For this special Backtalk with songwriting legend Jimmy Webb, we asked songwriter Jim McCormick to do the interview. McCormick is a staff songwriter for Warner Chappell Music in Nashville. His songs have been recorded by Tim McGraw, Trisha Yearwood, Randy Travis, Luke Bryan, Ronnie Milsap, Anders Osborne, Amanda Shaw and many others. His song “Happy to Be Here” appears on the brand new Trace Adkins’ CD, X (Ten).—ED.
 |
I talked to Jimmy Webb over the phone last month while he sipped a cup of tea in New York and I a cup of coffee in Tennessee. Webb wrote the platinum-selling hits “By the Time I Get to Phoenix,” “Wichita Lineman,” “Galveston,” “Up, Up and Away,” “Mac Arthur Park,” and “Didn’t We,” along with countless other songs recorded since the 1960s. He will perform in New Orleans for the first time on December 6 at the House of Blues as part of the New Orleans Songwriters Festival. The iconic composer, arranger, producer, actor and recording artist will join Allen Toussaint—both Webb and Toussaint had No. 1 singles with Glen Campbell—Mary Gauthier, JD Souther, Susan Cowsill, Zachary Richard, Cassandra Wilson, and others—including yours truly—for what festival founder Bud Tower calls a “first for the city, a pure focus on the song and the songwriter.”
Have you played in New Orleans before?
No. I was down there with Linda Ronstadt once when she played the Jazz Fest, but I didn’t play. I took my son there once for the Super Bowl. Again, we just hung out and had a good time. It’s always been a magnet for me because I loved to go into the clubs and hear the bands, and I loved the architecture. In those days I was a drinker—I haven’t had a drink for eight years—and New Orleans is a great town if you like to have a drink.
It’s easy not to do work there.
Yeah it is. I’m looking forward to the festival, to in some small way be a part of the musical heritage of New Orleans. To make some sort of contribution there has a great deal to do with me wanting to come down in the first place.
My friend Ralph [Murphy], who has been sort of going around like Johnny Appleseed and starting these songwriting festivals in various places—the last one he worked on was in Key West—asked would I mind if JD Souther came along [Souther's not confirmed at press time--ED.]. JD and I have been saddle buddies for a long time. It’s going to be a good thing. I’ll hang with some old friends, maybe make some new friends, and do it all in a place that I think deserves some creative energy and some rebuilding, particularly in the music area.
Also, I think New Orleans is a very cool place to have some sort of focal point for songwriters. It seems that it would be overdue at this point to have an annual event for those who are trying to get started and who want to play their songs for the first time. New Orleans is the perfect place for that, so I’m looking forward to it, very much so.
We’re all aware of the great writing tradition that comes out of New Orleans, but the town seems to be better known for its performers and its vibe than its writing.
People probably think of it more as a jazz place. And songwriting and jazz don’t necessarily walk hand in hand, but then again, we know that they do. We know that there are great jazz standards—“April in Paris”—that have lyrics and were sung by the likes of Ella Fitzgerald. Can’t get much cooler than that. It’s all part of the same family, and it’s the perfect place to promote songwriting.
Well, surely you’ve crossed paths with Allen Toussaint?
I think Allen and I met years ago, briefly. I’m a huge fan.
One almost curious anecdote of my life is one afternoon I had Glen Campbell over to my house and I was playing an Allen Toussaint record. And we were like just talking and listening to this groovy music, and he said, “What’s that? What’s that song?!” “Oh that’s ‘Southern Nights,’” I said, and went back and played it again for him. He asked, “Can I have that?!” I said, “Well yeah you can have that.” He said “I mean right now!” And I laughed, “Yeah you can have it right now.” I took the record off the record player and gave it to him. He ran right out of my house without even saying goodbye to me. He went roaring down the driveway in his car!
It was about two months later that I heard that song come on the radio. Glen is very good at popularizing songs, taking them out of their ethnically diverse niches and putting them out there for the masses, which is what he did with my music. A lot of my music probably otherwise would have stayed in the coffeehouse circuit. He was just a natural.
I don’t know if Allen ever knew the part that I played in that.
You were Mr. Toussaint’s song plugger for a day!
I was, and I’m glad I was, because it was a huge record. And I’m sure he made a couple of dollars on it. I’ll be looking forward to seeing him.
Aaron Neville is a friend of mine. I’ve known him through Linda Ronstadt, with whom I’ve done a lot of hanging and playing. I’ve spent a few evenings with Aaron and learned to really appreciate him as a man and a person, and I love his sound. I always tried to write a song that they could do, but Linda would say, “Well, it’s almost right, but I just don’t hear that coming out of Aaron’s mouth.” It’s really frustrating when you think you’ve got it. But it is a highly specific thing, the character that comes out of the singer’s mouth.
