POP MUSIC : Heartaches by the Score : With five marriages and more than 100 hits over four decades, Harlan Howard is a master of writing sad songs, Nashville style

By ROBERT HILBURN

June 14, 1992 12 AM PT

<i> Robert Hilburn is The Times' pop music critic</i>

NASHVILLE, Tenn. —

Harlan Howard, the dean of country music songwriters for almost 30 years, loves to tell stories--especially the one about his first big royalty check.

It was back in the late ‘50s after separate recordings of his song “Heartaches by the Number” cracked the country and pop Top 10.

The struggling young songwriter had gotten royalty checks before, but they were for minor hits and never amounted to more than $27. So, you can imagine his surprise when he opened the envelope and saw a check for $48,000.

“I thought that was all the money in the world,” the silver-haired Howard says. “I was still driving a fork truck at a book bindery in Huntington Park out in California, making $200 a week . . . $225 if I worked overtime.”

Howard leans his head back and roars at the memory of his good fortune all those years ago--but the story’s not over.

“So what happens three days later? I get another check for $52,000,” he says, resuming the tale. “Here I was all of a sudden with $100,000, which must be like having a million dollars today, and I didn’t even have a bank account.

“I went out and did the typical hillbilly thing. I bought a brand-new, white-on-white Coupe de Ville . . . paid $5,200 cash for it. . . . The next thing I did was move to Nashville and hit the ground running, writing day and night for 10 or 12 years. I kept at it, almost like a fever, until finally it occurred to me that I had enough hits built up that I would never have to go back to Los Angeles and that fork truck.”

In Nashville, Howard became known as the quintessential country songwriter. Though not as famous as Willie Nelson and others who both write and sing their own material, Howard has written about heartache and romance in ways that defined the honky-tonk side of country music.

Still active at 64, Howard has made it through all the Nashville style changes--from the urban cowboy craze of the late ‘70s to today’s new traditionalist movement--because his best songs (he’s written more than 100 hits) speak of everyday life with a raw, fundamental emotion that is at the heart of country music’s appeal.

His vast body of work ranges from “I Fall to Pieces,” the Patsy Cline hit that he wrote with Hank Cochran, and “The Chokin’ Time,” a dark tale of broken love that was a pop hit for Joe Simon, to “Busted,” the hard-times saga that Ray Charles turned into a country-pop standard, and “Why Not Me,” the perky tune that was one of the Judds’ biggest hits.

Sitting at his favorite table in Maude’s Courtyard, the record industry’s power-lunch restaurant here, the Kentucky native, who has been married five times, spoke with affection and insight about songwriting--Nashville style.

Question: Did you grow up on country music?

Answer: Yes, that and the blues. I was born in Kentucky, but my folks moved to Detroit when I was a child because Henry Ford was paying big money, $5 a day or whatever, to work in the auto assembly lines. We lived in this poor white ghetto right across the street from a black ghetto, so I heard all this country music from Tennessee and black blues.

Q: When did you start getting serious about writing?

A: Nothing really happened until I moved to California in 1955. I had been to Nashville a bunch of times to see if I could get anything going, but I was a factory worker and Nashville had no factory jobs so there was no way to support myself while I tried to write the songs. L.A., on the other hand, had jobs and there was a growing country music scene out there.

Driving that fork truck was real dull, but it gave you lots of time to goof off. I’d go home every day with six songs in my pocket. Writers want jobs that are not mental . . . anything you can do to get by so that you are free to think about your music. I think writers train a portion of their brains to be on alert. I don’t care if I am at the movies, watching TV, doing an interview, whatever, I’m always thinking about that next song.

Q: Was “Heartaches by the Number” your first hit?

A: No, (Charlie Walker’s) “Pick Me Up on Your Way Down” was my first big country song. After that, Ray Price called me at the factory to ask if I had any more like it. He was just about the biggest singer in country music at the time and I was so nervous that I was shaking. Price said he liked “Pick Me Up” and was looking for material for his next session. I sent him “Heartaches by the Number” and, sure enough, he recorded it. Then Guy Mitchell cut it for the pop field. In those days, a lot of pop singers recorded country songs and you had a hit in both fields.

Q: What was it like when you had the No. 1 record in pop?

A: To tell you the truth, I was so dumb when it comes to the music business that when I heard Mitchell’s record, I felt bad. When I wrote the song, it was such a soulful thing--the way Ray Price did . . . kind of a slow shuffle, lots of soul, tear-jerker. Then Mitchell comes out whistling, ukuleles. I thought he ruined my song--except Mitchell’s damn thing sold about a million records and I learned a lesson . . . you take a sad subject and give it a happy flavor and you’ve got a hit.

