Johnny Rodriguez

In the pantheon of country music, 1973 wasn't a banner year, at least not radio-wise; and that's pretty much all country music fans had back then. In my town, we barely even had FM, so we relied on our portable AM radios to catch the latest singles.

Either very late in 1972 or early in 1973, a new voice wafted through my speakers. I wasn't fond of the top hits of the day, especially for the month of January ~ "She's Got To Be a Saint" (Ray Price), "Old Dogs, Children, and Watermelon Wine" (Tom T. Hall). Even the old standbys like Merle and Loretta and Charley weren't releasing their best. Country music was in a weird transitional phase; it was softening. It wasn't as if it hadn't happened before. In the early sixties, Chet Atkins' Nashville Sound competed with real country for chart dominance, but there was enough room for both. The early seventies, though, started down a path of "easy listening country", with names like Jerry Wallace and even Ray Price releasing singles that either toned down or outright eliminated the instrumentation that made country unique.

This particular voice, though, and this song, stopped me in my tracks. It was definitely stone country, with the appropriate amount of steel guitar. I had no idea who the singer was, but I would soon find out. (I can't find a decent live performance from that time, and the song deserves to be heard the way I heard it.)

This is a Tom T. Hall song, the man who is credited with discovering Johnny Rodriguez, and despite my general dislike for Hall's compositions, he gave Johnny a good one.

Of course I ran out and bought the album (the one shown in the video), and let me just say, I was pretty much floored. 

His debut album produced a lot of hits, but unfortunately, live performances are almost impossible to find, so here's a non-live performance of one of them: 

 

Another:

Rodriguez had a cool voice, and by "cool", I mean not bombastic. He was a crooner. His music wasn't easy listening, but he was definitely easy to listen to.

I've lived long enough to know that origin stories are often wildly exaggerated, but according to legend, Tom T. Hall and Bobby Bare discovered Johnny when he was in jail (a cool feat, considering) and convinced him to come to Nashville. With "Pass Me By" he quickly made his mark. He was nominated for male vocalist of the year by the CMA's in 1973 and won the ACM's Most Promising Male Vocalist award that same year.

While he didn't dominate the seventies, he did rack up six number one singles and many top tens. (Tragically, Pass Me By only reached #9 on the charts.)

Rodriguez had a lot of personal demons and a lot of circumstances he'd likely admit he brought upon himself, including being charged with murder. (He was acquitted.) He switched record labels a lot, but never achieved the highs of his seventies heyday. Probably my second favorite Rodriguez single was released in 1979:

Johnny Rodriguez died on May 9, 2025 of undisclosed causes, although we do know he was in hospice at the end. (It's really nobody's business anyway.)

It's difficult to explain the impact his music had on me throughout the decade of the seventies. Sure, he recorded a few more poppish songs, although his Eagles cover of Desperado wasn't exactly pop, but for the most part he stuck to real country. And in the seventies, trust me, that was very rare. He could have been inducted into the Country Music Hall of Fame this year in the Veterans Era category, but this isn't the time or place to talk about how he was robbed of that honor. The enduring love his fans have for his music will have to suffice.

I can probably count on one hand the number of times I heard a song on the radio that made me sit up and take notice. "Pass Me By" was one of those songs, and it belongs in my top twenty of all-time best.

Rest in peace, Johnny Rodriguez. Thank you for the musical memories.