Red Lane, one of my favourite hard-core country music songwriters, passed away on July 1, 2015, following a lengthy bout with cancer. He was 76. One of the best kept secrets in country music, he was one of the most authentic country songwriters with a gift for prose that transcended time. Heralded by his peers of the day, he enjoyed a successful career composing bluesy, deeply personal country classics for over five decades, penning hits for Eddy Arnold, Waylon Jennings, Willie Nelson, Conway Twitty, George Strait, Merle Haggard and Faron Young. Throughout the 1970s and 1980s Lane wrote classics such as ’Til I Get It Right (Tammy Wynette), The World Needs A Melody (The Carter Family with Johnny Cash), Miss Emily’s Picture (John Conlee) and New Looks From An Old Lover (B.J. Thomas). Lane also collaborated with Dottie West (Country Girl) and Merle Haggard (My Own Kind Of Hat). More recently his songs were recorded by George Strait (Tell Me Something Bad About Tulsa) and Lee Ann Womack (He’ll Be Back).

I’ve been a passionate supporter of songwriters ever since I bought my first record more than fifty years ago. I first became aware of Red Lane and his songs back in the late 1960s, initially due to Waylon Jennings’ recordings of Walk On Out Of My Mind and Mississippi Woman. Then came Darling, You Know I Wouldn’t Lie, a big hit for Conway Twitty in 1969 and the song that really clinched it for me, One Row At A Time, which had Dottie West sharing the writing credits and Merle Haggard recording it as an album track. A song that explores the hard times of growing up in an era when hard work and poverty went hand-in-hand, this was a song that dealt honestly with childhood memories with both affection and hate.

Red Lane’s beginning in music is a pretty common story replete with all the hard knocks and dues paying that is required to get your foot in the door in the music business. What is not common is his unique take on the cards he was dealt in life and the raw and sometimes irreverent way that he communicated his experiences lyrically. Much like the best and most influential artists to ever put pen to paper, Red Lane made no apologies for his sobering assessment of things be it a raucous glass raising anthem or a razor sharp ballad about loving with a wounded heart.

Somewhat of a free spirit, Red Lane was born Hollis Rudolph DeLaughter on February 9, 1939 in Zona (now part of Bogalusa), Louisiana. He spent his childhood hoeing corn and cotton alongside his sharecropper father. Young Red began to learn guitar after his father sold his favourite .22 -calibre rifle to buy an acoustic guitar from Sears, Roebuck and Co. and taught his nine-year old son to play. Red became accustomed to life on the move, as his family was always in search of the next field to harvest. In one year alone, he attended four different schools. In 1952, his family moved to Michigan northern Indiana, where his father worked heavy construction machinery.

After graduating from a high school in Indiana, Red enlisted in the Air Force, where he served as an aircraft engine mechanic because his colour blindness disqualified him from becoming a military pilot. He was stationed in Hawaii where his guitar prowess won him several Air Force talent contests, and he was asked to perform on the famous live radio show Hawaii Calls out of Waikiki Beach. In 1958, after relocating to a base in Omaha, Nebraska, Red began playing local nightclubs six nights a week. In order to avoid problems with authorities at the Air Force base, he joined the local musicians’ union and needed to use a different name. He already had the nickname ‘Red,’ and when a friend recommended ‘Lane’ as a last name, his new identity was created and the new stage name stuck.
 Upon leaving the military, Red settled in Southern California and briefly gave up music as he searched for career direction. Hanging around West Coast clubs he met Buck and Bonnie Owens, and other Bakersfield performers, which re-ignited his musical interest. He eventually moved to Phoenix, Arizona, where he picked cotton to make ends meet and for a while lived under a bridge because he couldn’t afford rent.

