The Bluebird Café in Nashville is home to some of the best short-story writers around; after all, story is what makes a great country song. And every writer – especially acclaimed ones, like novelist James Patterson, knows just how hard that can be. “I actually tried to write some country-western songs,” he said.
Correspondent lee Cowan asked, “Did you ever perform them?”
“No!”
That’s because, in part, Patterson was too busy becoming a novelist. He’s written or co-written more than 200 of them, and has more bestsellers than anyone.
He’s at home in Music City. He earned his masters from Vanderbilt University, and he’s never forgotten the faces of wannabee country stars wandering from bar to bar: “You could not sit in one of those bars for more than 10 minutes without somebody coming in off the street, sitting down, and playing.”
For his latest novel, Patterson decided to write about a nobody coming to Nashville with dreams of becoming a somebody. Even he admits that’s a tale as well-worn as an old pickup, which is why he needed a co-writer who had actually lived that life to give the book a little sparkle.
“I asked him, ‘Why you need me? You’re doin’ pretty good on your own!” said Dolly Parton.
It might seem an odd pairing at first – the girl from the Great Smoky Mountains of East Tennessee, who became one of the queens of country music, teaming up with a former Manhattan ad executive-turned-bookworm, who’s barely touched a guitar in his life.
They hadn’t met until 2019, when Patterson flew to Nashville to pitch Parton on the idea. She would even pick him up at the airport. “I’m always there to pick him up. I wouldn’t dream of letting him come into town.”
“That’s so sweet,” said Cowan.
“But that’s what you do out of respect. But I just ain’t gonna send somebody after him if I can at all be there.”
“If you guys hadn’t clicked and not particularly liked each other, would it have worked?”
“It wouldn’t have happened, no,” Patterson said.
“No, we didn’t have to do it,” she said. “I don’t make that many friends. A lot of my old friends have gone on. And I’ve got some friends, you know, but trusting ’em after you get famous, you don’t know who’s a friend and who’s not.”
Patterson noted, “She said, ‘He’s that guy that writes about serial killers, right?’”
“Yeah, I knew that.”
It might seem an odd pairing at first – the girl from the Great Smoky Mountains of East Tennessee, who became one of the queens of country music, teaming up with a former Manhattan ad executive-turned-bookworm, who’s barely touched a guitar in his life.
They hadn’t met until 2019, when Patterson flew to Nashville to pitch Parton on the idea. She would even pick him up at the airport. “I’m always there to pick him up. I wouldn’t dream of letting him come into town.”
“That’s so sweet,” said Cowan.
“But that’s what you do out of respect. But I just ain’t gonna send somebody after him if I can at all be there.”
“If you guys hadn’t clicked and not particularly liked each other, would it have worked?”
“It wouldn’t have happened, no,” Patterson said.
“No, we didn’t have to do it,” she said. “I don’t make that many friends. A lot of my old friends have gone on. And I’ve got some friends, you know, but trusting ’em after you get famous, you don’t know who’s a friend and who’s not.”
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