Welcome to a breath of fresh air with Sandy Kaye. Hello, great to have you company. Are you old enough to remember this song? See the tree how big it’s grown, but friend, it hasn’t been too long.
It wasn’t big. I laughed at her when she got mad. The first day that she planted it was just a twig.
Honey topped the charts in 1968 and was the genius of singer-songwriter Bobby Goldsboro. Bobby’s sophisticated yet sentimental vocal style yielded several top 40 entries throughout the middle of the decade, and his career has been nothing short of a remarkable evolution. The multi-talented performer started out in the early 60s as a guitarist with the legendary Roy Orbison.
During his three years with Roy, he travelled the world and even toured with the Beatles. Bobby said it was Roy who encouraged him to mount his own solo career. Let’s meet him, shall we? Hello.
Thank you so much for your time with us. Tell us when you first got interested in making music. Well, I was going to college up at Auburn University in Alabama, and I didn’t know what I was going to do.
We had a little band, and we were playing all the sororities and fraternity parties. I thought, boy, this is a great way to make money and something I enjoy, and I started kind of writing a little bit. And during the summer, we were playing a big sorority party, and back then they had phone booths.
And somebody came over and said that somebody from Nashville was wanting to talk to somebody in our band. So I went over and I took the call, and they said, Roy Orbison is coming through your area to do four one-nighters. And he just fired his band because he caught them drinking, and he didn’t allow that.
And they asked us, can you back up Roy Orbison? And I’m thinking right away, I’m thinking Roy Orbison with all the big violins and all the big orchestration. And immediately I said, sure. And we were not that good a band.
We were just the only band up there. So we backed up Roy for four nights, and after the first night, Roy and I were just like brothers. It was just unbelievable.
He was such a great guy, and we got along so great. And he asked us if we’d like to go on the road as his band. It was the summer of my second year of college, and I didn’t really know what I was going to do.
And I thought, what a great way to make a living. So I said, sure. So three of the four guys, we all decided to do it.
And the drummer wanted to stay in school, so we got another drummer, and that’s how I got started. How did you learn all of Roy’s songs so quickly? Well, I was familiar with them just having listened to the radio. But naturally, when we would do shows at these fraternities and sororities, we didn’t do any Orbison songs because nobody could sing like Orbison.
Nobody had that kind of voice. But I knew the songs, and we just kind of sat there, and I have a good ear for music. I still can’t read or write music to this day.
But I could tell, I could hear something, I could play it. So that’s how we learned the songs. And I would tell the bass player what to play, I would tell the piano player what to play, and things like that.
And that’s how we learned them. And Roy just loved us, and we got along great with him, and we became the Roy Orbison Band. Which was your favorite song to play? Oh, gosh.
I guess Crying Naturally was such a great… I mean, I loved playing that, but I also loved… I would sing harmony with Roy on stage in Only the Lonely, which was his first big hit. And I got to sing harmony on all those things with Roy on stage. So those were favorites of mine, Only the Lonely and Blue Angel and things like that.
He had so many great hits. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah Dum, dum, dum, dum, dum Dum, dum, dum, dum There goes my baby There goes my heart They’re gone forever So far apart But only the lonely Bobby, you ended up being part of the Roy Orbison Band for the next three years, didn’t you? Right. In fact, that was the greatest experience for me, because we got to travel all over the world with Roy, and we had never really been out of the state of Alabama, in Florida, hardly.
And here we got to go one of the first dates we worked with Orbison after those four original nights were in the Washington state area. And then I got to tour with Roy over in England with the Beatles. Roy did more for me for my career than anybody, because getting to be on stage in front of all those people every night with Roy, it got to be kind of comfortable for me.
So Roy was the biggest influence on me probably of anybody. I can imagine it would have developed your sense of confidence and performance, so that you’d gone from playing high school and fraternity parties to being on a big stage with thousands of kids watching you. Exactly.
