Unknown Known: The Story of Songwriter Dennis Linde
You probably don’t know Dennis Linde. Not many people outside of the Nashville recording industry did. Shy and quiet, clean-cut and unassuming, Linde (pronounced LIN-dee) did his best to stay away from public life, despite being one of the most prolific songwriters of all-time.
He won numerous songwriting awards but rarely showed up to accept them. He wrote hits for Elvis but never met him. He refueled Roger Miller’s singing career but struggled to launch his own.
Called a “a loner who was never alone,” Linde didn’t say much because he didn’t have to — his songs did the talking.
And you do know Linde’s songs, whether you’re a fan of country music or not. Linde’s career spanned decades and genres. He wrote Elvis Presley’s “Burning Love,” his first massive success as a songwriter. He penned pop, rock, R&B and soul tunes for artists like Roy Orbison, the Everly Brothers, Foghat, Manfred Mann’s Earth Band, Arthur Alexander, Aaron Neville, and Delbert McClinton.
But it’s country music where he found his niche. He helped shape the distinct sound of 80s and 90s country, writing songs like Kenny Rogers’ “Goodbye Marie,” Randy Travis’ “What’ll You Do About Me,” Mark Chestnutt’s “Bubba Shot the Jukebox” and “It Sure is Monday,” Joe Diffie’s “John Deere Green,” Sammy Kershaw’s “Queen of My Double Wide Trailer,” and Garth Brooks’ smash hit “Callin’ Baton Rouge.”1
Linde is even responsible for perhaps the most iconic feminist anthem of modern country music, the Dixie Chicks’ “Goodbye Earl.”
“I thought I was writing a black comedy like Arsenic and Old Lace,” Linde said about the song.
He stayed behind the scenes but at the front of the pack, revolutionizing a sound most in Nashville weren’t ready to embrace. Linde was far ahead of his time, and everyone else is still trying to catch up.
Linde was born in Abilene, TX, in 1943, but he moved to St. Louis with his family at an early age. As a young teenager, he quickly learned basic chords on a $14 guitar given to him by his grandmother. In the 1960s he worked as a delivery driver by day while playing in rock-n-roll cover bands at night.
At age eighteen, Linde and a friend were arrested for riding a motor-scooter down a runway at the Lambert-St. Louis Municipal Airport.2 The pair drove about 1.5 miles to the end of the 10,000-foot runway reserved for jet airliners, turned around, and traveled about halfway back before being intercepted by a fire truck. Linde and his friend, 20-year-old Joseph B. Tate, claimed they wanted to get a closer look at the airplanes as they landed and took off.
The eighteen-year-old Linde was sentenced to twenty days in jail for trespassing, but was released three days later after an attorney filed a writ of habeas corpus. Linde was placed on six months parole for the incident.
The stunt quietly put Linde on the periphery of the battle for 5th amendment rights taking shape in the 1960s. Linde’s mother wrote a letter to the editor in the St. Louis Post-Dispatch titled “Is This Justice?” The letter described the treatment of her teenage son the night he was arrested. Linde was not allowed to make a phone call and was held in St. Louis County jail overnight. There was also no mention made to Linde about his right to legal counsel at the sentencing hearing.
As fate would have it, a convention of lawyers from the ABA’s Criminal Law Section was taking place at the Statler-Hilton hotel in St. Louis on August 10, 1961. Mrs. Linde’s letter came to the attention of attorney Joseph J.C. Thompson, secretary of the Manhattan Criminal Courts Bar Association. Thompson introduced a resolution at the conference that would require police to hand out a pamphlet stating one’s rights during an arrest. The resolution passed.3
St. Louis County Supervisor James H.J. McNeary responded to the ABA’s resolution with a scathing letter of his own. McNeary alleged the ABA had acted too hastily and without all the facts. He claimed that Linde’s story conflicted with that of his cohort, Joseph B. Tate, and that Linde was given the opportunity to make a phone call at the airport, but declined when officers said they would have to make the call for him. McNeary called the account given by Linde’s mother a hoax.
