Tracy Byrd Finds Hit In Paycheck Song

On the heels of “Big Love,” which was big enough to reach No. 3 in the Hot Country Singles chart, Tracy Byrd may well have released his career’s biggest record to date in his brand-new remake of Johnny Paycheck’s old “Don’t Take Her, She’s All I’ve Got.”

Byrd himself suggested the song to producer Tony Brown. During a break in a Nashville recording session, he went to a Tower Records store, came back with the Paycheck recording, asked Brown to play it and said he would love to record it himself. Brown, too, was a fan of the song and agreed.

Its initial impact has been out of the ordinary.

“I went with Tracy to Billy Bob’s (a huge Fort Worth nightclub) in Texas the other night,” reports Byrd’s publicist, Melissa Matthews, “and the moment he started into ‘Don’t Take Her’ the whole crowd started singing along. And the place was packed, standing room only.”

Byrd will have his own one-hour TV special, “Tracy Byrd: Big Love,” on The Nashville Network March 19.

The content will show Byrd’s personal passions, from his family and hunting and fishing to charity work with the Special Olympics and March of Dimes to, of course, singing.

The performance part of the special is being shot at Nashville’s Wildhorse Saloon, with guests slated to include the longtime swing band Asleep At The Wheel and Byrd’s predecessor at a Beaumont honkytonk called Cutter’s, fellow star Mark Chesnutt.

Byrd is still doing intermittent dates with Tracy Lawrence, with whom he performed 26 shows last fall.

The two confess that they initially didn’t care for each other at all, Lawrence disliking Byrd because he was forced to share country stardom with another Tracy and Byrd resenting Lawrence because Byrd had been singing the song “Alibis” at Cutter’s before Lawrence recorded it and made a hit of it.

When they finally met and had to talk, the story goes, each found the other likable. Now they are such friends that Lawrence, who closes their shows, brings Byrd back out to sing with him during his set.

At the reception after Lawrence’s impending wedding, which is being planned for April, Byrd is scheduled to sing his love ballad “Keeper Of The Stars.”

HeadHunters on rebound

Be forewarned, all ye faint of heart and fragile of eardrum:

The forthcoming album of the reviving Kentucky HeadHunters is half-finished and is reported to be due on the street in March.

‘Wolverton’ a hit in ‘60s

“Wolverton Mountain,” now on the radio by the group Great Plains, was first recorded 35 years ago by Claude King and spent nearly a year in the hit charts’ upper reaches.

The song was co-written by King and Merle Kilgore, now the manager of Hank Williams Jr., and it concerns a real place in Arkansas and a real person named Clifton Clowers, Kilgore’s uncle by marriage. Great Plains isn’t the only act to decide to remake the song since, either.

Kilgore notes that it has been recorded even by such non-country performers as Bing Crosby, Louis Armstrong and Nat King Cole. Cole, Kilgore says, told him he had done the song because his sister “drove me crazy telling me I had to record that.”

Great Plains lead singer Lex Browning says he remembered the song’s lyrics from childhood, when he and his brother sang it on a Lexington, Ky., radio broadcast.