Remembering "Gentleman Jim"

I recently had the chance to talk with Larry Jordan, who wrote the incredible new biography on Jim Reeves. In reading the book Jim Reeves: His Untold Story, it took me back a ways to much simpler time in life.

Though Jim Reeves passed away a decade before my birth in 1974, his music was still very much a part of Country Radio during the late 1970s and 1980s. I remembered his electronically engineered duets with Deborah Allen and Patsy Cline in the 1980s, which were very much radio hits - even during the "Urban Cowboy" period of the era.

However, I can pinpoint the night that I first became acquainted with the music of Jim Reeves. My family and I had been visiting relatives in Columbia, TN and stopped at the Shady Brook Mall. Even as a eight or nine year old, it was record stores that served as my toy shops. And, Columbia had one - Sound Shop. On the racks was a cassette copy of The Best Of Jim Reeves, Volume One. Released just a few months before the plane crash that took his life, there was something about that voice that intrigued me somewhat.

Even to a child, there was something about the songs - "He'll Have To Go," "Blue Boy," "I'm Gettin' Better," and a couple that had a profound impact on me - "The Blizzard" and "Stand At Your Window." The latter was not even a top ten hit, but when I think of Reeves and his music - that's one of my first thoughts. And, the former might very well be one of my favorite compositions from the late Harlan Howard. Still, when I listen to this recording fifty years later - I can still see the character and his trusted pony roaming the plains trying to beat the frigid conditions home. Alas, they didn't as they were only a "hundred yards from Mary Anne."

I might have been the only kid at Burns Elementary School who listened to Jim Reeves as much as I did Thriller by Michael Jackson. I guess that makes me somewhat of an odd ball, but in the past few years I have learned to embrace my oddness. I continued to listen to the man and his music, and am proud to say that I have most of the music he recorded.

As a biographer, Jordan does a brilliant job in capturing Reeves the artist - as well as Reeves the man. The artist was one of the smoothest voices that has ever lived, someone who could sing just about anything and do it well. The man, well, that is a complicated story. One of the things i had long heard about Reeves was how insecure he was about his talents. How he didn't really see what others saw in him. There were other demons and insecurities, as well. But, as I have found out in the years since I was that little kid coming back from Columbia listening to music from twenty years prior, we all do. I wholeheartedly recommend you to pick up a copy of this book. It's a lengthy read, but a mesmerizing one, at that.

Thanks, Larry, for a trip back in time. I truly enjoyed the book. I know it was a labor of love, and it shows!

For more information on the book, log on to http://www.jimreevesbook.com/