Roughly 18 months later, Ernesto Miranda was arrested for kidnapping and rape in Arizona. He later made a written confession of guilt without being informed of his right to counsel or his right to remain silent. The case was thrust into the national spotlight, becoming a focal point of the nation’s debate on 5th Amendment rights. The aftermath was the landmark Supreme Court decision, Miranda v. Arizona.
Reading someone their Linde Rights just doesn’t have the same ring to it.
Linde’s songwriting career began because of another run-in with St. Louis law enforcement, albeit much less serious. In 1965, Linde was pulled over for speeding too many times and had his drivers license suspended for 45 days.4 He said this allowed him to spend almost 10 hours a day working on songs.
“How much time can you kill when you can’t drive around,” Linde said. “So I started writing songs.”
Influenced by artists like Little Richard and Fats Domino, Linde described his early songs as “blue-eyed soul.” He then moved to a psychedelic rock phase before discovering his talent for writing country songs.
“I don’t understand country music that well, but there’s something about it that makes people in it able to do a lot of things,” Linde told The Tennessean’s Lynn Harvey in 1976.
He understood it well enough for publishers on Music Row to take notice. Linde began sending his songs to Nashville, and Nashville responded with “30 pounds of contracts” in the mail, followed by an invitation to move there.
Linde moved to Nashville in 1969, where he was discovered by Bob Beckham, president of Combine Publishing.5 Combine had a reputation for being Music Row’s maverick publishing company, thanks to the mostly fringe, experimental songwriters it embraced. Such songwriters included Linde, Kris Kristofferson, Billy Swann, Mickey Newbury, and Kinky Friedman — all unknown before Combine.6
Most artists and producers in Nashville in the late 1960s considered the types of songs coming out of Combine too suggestive, too poetic, and too different for country radio. Their writers wore their hair too long and their clothes too baggy.7 They stayed out too late drinking wine and playing pinball.
But Beckham recognized their talent and stood by them. The doors at Combine were always open, and the rag-tag, rebellious songwriters would often gather there late at night and write songs into the morning. Some even occasionally slept on the floor.
“They’d be down at the Combine at all hours, picking and singing,” Beckham said. “This was before any of them had done anything.”
Eventually the songs caught the eye of artists like Roger Miller and Johnny Cash.8 Kris Kristofferson’s “Sunday Morning Coming Down” was recorded by Cash, and his “Me and Bobby McGee” was recorded by Miller.9
Neither would have admitted it, but Dennis Linde saved Roger Miller’s career.
The pair crossed paths when both were struggling to find much success. Miller’s reign at the top of the music world had come crashing to a close in the late 1960s. He was still touring regularly and making numerous appearances on late-night television shows, but exhaustion from the road left him without time to write any songs, and his out of control drug habit left him without any inspiration. Still, he had contract obligations to fulfill with his record company, and he needed songs.
For the first time in his career, Miller put the word out that he was looking for songs written by other songwriters. His 1967 album, Walkin’ in the Sunshine, featured three cover songs: Curly Putman’s “Green Green Grass of Home,” Mel Tillis’ “Ruby (Don’t Take Your Love to Town,” and a very goofy take on Hank Williams’ “Hey Good Lookin’.” His next album, A Tender Look at Love, was almost entirely filled with love ballads written and recorded by other artists. Just one song, “What I’d Give to Be the Wind,” was written by Miller.10
Dennis Linde’s connection with Roger Miller came from a combination of luck and nepotism. Bob Beckham, Linde’s new father-in-law, played a few of Linde’s songs for producer Jerry Kennedy, who had produced all of Miller’s studio albums up to that point. Kennedy loved the songs, and so did Miller, who recorded two of Linde’s songs for his 1969 self-titled album: “Colonel Maggie” and “Where Have All the Average People Gone?”11
“Naturally he was looking for stuff that was off the wall12 because of the way he writes,” Linde said of Miller. “Roger was one of my heroes. It’s just nice to know he listened to them.”
