Purely by chance, I met the great Nashville songwriter, record producer and singer Rob Galbraith four years ago while I was browsing in a local record store. I was already a fan of a legendary full-length he'd co-produced in 1975, and when I noticed that record sitting on the new-release rack — it was the 2011 CD reissue of Georgia funk-soul singer Larry Jon Wilson's New Beginnings — I told my friend about it.
A tall, hip-looking fellow standing nearby looked at us with an air of surprise. "Hey, I produced that record," he said. Overseas record labels being what they are, it turned out Galbraith didn't even know about the reissue. That oversight has been corrected, though, with the release of Galbraith's first full-length in more than a decade. Chicago archival label The Numero Group has released Damn It All, a collection of demo recordings Galbraith made in Nashville in the 1970s, and the record makes a case for Galbraith as one of the era's finest soul-funk-jazz singers-songwriters.
Damn It All compiles tracks Galbraith cut between 1969 and 1977, when he worked for two Nashville publishing companies, Moss-Rose and Combine Music. Born in Concord, Tenn., in 1944, Galbraith played in Knoxville R&B groups before making his bones as a disc jockey on radio station WNOX, where he helped break such singles as Bobbie Gentry's 1967 "Ode to Billie Joe" and fellow East Tennessee native Clifford Curry's "She Shot a Hole in My Soul," recorded at Madison's famed Cinderella Studios.
In fact, Galbraith put Curry in touch with Nashville songwriters and producers Buzz Cason and Bobby Russell, who had started their Elf Records label in 1966. "I would make these demo tapes of Clifford and the black artists I was runnin' with, and I would get in my car and drive down [to Nashville] early in the morning and start knocking on doors," Galbraith tells the Scene. "It was tough trying to find somebody who was not country, but I found Buzz and Bobby and then [guitarist and songwriter] Mac Gayden.
After moving to Nashville in 1968, Galbraith wrote songs for Moss-Rose before cutting the 1970 full-length Nashville Dirt. Famed country producer Billy Sherrill helped Galbraith secure an A&R position with Columbia Records, where the scout unsuccessfully attempted to interest the label in rock artists such as J.J. Cale. "[Sherrill] was kind of a benefactor of mine, and my favorite country producer," remembers Galbraith. "It was a learning experience, man, to watch Sherrill and the way he operated."
Galbraith moved to Combine Music in the early '70s and cut the bulk of the tracks that make up Damn It All during his tenure there. Never comfortable with the rigors of performing, Galbraith wrote songs and briefly became part of Jubal, a Nashville rock band whose 1972 full-length featured the talents of fellow Music City eclectic Dennis Linde.
Damn It All grew out of a 2002 trip to Nashville by Ohio-born singer-songwriter Jerry David DeCicca, who was in town with fellow singer and music historian Jeb Loy Nichols to meet with artists whose work would later appear on two compilations of 1970s soul music, Country Got Soul. "We went to meet Rob, because Jeb wanted to use one of his songs," DeCicca says. "He had incredible stories about doing stuff with Larry Jon Wilson and Mickey Newbury, and later that night Rob took me to see Clifford Curry, 'cause Rob had been working with Clifford forever."
With help from Delmore Recording Society head Mark Linn, who made digital transfers of some of the tracks that compose Damn It All, DeCicca put together an invaluable document of Galbraith's sensibility. (Linn wasn't involved in working on the finished record.) The track "I Been Down" sports a subtle funk rhythm, while "In Pulaski" finds Galbraith exploring small-town morality: "The flower club is fine / But there's something missing there," he sings. "And questions about daughter's trip to New York / Mostly bring on an icy stare."
Damn It All is part of Numero's new "Project 12" subscription service, so the LP won't be available in record stores. For Galbraith, whose résumé includes producing records for country star Ronnie Milsap, the collection gives listeners the opportunity to appreciate his solo career, which lay dormant for decades until he returned to performing in Nashville in 2008, with a band that currently includes drummer Chester Thompson, guitarist Sam Hunter and saxophonist Sam Levine.
"I was a reticent artist at best," Galbraith says. "But you write these things, and you sing them in the studio, and sometimes you feel like you'd like to hear some of that."
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