Down in Orburndale: A Songwriter's Youth in Old Florida

Bobby Braddock, one of the most successful country songwriters of all time, is a living legend. His smash hit "He Stopped Loving Her Today" won the Country Music Associations Song of the Year Award in two consecutive years and was voted "Song of the Century" in a poll conducted by Radio & Records magazine and "greatest country song of all time" in a poll conducted by the BBC. In this captivating narrative, Braddock demonstrates that he is as much at home writing the story of his life as crafting an awardwinning country tune. Warm, candid, intimate, and laughoutloud funny, Down in Orburndalethe title plays on the Southern pronunciation of Braddocks hometown of Auburndale, Floridarecounts his colorful saga up to age twentyfour, when he decides to move to Nashville and pursue a career as a professional songwriter.Braddock retains enormous affection for his Florida upbringing, back in the midtwentieth century when "Florida was still Southern," oranges were more essential than tourists to the states economy, and every small town seemed to be populated with actual eccentric characters right out of a Southern novellike Bobbys father, twentyfour years older than his mother, with a voice that was "a cross between Foghorn Leghorn and W. C. Fields." Braddocks sensory memory of his childhood infuses his storytelling with the sights, sounds, smells, and significance of everyday living. When he tells tales of playing rock n roll music in the Deep South of the early 1960s, readers experience some of the decade's most significant moments from a different perspective (for example, his band was in Birmingham, Alabama, when the Ku Klux Klan murdered four little girls). Along the way, he battles depression, hypochondria, and panic disorder, marries, and finally finds his true calling.Rednecks, religion, Florida, oranges, swamps, politics, racism, love, sex, illness, family, murder, and dreamsall fill the pages of Braddocks compulsively readable ode to his youth. But it is music, above all else, that drives the story, providing a soundtrack for a life lived large. AUTHOR BIO: Bobby Braddock grew up in Florida, traveled the South as a rock 'n' roll musician, and became a songwriter in Nashville in the mid1960s. Many of his songs, such as "DIVORCE," "Golden Ring," "He Stopped Loving Her Today," "Time Marches On," and "I Wanna Talk about Me" are country music standards. In 2001, he embarked on a new career as a producer, discovering singer Blake Shelton and making several number one records with him. Read more