Buddy Killen

How do I pitch to you? So Dan Wilson brought me Freckles.

And Buddy Killen sent it over, and I listened to it.

We'll cut that.

we'll cut that okay go in there and duplicate this because i want to take this to all the song pluggers and just tell them you you want to know what the oak ridge voice will cut play freckles and so every song on the y'all come back saloon is about a girl every one of them listen to the album Because everybody in town thought, okay, you'll cut Freckles, you'll cut my song about Emmylou Harris.

Uh, w- well, I guess our, our history, we have a history in, in Los Angeles.

Um, but, but in Nashville, the, uh, when we came- when we start turning to a country band, we started recording, uh, at the Sound Shop that was owned by Buddy Killen, who was our producer at the time.

It's since been leveled and, and other things have been built, but that was a legendary studio, and we did, I think, probably four or five albums there.

And so that's, that's really where my heart is.

Well, there's two different contracts.

I worked with Buddy Killen, who owned Tree International.

He just passed away a couple of years ago.

But he took a great interest in me as a writer, but he also was a producer, and he produced a record on me.

So I got work through Tree Publishing Company.

Buddy Killen was a dear friend.

And so he would get me on these sessions singing some of the songs that these writers had written, singing the girls' songs.

And then I didn't have a car, didn't have a phone, didn't have anything.

I've been to a memorial service, celebration of life or whatever, with Dolly, actually.

One of the last times I got a good hug, we were at one of those things together for our friend, Buddy Killen, who was a publisher and producer on Music Row.

And those things are sad no matter how you do them.

So Dolly just didn't want to go in that direction.

So I, I know how lucky I've been, and I'm grateful for it every day, 'cause I love what I do.

Now, another thing you did early on is that you sent songs to Buddy Killen, the head of Tree Publishing, which is a big country music publisher.

And did you get other people to record your songs?

Well, I wrote a song with my Uncle Bill Owens, the same uncle that I was talking about.

So yeah, so I had, uh, different songs recorded by different artists, that being the biggest at that time.

And I did write for Tree for, for a, a while.

Buddy Killen was very good to me.

And then Buddy, I mean, um, Fred Foster, who owned, uh, Monument Records, took me over, and I started to write for, uh, Combine Music.