“First of all, I’m not a star because I’ve been married to the same lady for 45 years,” the iconic singer, pianist and entertainer insisted. “So right there, that tells you I’m no star. If I’d been married 20 times and had a whole lot of houses and cars, I’d be a real star, but I don’t live my life that way. I always think legends are people who have been around a long time. I think of Merle Haggard or Willie Nelson or George Jones; they’re definitely legendary to me. I don’t think I’m in that category yet.”
Consider the modest Mr. Milsap overruled on this one. One multi-Platinum album (Greatest Hits), one Platinum (Greatest Hits 2) and six Gold testify to the loyalty of his longtime fans. Beginning in 1974 with “Pure Love” (written by Eddie Rabbitt), Milsap singles would hit No. 1 some 40 times. He has won six Grammy Awards, all in the category of Best Country Solo Performance, Male. And his peers have honored him with 19 nominations and eight wins for CMA Awards.
This achievement retains special meaning for Milsap, going back to his first Award as CMA Male Vocalist of the Year in 1974. “It had really been a great year, but I was probably a little stunned by hearing my name called,” he said. “Seems like (producer) Tom Collins and (manager) Jack Johnson came over, one got on one arm and one got on the other and they had to lead me up there. I think I was just amazed that would happen. And then, stepping off the stage, Jerry Reed grabbed my hand and shook my hand and said, ‘Congratulations, Milsap!’ That was a great Award.”
Three years later, he took the triple crown of CMA Entertainer, Male and Album of the Year Awards. “Winning Entertainer of the Year, I never expected that to happen,” he said. “It was still pretty early as far as developing my own career in Country Music. I thought it was too early on to win Entertainer of the Year, but if it happens, it happens. I wasn’t going to quarrel with it.”
These moments and all else that Milsap has accomplished are especially remarkable given the adversities he has overcome. Born with a congenital ailment that eventually left him blind, abandoned by his mother, he was raised by his grandparents in Robbinsville, N.C., until enrolling at The Governor Morehead School for the Blind in Raleigh, N.C. He was 6 years old when he began traveling alone by Greyhound Bus from Raleigh to visit his grandparents twice a year, sleeping on a bench between legs of his journey and then walking several miles up a dirt road to his destination.
“To have gone through what he went through in his life, he is the most normal, well-adjusted person I know,” said his longtime producer Rob Galbraith. “I told him, ‘Man, if you hadn’t been blind, I don’t think you would ever have gotten out of those hills.’ He would have probably been working in the sawmill.”
Maybe not, given the talent he showed as a child. “Blind School taught him about Beethoven, Bach and Mozart, and the radio taught him about Ray Charles, Jerry Lee Lewis and Little Richard,” said Galbraith. And though he was awarded a full scholarship to study law at Young Harris College in Georgia, Milsap changed his plans in part through a chance encounter with Charles, who urged him to pursue music. He released his first single, “Total Disaster” (Vicki Simmons), in 1963. In those early years, his music was more R&B-flavored; one single in that style, “Never Had It So Good” (Nickolas Ashford and Valerie Simpson), reached No. 5.
The shift toward Country began with another chance encounter, between his wife Joyce and Charley Pride. They met in a hotel elevator, where she persuaded the future Country Music Hall of Fame member to call her husband in their room.
“I’m just up there waiting to find out what’s for breakfast. The phone rings and I hear” … Milsap breaks into the chorus from Pride’s hit “Is Anybody Going to San Antone?” “I said, ‘I don’t know who you are but you do a great impersonation of Charley Pride.’ He said, ‘I am Charley Pride.’”
After dropping in on Milsap’s gig that night and hearing him perform several Country songs, Pride encouraged him to move to Nashville. He did so in 1972, signing up with Pride’s manager at the time, Jack Johnson, who began spreading word about his new client. “Eventually, when Jack talked to Jerry Bradley (then VP, RCA Records Nashville), he said, ‘I know all about Ronnie Milsap,’” the singer remembered. “He plays down in Memphis. He’s an R&B singer. He’s not a Country singer.’ Jack said, ‘Well, you need to listen to this tape.’ After he played the tape, to quote Jerry Bradley, he said, ‘You know what? That S.O.B. can sing Country!’ So Jerry Bradley signed me and I was on RCA.”