Before long, he began playing in Phoenix bands and met another young, up-and-coming musician, Waylon Jennings. He became an early supporter of the vocal talent of the future Nashville outlaw and begun a friendship that would last until his death. At the time, Red didn't write songs. But he fell in love with the early albums of Willie Nelson, whose original songs inspired him to write his own compositions. He then moved back home to Indiana and worked three shifts a day as a guitarist, working from noon to five a.m. in local clubs. In 1963, he met country star Justin Tubb at one of the Indiana clubs, for whom he played three or four of his self-penned songs. The Grand Ole Opry star liked the songs and convinced Red to send some of his original songs to Buddy Killen, head of Nashville’s Tree Publishing Company. Killen not only signed him to a publishing deal in 1963, but he also helped Red relocate to Nashville by securing him a job as a guitarist and singer in Justin Tubb’s band.

By the time Red moved to Nashville near the end of that year, Faron Young had recorded My Friend On The Right, a song he’d co-written with Red. Within a year the song had reached number 11 on the country charts and earned Red Lane the first of his many BMI songwriting awards. With the security of a regular monthly publishing pay cheque, Red was able to concentrate full-time on his songwriting. He also picked up tips and advice from fellow songwriters. 

Not long after arriving in Nashville, Red began a long-running association with singer Dottie West. In the late 1960s he fronted her band and co-wrote dozens of songs with her including Clinging To My Baby’s Hand, It’s Dawned On Me You’re Gone, Come See Me And Come Lonely, and Country Girl, a Top 20 hit in 1968. The previous year, his long-time songwriting idol, Willie Nelson, scored a top 20 country hit with Red’s Blackjack County Chain,

Shortly after this success, Willie’s label-mate Waylon Jennings recorded Walk On Out of My Mind, which became Red’s first top-five hit as a writer in 1968. That year proved to be very big for the songwriter, who also scored with They Don’t Make Love Like They Used To, a top 10 country hit for Eddy Arnold, and Darling, You Know I Wouldn’t Lie, a song that narrowly missed the top spot for Conway Twitty—but nevertheless earned a nomination for the song of the year award from the Country Music Association that year—one of only two Twitty hits to earn such a distinction.

Red had remained enamoured with airplanes and flying. In the early 1970s he began parachute jumping and used his skydiving exploits as inspiration for the song The Day I Jumped From Uncle Harvey’s Plane, which was recorded by Roger Miller in 1972. He also got his pilot’s licence and. purchased a 170-passenger Douglas DC-8 jet that he converted into a home in Ashland City, Tennessee where he lived for more than 30 years.

A talented guitarist, Red also became an in-demand session musician who played on recordings by Merle Haggard, Johnny Cash, Clarence ‘Gatemouth’ Brown, Dottie West, Bobby Bare and Waylon Jennings. He went on to work with two of his personal guitar heroes in the 1970s, scripting the Ride This Train segments with Merle Travis for the Johnny Cash Show and recording and touring with Willie Nelson.

With his success as a songwriter, Red was offered a recording contract by Chet Atkins, another of his guitar heroes, with RCA Victor. He had previously recorded one single, Maliguena, for the small Lawson label in 1966. His first session for RCA, produced by Ronny Light, took place in the legendary RCA Studio B in August 1969. His first three singles—It Always Rains On Tuesday, Please Don’t Tell My Dad and Arkansas Lovin’ Man—all failed to chart. His fourth one, The World Needs A Melody, a song that he’d co-written with Larry Henley and Johnny Slate, reached number 32 in the summer of 1971 and became the title track of his only album, released later that year. The song was revived a year later by the Carter Family with Johnny Cash and became a popular album track throughout the 1970s with George Jones, Tammy Wynette and Kenny Rogers all recording the song. The track recently surfaced once again on Teea Goans’ 2014 album MEMORIES TO BURN.

Red’s album, which has been in my collection for more than 40 years, was a neat collection of self-penned songs that gleam with pure-country authenticity. Written with great emotional honesty and integrity they dealt not only with the vagaries of love and inner frustration; but his social agenda was also evident in songs like the haunting Valley Of The Never Done Good. Alongside his previous singles, Red also reprised several of his hit songs for others including Mississippi Woman (Waylon Jennings), Darling You Know I Wouldn’t Lie (Conway Twitty) and Blackjack County Chain (Willie Nelson).