Q: Why have you written so many love songs?

A: I am very interested in the whole thing about relationships . . . about how hard it is for men and women to get it right. . . . how much we need them and all the mistakes we make. Pop and rock songs are about a lot of things, but boil down country songs and they are about relationships. It’s what Hank Williams sang about and it’s what Garth Brooks sings about.

Q: Why have so many of your love songs been heartbreak tales? Does that come from five marriages?

A: I feel I have done about everything in life but die--at least when it comes to relationships. I don’t know if all that is essential for a writer, but it sure helps because you can draw upon all those feelings. You remember the guilt, the regrets, the dreams. But, then, it’s like a painter . . . you embellish on the emotions.

If you were rotten and you write a song about it, you make yourself 10 times as rotten. Maybe you did something wrong, say you get drunk and wreck the car, well, you dramatize it in the song. To me, a song is like a three-minute movie.

Q: What is the most important element in a song for you?

A: I’m a title person. I don’t sit around and strum melodies, waiting for inspiration. I look for a title that intrigues me . . . something that will look good on a title strip in a jukebox . . . like a book attraction in a bookstore. I think there is a real attraction in titles.

Once you have the title, you have to figure out a way to make that into a love song of meaning--a little observation on love that hasn’t been beaten to death. That’s why love is such a good subject. You never run out of things to say about it. I’m fascinated by how much we’ll go through for love . . . what we’ll give up, the mistakes we’ll make, how weak we can be.

Q: But why so often sad love songs?

A: I don’t know, but it’s just what interests me I guess. It’s also the kind of movies I like and the kind of books I like. Besides, I see a lot of people around me struggling. I don’t see a lot of people who have been married 70 years and never have a problem. I wish I saw more of that, but that’s not dramatic enough for me as a writer.

Q: But one of your best-known songs is “Busted,” which isn’t a love song. (See lyrics, Page 67.) How did that come about?

A: At the time (in the early ‘60s), I had been writing a lot of folk type things for Burl Ives and songs for Patsy Cline that teen-age girls could relate to--and that eliminates a lot of subjects. Because of this, I hadn’t written a really good down-home country song in quite a while, so “Busted” was my return to that. It was a deliberate attempt to write about family, poverty, farmers. I just wrote it for me, I guess. Johnny Cash did record it, but it wasn’t a hit and I kind of forgot about it until Ray Charles did it and it won a Grammy, which sure pleased me.

Q: How has songwriting changed in Nashville over the years?

A: Lots of songwriting today is by committee, which I don’t particularly like. It amazes me what goes on. I’ve got young friends now who tell me they’ve got appointments at 10, 2 and 4, which means they are going to write three different songs with three different people that day. Co-writing is easier because you only have to write half the song, but, then again, you’ve got to write twice as many songs to make the same money.

Q: Why do you think country music is selling more than ever?

A: To me, it’s simple. Pop music disappeared. Big bands disappeared first, then pop singers. Everything turned to folk and then the Beatles, who were great, but then into heavy rock and metal, things that most adults can’t relate to. The radio programmers and record company executives who decide all this wiped out Tin Pan Alley in New York.

The result is you don’t have love songs to speak of anymore in pop, except for the occasional Phil Collins or Whitney Houston record. Country music is the Tin Pan Alley of today . . . the supplier of love songs. Plus, you have some great country talents that can appeal to anybody.

Q: What do you think of some of the new stars? Wynonna Judd?

A: She’s a wonderful singer. She reminds me of Patsy Cline. She can be that good if she finds the right material. To be honest, I’m not sure her talent has been tapped. She’s still young. Maybe she hasn’t had her ass busted romantically enough yet . . . a couple of divorces under her belt. I don’t wish Wynonna a bad life; I’ll be interested in what she’s doing when she gets close to 30.

Q: And Garth?

A: I can’t believe the energy he puts out. You can tell he’s been to rock concerts. I don’t get out that much, but I never saw any singer be as energetic on stage. But he also has a sincerity. He moves me--and he’s never done one of my songs so I don’t have anything to gain by saying that. I think he’ll have a big influence on country and pop. As long as they don’t suddenly stop doing love songs, Garth and country music have a lot more records to sell.

A HARLAN HOWARD SAMPLER

BUSTED (1962)

I’ve got a cow that’s gone dry

And a hen that won’t lay.

A stack of bills

Getting bigger each day.

The county will haul my belongs away

‘Cause I’m busted.

I went to see my brother

Gonna ask him for a loan

I was busted

I had to beg like a dog for a bone