And I knew they weren’t looking at me, they were watching Roy, but at the same time I’m up there performing, and we would usually, there were a lot of, probably three of every four nights we would play concerts, we as the band, we would go up and play like 45 minutes before Roy would come out and do a show, and then we’d play another 45 minutes and Roy would come out and do the second show. So we got to perform in front of all those people every night, and it was a great experience, a great learning experience. Oh, you wish me well You couldn’t tell That I’ve been crying Over you Crying Over you And you Said so long Left me standing All alone Alone and crying Crying It’s hard to understand But the touch of your hand Can start me crying You mentioned that you toured with Roy with the Beatles as well, what was that like? Roy had never been to England, and when they first booked the tour, the Beatles were going to be on the bill, but nobody really knew who the Beatles were, and by the time the tour started, the Beatles had overnight become the biggest thing in the world, and when we got there, Roy was supposed to, was headlining, so it was co-headliners by the time we got there, the Beatles and Orbison, and they didn’t know who should close the show.
So finally they decided Roy would do the first half, would close the first half of the show, there’d been an intermission, and then the Beatles would come on. And even though the place, it was just pandemonium everywhere we went, because the Beatles were the biggest thing in the world, but Roy had never been to England, and he would do two and three encores a night before the Beatles came out, that’s how big Roy was over there, and how great they accepted him. Was he concerned that he was to some extent upstaged by them? Not at all, Roy was the kind of guy that they said, hey, they’re the hottest thing out there, I can’t wait to watch them on stage, that’s the way Roy was, so there was no problem with that, and the Beatles would stand out backstage and watch Roy’s show, the whole show every night, they were big fans of his, so it was just a great two-week tour.
So what made you decide to go off and start a solo career? Well, I had gone up to, when we still had our little band up at Auburn University, we would go up to Birmingham, Alabama, we found a little recording studio and we were just putting down some songs that I had written and that we were working on, so some guy in New York heard the tapes and ended up coming down and signing me to a recording contract, I didn’t hear from him for a year, and I figured, well, that’s the shortest career in history, I never heard back, and in the meantime is when we got with Orbison, and after one of the tours with Roy, we got a call from the guy in New York, and he wanted to come down and record me and bring me to New York, and so I was kind of conflicted, I didn’t know whether I should do it or stay with Roy, and it was actually on the Beatles tour, and I sat up with Roy until like 3 in the morning one night, talking about it, and he said, when you get back from the tour here in England, why don’t you give it a shot and see how you like it as a solo artist, and if you don’t like it, you can always come back and play guitar for me, so I had nothing to lose, you know, that’s the kind of guy Roy was, so when we came back, I ended up going into the studio and recorded See the Funny Little Clown, actually, it was the first big hit I had. Everyone knows he’s dying on the inside Cause he’s laughing on the outside No one knows, no one knows See the Funny Little Clown, he’s hiding behind a smile They all think he’s laughing, but I know he’s really crying all the while How his heart is aching, how his heart aches inside But he keeps laughing on the outside I said, I don’t know if I’m going to be comfortable doing this or not, he said, go ahead and give it a shot, go ahead and do the TV shows, and see what you think, and I started doing that, I mean, they had so many TV shows at the time, you could do a different one every day, you go to California and do Where the Action Is and American Bandstand, and the next day you stay out there for a week and do a week’s worth of shows, different shows, so thank goodness I had been with Roy for 3 years, so I was kind of used to that, and so it really set me up for having my own career, and after that I decided to be a solo artist. See the Funny Little Clown was the first of a string of 16 top 40 hits, you couldn’t put a foot wrong, anything you recorded just was a smash, right? Well, I was very fortunate at the time, the greatest thing about the music at the time, they didn’t have little different areas of music, segments of music, they didn’t have country music, pop music, rhythm and blues, everything was played, and that’s why in the top 10, I think when Honey was in the top 10, it was instrumental number one at the time, there was another, I think Andy Williams had a hit, Lawrence Welk, all these people had hit records at the same time, because the radio played everybody, it’s not that way anymore, so I think I was out there at the right time.
Little things that you do Make me glad I’m in love with you Little things that you say Make me glad that I feel this way The way you smile The way you hold my hand And when I’m down You always understand You know I love those little things In my ear That you say When there’s no one here Little things that you do Let me know That your love is true When we walk You like to hold my hand And when we talk You tell me I’m your man You know I love those little things That I hear This way when we walk You like to hold my hand Love those little things It was a good time for making music, wasn’t it? As you said, there were so many television shows that featured music, radio was so prolific, playing everything. When we talk about the good old days of music, I guess they’re the days that we refer to. Well, I believe that was the best time for music simply because everybody played everything.
