Larry Bastian -- The Only Game in Town
He knew his oats, and he knew songwriting
Larry Bastian
Longtime Major Bob Publishing songwriter Larry Bastian died on Sunday (April 6) at age 90.
Bastian co-wrote such Garth Brooks hits as “Unanswered Prayers,” “Rodeo” and “The Old Man’s Back in Town” in 1991-92. The superstar recorded many other Bastian songs, as did a who’s-who of country music.
Larry Bastian was born and raised in Porterville in California’s agricultural San Joaquin Valley, and he lived throughout his life in the Springville/Porterville area. He was from a farming family. He was a 1952 Porterville High graduate.
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He was born into a family that has farmed, and still continues to this day, in the San Joaquin Valley since 1882. Despite the fame and success, Bastian and his high school sweetheart Myrna, who were wed in 1954, never left the area. Looking back, he says not moving to Nashville to be closer to the country music scene was a good move that never happened.
“There is a saying in Nashville that you have to be present to win and I blew that one all to hell,” Bastian says. “Familiarity breeds contempt and that is so true in the music business. All of those guys back there were trying to get in to see people that I knew from back in California.”
The musical ties to California, specifically Bakersfield, started shortly after high school when he was a member of a quartet that won a talent show organized by radio and TV personality Horace Heidt in 1953.
“Our little quartet won the talent contest for Central California, it was held over in Tulare,” Bastian says. “After that we traveled around, we did shows down in Bakersfield, San Francisco and places, had a good time.”
Bastian describes his musical interests as “eclectic” and is fascinated with the honesty of country music.
“Did you ever hear a robin weep; when leaves begin to die; it means he’s lost the will to live; I’m so lonesome I could cry,” Bastian says repeating the lyrics of the legendary Hank Williams Sr. song from 1949 as his eyes water a little. “It was like, wow, this is really something, there is something there I need to have more of.”
Not long after winning the contest, Bastian married and went to college, but still played music, mostly in Bakersfield.
“I understood that at that time I would be giving up a lot,” Bastian says. “I figured I might be an artist, and I loved the music. But I recognized that crowd was going to get me in trouble if I stayed their long enough.”
So, he focused on his family, finished school and went to work in various ag-related fields, including 15 years between the Ag Commissioner’s Offices in Kern and Tulare counties and then as a biologist for California Fish and Game.
He continued to play some in Bakersfield and then one day in the 1970s, he ran into dear friend Bonnie Owens, who was married to Buck Owens and later to Merle Haggard. She was with Haggard at that time and was running Shade Tree Music for him.
“I said ‘well I sure miss the music, but I can’t,’” Bastian said. “She says, ‘you know you could write a song, go write a song and bring it back to me.’ So I did, I wrote a song called ‘The Only Game in Town’ and I took it back to her, she liked it and she published it. That was the first thing I had published.”
Looking back, that was the start of his songwriting career.
“The music never left. I think I was better for it (the time away), more mature by the time everything hit,” Bastian says.
By the late-70s he was working closely with writer Jim Shaw of Buck Owens Productions. Bastian also worked on some films with Clint Eastwood and Thomas Lesslie “Snuff” Garrett down in Hollywood. Then he went back to Nashville for visits and got acquainted with some people that liked the music and wound up getting songs back there by about everybody in the business.
For the next decade, Bastian, from his home in Camp Nelson, continued to build an impressive resume and worked with many of the top songwriters and producers such as Bonnie Owens, Shaw, Price, Mickey Newbury, Larry Gatlin, Buddy Cannon, Phil Baugh, Tex Whitson and Bob Doyle. Trisha Yearwood, Neal McCoy, Sammy Kershaw, Rhett Akins, Tom Jones, Tammy Wynnette, Janie Frickie and Conn Hunley, among others recorded his songs.
“I fell in with the right bunch,” Bastian says. “I had people that believed in me and kicked me in the butt and sent me on my way. I was really fortunate. Timing is everything.”
Toward the tail-end of the 1980s is when he met Brooks, who at the time was a relative unknown in the country music scene in Nashville.
“Garth and I hit it off,” says Bastian, who co-wrote three songs on Garth’s breakout 1989 self-titled album. Brooks even stayed a week with the Bastians at their home in Camp Nelson. “I think we wrote five songs in seven days, or something like that.”
Bastian co-wrote two more songs on Brook’s follow-up multi-platinum album “No Fences” in 1990, including the chart-topping “Unanswered Prayers.” He co-wrote the title track of 2014’s “Man Against the Machine,” Brook’s first studio album since “Scarecrow” in 2001.
Bastian continues to write and says he’s written some 900 songs, of which about half have been recorded. When asked if he had a favorite of his songs, Bastian smiles and answers, “The next one.”
n the 1970s, when he connected with Bonnie Owens and
other musicians forging the Bakersfield Sound. He soon became friends and
cowriters with Jim Shaw, and together they wrote a song called “This Ain’t
Tennessee and He Ain’t You,” that was recorded by Janie Fricke and released in
1980 (Eddy Arnold and Tom Jones would later also record the song).
A SONGWRITER'S DREAM - How many songwriters do you
know who are also biologists? Larry Bastian, who penned
Sammi
Smith's current single, "Sometimes I Cry When I'm
Alone," and a couple of tunes on David Frizzell and Shelly West's album,
including "Lefty," (about David's brother Lefty Frizzell), is a
biologist Helen Hudson
in California, but by year's end, he will be moving to
Nashville to continue his thus far suc-cessful songwriting career. Bastian began
writing in 1975, when, by a stroke of luck, he met
Bonnie Owens while peddling some of his newly written
tunes to Shadetree Publishing
(Merle Haggard). Owens was filling in for the receptionist when Bastian dropped off some of his songs. According to the songwriter, Owens called him at home, explained the company was interested in some of his songs and signed him up. As major influences in his career, Bastian cites Larry Gatlin, who he says helped him tremendously. "Larry helped me with my writing when I was just starting out," he said. "He'd sit there and listen to my junk stuff, critique the songs and offer suggestions. He's really been a great friend to me."
