VMP Magazine

Strictly speaking, Willy And The Poor Boys didn’t need to exist. Not as quickly as it arrived, in October 1969, only three months after Creedence Clearwater Revival’s previous album, Green River. And Bayou Country, featuring “Proud Mary,” the song that made Creedence’s national reputation, only came out in that January. It was a magical, breakout year for the southern-sounding quartet from the Bay Area, who spent spring and summer performing on every major festival and television stage while a succession of double-A-sided singles climbed the charts. They had conquered the world by August; why rush a third album by Halloween?

Let’s first talk about Steve Wariner’s “Small Town Girl,” which was the No. 1 country song in the United States on March 8, 1987. This romantic ballad was co-written by John Barlow Jarvis and Don Cook, who would go on to write Vince Gill’s “I Still Believe in You” and Brooks & Dunn’s debut single “Brand New Man,” respectively. “Small Town Girl” was the first single from Wariner’s fifth album, It’s a Crazy World, and a relatively early production for former Emmylou Harris pianist Tony Brown, who handled the entire album. He recorded It’s A Crazy World in two places: Emerald Sound Studio, a newer Music Row facility used by contemporary lights like Reba McEntire and Randy Travis as well as Conway Twitty and Ray Charles; and Sound Stage Studio, where legendary producer Jimmy Bowen oversaw Nashville’s most state-of-the-art digital setup.