Knowing when not to cut a record is an important skill. Knowing who should cut a record is another matter altogether. And in the early 1980s, Loretta Lynn flexed her ability to do both simultaneously with a Southern gothic song by Stewart Harris and Jim McBride, “Rose In Paradise”.
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Two different artists cut a version of “Rose In Paradise”, but neither saw the light of day. It was still unreleased when Loretta Lynn visited the CBS office to listen to songs. Publisher Judy Harris was at the meeting, and she told Lynn, “I know this song is not for you. But let me play it for you.”
Harris put the track on for Lynn, who said, “Oh, Lord. That would be so good for Waylon.” Country music history would show she was right, of course. However, it didn’t seem like a surefire possibility at the time.
Why “Rose in Paradise” Was “Hidden Under a Rock” for a Year
Don Lanier was at CBS with Loretta Lynn and Judy Harris that fateful day, and he was the one who called Waylon Jennings to propose that he cut a version of the song. Jennings was interested in doing it, but he had just gotten out of the studio. He asked Lanier if they could “put that song under a rock” until he returned to the studio in a year. “You know how many times that happens, and then the song don’t get cut?” Jim McBride later recalled, per The Boot.
Despite their doubts, Jennings followed through with his promise. He recorded “Rose In Paradise” several months after Lanier called him and released it on his 35th studio album, Hangin’ Tough. It would be Jennings’ last No. 1 hit on the country charts.
So, Who Was This Southern Gothic Tale Really About?
According to songwriter Jim McBride, “Rose In Paradise” was born from a ghost story swap between him and Stewart Harris. McBride recounted a local legend about a woman named Rose from the 1800s who lived outside of Huntsville, Alabama. She had five husbands, all of whom died mysteriously. Per the rumor mill, there were five nails in the front hallway that she allegedly used to hang her dead husbands’ hats. Harris countered with his own ghost stories from the Low Country of South Carolina.
“Rose In Paradise” technically came from those stories, but it wasn’t about them. Harris and McBride made up their own paranormal tale about a woman whose banker husband from Macon trapped her in a mansion on a mountain to keep her away from the outside world. She eventually disappears, and the song leaves it open-ended as to whether she died or ran away with the gardener. “Now the banker is an old man / That mansion’s crumbling down / He sits and stares at the garden / Not a trace of her was ever found.”
“I don’t know where the title came from,” McBride said. “It was two years later that I notice the initials for ‘Rose In Paradise’ are R.I.P.! I don’t even know which one of us came up with the idea.” He said that he and Harris wrote their chilling ghost story after a lunch break. When they showed the song to publisher Judy Harris, her first question was, “Where did y’all go to lunch?”
Photo by Tom Sweeney/Star Tribune via Getty Images
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