"Woodrow Snyder" Bek 'n' I w/ Flowers.  

First single (1974)  released by Little Rock, Arkansas based house band for Steak & Ale/Jolly Ox steak chain and Las Vegas veterans on MGM and then Sussex records.  Title reached heavy rotation in Little Rock almost immediately on KAAY and then in Houston, eventually reaching number one in both cities.  As the combined label efforts for ALL signed artists collapsed and Sussex was padlocked by sheriffs in California,the "sunshine was gone," promotion was suspended, and the record died.  Other tracks for the first LP are either partly or completely finished "in the can."  Song copyright 1972 by Jerry W. Flowers.  Randy Burris (L to  R), Becky Fain, and Jerry Flowers.  Rare record exists on  Wet Paint, Sounds of Memphis, MGM, and Sussex labels.

Group played all instruments except drums and strings, with Flowers handling everything but acoustic rhythm guitar. "Figuring we needed to be in a town with a label office, the group moved to Nashville in 1974.  Flowers got a cut on his first "pitching" appointment with famed producer Bob Montgomery, and even got to play guitar on a trick center section that the studio players were not quite capturing and which Montgomery insisted on having.  His acoustic guitar on the record replaced a track by guitar master Steve Gibson.  "Can you imagine how nervous I was, getting called out into the studio to play with those guys?  I could have sworn it was set up by Bob to make me feel good, but Steve swears to this day that if it was a setup, he want in on it.  I'll take that any day." said Flowers.

"It was really just a variation on and old Beatles riff," he says, "but I had the G string tuned up to an A.  My thrill from the night was getting to play on a record with one of my musical heroes.  Joe Osborn, who was an integral part of just about everything released on Lou Adler's recordings (from Johnny Rivers to The Mamas and Papas.  Joe's melodic and inventive bass lines and Hal Blane's drums were magic to me. I was more excited about that than the cut, "I Can See Love" on the million-selling Austin Roberts "Rocky" album. "I never did get paid for the session work or any sales or airplay," he laughs, so somebody owes me money."  Two of the three trade magazines in publication picked his song as one of the highlights of the LP.

It would be two years before he got his next cut, but he filled the time playing and singing on sessions and writing for several magazines including "Country Music Magazine," "The Music Gig", what he calls the grocery line magazines, and artist bios for Dan Beck's Columbia/Epic Records publicity department.  "My first two assignments were Tanya Tucker and Johnny Rodriguez.  Why don't you just throw David Alan Coe in there with 'em?" I asked.  Then I'll have the trifecta of trouble under my belt.  Then Jim Foglesong and Jerry Bailey gave him a secretarial job in the ABC publicity office.  "Instead of my foot, I stuck my butt in the door,"  he said.  "Made me much harder to push back out."

Flowers would ABC Records pop and ABC/Dot records country (Jimmy Buffett, Stephen Bishop, Rufus featuring Chaka Khan, B.B. King, Fifth Dimension, Barbara Mandrell, The Oak Ridge Boys, Don Williams, Tommy Overstreet, Delbert McClinton, Amazing Rhythm Aces and many more:, RCA Records (Alabama, The Judds, Waylon Jennings, Chet Atkins, Steve Wariner, Dolly Parton (including marketing first two movies), Sylvia, Charley Pride, Jerry Reed, Mac McAnally famed producer Tony Brown, Lee Greenwood "on the sly with Teddy Gentry of Alabama, and many others), Halsey International (too many artists to name including The Judds, James Brown, Roy Clark, Tammy Wynette, Ronnie Dunn, Lee Greenwood, The Oak Ridge Boys, the Forrester Sisters,The Whites, Kathy Mattea and many more); Procter and Gamble (double top marketeer of the year awards, something never accomplished by a start-up event marketing agency in it's first two years; Acuff-Rose Music, Nashville's first and most valuable music publishing catalog (Michael W. Smith, Sanger D. Shaffer, John D. Loudermilk, Don Gibson, Roy Orbison/Joe Melson, the Everly Brothers, Mickey Newberry, Roy Acuff, Hank Williams and "at least one or two songs from just about anyone who every wrote in Nashville.  Flowers withdrew from the everyday music business after signing Aaron Tippin and Kenny Chesney to recording contracts to RCA and BNA Records respectively, now part of Sony.  He emerged again in 2000 to co-manage Michelle Tumes and add two more number one LPs to his collection of record sales of more than 40 million copies.  

He has served on every industry board, including the influential National Music Publishers Association, where he was part of the Legislative Committee involved in negotiating and even writing parts of The Sonny Bony Copyright Act and what he calls the highly-flawed Digital Millennium Copyright Act.   He has contributed to speech-writing for three presidential candidates and two presidents; worked out deals with companies like Toll Brothers Builders to provide land for parks in both Brentwood and Franklin, TN and with voters and county officials on behalf of Williamson Medical Center; headed the capitol campaign to build the soccer complex at Brentwood High School, coached baseball and soccer with state championship travel teams and for middle-school programs; been active in charitable work such as the Katrina cleanup and Inner City Ministries in Nashville; " and "too many other bullet points to mention. 

"Now I'm just trying to assist my son in his dreams for the business while biting my tongue and trying to keep from interfering, which is mighty hard for an over-achiever Type A who has 'been there, done that'.  (Tyler Flowers "Some Things Never Change" on iTunes and cdBaby) 

"This business will absolutely kill you if you climb on the roller coaster and ride the emotions.  Successful artists and writers learn to take the bad with the good, or they go home.  I've signed more stars because of their determination than because of their talent, which I expect.  Too many come to Nashville thinking they're not going to have to work at it.  So, if you're one of the ones out there saying to the radio, 'I can do better than that; I'll just go get a deal' let me tell you that many of the artists with whom I've worked were successful because the listened and they worked and just outlasted better voices or pickers.

"In the school of life, I've gotten the best education possible, because people believed in me, and gave me jobs for which I was not qualified and let me grow into them. I've been one lucky Mississippi mud beater."

Sections excerpted from the book "When the Row Was Still Fun: 1974 - 1994" which will tell a lot of back stories for the first time from "forty years of keeping journals," says Flowers, "if I live long enough to finish it." 

TO BE ADDED: INFO ON RANDY BURRIS AND BECKY FAIN  (UN-PROOFED)   Hey, I can't do everything on the first day.

Woodrow Snyder

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Woodrow Snyder

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