In The Majors Singer Jeff Carson Methodically Works His Way Into The Big Leagues Of Country Music

Just outside of Dierks, Ark., country singer Jeff Carson got an early taste of fame.

He had just played the local Pine Tree Festival. Word was out that the singer of “Not on Your Love,” a No. 1 hit, liked to ride with the local cops if they would allow it.

In Dierks, that’ll work.

“I get in the car with him and we just start headin’ out and just get outside of town,” Carson recalls. “And this cop just turns on the blue lights for no reason and just floors the car and goes, ‘Yee haw!’

“I thought, ‘Oh God, what am I gettin’ into?”’

With one chart-topper under his belt and a big promotional push by Curb Records on another heart-tugging ballad, “The Car,” the amiable Carson may soon have to apply the same question to his entire life.

Carson has followed a path to country music stardom that reflects a minor league system that offers Nashville talented, controllable young stars. He honed his sound and got noticed not in honky-tonks but rather in Branson, Mo., theaters and Nashville recording studios.

Born in Gravette, Ark., 31 years ago, the musically inclined Carson saw country music as “the only good ticket out of town.” Shortly after high school, he won second place in a talent contest in nearby Rogers, and than settled down in a house band there.

“And then I moved to Branson - just kind of set up a new set of goals,” Carson said. “I stayed up there about three years or so, and then about that time I got with my wife, Kim, and she’s the one that really gave me that main push and kind of convinced me I was good enough.

“So we just picked up roots and moved to Nashville without knowing a soul.”

Within a month, Carson was singing at a lounge at the Opryland Hotel (in the same complex and owned by the same company as the Grand Ole Opry), and from there worked his way into the demo singing trade. The demo singer helps song publishers sell their wares by making a sample of how the finished product could sound.

Before he started turning down work because of his own album, Carson was one of busiest such singers in town. “It’s like 20 or 30 songs a week,” Carson said.

“My ears were hurting. If I wasn’t in the studio with the headphones on singing in the booth, I was learning the next day’s songs with my Walkman headphones on, so I constantly had headphones on.”

Carson sang “Walkin’ to Jerusalem” and “The Heart Is a Lonely Hunter” before Tracy Byrd and Reba McEntire ever heard of the hits. He also made valuable contacts with hit songwriters and had a few songs in mind when Curb Records gave him the opportunity to do an album.

“They (songwriters) were more apt to let me have some of their good material that ordinarily they’d probably save for the Garths (Brooks) and Alan Jacksons and all that,” Carson said.

Carson’s first single, the upbeat, lighthearted “Yeah, Buddy,” failed to make much of a chart dent. “Not on Your Love,” a rather faceless ballad in the mode of John Michael Montgomery’s “I Swear,” made it all the way to No. 1.

Curb executives decided to stick with what worked and have issued another heavy ballad, “The Car.” The potential of less ponderous material, like the sunny “Betty’s Taking Judo,” will have to wait. One of his former publicity mavens tried to sell Carson as “The New Tim McGraw.” The singer prefers Earl Thomas Conley and John Conlee as role models and can play you just about every James Taylor song there is.

But Carson is not the complaining type.

“Yeah man, he’s (McGraw) selling like crazy, isn’t he? Hey, that’s all right with me,” Carson says.

“If I can sell half of what he’s selling, I’ll be happy!”