Nobody saw him running from Sixteenth Avenue
They never found a fingerprint or the weapon that was used
But someone killed country music, cut out its heart and soul
They got away with murder down on Music Row…
I bet you sang part of that, didn’t you? With some of the cleverest lines of any song from the past several decades, Murder on Music Row, penned by the esteemed Larry Cordle and Larry Shell, took the bluegrass and country music worlds by storm just over 25 years ago. Currently, the acclaimed song is in the midst of celebrating the 25th anniversary of winning multiple Song of the Year honors. It holds the distinction as the only number to win Song of the Year from the Society for the Preservation of Bluegrass Music of America (SPBGMA), the International Bluegrass Music Association (IBMA), and the Country Music Association (CMA). The two bluegrass honors came in 2000; the CMA trophy in 2001.
While the lyrics describe a murder that never really happened, a Nashville policeman did supply crime scene tape. More on that later…
I recently had the chance to talk with Larry Cordle about the song and its impact. The way he tells it, beginning around 1995, the songs that labels and artists were looking for started “going left.” A&R people began looking for “country, but not that country,” and he began struggling to get any songs cut. As time passed, he got busy with life, focused on raising his daughter Kelvey, and stepped away from traveling with a band.
Then, around 1999, the bug bit him again after seeing Del McCoury play. Cordle says he told his wife, “I’m going to have to think about doing this again.” Soon after, he began working on a new album – the one that would become Murder on Music Row.
“I thought I had all the songs picked out for the project,” says Cordle. “I had been focused on putting together the best record I could. Then, one day, my buddy Larry Shell called me and said he had a song he wanted us to get together and work on. It was about two or three days later and I went to see him. It really came together in just a couple of hours. We came back from lunch and tweaked a few things, but it was pretty much finished.”
Before the song was recorded, he played it at several popular Nashville venues for songwriters. Cordle got quite the surprise when he performed the song at Nashville’s Bluebird Cafe. “There was a tremendous uproar when I got to the chorus. I was singing the song with my eyes closed and it scared me. The roof came off the place.” A performance at the Station Inn had the same result.
On the last night of the recording session for what would become the Murder on Music Row album, Cordle asked the band if they’d help him record the song just so he’d have a good demo of it. It still wasn’t meant to go on the record. However, he says he began thinking, “Every real bluegrass fan I know is an old country music fan too.” After he realized it would make a good connection with his fans, he decided to include it as the final track of the project.
Prior to the record’s release, he found himself eating at a Longhorn Steakhouse restaurant in Nashville. After seeing two police officers in the restaurant, he decided to introduce himself. Their conversation led him to two discoveries: police officers often like country music, and they carry crime scene tape in the trunks of their vehicles.
Next, Cordle came up with a plan for the album cover, and searched 16th Street for a labeled street sign. Favors were called in for a hearse (even a funeral director showed up), Bruce Bouton’s steel guitar was borrowed and placed on a gurney, and some chalk lines of instruments and people were drawn on the street. They used the yellow crime scene tape to make it all look realistic.
“Man, we used that stuff [crime scene tape] for everything. It was our major promotion at the IBMA convention that year,” Cordle says. Some of the CDs that went to radio hosts were even wrapped in it.
Carl P. Mayfield was the first disc jockey to play the song, and did so on his 6:00 – 10:00 a.m. radio show. He played the song eight times the first day. The requests for the song were so numerous that the phones were shut off. In fact, Cordle’s phone started ringing, too. Soon after the song’s radio debut, Erv Woolsey, longtime manager for George Strait, brought the song to Strait’s attention. Evidently Strait and Alan Jackson had been looking for a duet for quite some time.
Strait and Jackson performed the song on the 2000 Academy of Country Music Awards show, and Strait also released it on his Latest Greatest Straitest Hits record in 2000. It wasn’t a single for Strait, but did reach top 40 status, going as far as number 38 on the Billboard charts. Although it wasn’t officially released to radio, the song truly struck a chord with country listeners, earning Music Event of the Year at the 2000 CMA Awards, in addition to its several Song of the Year honors.
While Cordle and Shell certainly foresaw the wave of pop country, bro country, and more that has overtaken Nashville since the release of Murder on Music Row, they also created a rallying cry for well-written songs performed by truly talented musicians and singers. Here’s to 25 years of one of the best, and most impactful, songs to ever cross the bluegrass and country music airwaves!