Phil Baugh, Smith's producer, is another Bastian cites as
having had an influence and one who encouraged his writing. "I've always
felt writing was something I could do. In '75, I decided I'd put if off long
enough, and now music consumes me," said Bastian.
“The Country Column,” By Jennifer Bohler, Cash Box,
August 15, 1981, Page 27
…
Mary Katherine Carllile, b. 1963. Nashville, daughter of Kenneth Ray “Thumbs” Carllile.
“Stay Until the Rain Stops,” on Frontline Records, Wayne
Carson, Bonnie Owens, Ronnie Reno, age 17, record debuted on Billboard country chart at No. 90 with a star in early 1980
Clint Eastwood,
film actor, director and, yes, singer:
Chuck Roberson
Roberson died of cancer on June 8, 1988, in Bakersfield, Calif., and is buried in Forest Lawn Cemetery, Hollywood Hills, California, next to his brother, actor Lou Roberson.
Bob Dylan drew him as Long Tom in his Beaten Path series; the drawing is entitled "Untitled 1" and is based on a frame from the film Winchester '73 (1950).
Roberson and Wayne Burson, another stuntman, were partners in breeding and training racehorses, with Roberson furnishing the horses from his Bakersfield, ranch and Burson training them.
I'm not saying any of these are the greatest or whatever. It's my often-updated DESERT ISLAND DISCS, what I would choose to listen to if I was on a desert island and had the means to play only these personally selected recordings:
3 albums
Johnny Horton's Greatest Hits -- Johnny Horton
Johnny Horton was best known for his “saga songs,” historical narratives that were popular in country music in the early sixties, right around the time the urban folk movement was hitting the pop charts. The longtime Tyler resident’s best-known saga song was “Battle of New Orleans,” which was written by a folklorist who put lyrics about the final battle of the War of 1812 to the melody of the traditional fiddle tune “The Eighth of January.” Horton’s rendition—with some throaty grit roughing up his molasses-smooth East Texas accent—topped the pop and the country charts. He sang with pop music clarity and diction, with a hard twang, or with a threatening rumble. Before saga songs, he specialized in rockabilly- and boogie-tinged country but was just as comfortable with honky-tonk ballads. He never got more of himself on one album than this one.
Gord's Gold -- Gordon Lightfoot
Though he rose from the ranks of journeyman '60s folksinger to become a potent and consistent '70s hit maker, Canadian singer-songwriter Gordon Lightfoot's stock in trade was as much hard-eyed, dispassionate observation as romance or poetic whimsy. Perhaps that's why his songs have been covered by everyone from Elvis (this set's "Early Morning Rain") to Dylan. If there's such a thing as an alpha-male folkie, Lightfoot certainly fits the bill. Spanning the tongue-in-cheek chauvinism of 1965's "For Lovin' Me" and the cheatin' ways of "Sundown" to more introspective fare like "If You Could Read My Mind" and "Beautiful," this 20-track collection presents a concise primer on Lightfoot's career and craft. After his career peaked with one of the most unlikely top five hits ever, the gloom-laden 1976 narrative "The Wreck of the Edmund Fitzgerald," Lightfoot's production tailed off sharply, though this anthology's "Stay Loose" ('86) and "Restless" ('93) are testament to his enduring skills as a songwriter and performer. --Jerry McCulley
Paul Simon's Concert in the Park (live) 1991
Reviewed on March 15, 2024, Amazon customer
10 singles
Goin' Skinny Dippin' -- Mayf Nutter
I Love a Rainy Night -- Eddie Rabbit
I Can Help -- Billy Swan
Somethin' Else -- Eddie Cochran
Summer Wind -- Frank Sinatra
Silver Wings -- Merle Haggard
(Sittin' On) The Dock of the Bay -- Otis Redding
Carefree Highway -- Gordon Lightfoot
Gentle on my Mind -- Glen Campbell
California Dreamin' -- The Mamas & the Papas
The Best Merle Haggard Covers*
1. The Byrds – Life in Prison
2. Miranda Lambert – Misery and Gin
3. The Everly Brothers – Sing Me Back Home
4. Old ’97s – Harold’s Super Service
5. Lynyrd Skynyrd – Honky Tonk Night Time Man
6. Country Joe McDonald – Rainbow Stew
7. Will Oldham – If I Could Only Fly
8. The Fall – White Line Fever
9. Dave Alvin – Kern River
10. Shelby Lynne and Allison Moore – Silver Wings
11. The Melvins – Okie from Muskogee
12. David Allan Coe – Mama Tried
13. Keith Richards – Sing Me Back Home
14. Willie Nelson – Today I Started Loving You Again
15. Clint Black – I Take a Lot of Pride in What I Am
16. Rosanne Cash – You Don’t Have Very Far to Go
Me:
The Bottle Let Me Down -- Leann Rimes
Sing Me Back Home -- Joan Baez
*A “tribute” album has been done since and I would
include Toby Keith’s doing “Carolyn” as an add-on here. I don’t know who
compiled the above list but it is interesting.
"Dylan wasn’t trying to outsmart anyone this time. He wasn’t hiding behind poetry. These songs didn’t want to change the world. They just wanted to sound good in a kitchen with the windows open. And somehow, that kind of quiet confidence hit harder than anything else."
A favorite quote, this from Riley Johnson, May 25, 2025, in an article he wrote for Country Thang Daily about when Bob Dylan went country with his Nashville Skyline album.
