G Shepard) among many other big hits. The Last Cheaters Waltz is one of my all-time favorite songs.
When I first moved here Sonny was writing for Tree Publishing. The song plugger, the person who Sonny brought his songs to at the publishing company, took Sonny’s tape of his latest efforts and threw it back across the desk to Sonny saying “Is this the best you can do? This is crap!”
Disappointed, Sonny left and went back to Texas to work in construction. About six months or so he got a call saying that one of his songs, Middle Aged Crazy I think, had been cut by Jerry Lee Lewis and was screaming up the charts. Sonny came back to Nashville and, based on that song’s success, artists were clamoring for whatever he had. He pulled out all his previously written stuff and within the year he had 20-30 of his songs cut.
Then some time after his first big success, Sonny watched as others took his songs and climbed the charts. He decided that if he was going to write songs for other people to become big stars - why not record them and become a recording star himself. So he wrote a whole album of good stuff, “A” material as it was called, then went in the studio, recorded and released it. The only problem was Sonny wasn’t all that good a singer. Other artists knew this and upon hearing of the impending release of his LP they licked their lips waiting for Sonny’s album to come out because once it did, the songs immediately became available for anyone to record. That’s the way it works. Other artists jumped all over it. For example, Sonny’s version of Last Cheaters Waltz went to 50 on the charts and died. TG Shepard recorded it and took it to number one a few months later.
The music business is tough. I recall that Nick Nixon, a country artist and friend who was super-big in the St Louis area back in the seventies, came to Nashville and cut a song called “She’s Just An Old Love Turned Memory”. It went to #23 on the Billboard charts and was Nick’s highest charting record and one of his last chances to become a hit artist. At the time Nick prophetically commented to me that if Charley Pride had cut it would have been a number one hit. Lo and behold, Charley Pride eventually did cut and release that song and guess what – it went to #1 on Billboard.
Poor Nick. I really think one of the things that hurt him as an artist is that he had this high paying regular gig at a club in St Louis called the Downspout which was near Lambert airport. He felt he couldn’t afford to go out on promotional tours and support his records because he would lose the weekly check from the Downspout gig. Who knows what could have happened if he had taken the other route.
Getting back to Sonny Throckmorton, I actually took Sonny in the studio to record a pilot radio program I created called Sixteenth Avenue back in the early eighties. The concept was to interview a different hit songwriter every week and give the listening audience an inside look into the people who wrote the songs and how they sounded when the creator played and sang them. Sonny was my first guest songwriter. The show never got off the ground because I didn’t know how to market it. I still have the pilot tapes.
I’ll never for get it. My host was the number one DJ in town at the time and Sonny had some really good wacky tobacco that we shared. Those were the good old days.
Anyhow, here is the link for the George Burns singing Throckmorton’s song, I Wish I Was Eighteen Again. Me too Kiddo!
Gary
