Before Garth Brooks rewrote country music history, there was Allen Reynolds. The soft-spoken producer with an ear for lyrics was born on this day in 1938 in North Little Rock, Arkansas. From Crystal Gayle’s velvet hits to Don Williams’ effortless grace and Brooks’ versatile storytelling, Reynolds built the soundtrack of a generation.
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“What you try to do as a producer is help the artist find their own uniqueness, their own true self,” Reynolds said. “Then lift that forward,” Reynolds said on PBS.
Reynolds was born on August 18, 1938, in North Little Rock, Arkansas, and grew up in Memphis, Tennessee. He started writing songs at Rhodes College, then teamed with Dickey Lee. The pair co-wrote Lee’s 1963 pop hit “I Saw Linda Yesterday.”
Allen met producer and songwriter Cowboy Jack Clement when Sun Records signed Lee as an artist. In 1960, Reynolds followed Clement to a host of musical opportunities, including Nashville’s RCA Records and Clement’s newly-founded label, JMI Records. Reynolds joined Clement’s publishing company, Jack Music.
“Nashville nurtured a creative environment,” Allen told PBS of early 1970. “The attitude was ‘This is a great town for writers.’”
Allen Reynolds: “It’s Not Your Record”
Reynolds wrote songs and made a name for himself as a producer through his work with Don Williams. When JMI Records closed in 1975, Reynolds bought Clement’s studio, Jack’s Tracks, on Music Row. The purchase made him an independent producer, and Crystal Gayle was one of his first clients. Gayle and Reynolds recorded 10 albums. They charted 17 No. 1 singles, including Gayle’s career song, “Don’t It Make My Brown Eyes Blue.”
“One of the most important things to keep in mind is that it’s not your record; it’s the artist’s,” Reynolds told PBS. “And your job, as a producer, is to do anything you can to get a performance out of everybody, to get them to forget about microphones and technology and get into the music. I always tell people my hardest work was done before I went to the studio. And that was the process of finding the ingredients. It was finding the songs, and getting everybody ready – the right mood, you know?”
He later teamed with Kathy Mattea, Emmylou Harris, and more. He helped the women sonically articulate acoustic-leaning storytelling songs into the late ’80s and early ’90s.
Anniversary Month
But August is more than Reynolds’ birthday—it marks another significant anniversary. In August of 1988, Reynolds, Brooks, engineer Mark Miller, and a powerhouse studio band called the G-Men assembled for the first time. That alliance — Reynolds, Miller and Brooks with G-Men musicians Bruce Bouton (steel guitar), Mark Casstevens (acoustic guitar), Mike Chapman (bass guitar) Rob Hajacos (fiddle), Chris Leuzinger (electric guitar), Milton Sledge (drums) and Bobby Wood (keyboards)– fueled the country music juggernaut, turning a young Oklahoma dreamer into the genre’s biggest-selling star and cementing Reynolds as one of Nashville’s most trusted architects of sound.
Reynolds, Miller, and the G-Men worked with Brooks on virtually all of his blockbuster hits from 1989 to 2001. They recorded most of the songs at Allen’s Jack’s Tracks recording studio in Nashville. The men brought “If Tomorrow Never Comes,” “The Dance,” “Friends in Low Places,” “The Thunder Rolls,” and many more to life in that space.
Garth Brooks: Allen Reynolds is Timeless in His Wit
Reynolds prefers lyrical content over studio flash and intimate, unhurried performances that let artists be themselves. His style is apparent from Williams’ warm minimalism to Brooks’ stadium-scaled storytelling.
“Allen Reynolds is timeless in his wit, his work ethic, and his love and knowledge of music,” Brooks said on his website. “We started this journey in August of ’88, and it’s still all about the song. I love that.”
When Reynolds retired, Brooks bought Allen’s Jack’s Tracks studio and renamed it Allentown in Reynolds’ honor.
In 2016, Garth, Allen, Mark, and the G-Men were inducted into the Musicians Hall of Fame together. Reynolds is also a 2000 inductee into the Nashville Songwriters Hall of Fame.
Reynolds, Miller, Brooks, and the G-Men still work together today.
Photo by Danielle Del Valle/Getty Images
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