Still rockin’ after more than 60 years

By Gary Graff
April 14, 2017

James E. “Buzz” Cason is known more for his songs than his guitar playing, but he’ll be the first to tell you those songs wouldn’t be around if it weren’t for the guitar. The Nashville native, now 77, is best known for 1962’s “Soldier Of Love (Lay Down Your Arms)” — which has been covered by Arthur Alexander, the Beatles, Marshall Crenshaw and Pearl Jam, among others — and Robert Knight’s “Everlasting Love,” but his career runs deeper than that. In Nashville he was part of the Statues with a couple of the Jordanaires vocal group, and under the pseudonym Garry Miles he had a Top 20 1960 hit with “Look For a Star.” In Los Angeles, he was an assistant to producer Snuff Garrett, and Cason and Leon Russell also produced a version of Richie Valens’ “La Bamba” for Buddy Holly’s Crickets.

The Cason resume also features touring gigs with Elvis Presley and Kenny Rogers and recording with Bob Willis, Jimmy Buffett, Willie Nelson, Kris Kristofferson and more. His Creative Workshop recording studio, meanwhile, hosted sessions by the Doobie Brothers, Emmylou Harris, Dolly Parton, Merle Haggard and others. Cason published a memoir, Living the Rock ‘N’ Roll Dream, in 2004 and he continues to tour. And in February, he released a new album, Passion, an 11-track set whose title is a testament to his continuing enthusiasm for music.

FGPO: How did music become IT for you?

Cason: It starts out at the very beginning, in 1956. I was an art student in high school and that’s what I wanted to do. I had drawn all my life, scribbled and everything, and I was going to be a commercial artist. Then a buddy said: “We’re going to be pantomiming,” they didn’t call it lip-synching back then, “a Bing Crosby number, ‘White Christmas,’ down at this TV station. You ought to join us.” I said: “Man, that’s not my thing. I’m into art.” He said, “There’ll be a lot of girls there.” And I said: “OK, I’ll do it!” [laughs] That was the major lure of it.

FGPO: So, your priorities were right.

Cason: I guess so. We did it at the ABC affiliate, a little small station on a hill outside of Nashville, and this disc jockey who hosted the show, Noel Ball, who was kind of our Dick Clark, took a liking to me. I started hanging around, lip-synching records on my own. I would pick out black records ’cause I was into R&B, and I organized a little group; we called ourselves the Manhattans. They did the doo-wop stuff right behind me. I started to get a little following and I got hooked.

FGPO: It’s a leap from lip-synching to songwriting, though.

Cason: One day there was a band at the station, the Richard Williams trio, and I heard them and told myself: “Look, you’re never gonna get anywhere lip-synching other people’s records, man. You need to be doing original music.” So I wormed my way into that band. They had a singer, but I told them they could use another one for duets. We played every Everly Brothers song on our first tour. And the manager’s wife took a liking to me and said: “Let Buzzy sing. I’m tired of hearing [Williams].” Richard said: “Sure you can sing. What do you know?” I said: “‘Blue Suede Shoes’ in C; the reason I said C is it’s the only key I could play [guitar] in. So that went over well and I started do some more. I wound up naming the band the Casuals, and we started getting serious about doing some originals. Richard wrote our first song, “My Love Song For You,” and it got picked up and we just kept going.

FGPO: When did you start playing guitar?

Cason: I started that in that band, the Casuals. There was a guitar player, a guy I knew in high school. He was one of the first guys to play electric, ’cause you’re talking about 1956, and not many guys were playing lead. I was interested in the guitar but didn’t have any mentors, so he took me under wing, showed me an E chord, showed me a few open chords, which is about as far as I ever got. I never became an accomplished player, just good enough to know what I’m doing on stage. I do regret never focusing and learning more about guitar, but I became more interested in writing and most of my co-writers were such good players; I was embarrassed to play in front of them.

FGPO: What kind of guitar did you learn on.

Cason: I had an old Harmony; that was the first guitar I bought, and I had been borrowing the other guy’s acoustic, which was a Gibson. I still play it some on shows, not even amplified.

FGPO: Who were your guitar heroes or influences?

Cason: Going all the way back, it was Scotty Moore with Elvis. He was our hero. He was the hallmark of rock ‘n’ roll. He influenced all of our music. Grady Martin was a guy who played on a lot of sessions, Wayne Moss was in the Casuals and became a top session player and one of the guys I followed. My co-writer Mac Gayden was a great slide player, just an innovator on guitar and still a hero of mine. The great Jerry Reed had an influence on me, and Joe South; both of them were from Atlanta. Chip Young, who played on hundreds and hundreds of sessions, was my friend before he started doing that; he wasn’t the most technically perfect guy until later, but he had an energy about him and really got into doing thumb-picking. There were just a lot of players around, and I picked up whatever I could from anybody I met.

FGPO: What do you feel your role is when you’re playing guitar?

Cason: Well, when I record, I do come up with a lick. It’s very simple stuff, but I try to find a groove and a tempo and keep the intensity going, and then I get the other players to take the lick on to a whole other level while I just accent it and try to hold down the groove of the song. I have to work at it; it doesn’t come naturally. I struggle sometimes, because there’s so many lyrics to get out. But I just try to keep the feel of the songs going and not worry too much about missing notes here and there. It’s more important to keep the groove going.

FGPO: Do you write mostly on guitar?

Cason: I do, yeah, definitely. I write some on piano, but guitar has mostly been my go-to for songwriting. It’s got more intensity. It’s more for the rockin’ kind of numbers. You come up with something totally different when you’re playing the guitar.

FGPO: What’s the “Soldier Of Love” story?

Cason: The disc jockey I mentioned before, Noel Ball, was kind of our mentor with the Casuals and had produced our record. At the time, Tony Moon was our guitar player, and he and I tried to write a little. Noel said: “If you guys write a song for Arthur,” talking Arthur Alexander, “I may record it.  So we wrote the song and we took it to him, and he said: “Yeah, I’ll record it.” Arthur did a wonderful version of it; it wasn’t a big hit, but the Beatles got wind of it and started playing it live and later on recorded it at the BBC and fans were bootlegging those shows. It was one of the lead cuts on that Live At The BBC project when Capitol Records put it out. Marshall Crenshaw, Pearl Jam, the Derailers, they all did great versions of that song. That song has been quite an adventure. Everywhere you go people seem to know it.

FGPO: Can you live off one song like that when it shows up on a Beatles album?

Cason: Not at first. Arthur’s version of it wasn’t that big; DJs picked up on the B-side of it, “Where Have You Been?,” which was written by Barry Mann. So it took awhile for us to realize much income off the song. When did they put out that Beatles’ Live At The BBC album, that brought in some good royalties.

FGPO: It must be great to still be creatively active and even put a new album out.

Cason: The way it works is I’m fortunate enough to have a studio, the Creative Workshop here in Nashville, for 40-some years. I’m used to just going in when a song hits me and putting it down. I wasn’t really going in any direction or theme for the album. It just all fell into place. My son Parker Cason, who’s now more or less managing the studio and producing, co-produced and co-wrote a couple tracks on there, which is obviously nice to do something like that with your son.

FGPO: Is the Passion title a deliberate message?

Cason: Well, yes, that’s the underlying thing. The song itself downplays that a little bit; it’s really about just getting right down to the basics, the simple things in life. But music is my passion and has been for my whole life, so that’s why it was the perfect title for the album.