When I grew up in Mariana, Florida, that’s one thing I didn’t know. When I was listening to the radio, the radio played everything. They would play a gospel song, they would play a country song, they would play a blues song, and then they would play something by whoever a pop singer was at the time, and I just thought it was all music.
I didn’t know there was different kinds of music at the time, and I think that’s one reason that kind of influenced my writing in a lot of ways because I never wrote in one genre. I would come up with an idea for a song and I would write it, and I didn’t think, well, this is going to be country, this is going to be pop, or this is going to be R&B. I would just write a song and however anybody wanted to record it, that’s the way it was.
Bobby Goldsboro, what inspired your writing? Where did you take your ideas from? Gosh, everywhere. I mean, I look back at some of the most successful songs I ever wrote, and I have no idea where the songs come from. I just don’t know.
There were very few times, I know certain songwriters out of Nashville that were friends of mine, they would go in, a couple of guys would go in, they’d sit at the piano, they’d say, we’re going to write three songs before noon today, and they would come up with ideas and start writing, or one would have an idea. When I wrote a song, a lot of times it was based on a guitar riff that I would start, and then I would start getting a little rhythm going, and I didn’t have any idea where it was going to go, and all of a sudden I would come up with an idea. In fact, I think the best recording I ever made to this day, I think, was Summer the First Time, and it wasn’t the biggest record by any means.
Honey and Watching Scotty Grow and songs like that were bigger sellers, but I think Summer the First Time was the one time I got everything that I heard in my head onto the record, and I started writing that, but I was doing the Tonight Show with Johnny Carson, and I was backstage, and I had gotten this, I was actually in the dressing room, and I got this little guitar thing started, and I started playing it for my piano player, right before they opened the curtain for me to do this night show, I said, you got to hear this thing I’ve got going, and I played the guitar part, and the piano player, Tim Tappan was his name, and he went, ba-da-da-da-da-da-da, on the piano, I said, don’t forget that, whatever you do, don’t forget that little piano lick, and after the show, I couldn’t wait to do the night show and be through with it, so I could go finish writing the song. That to me was the key to that whole recording, but again, I don’t know where the song came from.
This is a breath of fresh air with Sandy Kaye. It’s a beautiful day. It was a hot afternoon, the last day of June, and the sun was a-beaming.
The clouds were afraid, one tear in the shade, and the pavement was steaming. I told Billy Ray, in his red Chevrolet, I needed time for some thinking. I was just walking by, when I looked in her eye, and I swore it was thinking.
I’ve never written anything down. I figured if it’s not good enough to remember, it wasn’t that good. I just, I rarely write anything down, because once I get into a song and I start playing it over and over and over, I’ve done it enough that I don’t have to write it down.
Certain times, I mean, there’s times my wife and I used to, back when I was writing more, now I’m painting, but I used to, I would wake up in the middle of the night, and I would have this melody going through my head, and I finally memorized the keys on the piano, then I would think of which notes to hit, and all I would need would be like four notes, and that would remind me the next day when I got up, the next day I would remember it by those four notes, and I’d go on and play them, and I would think of a certain rhythm to a certain song I’d recorded before, and I’d say, okay, it’s that rhythm and those four notes, then I could remember the song. So it’s just a little mental thing I would do, you know, and my wife would say, there’s so many nights she would lay there and my foot was tapping and I’m sound asleep, but I was thinking of some kind of song, you know. So, I mean, during that period in the 60s, you had something like 29 consecutive singles, and when we get to the late 60s, I think it was 1968, that incredible song Honey came out.
Can you tell us a little bit about Honey? Well, I had actually heard the song by, it was originally recorded by Bob Shane, who was formerly of the Kingston Trio, and Bobby Russell had written the song, and a friend of mine, Larry Henley, I don’t know if you remember the new beats that had Bread and Butter, they had a big hit called Bread and Butter. He likes bread and butter He likes toasted jam That’s what baby feeds him He’s a loving man Well, I like bread and butter I like toasted jam That’s what baby feeds me I’m her loving man He likes bread and butter He likes toasted jam That’s what baby feeds him He’s her loving man Well, she don’t cook mashed potatoes She don’t cook people’s steak She don’t feed me peanut butter She knows that I can’t take Well, Larry Henley was the lead singer, and he was a friend of mine, and he called me one day and he said, I want you to come over here, because I had a little apartment, I was building my house in Nashville, and we were still living in Alabama. He called me, and I was actually across the street from Acuff Rose Music Publishing.
