Music Legends—Harlan Howard 
By Greg DorschelWhen I first met Harlan in 1985 he was about 57 years old. He'd already had most of the hundred plus top-ten hits he would acquire in his lifetime. Many of those songs were "standards," some of them twenty years old but still being played on the radio then and some of them are still being played on the radio now, as I write this, another twenty years later.
He was already a legend and an icon but as he entered the central, open area at Tree Publishing during my first week as an employee, I had no idea of who he was or what he had accomplished. He got off the elevator and as much to announce his arrival as to greet everyone, he uttered what I would later learn was one of his famous sayings, "Hello children." When Harlan showed up, everyone stopped what they were doing and looked up. There'd be a lot of joking around, some flirting, and probably some cussing. Then he'd usually head into one of the songpluggers' offices to talk about what songs of his they ought to be pitching. Almost always he'd saunter into the tape room, which I was managing. That small room is where I introduced myself and shook Harlan's hand for the first time.
The tape room was filled on three walls, floor-to-ceiling, with hundreds of color-coded and numbered boxes of 7 1/2 inch reel-to-reel tapes. Each box held recorded demos and work tapes of songs. Harlan's catalog was called the Wilderness catalog and the man had written and demo-ed enough songs to fill three shelves, each about 2-feet long. Those blue-spined boxes held just over a thousand songs.
The tape room was where all the master reel-to-reel tapes were kept. The "Tape Guys" integrated new songs into the catalog as they were turned in, made countless cassette copies as requested by artists, pluggers, and writers. (In fact, we were never caught up on making copies and we recorded several hundred such tapes weekly.) We also kept up with copies of all the recorded songs. Every wall of the place was lined with tapes or records except along one wall where we housed a large rack of tape players and recorders used for editing, recording and playback. We liked to call it the "nerve center of the operation," and while in fact we were the low guys on the creative department totem, we always did know what was happening. We heard every song that came in, usually many times, and we always knew who was coming in to listen and really felt an intregal part of the hectic pace that Tree's continued success demanded. Harlan's songs had played, and contributed to play, a big part of that success.
Back then, Tree had over a hundred writers and averaged 12-18 songs on Billboard's Country chart each week. Tree had amazing catalogs that included Willie Nelson and Buck Owens and legendary staff writers such as Sonny Curtis, Curly Putman, Red Lane, Sonny Throckmorton, Max D. Barnes and Hank Cochran. It's hard to describe the energy in a small place so overloaded with talent and success but that's how it was.
Harlan would come into the "nerve center" and say hello, turn in some new songs or ask for cassette copies for pitches he wanted to make. He would never leave before asking who'd been pitching his songs and who had taken copies of them. He knew that no matter what claims the creative staff might have made to him, he could come to us and find out who'd really been pitching his songs and to what artists or producers and what songs they'd liked and had taken a copy of. All songwriters love cuts but I think Harlan loved placing a song just as much as he liked writing them.
We saw a lot of Harlan in those days; he might come by in the morning and get one of the songpluggers to take him to lunch. "Hell," he'd say, "it's my money anyway, you might as well buy me a lunch with it." Then off they'd go. Rumor has it that Harlan's lunches frequently included a white Russian or two, a "milkshake" as he'd call it, but I never drank with the man before five P.M. so I couldn't swear to it.
Two good things happened the night Harlan introduced me to Buck Owens. One was getting to meet and talk to Buck Owens. The other was that Harlan never forgot my first name after that.
I noticed the two of them sitting together near the end of one of Harlan's famous birthday bashes. It was a fall evening on the north end of Music Row, near where the current ASCAP building is. It was just the two of them talking together at an otherwise empty table in the VIP section. I didn't know Harlan very well then but I found my courage from the many beers I'd been drinking and I boldly interrupted them and asked Harlan to introduce me. He said "sure" and then he paused, looked right at me and didn't say a word. I realized he'd forgotten my name and didn't want to ask me what it was. I had been making tapes for him long enough that we both knew he shouldn't have forgotten so I called him on it.
I said, "Harlan, you don't remember my name do you?"
He responded by saying, "Of course I do, it's Jeff."
"No, Harlan," I corrected, "my name is Greg and I'd a thought by now you'd know."
Well he uttered an apology and introduced me to Buck Owens. I had a great five minute converstion with Mr. Owens and stumbled away but from then on Harlan went out of his way to call me by my first name.
For years Harlan took a seat almost daily at a place called Maude's Courtyard. Lots of music business folks ate there and a lot of hit writers and beginners would come down there especially to meet or hang out with Harlan at the bar. Writers would often talk about their new song ideas and Harlan would occasionally have to inform them, "I already wrote it." They'd can the idea and move on to their next one, sorry about having to abandon a good idea but validated that they must be on the right track if Harlan had had the same idea and decided to go ahead and write it. Years later, when Harlan was sick, ASCAP's Ralph Murphy would visit him frequently and they'd talk about all manner of stuff. Ralph told me that one day when the talk came around to the "good old days at Maude's," Harlan asked Ralph, "do you remember when I used to tell those writers down there that I'd already written some of those good ideas they were coming up with?" Ralph replied he did and Harlan said, "Well, I have a confession to make, some of them I hadn't, but I did!"
Harlan died in 2002. He was 74 years old. There are a lot of songwriters in this town who can tell you stories about their time with Mr. Howard and how he helped them with a song idea or about an introduction he made. The effects of Harlan Howard's time here are still being felt in Nashville and in all of country music. Just tune into a traditional country radio station and you can hear his songs, his "Heartaches by the Number." ###
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