What are you working on these days?
I just wrote a song for Johnny Rivers, who I used to work with a lot. Back in the ’60s, I was actually signed to Johnny Rivers Music [publishing]. We did a couple albums, one called Rewind that was all my songs. He really played an important part in opening up the door for me to the entertainment industry. He put me together with the Fifth Dimension, and that, of course, became a huge thing for me, that relationship. So it’s a little bit of a nostalgic tour.
He had recently lost his mother. She was in her nineties and they were very close. He called me up, and he asked, “Could you write me a song called ‘Where Words End.’” And he explained how he and [guitarist] Michael Georgiatus had been talking about saying goodbye to his mother.
Also, I recently went in the studio for the third session with my sons, Christiaan, Justin, Jamie and Corey, who are the Webb Brothers officially. They’re all very talented kids, and we got to talking about making an album. And that’s become my raison d’etre. We were just going to do it for fun, but it’s actually turning into a really wonderful record.
I was out in L.A. working with them three weeks ago, and I recorded my 85-year-old dad, their grandfather. He’s on the album singing a couple of things. The boys are contributing about half of the music and I’m contributing about half of the music.
You were raised on a farm in West Texas. How did you start out in music?
The whole inspiration for my music came out of sitting around with the family and playing and singing in church. My mother got the idea that she wanted me to be the church pianist. So, when I was about six years old, she started in with the piano lessons. She used to have this little chicken with a bell that you used for cooking, and she’d put that chicken on the piano, and I had to play until the bell rang. Every single day! I used to think that was cruel and that they should come get her and take her to jail. But in my early teens that piano playing began to come in handy with the girls, and I began to think my mother wasn’t so stupid after all.
Then as fate would have it, she got ill when I was about 16 or 17, and just before my career blossomed, she died. I remember the night I got a Grammy for “Up Up and Away,” I was up there thinking I wish mom could see this. There were so many high points, and there continue to be that I wish she could see. She was only 36 years old.
Do you only write songs on piano?
Yes. And I played lots of organ, because I got into the liturgical side of organ music, and most of the churches where my dad was a pastor had organs. Tried to play a little guitar, and my father was frustrated by that. He’d say, “Be a man, play a guitar!” And I’d try. He had this old Silvertone with steel strings that were just raw and worse than sandpaper. I’d say, “Oh daddy, I don’t want to do this.” And he say, “Well carnsonya!! Why don’t you be a man?!” He’d never cuss. He had a whole vernacular he’d substitute for cuss words. But I never could get the hang of it. The fact is, I took to the piano and had a knack for it.
When you work on a song, do you finish the music first?
My idea of songwriting has always been to have a great title, and you may as well say that a title and an idea are synonymous, which is what I say in my book Tunesmith. I write them together: title/idea. And I use that as a central anchor to build the song around, so that it’s really about something. You’d be surprised at how many songs come your way from young writers when they want your opinion. And you listen to the song and it’s got no beginning, middle, or end. You need to feel strongly about something before you write a song. The song really is an emotional flashpoint for cathartic experiences.
A lot of songs get off to a very good start, but it’s knowing how to carry the middle to the end and sew it up and make it like one of O. Henry’s short stories so that it makes the listener feel like they’ve taken a little journey with the writer. That’s one of the precepts laid down by our founding fathers, the traditional things that I’ve tried to keep alive in my lifetime because so many conventions and customs of classical songwriting have gone by the boards. There are very few people out there who are saying that the way Rodgers and Hart wrote songs is very important and that we don’t want to lose it. This is an American art form. It’s like the Italians and their glass blowing, which is an art that is handed down through the generations.
I was very young—16 or 17 years old—when I found myself sitting backstage at a hotel in Vegas where Tony Martin was playing. I had gone up there with some songs for Tony Martin. I’m sitting there—I couldn’t really see who it was because all the lights were down—and there was another fella there taking a rest. I was going through a couple of my scores that I wanted to show Mr. Martin, and this voice came out of the darkness and said, “What are you looking at?” And I said, “Oh this is just some of my music.” He said, “Well let me see that.” And it was somewhere around then that I realized who I was talking to. It was Satchmo. I’ll never forget it. I was fixated on his lips. There was a white scar around his mouth where he put the mouthpiece of the trumpet, and I thought about all the gigs, all the gigs that this guy had played. He looked at me and he said, “You know, I think this is pretty good. I think that you ought to stick with it.” So he didn’t know me from Adam, but he liked it. Well sometimes that’s all you need, is to know at least Louis Armstrong likes what I’m doing!