Red scored three more minor hits during 1971-72 with Set The World On Fire (With Love), Throw A Rope Around The Wind (from the Robert Mitchum movie Going Home) and It Was Love While It Lasted. His final RCA single, his original version of The Day I Jumped From Uncle Harvey’s Plane failed to chart. Buddy Killen signed Red to Dial Records in 1974, for whom he released one single, Ain’t Your Memory Got No Pride At All. One of the best songs he ever wrote, it was eventually turned into a minor country hit by Ray Charles in 1983, having also been recorded as an album track by Merle Haggard and several others.

Red decided that he preferred the songwriter’s lifestyle to that of an aspiring star performer. He toured as a guitarist with Merle Haggard, who went on to record more than 20 songs that Red has written. Many of his best ones are hidden away on the Hag’s albums and include Somewhere To Come When It Rains, Coming And The Going Of The Trains, Love Somebody To Death, There Won’t Be Another Now and I Didn’t Mean to Love You.

Soul singer Clarence Carter scored on both the r&b and pop charts with Red’s The Court Room in 1971, while Porter Wagoner included Funky Grass Band on his SIMPLE AS I AM album that same year. Probably his best known song is the unflinchingly honest love song ’Til I Get It Right, which Tammy Wynette turned into a number one hit in 1973. Though written from Red’s own personal experience, Wynette’s performance of this song was so powerful that many of her die-hard fans believed that it must surely have been her own song about her stormy relationship with George Jones. The song has since been recorded or performed by Solomon Burke, Bob Dylan, Lorrie Morgan, Kenny Rogers, Trisha Yearwood and more.
 Red Lane continued throughout the 1970s penning hit songs and album tracks for diverse acts across country, pop and soul musical styles. Amongst his country hits were Satisfaction (Jack Greene, 1973), Wake Me Into Love (Bud Logan & Wilma Burgess, 1974), Come See Me And Come Lonely (Dottie West, 1978) and I Must Have Done Something Bad and My Own Kind Of Hat (Merle Haggard, 1979).

One of my all-time favourite Red Lane songs is Miss Emily’s Picture, a number two country hit for John Conlee in 1981. Though I’ve heard this song probably hundreds of times, it still stops me in my tracks and I have to sit down and really listen to the words as I brush a tear away. Red Lane used his lyrics to tell stories with universal appeal, bringing to the task his skills as a natural poet but keeping the words strong, simple, and evocative.

Other songs by this creative genius that continue to resonate with me long after I first heard them include Would These Arms Be In Your Way, a minor country hit for Keith Whitley in 1987 and also recorded by Vern Gosdin, and Tell Me Something Bad About Tulsa, originally recorded by Merle Haggard in 1986 and turned into a top 10 country hit in 2003 by George Strait. Strait also recorded Red’s Haven’t You Heard for his SOMETHING SPECIAL album in 1985.

Among the other artists who have recorded Red Lane’s songs are Johnny Paycheck, the Del McCoury Band, Tex Ritter, Marty Haggard, Englebert Humperdinck, Wanda Jackson, Loretta Lynn, Jack Palance and Elvis Costello. In 1993 he was inducted into the Nashville Songwriters’ Hall of Fame. The Country Music Hall of Fame and Museum honoured Red as part of its Poets and Prophets series in 2010, which celebrates songwriters who have made a significant contribution to country music. During the celebration the songwriter recalled one of his many stories about his long association with Merle Haggard.

Haggard once goaded his long time friend by calling Red the world’s third-best country songwriter. ‘Hank Cochran is first,’ Haggard said. ‘I’m second. You’re third.’
The famously laid-back Red Lane shrugged, telling Haggard: “Thank you ... I think.”

There’s something compelling about Red Lane’s extensive song catalogue, his compositions come with a rare emotional depth. He had a way of taking tales of hardship, adversity and even death and crafting them into intense and heartfelt masterpieces.

“I cannot tell you how much I appreciate the fact that I could do what I do, and I’ve been able to do it all these years, and get paid enough for it so that I could keep doing it,” Red Lane said in August 2010. “That’s the most wonderful thing in my life.”