“Where Have All the Average People Gone?” became just the second Linde song released as a single.13 Linde had to pull his Volkswagen over the first time he heard it on the radio.
“When I heard [the song], it just floored me. It was just the fact that it was Roger Miller and it was on the radio,” Linde said. “[I]t was like time was standing still for three minutes. It was just an awesome experience.”
Linde got to meet Miller in 1970, when Miller flew him out to a show in Dallas, TX, at the Fairmont. Kris Kristofferson and Billy Swann were also invited. Looking like the renegade songwriters they were, the trio had to borrow comically oversized sports coats to get into the Fairmont. Always the jokester, Miller made the three songwriters stand up as he introduced them to the crowd.
Roger Miller recorded five more Linde songs for his 1970 self-titled album, including a psychedelic pop tune, “Crystal Day.” Linde didn’t think anyone would record the song, much less Roger Miller.
“He could get things into songs that worked that I don’t think other people could, Linde said of Miller. “I was so proud of the cuts he did of mine, and still am.”
After fulfilling his contractual duties to Smash records in 1970, Miller didn’t record another album until he released the appropriately titled Dear Folks, Sorry I Haven’t Written Lately in 1973.
Linde’s success writing for the King of the Road led him to an even bigger king: the King of Rock & Roll, Elvis Presley, who recorded Linde’s “Burning Love” in 1972.
Like a lot of his best songs, Linde wrote “Burning Love” on a whim while trying to write his usual songs. Practicing on a brand new set of drums he didn’t even know how play, Linde hammered the hit song out in about half an hour.
“I had this one rhythm down and I had to write something to play on it quick,” Linde said. “I guess in 30 minutes I wrote ‘Burning Love.’”
Bob Beckham played “Burning Love” for Elvis’ producer, Felton Jarvis.
“Felton loved it,” said Linde. “I don’t think Elvis was knocked out with the idea, but he did a great job. Some people say he didn’t really like the song that much, but you wouldn’t know that from hearing it.”
Elvis wasn’t the original artist Linde had in mind when he wrote the song.
“I didn’t write it specifically for Elvis. In fact, black artist Arthur Alexander originally cut a rhythm & blues — or soul — version for the Warner Brothers label, but it didn’t catch on,” Linde said.
“I was thinking if anyone cut it, it would be Sam & Dave. I was a big fan of theirs,” Linde said. “Elvis was so far out of reach. Well, even Sam & Dave were really out of reach at the time.”
The record was recorded in Hollywood, but Linde played what he called his “gimmicky guitar picking” in Nashville, which was dubbed into the recording later.
“I was afraid Elvis was going to show up,” Linde said. “He didn’t. . . . I’m actually glad he didn’t, because I wouldn’t have been able to play at all. . . . He’s so big in my mind he couldn’t have possibly lived up to that. . . . the King.”
Elvis’ large presence would remain only in Linde’s mind, as the pair never did meet.
“I’ve never met Elvis — not even over the phone.”
A book could (and should) be written about Linde’s life and career, but Substack only lets me type so many words. So here are some brief facts about Linde that provide a peek into just how talented and unique he was.
Linde was a master in the studio, always messing around with the equipment, searching for unique sounds and effects. He had a recording studio in his house, played multiple instruments, and was among the first to utilize a computer when recording.
He produced Mickey Newbury’s American Trilogy and Kris Kristofferson’s Jesus Was a Capricorn. He also arranged songs for Dee Presley, Elvis’ stepmother.
His first album as an artist, 1973’s Dennis Linde, was recorded for the Elektra label, considered one of the most progressive rock labels in the country.
Linde knew how to talk like a tape recorder played in reverse. He learned the skill as a “Beatle-crazed adolescent” in St. Louis. There was the famous rumor that Paul McCartney was dead, and that John Lennon could be heard confirming that fact when the White Album track “Revolution 9” was played backwards.
