Your Country's Right Here: Connie Smith's Star Glistens in Hall of Fame Spotlight

posted in: Country • Features

It’s not that Connie Smith wasn’t thrilled to receive the news that she was one of three inductees into the Country Music Hall of Fame. It’s just that when the news arrived, she was completely unprepared.

It came out of the blue, really, one night when Smith and her husband, country legend Marty Stuart, were having dinner. At Stuart’s request, she grabbed the ringing phone and heard the news that she was one of three 2012 inductees”Garth Brooks and session musician Hargus “Pig” Robbins are the others. She admitted to being speechless for a minute until she shared the announcement with Stuart.

“It just floored me. I wasn’t expecting it would ever happen to me”maybe sometime after I was gone,” said Smith, who established her country stardom in 1964 with the release of her first single “Once a Day,” that was the first No. 1 hit for a female country singer’s debut. “Marty and I just grinned at each other.”

For all her modesty and hesitation to keep herself in the spotlight, Smith’s credentials speak for themselves. During the inductee announcement ceremony earlier this month, music fans were reminded that Smith has recorded fifty-four albums and had a string of hits including “Ain’t Had No Lovin’,” “Just One Time” and “The Hurtin’s All Over.” The multi-GRAMMY Award nominee”who was most recently nominated with Stuart for their duet on “I Run to You,” which was on Stuart’s 2010 Ghost Train album”is cited by many other female vocalists including Dolly Parton to Martina McBride for her vocal quality and range.

“For me to be called a veteran, I am still learning what it is about,” said Smith with a laugh from the Nashville area home she shares with Stuart, noting his prodding moved her to record the 2011 album Long Line of Heartaches. “I am still so proud of that last album. Marty had tried for several years to get me [to record]. Dallas Frazier came back writing after thirty years [and we heard one of his new songs]. I told Marty ‘I love to record that put that.’ We put that one down and had a few more to go with it and that was the beginning of getting me back in the studio.”

Not only did the album mark a return to her partnership with Frazier, who has written many of her past hit songs, but the project took her back to Nashville’s famed RCA Studio B, where she recorded for the first nine years of her career.

“That was like going home,” said Smith whose album was produced by Stuart. “I was so excited because that’s where I recorded the first album I had ever done.”

Adding to the joy were the songs, five of which she and Stuart wrote. The song “Blue Heartache,” was one they had started fifteen years earlier and kept putting aside to rework. During the recording of the album, it all came together, she said. Yet Smith doesn’t take credit for her songwriting prowess.

“It’s like Hank Williams said,” she said noting a line to which she often refers. “I don’t write ’em, I just hold the pen.”

Although Smith has said that she mourns the waning of traditional country music, specifically music by artists that write and sing from personal reflections, she said that there are purveyors of traditional country music out there. Keith Urban is one. Alan Jackson another.

“Alan Jackson’s music will be around write from the heart, sings from the heart,” she said. “Keith Urban [is] one of the greatest talents we have ever had…It’s like Vince Gill, he’s not just a [virtuoso player] but he [writes and] sings from the heart. I love music. I love melody.  I love every lyric and I listen to every lick on a guitar.”

And does that mean she’ll record again soon?

“Marty and I were just talking about that. We both have so many irons in the fire,” she said noting the prolific Stuart has written a host of new songs. “I am busy in so many ways with doing what I do at home. I’m a wife. I have five children and [my daughter] just had my eighth grandchild. I went down and we did this [Hall of Fame] announcement and I came back and there’s just so much”just life”going on that I love. I just have to find time to focus on it.”

Find out more about Connie Smith and her music on her Web site.