Felice & Boudleaux Bryant

What would it be like living in a home where creativity was the norm, not an occasional occurrence? More specifically, what would it be like growing up in the home of Felice and Boudleaux Bryant, without question Nashville’s first full-time songwriters, and acknowledged ahead-of-their time champions of the rights of today’s tunesmiths?

What would it be like living in a home where creativity was the norm, not an occasional occurrence? More specifically, what would it be like growing up in the home of Felice and Boudleaux Bryant, without question Nashville’s first full-time songwriters, and acknowledged ahead-of-their time champions of the rights of today’s tunesmiths?

Del and Dane Bryant offered insights into their lives as youngsters, teens, and, finally, young men who faced the decision of what to do with their own lives. Both at first worked in their parents publishing company, then tried their hand as songwriters and independent publishers before finally settling into their current occupations. Del is senior vice-president of performing rights, BMI. Dane works with the real estate firm of Lura Bainbridge & Associates in Nashville, with offices on Music Row.

Felice and Boudleaux moved to Nashville in 1950, when the two boys were just toddlers. They had attracted the attention of Fred Rose, of Acuff-Rose Publishing, with the help of MGM recording artist Rome Johnson. Rose had heard one of the Bryants compositions, “Country Boy,” and thought it just right for Little Jimmy Dickens. He was right; Dickens cut it in 1949 and soon it was in the top ten of Billboard’s charts.

Like today, a hit record didn’t mean a check in the mail tomorrow. So Boudleaux hit the road with a traveling ten show, which left him stranded in Green Bay, Wisconsin when it ran out of money. He and Felice started playing as a duo, and it wasn’t long before they were a popular act in the Green Bay area. The gigs helped them through the summer months, but they knew their trailer wouldn’t make it though the harsh northern winters, so they returned to Moultrie, Georgia, and the safety of family and friends, with whom Boudleaux could find work.

Rose didn’t forget about the Bryants, and before long he convinced them to make the move to Nashville. They weren’t sure it was the right move, but nevertheless they made it, setting up housekeeping in a trailer park off Dickerson Road. Even without them living in Nashville, their reputation as songwriters had been growing, since they had several other cuts since the Dickens record.

The couple’s first visit to the Grand Ole Opry proved eye-opening. Their reputation preceded them, and many of the Opry members were anxious to meet them. It wasn’t long before Boudleaux was busy pitching songs to various recording artist in town, and soon the two were actually making a living as songwriters.

Many of the couple’s songs were pitched live to the artist who visited them at their home, or when Boudleaux went to their respective offices. Since they had no offices on Music Row, they were able to spend a lot of time at home with Del and Dane.

“I had mom and daddy home all the time,” Dane concurred. “A lot of kids didn’t have that. They’d be home with us, or we’d get hauled to sessions with them when they were going out, and we knew that we had to sit there and be quiet during the sessions, or if they took us to the Opry with them. I guess every Opry member baby sat us at one time or another when we moved to town.”

The Bryants had a unique schedule that allowed them to spend maximum time with their songs. Often they would write all night, Felice would fix breakfast for the boys before they left for school, then the husband and wife team would sleep all day, getting up in time to welcome Dane and Del home from school. After visiting and dinner, and making sure the boys had done their homework, Del and Dane would be off to bed and Felice and Boudleaux would begin their workday.

“Everybody came through our house in those days…Don Gibson, Eddy Arnold would pull up to the dock in his houseboat, the Everlys, Hawkshaw Hawkins, Cowboy Copas, Jimmy Dickens, Roy Orbison, Jim Reeves, Robert Mitchum, the Crickets, Tex Ritter, Patsy Cline…mom and dad were most prone to socialize with performers rather than songwriters,” Dane pointed out. “Dad never played one of his songs for another writer until it had been cut, and very seldom did he write with anyone other than my mother. If they did get another with them, it was always social, never business.”

That didn’t stop the songwriters from wanting to see Felice and Boudleaux. Both Del and Dane remember Harlan Howard, John D. Loudermilk, Hank Cochran and numerous others seeking them out to meet them, recognizing their importance in establishing a writing community in Nashville. These new writers sought them out as their heroes as much as they did to ask advice or for words of encouragement. To them, Felice and Boudleaux had opened the way for other writers to move to town and make a living as songwriters.

“We didn’t really realize that our folks were any different from anyone else’s parents, except that we knew they were home more,” Del said when asked how he, as a teenager, felt about being the son of Felice and Boudleaux Bryant. “I knew they did something different, but I grew up thinking everyone was in the music business. I knew there were firemen, doctors, and lawyers and so forth, but that wasn’t who came to our house all the time. It didn’t really hit us about what they did until the Everly Brothers started recording their songs.

