An interview from country music legend George Strait has revealed that the artist passed on one of the most iconic songs that could have been a major hit for him.
In 2017, George Strait did a rare interview with Kacey Musgraves where she asked him questions from fans. One fan in particular wanted to know if there were any songs that he had chosen to pass on that had become hits for other artists.
“There’s a couple, but the biggest one was probably ‘Tennessee Whiskey’ that Dean Dillon wrote,” Strait said.
At this point, “Tennessee Whiskey” is a well-known country music classic. The song was originally sung by David Allen Coe in the 1980s.
A few years later, George Jones took the song to number two on the Country Singles chart.
The hit song was revived recently by the extraordinarily talented artist Chris Stapleton.
Unfortunately for the country music world, there could have been a George Strait version, but there wasn’t.
Strait went on to say that the songwriter, Dean Dillon, had pitched the song to him in the mid-eighties, but he had passed on it.
“Just wasn’t your thing?” asked Musgraves.
“I missed it,” Strait responded.
He then went on to talk about other artists who cut the song, saying: “Chris Stapleton just nailed it.”
For those of us who are familiar with the inner workings of the country music world, it’s not surprising that George Strait had the opportunity to sing “Tennessee Whiskey” in the eighties. Several of Strait’s songs were written by Dean Dillon, including many of his chart-toppers. Songs like “Marina del Rey,” “The Chair,” and “Ocean Front Property” all came from him.
In fact, only George Strait album doesn’t feature a Dean Dillon song: Beyond the Blue Neon.
“The reason he didn’t have a cut on that album was that he brought me a song to the studio that some friends of his had written,” he said, referring to the song “Baby’s Gotten Good at Goodbye.”
When he heard that song, he loved it. He had been planning to put a Dillon song on the album, but instead chose that song, which went on to become one of Strait’s sixty chart-topping hits.
It is definitely unfortunate that country fans never got to hear George Strait sing “Tennessee Whiskey,” but sometimes things just aren’t meant to be.
As Outsider writes, “It is possible that if Strait would have taken ‘Tennessee Whiskey’ he would have sixty-one number-one singles. Then again, it could have joined songs like ‘Amarillo by Morning’ that are fan-favorites but never made it to the top of the charts.”
