Back in 1982, Stewart Harris and Jim McBride were kicking around song ideas at CBS Publishing but were coming up with nothing. Then, McBride started telling Harris about a woman named Rose who had heard about growing up in Huntsville, Alabama. Rose had five “well-to-do” husbands, who all mysteriously died. Rose went to trial, but there was no evidence proving that she poisoned her husbands, so she was set free.
“I knew a family that lived in that house, and they said there were five nails in the hallway when you walked in, and supposedly back in the day she had all five of their hats on those nails,” recalled McBride in 2016. “The lady moved off to Mississippi after the second trial; she was found innocent both times. After she moved to Mississippi, people lost track of her. I was telling Stuart how spooky the house was. My friends who lived there said there were ghosts.”
He continued, “So I’m telling him this story, and after I finish he starts telling me low-country ghost stories—he’s from South Carolina. So we go to lunch, and we decide when we come back we’re gonna write ourselves a ghost story.”
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McBride said he wasn’t sure where the title came from, but he noticed that the initials for “Rose in Paradise” were “RIP,” which seemed to it their ghostly tale. “We started telling this story of a pretty young girl in Georgia and this rich guy, and the next thing you know we had finished this song,” added McBride. “We took it into our publisher, Judy Harris, and played it for her, and she said ‘Where did y’all go to lunch?’”
She was a flower for the taking
Her beauty cut just like a knife
He was a banker from Macon
He swore he’d love her all a his life
He bought her a mansion on the mountain
With a formal garden and a lot of land
But paradise became her prison
That Georgia banker was a jealous man
Every time he’d talk about her
You could see the fire in his eyes
He’d say, “I would walk through Hell on Sunday
To keep my Rose in Paradise
He hired a man to tend the garden
To keep an eye on her while he was gone
Some say they ran away together
Some say that gardener left alone
Now the banker is an old man
That mansion’s crumbling down
He sits all day and stares at the garden
Not a trace of her was ever found
Loretta Lynn
Once the song was being pitched around, Randy Howard, then Toy Caldwell from the Marshall Tucker Band, were the first artists to cut the song, but their versions were never released.
When Don Lanier brought Loretta Lynn by CBS one day to hear the song, she immediately knew it was a song for Waylon Jennings. “Loretta went ‘Oh my Lord, honey, you need to get that Waylon,” said McBride. “So she did. She took it to [Jennings’ producer] Jimmy Bowen.”
Though Jennings liked the song, he had just finished recording and promised to pick it back up the next time around.
Jennings said “I just got through recording not long ago and it’s probably gonna be a year before I record again, but if those boys will put that song under a rock I swear I’ll cut it whenever I go back in studio,” remembered McBride. “You know how many times that happens and then the song don’t get cut?” added McBride. “Several months later, Waylon cut that song. I think it was the first song he cut with Jimmy Bowen, and it was a single. It was his last No. 1 song.”
Released in January 1987 on Jennings album Hangin’ Tough, “Rose in Paradise” went to No. 1 on the Country chart and remained on the charts for 19 more weeks and was Jennings’ final chart-topping song.
In 2009, Chris Young recorded a cover of “Rose in Paradise” as a duet with Willie Nelson for his album The Man I Want To Be, followed by Kris Kristofferson and Patty Griffin’s rendition in 2011.
Photo: Michael Ochs Archives/Getty Images
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