So he was over there, and he said, I want you to come hear this song. So I went across the street, and he played Honey by Bob Shane that had just been recorded. It wasn’t even released yet.
And I listened to it, and I thought it was a really nice song, but there were so many drums and so much going on that I really kind of missed the message of the song, actually, when the first time I heard it. And then Bobby Russell, about a week later, came up to the offices to play some songs for me for an album I was cutting. And he was playing me kind of teeny-bopper-type things, you know, little teenage-type songs.
I said, don’t you have anything more like a ballad? I said, what about the thing you just did for Bob Shane? He said, well, that record’s coming out next week. I said, well, play that again. I couldn’t really hear it.
And he played Honey just with the guitar. And my co-producer, Bob Montgomery, and I, we just fell out. We said, that doesn’t even sound like what I just heard with Bob Shane.
And Bob said to him, can we record this? And he said, well, the Bob Shane record comes out next week. He said, well, we want to do it for the album. And so we went and recorded the next night.
And I’ve never had a recording before or since where the musicians, the violinists and all, they actually came into the control room to listen to the playback. They all just felt like this was magic, one of those magical times, you know. And we recorded it, that first cut, and listened to it.
And there was nothing we could do. So we went out and said, well, let’s do it again and do it better. We went out the second time, and it was the same thing.
So we took the first cut. And that’s what was released. We called Bobby Russell from the studio and said, listen, I think we’ve cut our number one record.
What can we do? And he said, well, the Bob Shane record comes out next week. Why don’t you give us two weeks? And if you want to come out then, you can come out with it. The United Artists was the record company, and they waited for two weeks.
And then they released my record of Honey, and I had to hit with it, fortunately for me. And I honestly think if Bob Shane had sung on my track and I sung on his, he would have had to hit. See the tree, how big it’s grown.
But friend, it hasn’t been too long. It wasn’t big. I laughed at her, and she got mad.
The first day that she planted it was just a twig. Then the first snow came, and she ran up to brush the snow away so it wouldn’t die. Came running in, all excited.
Slipped and almost hurt herself, and I laughed till I cried. She was always young at heart, kind of dumb and kind of smart, and I loved her so. And I surprised her with a puppy, kept me up all Christmas Eve two years ago.
It was the magic of that arrangement that Don Tweedy did, the high voice and the violins and things. It was very simple, very tastefully done. I think the Bob Shane record was a little bit overproduced, and luckily I had to hit with it.
But I was just very fortunate at the time. I feel really sorry for Bob Shane. I can imagine what would have been going on in his mind.
I do too, because it was such a great song, and he had it first. It’s the recording, and it has nothing to do with me and my voice and his voice. If he had sung on my track, he would have had to hit.
I believe that. Yeah. Well, as they say, that’s showbiz.
That’s how it goes. I guess so. Your version of Honey was certified gold in just four weeks.
It was the fastest-selling record in the history of United Artists. Yeah. I never dreamed.
I knew we had a hit, and I knew it was going to be a big record, but I never dreamed it was going to be the largest. In fact, it was the largest-selling record in the world that year, 68. And I would have never dreamed it would have happened like that.
Again, my whole career has been being in the right place at the right time. If I hadn’t ended up there at that sorority party, I would have never gotten with Orbison, which led to all these other things. So I’ve been very blessed my whole life with being in the right place at the right time.
Honey even surpassed Hey Jude that year by The Beatles. Yeah, I did, and it just blew me away. Several times I would just sit there and say, is this really happening or am I dreaming this? What did that feel like for you? Can you kind of describe how it changed your life? You’ve got a number one hit in 23 countries throughout the world.
What difference did that make to you as a person and to your lifestyle? Well, I think career-wise, it was the kind of song that started getting me a lot of the television shows that I had never done before, a lot of the talk shows. Up until then, I was doing pretty much all the teenage shows, and there were a lot of those to do, but you have a very limited audience. And when Honey came out, it reached a whole different audience.
