THE NEW YORK TIMES – Jim McBride, a former postal worker from Alabama whose ability to write catchy country songs inflected with honky-tonk flair resulted in a long string of hits for artists like Alan Jackson, Waylon Jennings and Conway Twitty, died on Jan. 7 in Huntsville, Ala. He was 78.
His death, at a hospital, was from complications of a fall at his home in Hazel Green, a community north of Huntsville, his son Brent said.
Mr. McBride was a leading figure on Nashville’s Music Row in the 1980s and early ’90s, when musicians like Mr. Jackson, Dwight Yoakam and the Judds rejected the pop influences of the late 1970s and ’80s in favor of traditional country styles and instruments.
His biggest hit, “Chattahoochee,” which he wrote with Mr. Jackson in 1992, is a case in point.
A throwback to the honky-tonk sounds of the 1950s, it is propelled forward by an onslaught of piano, fiddle, steel guitar, an irresistible drumbeat and lyrics that hark back to rural adolescence:
Well, way down yonder on the Chattahoochee
It gets hotter than a hoochie coochie.
We laid rubber on the Georgia asphalt
We got a little crazy but we never got caught.
The song was Mr. Jackson’s first No. 1 hit on the Billboard U.S. Hot Country Songs chart; it was also Billboard’s top country song of 1993. It won a brace of awards, including Song of the Year from the Country Music Association.
By then, Mr. McBride was a Nashville veteran, having written hit songs for Mr. Twitty, Johnny Lee and the band Alabama. Over his career, more than 80 acts recorded his songs …
