Here’s Ronnie! Country Singer Milsap to perform

It was almost like a song.

Ronnie Milsap’s career, that is. When he hit with “It was Almost like a Song,” Milsap could easily have been singing about himself.

Born blind. Rebuffed his parents’ wishes to become a lawyer in favor of music. Saw a way to make a way in a field that spits out humans like snakes spit venom.

See Milsap on May 17. The phenomenally successful country star will spill the hits from the stage of the Niswonger Performing Arts Center in Greeneville. Expect a cavalcade of classics – “Smoky Mountain Rain,” “Pure Love,” “Daydreams About Night Things” and so on.

Let’s look deeper into the man who bucked enormous odds to become one of country’s best-sellers of the past 35 years.

“I wanted a life in music,” Milsap said by phone from Nashville in a 2007 interview. “Everybody who sponsored my education said I would fall on my face and be a total failure if I followed a career in music.”
Talk about a huge miss on their part.

“They just didn’t know how passionate I was about music,” Milsap said.

He soaked in music like a sponge soaks water. Milsap hails from western North Carolina, so he heard plenty of bluegrass – but not just bluegrass.

“It was from Flatt & Scruggs and Bill Monroe to Mozart and Brahms and classical music to Jerry Lee Lewis,” Milsap said.

A meeting with one his heroes helped sway Milsap from law school to a life in music.

“I met Ray Charles backstage at a concert in Atlanta when I was 20,” he said. “I told him I wanted to play music, but was about to go to law school. He said, ‘Play some music for me.’ I did. He said, ‘You can go to law school if you want to, but you ought to follow your heart.’ ”

Milsap charted his first single, “I Hate You,” seven years later.

Signed to RCA Records, Milsap notched his first of nearly 40 No. 1 singles less than a year later with “Pure Love.” He followed immediately with his first of six Grammy Award-winners, “Please Don’t Tell Me How the Story Ends.”

“We cut them both live, right there in the studio,” Milsap said. “Now, you and I could make a record right here on the phone.”

Still, even as studio technology has broadened enormously since his early days, Milsap maintained a steady pace of hits. He also retained a stubbornness and belief in self that steered him to music that has served him well in Nashville.

Take his 16th No. 1 single, “Smoky Mountain Rain.”

“The record company said it was a regional record, that it wouldn’t be a hit,” Milsap said. “I said, ‘What about ‘Galveston’ or ‘By The Time I get to Phoenix?’ ”

Each of those became monsters for Glen Campbell. Milsap won the argument, and “Smoky Mountain Rain” stands as one of his cornerstones. The song also represented a gradual stylistic change for the
Country Music Association Entertainer of the Year of 1977.

Out went his harder edged country sound. In went more pop-leaning approaches.

“It’s constant reinvention,” Milsap said. “I’ve had the opportunity to try to make different kinds of records.”

That from a blind man who when he was leaving his teens simply wanted to play music – any kind of music. Consider Milsap’s risks. Folks close to him had financially backed his education and all but assured a path to success as a lawyer. But he chucked it all for the immense risk of music.

Read Robert Frost’s poem “The Road Not Taken,” and you’ll have Ronnie Milsap’s career.

“The people who sponsored my education basically disowned me, but they were right [that it was a hard road],” Milsap said. “Oh, it’s been a miracle.”

MILSAP’S GRAMMYS

1974: “Please Don’t Tell Me How the Story Ends”
1976: “(I’m A) Stand By My Woman Man”
1981: “(There’s) No Gettin’ Over Me”
1985 and 1986: “Lost in the Fifties Tonight (In the Still of the Night)”
1987: “Make No Mistake, She’s Mine” (with Kenny Rogers)

IF YOU GO

Who: Ronnie Milsap
When: May 17, 7:30 p.m.
Where: Niswonger Performing Arts Center, 212 Tusculum Blvd., Greeneville
Tickets: $35
Info: (423) 638-1679
Web: http://www.ronniemilsap.com

TOM NETHERLAND is a freelance writer. He can be reached at .