“After the Everlys hit, then I knew they were different, because the kids at school started asking us if we’d ever met Phil and Don. Of course we had, they were only six or seven years older than we were, and we had fun with them. So we knew them and it wasn’t any big deal to us. But then kids started wanting to come home and meet or parents and they’d always sing a song or two for them. That was when I became aware that what they did really had an affect on other people.”

While what Felice and Boudleaux wrote had an effect on the fans of the people who recorded the music, it was also having an effect on other songwriters. The two had been acknowledged as being ahead of their time, and both Del and Dane agree that was true.

“Dad knew music, he could mix all kinds, from a simple folk ballad to classical and hoedown,” Del said. “I believe they helped stretch the music that was coming out of Nashville at the time. Anyone who does that makes it easier for others to stretch the music as well. They taught people you can write whatever you want to…in one instance a song about a kid in jail, the next about a country boy out behind the barn…but to make sure that it is all written well. They would write one song with a bridge, another with a different chord structure, then the next time they’d go back to that basic three chord country song that was being written then. They could do it all.

“People like Chris Hillman, Rodney Crowell, the Burrito Brothers, they all listened to songs by mom and daddy and they were all influenced by them.”

Del went on to say that Boudleaux’s knowledge of music was a tremendous help in the studio when he wanted to convey an idea to the musicians working on the session. “There weren’t producers then as we know them today, and often daddy would be called upon for his ideas when someone was recording,” Del explained. “There were occasions where knowing the language of the musicians probably helped insure the cut for mom and daddy. He would know what something should sound like in his head, and he would always be able to relay it to the musicians, to be able to communicate with them on what a certain song needed at a given point in the song.”

Both Del and Dane will tell you that if Felice was the idea person, Boudleaux was the man who cleaned up the song and put the finishing touches on it.

“Dad told me one time that the way he saw it, Felice was the idea man and he was the craftsman,” Dane said. “Mom started lots of songs, she was just compelled to write.”

Del agreed. “Mom was more excited about the actual writing of the song,” he said. “Dad was more excited about the cuts and the success, the fact that he could make a living with it. Mom just had a blast with the writing aspect of their careers, but to dad that part of it was work.”

Even though the songwriting was work to the Bryants, they managed to convey a love and respect for all kinds of music to their sons.

“Being the sons of those folks…they were like stars, so respected and loved by the folks around them, so our introduction to music and the music business was very positive,” Del said. “They were both very sweet people, and their success never went to their head. My dad had an ego, but it was in the fact that he was very sure of his talent, not in the success he had achieved. And my mother was just thrilled to be successful and be able to make a living doing what she loved to do.”

Entering a world outside the music business was foreign to the Bryant children. “Primarily I felt the world was composed of pickers and songwriters,” Del admitted. “And I knew there were a lot of singers. So of course I thought I’d be in that world. As I grew older, I knew that would not be the case, but even as a teen I felt that was where I was going.”

After a short career as a songwriter (“I Cheated On A Good Woman’s Love,” recorded by Billy Crash Craddock should be familiar to you), and after being partners with Dane in a company that published “Can I Have This Dance,” “Don’t Believe My Heart Could Stand Another You” and “With You,” Del went to work for BMI.

“I’m thick skinned, and find it hard to take rejection,” he admitted. His work at BMI was made easier by the fact that he already knew so many people within the music community.

“There are a lot of things my parents taught me that carry over into the job I do here,” Del said. “There is a certain etiquette involved in the music business, certain ethics, a proper way of doing things. Something as simple as holding a song and not pitching it to someone else after its been put on hold, many thins like that taught to me by my parents. They taught us basic honesty with regard to the song business.”

Dane said he backed into real estate. After his company with Del sold, and another publishing didn’t have a big enough catalog of songs to keep it going, he went into a real estate deal with his father. His plans were to do just the one transaction, then return to music.

“I never wanted to be a songwriter, but have always been interested in publishing,” Dane said, admitting that he still pitches songs from the House of Bryant catalog. “But after the one real estate deal, they asked me to stay on, and I got caught up in it and I kept working at it. I’ve never regretted it. I still consider myself in the music because so much of the work we do happens within the industry.”

For most siblings, growing up in a house where Don and Phil Everly or Chet Atkins dropped by to visit would be unheard of. Creativity flowed around them, and they absorbed a great deal of it along the way. To Del and Dane, this was nothing special, but a normal homelife for the boys while they were growing up in the Nashville suburb of Hendersonville. Today, they can appreciate their unique situation, and are grateful that they were fortunate enough to be exposed to the varied background of influences they had the opportunity to experience.