This Week in '90s Country

Her producer wouldn’t cut it because it was about a prostitute. Then she switched producers.

Reba McEntire had been asking since the mid-1980s. Bobbie Gentry’s 1969 original told the story of a teenage girl sent out of a New Orleans shack with one chance, and McEntire wanted it. Jimmy Bowen, then both her producer and the head of MCA Nashville, shut it down.

“Oh, no. You don’t need to do that. It’s about a prostitute!”Reba McEntire, recalling Jimmy Bowen, to Garden & Gun

In 1990 she had her son Shelby and a new producer: Tony Brown, who had played piano for Elvis Presley. They were nearly done with Rumor Has It when Brown asked if there was an old hit she wanted to recut. She said “Fancy.” He told her it was his favorite song.

By early September, Rumor Has It was in stores. The first single, “You Lie,” would go to number one that fall. “Fancy” stayed on the album until February, then peaked at number 8 — outside the top five, and nowhere near the size of the song it became. Taste of Country later called it her most-played catalog hit at country radio. CMT ranked her version at 27 on its 100 Greatest Country Songs. It is, by her own account, the one number her fans can count on every night.

She has never met Gentry. She has never even talked to her. Thirty years on, McEntire was still asking people who knew the recluse to pass along a message — smoke signals, she said, would be fine.

Reba McEntire — “Fancy,” written by Bobbie Gentry · Album: Rumor Has It, early September 1990 · Single peak: No. 8, 1991

The last Judds album arrived in September. Nobody knew it was the last one.

On September 11, 1990, RCA put out Love Can Build a Bridge, the sixth studio album by Naomi and Wynonna Judd. They had more than a dozen number ones and a six-year run as the CMA’s top duo. The record entered the Billboard 200 on September 29. Nothing on the sleeve said goodbye.

Naomi had been sick since New Year’s. Rolling Stone later reported she learned she had hepatitis eleven days into January, the day after her 44th birthday; the Los Angeles Times wrote that tests at the Mayo Clinic that spring found it was chronic and had gone undetected for years. She was writing anyway.

She invited Paul Overstreet to dinner and told him they had a Coca-Cola deal and a Grand Canyon video lined up — and no song. Overstreet started thinking about people standing on opposite rims. She already had a notebook of lyrics that were, in his judgment, basically finished. She took them to John Barlow Jarvis.

“I immediately heard a melody and wrote it in literally 15 minutes.”John Barlow Jarvis, to Nashville Hype

The lead single, “Born to Be Blue,” was already climbing toward number 5. The title track would also stop at 5 — rare air for a duo that had lived at number one.

Five weeks after the album hit stores, on a gray October afternoon in Nashville, Naomi told a room of reporters it was the most difficult day of her life, and that she had to retire. They sang the song on television one last time at the 2022 CMT Awards. She died nineteen days later, at 76.

The Judds — “Love Can Build a Bridge,” written by Naomi Judd, Paul Overstreet, and John Barlow Jarvis · Album: September 11, 1990 · Single peak: No. 5, 1991

Alabama’s longest number one didn’t sound like Alabama

The chart dated September 8, 1990, put Alabama at number one with “Jukebox in My Mind.” They were still there on the 15th, the 22nd, and the 29th. Four weeks — every remaining September issue of Billboard — which Billboard later listed as the longest number-one run of the band’s career.

This was the group behind “Mountain Music” and “Feels So Right,” the country-pop / southern-rock machine of the 1980s. The hat-act boom they had helped open was now the center of the format. Their last single, the title track from Pass It On Down, had stalled at number 3.

Then they dropped a quarter in a jukebox. Fiddle and steel, tight as a gospel trio, a needle hitting vinyl. Dave Gibson and Ronnie Rogers wrote it. The track starts the whole record over again, coin and all, just when it seems to be over — a memory that will not quit, played back from the top.

“…the boys of Alabama channel their inner Statler Brothers and go old-school, with their harmonies adorned with fiddle and steel that fit in perfectly with the records being made by Randy Travis and Alan Jackson at the time.”Kevin John Coyne, Country Universe

In 1991 the Academy of Country Music nominated it for both Single of the Year and Song of the Year. Both trophies went to a song that took the number-one slot the week of October 6: “Friends in Low Places.” Alabama had September. Garth Brooks had what came after.

Alabama — “Jukebox in My Mind,” written by Dave Gibson and Ronnie Rogers · No. 1 for four weeks, September 8–29, 1990