I think the teenage audience liked it, but so did the adult audience. And all of a sudden, I started getting bookings like The Tonight Show. All of a sudden, I’m singing a duet with Bing Crosby and people I grew up watching in the movies.
And it was the kind of song that reached everyone. And I was getting record charts in from Italy and Spain and where it was number one all over the place. They started booking me in to do television over in those countries.
I started going around the world, and I had never done that before. Honey was like just to open up a whole new world for me. And did that newfound fame and popularity live up to your expectation of it? You must have had a permanent smile on your face.
The thing is, to be honest with you, I had a smile on my face before I had Honey. I really did. I was thinking, life is so good, and I’ve been so blessed before Honey.
And it just opened up all these doors. But at the same time, I was amazed at how great life was even before Honey. And it was just even better after that.
My wife and I talk about it all the time, that every day just seems like we’re blessed every day and something good happens. We said it couldn’t get any better than this, and then it does. So that’s the way we’ve looked at life.
Bobby Cosgrove, it’s not fair. I mean, I can hear a lot of people listening to this going, oh, wow, he’s such a lucky guy. Life is so good and just got better and better.
That’s kind of fairytale stuff. That doesn’t just happen to the average Joe. It really is, but my whole life has been a fairytale.
I’m telling you, I’ve been ups and downs here and there like everybody. But, I mean, I could not – I wouldn’t change one thing that’s happened in my life. And I just turned 83, and I feel like I’m 33, and I have no problems health-wise.
My wife and I are healthy, and we just built a new home, moved in here this past December. And life is good, and I’ve got no complaints. So what’s your secret? Just enjoying life, and I think I met the right person to be with.
My wife and I, we’re just like two peas in a pod. We get up every day, and we plan the day out, and we’re never apart. I come into my art studio, and I’m painting during the day, and then we decide, well, okay, let’s go out and eat.
Let’s do whatever we’re going to do, and we’ve never spent a night apart in 39 years, and we’re just totally happy. And I wish I knew the secret, because I’d tell everybody in the world. And I love you so The people ask me how How I’ve lived till now I tell them I don’t know I guess they understand How lonely life has been But life began again The day you took my hand It was 1971 when your friend Mac Davis wrote the song Watching Scotty Grow, which actually became your biggest selling hit for all time.
Watching Scotty Grow, next to Honey, was the second biggest seller. But again, like I said earlier, being in the right place at the right time, I was in a clothing store out in Los Angeles, and a friend of mine walked up, who was a record producer, and we were talking, and he said, I was talking about you the other day. Mac Davis played a song for me, and this producer was producing Andy Williams, and Mac Davis had pitched Watching Scotty Grow to him.
And he said, when I heard the song, I said, you know what, that sounds like a Bobby Goldsboro song. It’s not right for Andy Williams, but it would be a good Bobby Goldsboro song. He said, you ought to call Mac and have him play this song for you.
And I knew who Mac was, but I’d never met him. So then after he gave me his phone number, I went back to the hotel, and I called Mac. He came over to the hotel, and we played guitars and sang songs for the next three hours, and I said, well, play me this song that he’s talking, that Jerry Fuller mentioned, about Watching Scotty Grow.
He played it for me, and I loved it. It came back to National and recorded it, and that’s, again, I happened to be, had I not gone looking for a shirt that day in the clothing store, I wouldn’t have Watching Scotty Grow. Do you know who Scotty was? Scotty was Mac’s son.
In fact, my son’s name was Danny, and I said, would you mind if I call it Watching Danny Grow? He said, oh, man, if I do that, I can’t go home. He won’t let me get in the house. I said, okay, we’ll keep it as Scotty.
And Mac used to say on stage that when he would do the song, when he was doing concerts, he said that Scotty still thinks that I’m his father. How would you describe the difference between, say, Andy Williams and Bobby Goldsboro? If it wasn’t right for Andy Williams and it was right for Bobby Goldsboro, what’s the difference between them? Well, I think the age thing, I think Andy was older, and, in fact, he’s singing about a little boy, and I don’t know, plus I think I had a younger sound. To me, I sound like I’m nine years old on most of my records anyway.
