Succeeding in the music business is more of a challenge than ever, and staying there is even harder. So when someone can claim a career that includes nearly seven decades of live performances, and over half a century singing with Nashville’s most venerable institution, it’s easy to wonder how they can still be doing it. But Jeannie Seely isn’t slowing down any.
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Seely just celebrated 53 years as a Grand Ole Opry member, one of only three living women (the others being Loretta Lynn and Connie Smith) to have reached this milestone. Her new album, An American Classic, contains a duet single with her old friend Willie Nelson, “Not a Dry Eye in the House.” With Nashville music industry legend Don Cusic (Bobby Bare, Melinda Doolittle) producing, Seely performs music on An American Classic by everyone from Sammy Cahn to Roger Miller, with guest appearances from Vince Gill, Lorrie Morgan and others.
“When Don and I were discussing who else to have [on the new album] we had this whole list of possibilities,” Seely said during a phone interview with American Songwriter. “I decided to go with the artists that I have a more personal connection with. Lorrie is very special to me, I watched her grow up backstage at the Opry, was good friends with her dad George Morgan. And I’ve loved Vince ever since he came to the Opry. And of course Rhonda Vincent, she just had a number one record on a song that I wrote, ‘Like I Could.’ That’s how I did it. I’m just so glad to live in Nashville where there’s so many wonderful artists. I always go with my friends first, my close friends with that personal connection.”
Until she co-wrote Vincent’s “Like I Could” with Bobby Tomberlin (Diamond Rio, Barbra Streisand) and Erin Enderlin (Alan Jackson, Luke Bryan), Seely had never participated in a Nashville-style co-write-by-appointment. “That was something I could never understand,” she said, “people talking about setting writer appointments. How do you know your brain is gonna think creatively two months from now at two o’clock in the afternoon? I never could figure out how they did that. But Bobby and Erin both kept encouraging me to do it. I was afraid I’d be intimidated, I wouldn’t be able to think of anything and I’d be embarrassed, and they said I couldn’t be embarrassed around them! And if we didn’t come up with anything we’d just sit and laugh. But when we got together it just came together so fast, it was so fun. I want to do more of that now. But with the promotion of this new record it’s just really busy right now, and with the pandemic everybody’s just trying to stay safer.”
Many people know Seely only as a singer, and don’t realize how many songs she has written that have been recorded by others. Her songs have been cut by Merle Haggard, Irma Thomas, Chris LeDoux and others, and in 2016 she released Written in Song, an album of her singing 14 of her songs that other artists have released.
“I love what I do,” she said, “and I feel so blessed to be 80 years old with a new album, that’s pretty phenomenal. And the duet single with Willie, not everyone gets that for their 80th birthday. I had planned to slow down a little bit, but I say until you’re ready to get out of the race, you gotta keep runnin’. That’s true in any business.”
