Hank Williams, Chet Atkins, and the Everly Brothers were some of the artists out of Nashville that profoundly influenced a young Neil Diamond when he started writing songs at 16 after his first guitar as a birthday gift.
Once his music career kicked off, Diamond’s path crossed with the music coming out of Nashville again when T.G. Sheppard took Diamond’s “Solitary Man” to No. 14 on the Country chart in 1976. A year later, Diamond also wrote “Sunflower” for Glen Campbell‘s album Southern Nights. In 1979, Tommy Overstreet also recorded a country version of Diamond’s 1978 song “Forever in Blue Jeans” for his album I’ll Never Let You Down.
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By the late ’60s, Waylon Jennings also started to tap into Diamond’s songs, covering one in 1968 and another by the late ’70s. “I’ve known Waylon for 25 years,” said Diamond in a 1996 interview with Larry King. “We’re kindred spirits from the road.”
Throughout a near-10-year stretch, Jennings recorded two songs from Diamond’s earlier catalog. Here’s a look back at the two songs written by Diamond that Jennings covered and when they finally came together for a duet in the mid-’90s.
[RELATED: 4 Songs Neil Diamond Wrote for The Monkees (1966-1967)]
“Kentucky Woman” (1968)
Written by Neil Diamond
In 1968, Jennings’ Only the Greatest features his No. 2 Country hit “Only Daddy That’ll Walk the Line,” and a song Diamond released a year earlier, “Kentucky Woman.” The song was written by Diamond while on tour in the South as an homage to a woman from Kentucky—She shines with her own kind of light She’d look at you once / And a day that’s all wrong looks all right. Bang Records’ Bert Berns liked the song, though it wasn’t the single Diamond intended to release. He preferred another song he had written, “Shilo,” but the label had a different idea of his musical direction at the time.
Though Diamond had moderate success with the song, which went to No. 22 on the Billboard Hot 100, it wasn’t a song he was proud of, and it prompted him to leave Bang behind.
“Kentucky Woman” still had some life and resurfaced in October of ’68 when Deep Purple hit the Top 40 at No. 38 with their version.
“Sweet Caroline” (1977)
Written by Neil Diamond
Jennings’ 1977 album, Ol’ Waylon, became one of his highest-selling releases, thanks in part to his hit, “Luckenbach, Texas (Back to the Basics of Love),” which went to No. 1 on the Country chart. The album also features a cover of Diamond’s 1969 anthem “Sweet Caroline.” Several years earlier, Roy Orbison and Frank Sinatra also released their renditions of the Diamond classic in 1973 and 1974, respectively.
When describing who “Sweet Caroline” was about, Diamond mentioned two women. Initially, he had written it for his second wife, Marcia Murphey; the couple married in 1969 and later divorced in 1995. At the time, he needed a three-syllable name to fit the melody, and Caroline fit.
“I was writing a song in Memphis, Tennessee, for a session,” said Diamond. “I needed a three-syllable name. The song was about my wife at the time—her name was Marcia—and I couldn’t get a ‘Marcia’ rhyme.”
Diamond also said that Caroline Kennedy was a significant influence behind the song. He even performed it for her at her 50th birthday party in 2007, and revealed that he used her name after seeing an early photograph of her in a magazine. “I’ve never discussed it with anybody before, intentionally,” Diamond told Associated Press in 2007. “I thought maybe I would tell it to Caroline when I met her someday.”
When he wrote “Sweet Caroline,” Diamond said he saw a childhood photo of Caroline in a magazine atop a horse with her parents, President John F. Kennedy and Jacqueline Kennedy standing near her. “I thought she might be embarrassed, but she seemed to be struck by it and really, really happy,” added Diamond. “It was a picture of a little girl dressed to the nines in her riding gear, next to her pony. It was such an innocent, wonderful picture. I immediately felt there was a song in there.”
Holed up in a Memphis hotel, Diamond said he wrote all the lyrics to “Sweet Caroline” within an hour and called it “probably is the biggest, most important song of my career.” He added, “And I have to thank her [Kennedy] for the inspiration.”
The song, which went to No. 4 on the Billboard Hot 100 and became a staple anthem throughout sports and around traumatic events, also has a divine meaning behind it.
“I think there’s a little bit of God in that song,” Diamond revealed in 2013. “I always have felt that. There’s no accounting for what can happen to a song.”
“One Good Love” (1996)
Written by Neil Diamond and Gary Nicholson
For his 23rd album, Tennessee Moon, Diamond wanted to go to Nashville and bring in a small circle of country singers and songwriters, including Chet Atkins, Harlan Howard, Hal Ketchum, and Beth Nielsen Chapman. “It’s natural that I come down here [Nashville],” said Diamond in 1996. “My music started from Nashville music, the Everly Brothers, Hank Williams, and Chet Atkins, these were the people that I tried to emulate when I was 16 years old. So I knew all the music. I’ve followed it all my life. I probably should have come down 25 years earlier, but better late than never.”
Recorded at Dark Horse Studio in Franklin, TN, Tennessee Moon was a success for Diamond, peaking at No. 3 on the Country chart and No. 14 on the Billboard 200.
Jennings also joined Diamond for a duet on the ballad “One Good Love.” The ballad was co-written by Diamond and Gary Nicholson, who co-wrote Vince Gill’s 1993 No. 1 hit “One More Last Chance,” Garth Brooks and Trisha Yearwood’s 1995 hit duet “Squeeze Me In,” Montgomery Gentry “She Couldn’t Change Me from 2001, and more for Willie Nelson, Ringo Starr, B.B. King, Fleetwood Mac, and George Strait, among many others.
Diamond and Jennings recorded a music video for “One Good Love” and performed the song together in Nashville at the Ryman Auditorium.
Photo: CA/Redferns
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