According to songwriter Dennis Morgan, the idea for Barbara Mandrell’s 1981 hit song, “I Was Country When Country Wasn’t Cool,” came from his co-writer Kye Fleming.

Fleming said she had written the title down in her notebook and carried it around for several weeks before showing it to Morgan.  Kye said, “It was quite a while before I mentioned the idea to Dennis.  When I finally did, we quickly decided that the song would either be a hit record or a bomb!  We wanted to make sure that we wrote it right, because when you have a really great idea, it can be a little scary!”

Dennis added, “It was kind of like, we were afraid to get started writing the song for fear we would mess it up! But we finally started with the title, then a verse-chorus-verse-chorus--with the lines basically like they were on the finished record.”

“We didn’t really write the song for anybody in particular. We were in California that Christmas and Barbara was out there at the time-so we went to her house and played her the tape. The song was among four or five other songs on the tape and Barbara fell in love with the song the first time she heard it.  We brought the song back to Nashville and worked on it some more, adding a bridge and changing the format to two verses and a chorus.”

Kye said, “The song was actually fun to write, because it’s a little light and we were able to throw in some real neat things, like “putting peanuts in my coke.”  That came from an uncle of mine. He was five years older than me and when I was little, he was always putting peanuts in his coke.  He thought it was real hot stuff.”  Dennis added, “But I did that all the time in Craig’s Pool Hall back in Tracy, Minnesota.”

“I Was Country When Country Wasn’t Cool,” was Barbara Mandrell’s 34th chart single.  It entered the country music charts May 9th, 1981, made it to number one and was on the charts for 13 weeks.

Doug Davis
Country Music Classics