Linde’s 1976 album Under The Eye ventured far outside the realm of country music. It used a lot of synthesizer and even featured lyrics questioning the intrigue around UFOs. Linde claimed he had seen an unexplainable phenomenon in the sky, a spot of light at night that sped overhead, suddenly stopped, then darted off toward the horizon.
Linde was heavily influenced by writers like Mark Twain and John Steinbeck, and many of Linde’s songs have characters who appear in multiple songs. His 90s country hits are the best examples. ‘Mary Ann,’ ‘Wanda,’ and ‘Earl’ all make appearances in other Linde songs written before “Goodbye Earl.”
‘Mary Ann’ is the titular character in Brother Phelps’ “Mary Ann is a Pistol”
Way down deep in those light blue eyes
You can see it as clear as crystal
Mary Ann is a pistol!‘Wanda’ first appears in Joe Diffie’s “Junior’s In Love”
With a dozen roses in his gun rack
Junior pulled up into her side lot
He carried them up to the front porch
And hollered, "Wanda, look at what I got!""‘Earl’ first appears in Sammy Kershaw’s “Queen of My Double Wide Trailer”
Well, a few nights later I run into her
With some stranger on a park bench
She said, "He rebuilds engines and his name is Earl
He's the Charlie Daniels of the torque-wrench"
I whispered, "Honey let's just go on home
Have some onion rings and watch TV"
As I walked her to the truck
Earl was crying, "Don't you leave me"Reviews often highlighted Linde’s songs as notable standouts on otherwise mediocre country albums. “In a Letter to You” was called “the only true good song” on Eddie Raven’s 1989 album, Temporary Sanity. The reviewer called the song clever and funny, but marred by hokey backup singers. The album received two stars. . . . “What’ll You Do About Me?” was mentioned by critics as the standout song on Randy Travis’ 1987 album, Always and Forever, which saw four other songs reach number one on the Billboard Country charts.14
Linde saw massive success in 1994, earning songwriter of the year honors from both the National Songwriters Association International and Broadcast Music, Inc..
He didn’t show up to accept either award.
Dennis Linde passed away on December 22, 2006, after a brief battle with Idiopathic Pulmonary Fibrosis, a rare lung disease. His songs were still being recorded after his death.
Works Cited:
“1995 BMI Country Awards Winners.” The Tennessean, 1 Oct. 1995, p. 28.
“2 Go to Jail for Driving on Airport Runway.” St. Louis Globe Democrat, 3 Aug. 1961, p. 7.
“Another Presley in Music.” Johnson City Press, 1 Jan. 1974, p. 14.
“BMI’s Top Song Awards of ’93.” The Tennessean, 29 Sep. 1993, p. 24.
“Combine Reunion Held.” Murfreesboro Daily News Journal, 5 Sep. 1976, p. 46.
“Dennis Linde Biography.” AllMusic. (n.d.). https://www.allmusic.com/artist/dennis-linde-mn0000202466#biography
“Dennis Linde.” Nashville Songwriter’s Foundation. (n.d.). https://nashvillesongwritersfoundation.com/Site/inductee?entry_id=2426
“Eddy Raven; Temporary Sanity.” The Odessa American, 25 May 1989, p. 56.
“It’s a Fact.” Kansas City Star, 18 Apr. 2000, p. 82.
“Letter in Globe Alerts ABA; Pamphlet to Outline Rights When Arrested.” St. Louis Globe-Democrat, 11 Aug. 1961, p. 3.
“McNary Assails ABA Over Lambert Field Scooter Episode.” St. Louis Globe-Democrat, 30 Aug. 1961, p. 160.
“Nashville Sound – and Others…” Johnson City Press, 11 Nov. 1972, p. 18.
“New C-W Breed Finding Success in Nashville.” Fort Worth Star-Telegram, 4 Jul. 1976, p. 46.
“Scooter Riders’ Stories Conflict, Hensley Says.” St. Louis Globe-Democrat, 12 Aug. 1961, p. 2.
“Trio of New Albums Shows Good Progress for Newcomers.” Knoxville News-Sentinel, 22 May 1987, p. 56.
