Every Friday around 11 a.m. Central, it’s time for Classic Americana on Radio Heartland. We pull a special track from the archives or from deep in the shelves to spotlight a particular artist or song.

Our Classic Americana artist this week is a singer-songwriter called Razzy Bailey. Born February 13, 1939, Razzy Bailey grew up on a farm in Alabama, singing songs on the front porch with his family and friends on Saturday nights until the wee hours of Sunday morning. As a high schooler, Bailey participated in Future Farmers of America, and he played in a string band that was sponsored by FFA. Bailey’s string band got invited to participate in a music-talent contest at Auburn University, and they won second place.

That would be the last bit of music success that Razzy Bailey would experience for some time.

Immediately after high school, Bailey married and started a family. He took odd jobs — truck driver, insurance rep, furniture salesman — but he continued playing music at night and worked on honing his craft as a songwriter.

Bailey eventually landed a publishing deal with Bill Lowery of Atlantic Records, who recorded Bailey performing a couple of original songs in 1966 (one of the studio musicians on Bailey’s first recordings was an up-and-coming piano player, Billy Joel). Bailey’s songs were commercially unsuccessful, and he stopped pursuing a music career for about 10 years. Then, in 1976, singer Dickey Lee enjoyed a chart-topping hit with his cover of Bailey’s original song “9,999,999 Tears”; the next year, Lee landed at No. 1 again with his cover of Bailey’s song, “Peanut Butter.”

Feeling encouraged, Razzy Bailey returned to the music industry, singing with RCA Records. “I got so used to my songs being turned down and my efforts at recording deals falling through,” Bailey told U.K. magazine Country Music People in 1980, “that it just made me all the more determined to succeed.”

Succeed he did. In the early 1980s, Razzy Bailey enjoyed a streak of five consecutive No. 1 hits: "Loving Up a Storm," "I Keep Coming Back," "Friends," "Midnight Hauler," and "She Left Love All Over Me.”

While most of those songs sound like yacht rock in today’s ears, Bailey’s song “Midnight Hauler” is a foot-stomping trucking song, reminiscent of Dave Dudley’s “Six Days on the Road” or Townes Van Zandt’s “White Freightliner Blues,” but with a jazzy horn section and boogie-woogie piano. There’s even an added air of authenticity to “Midnight Hauler” given Bailey himself was a truck driver during the troughs in his musical career.

Bailey’s winning streak achieved its zenith in the early 1980s. He continued writing and releasing music, however, even recording duets with Johnny Cash and Willie Nelson in the early 2000s. Bailey died at home in Tennessee in 2012 at the age of 82.

External Links

Razzy Bailey – official site