I didn’t like to listen to my recordings because I sounded so young on them, but I think Andy had this bigger voice, and for him to sing that type of song, and I agree with the producer, I think it was a better song for me than for Andy. Just like Moon River was definitely a better song for Andy Williams than for me. That’s when you have a good producer that can pick the right song for you.
There he sits with a pen and a yellow pad What a handsome lad, that’s my boy B-R-L-F-G spells mom and dad Well, that ain’t too bad, cause that’s my boy Well, you can have your TV and your nightclubs And you can have your drive-in picture show I’ll stay here with my little man here, he’ll listen to the radio Biding my time and watching the sky grow Your voice still sounds so young. You said you’re 83 years of age now. You sound like you’re 53.
I feel like, like I said earlier, I feel like I’m 33. I’ve got no complaints. I enjoy life and hopefully there’s a lot more of it.
Bobby, one of your next hits, I mean, there’s so many to run through, and we’ll have to keep the list a little short, but another one that we as an audience really enjoyed right around the world was Little Green Apples. Well, that was one that Bobby Russell, also who wrote Honey, was the writer of that. And I did, in fact, that was going to be a single for me three different times.
And Roger Miller came out with it before I could, because I still had another record out and I couldn’t come out with it. So we said, well, we’ll wait a while and then we’ll release mine. And then O.C. Smith had a big hit with it.
Oh, I wake up in the morning with my hair down and my eyes And she says hi And I stumble to the breakfast table while the kids are going off to school Goodbye And she reaches out and takes my hand Squeezes it And says How you feelin’ Heartless And I look across at smiling lips That warm my heart And see my morning sun And if that’s not loving me Loving me Then all I’ve got to say Got to say Oh, God didn’t make it in Queen Anne’s It don’t rain in Indianapolis in the summertime And there’s no such thing as Dr. Seuss in Disneyland Mother Goose is no nursery rhyme God didn’t make little green apples It don’t rain in Indianapolis in the summertime And when myself is feeling low I think about her face up low To ease my mind Sometimes I call up at home Knowing she’s busy Finally, we got the release of that several years later, but that was, again, written by Bobby Russell.
This is a breath of fresh air with Sandy Kaye. It’s a beautiful day. It seems that your biggest hits were ones that you didn’t actually write.
Did that bother you? Not at all. Listen, probably 90% of the things I recorded over the years were songs that I wrote, but the two or three biggest ones were written by somebody else. And the whole idea is if you can record the best song, whether it’s yours or somebody else, you know, that’s what you do.
A lot of artists, I think it hurt their careers trying to box out everybody, every songwriter, I want to write my own things. You know, I was always looking for the best song at the time. And certainly your writing served a lot of other artists really well too because many of your compositions have been recorded by artists like Aretha Franklin, John Denver, Paul Anka, Dolly Parton, Johnny Cash, Dr John, Conway Twitty, Bette Midler, the list goes on and on.
So you obviously had complete confidence in what you were doing. Well, that was always such a satisfying thing to have an artist like one of these people, like a Bette Midler who recorded and did some of the first time in one of her movies. And things like that just always blew me away.
I said, hey, they thought enough of my song to put it in a movie or to record the song in an album or whatever. And I got a call and they said Johnny Cash was doing a TV special and he wanted to do a song that I had written called The L&N Don’t Stop Here Anymore. And it was about the L&N Railroad, which is the Louisville and Nashville, the old railroads.
It was about the dying out of the old railroads. And he was doing a one hour special TV special on the dying out of the railroads. And he picked that song and did it.
And I was just completely flabbergasted that Johnny Cash was going to do my song. When I was a curly headed baby My daddy sat me down upon his knee He said, boy, you go to school and learn your letters Don’t you be a dirty miner like me I was born and raised in the mouth of a hazard hollow Old cars rambled past my door Now they’re standing in a rusty row all empty And the L&N don’t stop here anymore I worked with him over the years on TV and did his TV show and things like that. But still, for him to record a song of mine was just… And Aretha Franklin, I mean, you can’t get any bigger than that.
And when she did with Pen and Hand, it was one of the best recordings of the song. That was recorded over a hundred times by different artists. And I think Aretha Franklin was the best one.
It must have been absolutely incredible for you to have these artists that you would have idolised growing up recording your material. I can’t imagine how that would feel. It was a great feeling.