Milsap released his first Country album, Where My Heart Is, in 1973, followed a year later by Pure Love, scoring his first No. 1 with the title track. He went to the top of the charts with “Daydreams About Night Things,” (John Schweers) his first million-seller “It Was Almost Like a Song” (Hal David and Archie Jordan), “What a Difference You’ve Made in My Life” (Archie Jordan), “There’s No Gettin’ Over Me” (Jim Aldridge and Tom Brasfield) and “Any Day Now” (Burt Bacharach and Bob Hilliard), among many others. He scored numerous crossover hits and was even on MTV in the ’80s with a video for the techno/pop “She Loves My Car” (Bill LaBounty and Roy Freeland), starring Mariska Hargitay of “Law & Order: SVU.” Milsap’s ability to achieve success without following established recipes and his willingness to take chances changed many minds about what qualified as Country Music. “No other piano players really existed in Country, except for Jerry Lee Lewis,” noted Phil Vassar. “You can still count them on 10 fingers. But I remember when everybody was telling me, ‘Look, you need to throw a hat on and you need to play guitar. That’s just how we do it here.’ And I would always say, ‘Well, what about Ronnie Milsap?’”
“And he was singing with so much soul,” Vassar added. “He’s a soul singer! That’s what made it cool for me. I grew up on Ronnie Milsap and Ray Charles, guys who proved that Country and soul or R&B music are brothers.”
“Crossover was kind of a dirty word,” said Galbraith. “And then it became the only word. What Taylor Swift and other folks are doing would have been pure heresy except for Ronnie.”
For Milsap, drawing from other genres enriched rather than diluted his feel for Country. This is clear on his latest album, Country Again, scheduled to be released July 26 on Bigger Picture Group. A few of its 12 songs were cut originally for My Life, released in 2006 by RCA Records, but most are newly tracked.
For the first single, “If You Don’t Want Me To” (Robert White Johnson and Jimmie Lee Sloas), Milsap revisits a song he had recorded many years ago. Here, he builds a crisp, dance-friendly groove on a keyboard riff reminiscent of the Doobie Brothers’ “What a Fool Believes,” with a vocal that defines the art of Country/pop fusion. “We never released it as a single and never put it on an album,” said Galbraith. “We used it as a B side on three different singles. Ronnie was like, ‘What are we gonna use as the B side? We don’t want to waste one of the others. Well, let’s put “If You Don’t Want Me To” on there again.’”
But the rest of Country Again lives up to the title. Milsap caresses the lyrics to “A Better Word for Love” (Al Anderson and Gary Nicholson) with exceptional tenderness, does a down-home recitation leading to a dramatic change of texture, rhythm and feel on the chorus of the title cut (Carson Chamberlain and Anthony Smith), raises the spirits of old-school balladry on his remake of the 1954 Jimmy C. Newman hit “Cry, Cry Darling” (J.D. Miller and Jimmy C. Newman) and features chorus-sweetened Countrypolitan on “You’re the Reason I’m Living” (Bobby Darin).
WSM on-air personality Eddie Stubbs, credited as Executive Producer, helped inspire the album through conversations with Milsap. “A lot of people don’t know how deep Ronnie’s background is in traditional Country Music,” he said. “He grew up listening to this music on broadcasts out of Nashville on WSM and from Knoxville on WNOX. A lot of the Knoxville music was very, very traditional and it went into who he is, along with pop, rhythm & blues and all the other outside influences.”
“I’m really excited about this new album,” Milsap said. “The album is called Country Again and that’s exactly what it was because it’s predominantly a Country album.”
“He came to Nashville and started real stone Country because he really is stone Country,” said Galbraith, who has commissioned some people to shop a screenplay about Milsap’s life to the West Coast. “And he is stone R&B. That’s a blessing and a curse at the same time because we tried to satisfy two masters. The Country audience over the years has given him an extra credit, extra leeway. They were proud of all that Ronnie could do.”
“It’s all about the fans and I certainly know that,” Milsap concluded. “Fans have been so good to me over the years. They know me inside and out. I’m just happy I’ve been allowed to do something I love so much. What a way to make a living.”
On the Web: www.RonnieMilsap.com
Article (C) 2011 CMA and used with permission.
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