Jan 08, 2020:
THE STORY OF “I BELIEVE (In Loving You)”
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“I Believe (In Loving You)“ was written by Hod Pharis, and recorded by him in the early 1980's. As my producer (Ron Mahonin) tells me, 'Hod was an older, very 'western' gentleman/artist who was an all-night radio host at CFAC in Calgary, playing the occasional weekend and, of course, during the Calgary Stampede.'
Ron, my producer, who owned a studio called Northern Productions in Calgary heard that Hod was also a songwriter and Hod came in to the studio with his band to record original material that he'd written, so they could listen later at their convenience and pick the best songs to record for Hod’s album.
Halfway through the session Hod commanded his band to do the next number,"Bluebird", a song my producer knew very well. "Bluebird" was a song he grew up on - his mom and dad used to sing it (as a young boy, he sang 3rd part top harmony) - that song was forever on the 'all night' country radio shows, and it was in every record collection owned by any 'country' fan - recorded by The Browns, Marty Robbins, and hundreds of others including Kris Kristofferson & Rita Coolidge, Hal Lone Pine & Betty Cody, Jim & Jesse McReynolds (a bluegrass version), Elton Britt, Wink Martindale and among the Canadian artists to cut the song were Chuck Irvin, Ron McMunn, Cornelia & Billy, Tracey K. Houston & Jim Ed Brown (a duet in 2004), Miriam Dreher, making "Bluebird" an all-time 'million-seller' country hit. (Hod was in fact posthumously inducted into the Canadian Songwriters Hall of Fame for this million seller hit).
During a break in that recording session, my producer mentioned to Hod that he liked all the material he had chosen, but asked him if they were striving to record 'original' material why he would cut "I Heard The Bluebird Sing". Ron said he'd never forgot the look Hod gave him as he said "Why wouldn't I cut it? I wrote the dang song". Suddenly it dawned on him that here in his studio was a walking, talking, living legend, recording his songs. An embarrassing and humbling moment to be sure.
They listened to the tapes for a few days after the session and one song that stood out was a song Hod wrote called "I Believe (In Loving You)". Ten songs were chosen and put on his album, 'Call of The Mountain’ - 500 hundred copies manufactured. Hod agreed to publish I Believe with Have A Heart Music; and it's has been registered with Hod as writer, and Have A Heart Music SOCAN, since then.
In the immortal words of Paul Harvey, ‘Now, the rest of the story'...
Years passed, and in the late 1990's the entire Have A Heart Music publishing catalog had been converted to DAT tape. No albums, no vinyl, no tapes, no cassettes left. All “safely” stored on Digital Audio Tape. Unfortunately around 1999/2000, the catalog stored on DAT was found to be corrupt. Hundreds of songs stored digitally on tape were lost. A slow process began in trying to recover/restore/find from whatever mediums, the catalog - hundreds and hundreds of hours of a lifetime of recording! Some were found; others not. Hod's song was not among those found. And for some reason, my producer felt that he needed to find the words at least to this song; he did remember the melody. That in itself was a mysterious and wondrous thing; why would someone recall the melody to a 30+ year old song?
One day (in 2015), he found a Canadian record collector / music writer who contacted him from one of Ron's queries, and who turned out to be none other than the publisher of the now-inoperative Canadian country music magazine - Country Music News. Larry Delaney, the ex-editor had the album in his collection of thousands and was most gracious in sitting down and transcribing the lyrics from the album and e-mailing the lyrics to my producer, though he wasn't able at the time to send him a rough MP3 of it. So he had to work with the lyrics - and the melody still in his memory.
Record collection of gracious editor/writer/collector, Larry Delaney, who located Hod's album. |
Excited in having finally found the lyrics, he started producing a demo. One thing led to another, and later that year, with the help of some studio veterans, he re-created a master of this song. There were a few changes from the original - Ron changed it to 4/4 timing from the original swing two-step timing, and there was one line that Hod wrote that sounded 'dated' for today's world. So the second line in the 2nd verse went from 'With TV set and a telephone' to “Checkin' Facebook likes on her pretty iPhone”, which helped it become more relevant to modern times. Then he recorded a ghost vocal track to save the melody and late in 2019 I was honored to come into the studio to record "I Believe (In Loving You)", a truly great classic country song.
When asked why as a songwriter myself, I would cut a cover, my answer came to me like an inspiration: “When I first heard “I Believe” I knew that it was a gem of a song just begging me to record a cover. When I sing it I feel its emotional and lyrical power to the depths of my being.”
The song just grabs you by the heart and doesn’t let go. But I experienced sadness when I was recording “I Believe.” While digital is indisputably the medium of today, the experience made me wonder how many thousands, hundreds of thousands, or millions of musical gems are locked in a time warp - hidden on vinyl that only a limited few can play. I extend heartfelt kudos to my producer for his determination in making “I Believe (In Loving You)” available to classic country music fans wherever they may be. And kudos too, to Larry Delaney for his contribution to this endeavour - and all he's done for Canadian country music!
Allan Markin, Jan 2020