And when I would get a call and somebody said that John Denver is cutting a song of yours or somebody else, I thought, wait a minute, these are people that I’ve idolised over the years and now they’re recording a song that I wrote. So like I told you, life is good. I have no complaints.
That’s definitely your slogan, isn’t it? Life is good. It’s taken you a long, long way. With Pen and Hand, I’ll sign your name I might be on that train In the 70s, I think it was 1973, you then even got your own national TV series, The Bobby Goldsberry Show, which ran for three successful seasons.
And it actually became the highest rated variety show in syndication in the 70s, which was amazing. How did you then step into hosting your own TV series? Well, I had been doing so much television over here in the States so I was booked up quite a bit. Finally, they came to me in Nashville.
The company asked me if I would consider doing my own show. And I said, well, I wouldn’t mind doing it as long as I’m not doing like an Ed Sullivan show where I’m just introducing three or four acts and I step out and they sing their songs. I said, if I can get to sing with the artists and we do something, do a duet and have a little comedy in there, then I would enjoy doing that.
And so that was the format we did. And we’d have one guest every show. I mean, we had so many great, Kenny Rogers and Jim Neighbors and Mac Davis and gosh, so many great artists that did the show.
Seals and Crofts were a great duo that did the show. And I got to sing with each one of them. And the whole time I’m out there singing with Johnny Mathis, I’m playing guitar and Johnny Mathis is singing.
And I’m thinking, I’m playing guitar for Johnny Mathis here. You know, this is the kind of thing that I would just like an out-of-body experience. Chances are Cause I wear a silly grin The moment you come into view Chances are you think That I’m in love with you Just because My composure sort of slips The moment that your lips meet mine Chances are you think My heart’s your Valentine We did it for three years and it was the highest rate.
We had our highest ratings after the third year, but I said, I’m not getting to write anymore because we were spending so much time in the studio, taping and recording the music for the shows and I wasn’t getting to write and couldn’t even hardly do concerts anymore. So it was taking up pretty much all of my time and I finally decided after three years, I said, well, we’ve got our highest ratings, I’d rather stop now. But it was a great experience for me.
What fun. And, of course, then when you did stop it, you opened a publishing company yourself in Nashville. So then you’ve turned yourself around a little bit too.
And your publishing house put out some amazing music in its own right. We did. We published Wind Beneath My Wings and gosh, we had so many big songs that we became the biggest music publisher in Nashville for years was Tree Publishing and they have all the country music hits for years and then we opened up House of Gold.
When I say we, it was me and Bob Montgomery, who was my partner, and we opened up House of Gold Music and I signed Kenny O’Dell to write for the company and he wrote Behind Closed Doors right off the bat for us and that was a fucking huge hit for us. Oh, I thought they’d love to talk But when they turn out the lights I know she’ll be leaving with me And then Larry Henley and Jeff Fillmore wrote Wind Beneath My Wings and we got off to a great start and the company just took off after that. So again, that was something, when Bob and I formed the company, I said, you’re going to have to run the company and I’ll help sign the writers and all of that but I’ve got to still be out there doing concerts and writing and all of that.
I’m completely in awe of you. Whatever you touch turns to gold. It’s really, really very unfair that some people are like that.
Well, I think it’s attitude has a lot to do with everything and when we started the publishing company, I said, hey, if it doesn’t make it, so we move on. That’s the way you have to look at things. You can’t say, if this doesn’t make it, what are we going to do? You have to have an open mind about everything and when I started oil painting, I had never oil painted until I turned 65 but I thought about it for 20 years.
My wife and I would go to, after concerts, we’d go to an art museum or a gallery, art gallery and I would look at the paintings and I would say, you know what, I think I’d enjoy doing that. One day I want to try that. And this went on for 15, 20 years and finally my wife said, you always talk about oil painting.
When are you going to do it? And I said, you know what, when I turn 65, that’s when I’ll start oil painting. And the day I turned 65, I went and bought canvases, paints, brushes and I just started painting. I’d never painted, never tried it and I didn’t take any lessons but it’s kind of like the music.
