Used with permission of CMA Closeup News Service
By Edward Morris
Jerry Reed will be the first to admit that he's no longer the hot-wired, nimble-fingered hipster he was back in the glory days of "When You're Hot, You're Hot" and "Smokey and the Bandit." But he's not shopping for rocking chairs yet, either. Reed has fun with this tug-of-war between youth and age on his new album, Jerry Reed Live! Still. It's his first album since Pickin' in 1999 and his first all-live album.
Reed and his band recorded Jerry Reed Live! Still last year in Parsons, Kan. The r2k Records album was co-produced by Reed and Chet Hinesley (Doug Stone, Tony Joe White) and only two songs are new - the euphoric and gospel-flavored "A Brand New Me" and whimsical self-portrait and first single, "Father Time and Gravity." All the rest are favorites from Reed's 43-year chart history. And all, save two, are songs he wrote himself. It's pure Reed, wall-to-wall.
Thus, it was with a tone of satisfaction that the 68-year-old showman greeted CMA Close Up's call on a recent sunny morning. "I'm sittin' lookin' out my window at the 18th fairway here," Reed drawled as he relaxed at his home. "It's the second day of spring. So what could be wrong with the world?"
Reed explained that he had been writing songs and working the road since Old Dogs, a 1998 romp with fellow seniors Bobby Bare, Waylon Jennings and Mel Tillis. That same year he appeared in "The Waterboy," his latest film.
"I turned down a movie because I don't want to mess with those things anymore," Reed added. "There comes a time in your life when you have to make up your mind what you love to do. You can't do everything. God has blessed your life if He lets you make music for a living. It's that simple. If you can get up there on stage and go one on one with a crowd of people and just whoop and holler and have them throwing babies up in the air, God has blessed your life. You can't get that from movies."
While Reed enjoyed making movies - especially the ones with Burt Reynolds - he said he never felt properly appreciated or compensated for the work and star power he contributed. "Hollywood didn't know I'd sold millions of records. I did it for practically nothing - just to do it. Well I ain't gonna do that no more ... I'm making a heck of a lot more money [in music] and have a lot more fun and a better life. And I can go fishing when I want to."
He had just been fishing, he recounted, the first and only time he met Elvis Presley. That was in 1967. Presley had come to Nashville to record, and one of the songs he was working on was "Guitar Man," which Reed had written and recorded. "I was out on the Cumberland River fishing," he recalled, "and I got a call from Felton Jarvis (then Presley's producer). He said, 'Elvis is down here. We've been trying to cut 'Guitar Man' all day long. He wants it to sound like it sounded on your album.' I finally told him, I said, 'Well, if you want it to sound like that, you're going have to get Reed in there to play guitar, because these guys (you're using in the studio) are straight pickers. He picks with his fingers and he tunes that guitar up all weird kind of ways.'" So Jarvis hired Reed to play on the session.