Amarillo by Morning

This is your host and storyteller, Sonia Heisinger.

This is the part of the show where we go behind the scenes of Amarillo by Morning, performed by many musicians, as we will come to learn, but famously by George Strait.

Unlike our companion episode where you got to experience my adaptation of the song as narrative fiction, this part of Songbook is spontaneous and unscripted, except for this intro.

You're going to learn a little bit about the song itself, the artists and or songwriters who created it, what drew me to the song as inspiration, and how I crafted it into a story.

I actually attended a rodeo.

The timing couldn't have been more perfect.

I'd already chosen Amarillo by Morning as my next story, and a rodeo just happened to be scheduled for this past weekend.

So I took my boys.

Like, what are they doing? Like, is this their first time? Good night.

Amarillo by Morning, shout out to George Strait.

Some fine listening there, boys and girls.

I'm not gonna call, uh, George Strait the king of country because he's not the king to me.

They turn the wipers on and they're just rubbing against the fucking dry windshield with the dusty ass.

[laughs] Fucking, I was like, "What the fuck are these on for?" Uh, there's people that do that all the time.

Shout out to Amarillo by Morning, one of the GOAT country songs of all time.

Fuck yeah.

...

George Strait's Amarillo by Morning is in the lyrics.

Yeah, yeah.

It could've been sung by Kathy Mattea 35 years ago.

That already makes her more interesting to me.

[laughs] Right.

He always loved Amarillo by morning.

I shoulda taken-

1982, country singer LeAnn Rimes is born Margaret LeAnn Rimes in Jackson, Mississippi.

In 1982, George Strait lands his first number one country hit with Pool Hearted Memory, a song from his second album called Strait From The Heart, which also contains his famous cover of Amarillo By Morning.

Strait quickly became the biggest hit maker in country music with 17 number one hits by the end of the decade.

In 1986, Florence Welch forms Florence + The Machine with keyboard player Isabella "Machine" Summers, is born in London.

Of George Strait's Amarillo by Morning.

I had to listen to that song last night like 10 times.

It was an earworm and I couldn't get it out of my head.

And I thought the only way to do it is to listen.

You have to listen to the song.