Remembering Tommy Overstreet, 1937-2015

Tommy Overstreet, who died Nov. 2 in Hillsboro, Ore. at age 78, enjoyed a string of country hits in the 1970s that played upon his genially masculine persona. Overstreet’s 1971 “Gwen (Congratulations)” and “Ann (Don’t Go Runnin’)” updated the country-music cheating song, and the records’ ornate arrangements presaged the more elaborate productions of later pop-country. A somewhat neglected figure today, Overstreet brought humor to a macho genre, and his work predicted — for better or worse — today’s bro-country.

Born in Oklahoma City on Sept. 10, 1937, Overstreet appeared on television in Abilene, Texas, in the 1950s and cut a few unsuccessful singles before moving to Nashville in 1967 to manage Dot Records, a label started by Tennessee-born record producer Randy Wood. Overstreet, whose uncle was famed 1920s singer Gene Austin, was eager to break into the music business, and he hit in 1969 with a version of Dallas Frazier and A.L. “Doodle” Owens’ “Rocking a Memory,” a country waltz that harked back to the early ‘60s.

Overstreet hit his stride with “Gwen (Congratulations)” and “Ann (Don’t Go Runnin’),” whose parenthetical titles perfectly expressed the ambivalent emotions of the songs' cheating — and cheated upon — narrators. “Ann” hit Number 2 on the country charts in 1972, and Overstreet continued to make the charts over the next few years. Another hit, 1975‘s “I’m a Believer,” cast Overstreet as the victim of a three-sided love affair and featured his smooth high baritone and an imaginative country-crossover arrangement. On his 1975 full-length The Tommy Overstreet Show, Live From the Silver Slipper, the singer and his band cut what may be the most antic version of Merle Haggard’s “Okie From Muskogee” in history — it’s a record that probably should have stayed in Vegas. Live From the Silver Slipper featured Overstreet the all-purpose entertainer, but his 1977 version of Michael Kosser and Rafe VanHoy’s “Don’t Go City Girl on Me” may stand as his masterpiece.

Cut with a crack Nashville studio band that included guitarist Reggie Young and drummers Jerry Carrigan and Kenneth Buttrey, “Don’t Go City Girl on Me” sports a tough blues-country guitar lick and opens with these immortal lines: “With your blouse halfway open / And your skirt flapping high above your knees / I declare you’ll catch your death of cold / With all that skin a-wavin’ in the breeze."

It’s outlaw country with a heart of pure pop, and it's worth remembering.

Overstreet had a few more hits. His 1978 single “Fadin’ In, Fadin’ Out” compared the love of his woman to a far-away radio station. But “Don’t Go City Girl” and its attendant album, 1977‘s Hangin’ ‘Round, was his peak. By that time, Overstreet had moved from parentheses to contractions, so Hangin’ contains such numbers as “Hangin’ On to What I’ve Got” and the title track, “What Am I Doin’ Hangin’ 'Round.” In his later years he became a regular attraction in Branson, Mo., and the great poet of marital strife weathered a divorce, remarried, and settled down to domesticity as he got older. “The music business and what we do in that career is not great for relationships,” he told Billboard’s Chuck Dauphin in 2014. “You're gone too much. I wouldn't encourage anyone to work that hard. I shouldn't have. I should have stopped and smelled the roses and spent more time with my family. But you learn those things in hindsight. Hindsight is 20/20.”