by John Stafford (ca early 1980's), CMPeople magazine
With Bobby Bare being one of my favourite artists, his album, Lullabys, Legends and Lies
being one of my favourite all-time albums, and with Shel Silverstein being one of my
favourite song writers, it will come as no surprise to you to learn that in the interview
I undertook with Bare during his last British tour a few months before the end of last year,
much of the time was spent talking about Shel. Shel's songs have been recorded by thousands
of artists in every conceivable field of music, so in no way could one say that his talents
are exclusive to Bare; but having recorded four full Silverstein albums, I think you will agree
that Bobby Bare more than qualifies to come up with this article.
Bobby Bare: "Shel grew up loving country music around Chicago, listening to WJJD, Suppertime Frolic and the Grand Ole Opry, even though he was not basically known as a country music writer - he's more famous, I guess, as a cartoonist and poet for Playboy magazine. I first met Shel in Nashville a long time ago; he was a friend of Chet (Atkins) and I think Chet was the one who got him to come down to Nashville. Shel had songs and he wanted to see what was happening. He had been writing before that - the first big hit song he ever wrote was I believe the thing that the Irish Rovers had out, 'The Unicorn'.
"It would be around the middle sixties when Shel first came to Nashville, and it wasn't until the late sixties that I first recorded one of his songs, 'Sylvia's Mother'. During this period he was making quite a name for himself as a country writer. In 1973, I had just spent two years with Mercury Records, I had left RCA and went to Mercury for two years, and then Chet, who had always been trying to get me to come back to RCA, came up to me and said: 'Why don't you come back to RCA and produce your own records?' My contract was up with Mercury so I said 'great', it was something I always wanted to do.
"At the time, Chet was getting out of producing - he was getting kinda tired of it - he'd already done everything there was to do, and so I came back to RCA as my own producer and decided to do albums instead of just singles like everybody was doing at the time. I decided to go to the great writers to see if I could get them to write me an album instead of a single...everybody's got a song, but when you go to a great writer and say 'write me an album', it scares them do death because that's a lot of hard work. I approached all the great writers of Nashville and they were willing to come up with an album of songs they had written that had been hits, but that wasn't what I wanted. I wanted ten or twelve new songs.
"I was over at Harlan Howard's house - Harlan was having a party - and I ran into Shel and I mentioned it to him...I said: 'Why don't you write me an album?'. He said: 'Well, I'll see', and in about three days he called me from Chicago and he said 'I have an album' and he flew in that night. It's about an hour's flight and I picked him up at the airport, and we got into my office and he sang me the songs all that night...they were great songs, they just blew me away...in other words, Shel was the first one who responded with what I wanted and the result was 'Lullabys, Legends And Lies'. We went into the studio with ten or twelve songs and we were having so much fun we wound up with eighteen or twenty, enough for a double album. One of them 'Rosalies Good Eats Cafe', was nine minutes long. I loved every song in it. What we were going to do initially was over record and have more than enough for an album, but there wasn't anything we could cut out.
"I was in Atlanta before the album was released and I had an acetate on it, a re-pressed copy, and I played it for the record company people in Atlanta. They took the track with me and my little boy, 'Daddy what if', and they took it to this big station and they got so much reaction that we immediately released it as a single about the same time that the album came out, and it became a very big hit. I then wanted to release 'The Winner' but the record company said it was far too long, it wouldn't get played on the radio, but I had been travelling around all over the country and I knew that the people really loved it - they requested it and I knew they wanted to hear it. We released '"Marie Laveau', which was a number one record, and then I went back in and insisted that they release 'The Winner'. They said it wouldn't get played, but they released it and they didn't have any trouble getting it played - it was still a great big hit.
"The next full album of Shel's songs was 'Singin' In The Kitchen'. It was a fun album. It was something I wanted to do, and the whole project was fun. Shel also writes books for kids - perhaps one of this biggest books was 'The Giving Tree', and he took it and made it into a song and I put it on the album. The next album I did of Shel's was 'The Winner And Other Losers' with the great song 'Brian Hennessy'. Shel once told me that if he could get a hundred ideas for songs a day, he could write a hundred songs.
"Then Shel and I got together again when I moved over to Columbia (CBS) and I completed 'Down and Dirty', another 'live' album like 'Lullabys'. We had gotten a bunch of good songs, crazy songs in it, and I think it worked out a better project than anything we'd ever done before...comparable to 'Lullabys, Legends and Lies'.
"Shel Silverstein...what can I say? Firstly, he's a very dear friend, but he's also one of the straightest people I know - he's not into drugs and things, he's the most realistic, logical person I've ever met. He's very witty, very intelligent and very sharp...I'm proud to be associated with him'."