“Two Get Jail Terms, Road Scooter on Airport Runway.” St. Louis Post-Dispatch, 2 Aug. 1961, p. 1.
“Two Songwriters Get 6 Awards Each.” Memphis Press-Scimitar, 13 Oct. 1971, p. 37.
“Two Youths Paroled After Scooter Spin on Airport Runway.” St. Louis Globe-Democrat, 6 Aug. 1961, p. 140.
Calemine, J. (2008, December 19). “The Soul and Songs of Dennis Linde.” swampland.com. http://swampland.com/posts/view/title:the_soul_and_songs_of_dennis_linde
Cusic, Don. Roger Miller: Dang Him! Bracken Publishing, 2012.
Harris, Elizabeth. “Dennis Linde: Unusual Skill.” Murfreesboro Daily News Journal, 21 Mar. 1976, p. 5.
Harvey, Lynn. “Dennis Linde: Music Mysterious as the Man.” The Tennessean, 11 Feb. 1976, p. 39.
Havighurst, Craig. “Songwriters Induct 4 to Hall of Fame.” The Tennessean, 5 Nov. 2001, p. 16.
Keel, Beverly. “Award-Winning Tunesmith Linde Could Write It All: Quirky Songwriter Recorded by Elvis, Others, Dies at 63.” The Tennessean, 23 Dec. 2006, p. B1.
Perrone, Pierre. “Dennis Linde Remembered.” spectropop.com. https://spectropop.com/remembers/DennisLinde.htm
Roland, Tom. “Linde: He’s Unknown But His Songs Aren’t.” The Tennessean, 5 Oct. 1994, p. 21.
Roland, Tom. “Top Songwriter/Artist Honors Go to Black.” The Tennessean, 11 Mar. 1994, p. 14.
Style, Lyle E. Ain’t Got No Cigarettes: Memories of Music Legend Roger Miller. Great Plains Publications, 2005.
Tubert, Bob. “Obituary: Dennis Linde.” The Tennessean, 24 Jan. 2006, p. B5.
Originally recorded and released by the Oak Ridge Boys in 1978.
Now known as “St. Louis Lambert International Airport".”
The resolution also had no legal standing, and no effect on police practices at the time.
He was hilariously ticketed for speeding in his company delivery truck, not his brand-new ‘66 Corvette.
Linde would eventually marry Beckham’s daughter.
Dolly Parton also wrote numerous songs for Combine.
Except for Linde, whose clean-cut look was part of the reason he didn’t stand out.
“It isn’t a gimmick. It’s just something I naturally feel. I never heard of anyone coming up to somebody and saying ‘hey why don’t you let your hair grow longer?’” - Linde
Here’s the insane story of Kris Kristofferson landing a stolen Army helicopter in Johnny Cash’s yard in order to convince him to record “Sunday Morning Coming Down” …which Cash did, even though he wasn’t at home during the stunt.
And eventually Janis Joplin. The story of the song and how/why it was written is pretty interesting, and I’m hoping to write a short article about it soon.
There was one hit on the album: Bobby Russell’s “Little Green Apples.” However, it was O.C. Smith’s version the next year that took home song of the year at the Grammys. The album also featured Russell’s “Honey,” which Miller originally passed on recording. Producer Jerry Kennedy wanted to record the song during the same session as “Little Green Apples,” but Miller was like a bicycle: too tired. The song was given to Bobby Goldsboro instead, and his version reached number one on the Billboard Hot 100, as well as numerous other charts around the world.
Only three of the eleven songs on this album were written by Miller.
Coincidentally, Miller released an album called Off The Wall in 1977.
Roy Drusky’s recording of “Long, Long Texas Road” was the first, at least according to Linde. All other sources I’ve been able to locate show that “Where Have All the Average People Gone?” was released first. Still, it’s possible Drusky recorded “Long, Long Texas Road” earlier and released it later.
“Too Gone, Too Long,” “I Won’t Need You Anymore (Always and Forever),” “Forever and Ever, Amen,” and “I Told You So.”