You see something in your head and like the music, I would hear it in my head and with the paintings, I see what I want to paint and I go in there and paint it. And I thought it was just going to be a hobby and it’s turned into a whole new career for me. It’s the summertime, summertime Laying back in the sun Yeah, summertime At the summertime farm It’s a time for two, just me and you And the summertime You’re making lots of money and giving lots of money to charity because your paintings are selling for a fortune.
Well, that’s what we’re trying to do and if we can do some good with it. I’m loving, if they weren’t even selling, I would still be doing it So the fact that they’re selling is a bonus because I love the painting, I love it like I do the music. What about the one that you did for Ray Stevens? Well, Ray called me one day because he had seen the art In fact, I went up and did his TV show Gosh, about five years ago and he showed some of my paintings on the show.
And then several weeks later, I got a call and that’s when he told me he was opening his new club. He built a $20 million nightclub up in Nashville so he could stay home and do the shows instead of going on the road. And he said, I want you to paint a life-size painting of me on stage I’ll send you the photo I haven’t come up with it yet, but I’ll send you the photo and I want you to paint it.
I said, okay. Finally, a few weeks later, he sent me a photo and it was him on stage with his white piano on stage and the background was just kind of stars. And I was probably three weeks into the painting and he called one day and said, Stop the presses.
I’ve changed the picture. I said, You’ve changed it? He said, Well, the background. I said, Well, because I’m already three weeks into this painting.
And he said, I’ve just changed the background. And what he did, he had to superimpose the earth in the background. Like he’s out in outer space on there.
And I said, Okay, if that’s what you want that’s the painting. In fact, it’s on my website. You can see it.
I named it Ray Stephens, Way Out There. Because he’s a crazy guy anyway. He’s free as the breeze.
He’s always at ease. He lives in the jungle and hangs by his knees as he swings through the trees without a trapeze in his DVD. He’s got a union card and he’s practicing hard to play the guitar.
Gonna be a big star. Yeah, he’s gonna go far. And Carrie Moonbeam’s home in a jar.
He ordered Chet’s guitar course. C.O.D. makes A and E and he’s working on B and D C and W and R and B and B and a chimpanzee. Agree that one day soon he’ll be a celebrity.
Get it, get it, get it, get it. Ow! Guitars there. He’s a guitar man.
He’s all you can stand. Give him a hand. Guitars there.
He is a funny guy. Bobby Goldsbrough, there certainly seems to be no end to your versatility. We haven’t even talked about all the work you’ve done for children’s books and children’s television.
What got you into that in the first place? Well, years ago I had written a children’s story called Easter Egg Morning. It was an Easter special. So I put my own money into it, did the production and it ran for 11 years on the Disney Channel as the highest rated Easter show.
And that kind of got me started with the, I’ve done the 52 episode children’s series called The Swamp Critters of Lost Lagoon where I created the characters and I did all the voices and I played all the instruments. It took me like four or five years to do the series. So with all of these different pursuits, do you still have time to make music today? I don’t do as much music now because I’ve got about six commissioned paintings I still have to do and that takes up most of my time.
So that’s the fun of it though. I can still do a little of each, write music and paint and I can’t think of a better way to live. So is there anything left on your bucket list that you still haven’t fulfilled? I don’t think there is and usually that’s kind of crazy to say but, I mean, my wife and I used to go out to Jackson Hole, Wyoming.
Every year we’d stay for a month or two and I would photograph all the wildlife and come back and paint them. And my wife got to be a fantastic photographer and those were other things that we enjoyed doing. Every day is, it’s a full day every day for us.
Bobby Gosper, I think it’s very true what they say, behind every good man is an even better woman because you keep talking about your lovely wife. She obviously has a lot to do with the success you’ve enjoyed over all these years. It’s amazing, I’ll tell you.
You hope that everybody should have that one, the love of your life, you paint them and I did. I was fortunate to do it and life could not get any better than it is now. Send her our best and thank you so much for sharing your stories with us.
What an absolute privilege and pleasure chatting with you and thank you for all the music, for all the paintings, for all the children’s series, for everything. That you’ve given the world because your contribution really has been super huge. Thank you, Sandy.
I appreciate that. All the very best to you, Bobby. You too.
Thanks so much. Bye now. Bye-bye.
It’s a beautiful day You’ve been listening to A Breath of Fresh Air with Sandy Kay. Beautiful day Oh, baby, any day that you’re gone away It’s a beautiful day