“Nothing special.” That’s what songwriter Bobby Braddock remembers writing in his diary about “He Stopped Loving Her Today,” the song on which he and Curly Putnam had just finished collaborating in 1977. Braddock was not alone in his lack of enthusiasm for the song. More than a dozen top country stars declined a chance to record it; many of them criticized its unconventional structure and its lack of a catchy, repeatable chorus. Even George Jones, on first listen, thought it was too sad and depressing to be a hit.

But producer Billy Sherrill believed otherwise, and he eventually convinced Jones to record it, but it was like pulling teeth. Jones cut the first verse of the song in 1979, then, losing interest, waited almost a year to finish the track. He bet Sherrill $100 that the song would never be a hit.

He couldn’t have been more wrong, or glad that he lost the wager. “He Stopped Loving Her Today” has proved itself to be the biggest hit of Jones’s long, her­alded career. It became the first consecutive two-time winner of the Country Music Association’s Song of the Year Award. It also helped Jones win two consecu­tive CMA awards for male vocalist and a Grammy.

The Cinderella story of “He Stopped Loving Her Today” reveals how the making of a classic song can be unpredictable, at best. The idea for the song origi­nated when Braddock sug­gested to Putnam that they write a song about a man whose love for his ex-wife was so powerful and obsessive that only death would end his devotion. At First, they tried writing it with a darkly comic slant, tossing around various cliches that people say at funerals. A few of these lines remain in the final version, such as the observation of the funeral guest/narrator who looks into the coffin and remarks of the deceased, “First time I’d seen him smile in years.” As the writers continued to work, however, the song took on a more somber, tragic tone, painting a musical picture of love mixed with sadness.

Singer Johnny Russell was the first to record “He Stopped Loving Her Today,” but his single received little attention. Producer Sherrill, one of Nashville’s top producers in the Sixties and Seventies, suggested that Braddock and Putnam add yet another verse, having the ex wife show up at the funeral. The writers then hit the nail on the head: “She came to see him one last time/We all wondered if she would/And it kept running through my mind/This time he’s over her for good.”

As Sherrill had believed, Jones’s voice turned out to be the perfect instrument for the song’s sense of heartbreaking loss. When the climactic title line comes in more  than half way through the song, Jones soars into a full-throated voice that cries out against the pain that sent a man to his grave. Sherrill underlined the drama by adding a full string section and a wailing soprano part performed by Mil­lie Kirkham. “It may be sad,” Jones says today of the song that cost him $100 more than a decade ago, “but I wish I had me a hundred more like it.”

“He Stopped Loving Her Today” entered the country music charts April 12^th, 1980 and made it to number one. It was on the charts for 18 weeks. It was also the CMA Single of The Year.

Doug Davis
Country Music Classics