“It’s not how fast you travel, it’s how far you go,” sings my friend Bob Morrison in his recently recorded song A Wheel Is A Wheel.
If you live outside of Nashville, TN you may not know the name Bob Morrison, but you most certainly know his songs. He was the straw that stirred the drink turning Looking for Love into a hit for Johnny Lee—the song featured in the movie Urban Cowboy. He won a Grammy in 1980 for You Decorated My Life, was ASCAP Songwriter of the Year four times, and if you don’t know those songs, then you’ll most certainly recognize a few names from his expansive list of song writing credits.
Over the past couple of years, between playing tennis and golf, Bob has been back in the studio recording music he affectionately refers to as: “The Bucket List Sessions”.
A couple of weeks ago I emailed Bob the version of Way Back Home I previously posted for you, and he wrote back, “If you like Muscle Shoals funk, boy have I got a track for you. I’ll send it when I get it finished.” A few days later I received a few recordings, beginning with the freedom loving: A Wheel Is A Wheel.
I asked Bob for permission to put A Wheel Is A Wheel on our websites for you to listen to. I also asked him who he collaborated with. He said, “My good friend Billy Henderson, a great lyricist and a good tennis player. I did the music and arrangements, he provided the brilliant lyrics.”
Regarding Muscle Shoals, Billy worked at Fame Studio and wrote for Rick Hall, eventually ending up in Nashville where he and Bob met 25+ years ago. Billy has a song, Healing Song, recently recorded by 6 Grammy winners in Louisiana which will be released soon.
“By the way,” Bob wrote, “Billy was a Baptist preacher at age 16, resigned in his 20’s to get into the music business” because he disliked the duplicity of the religion business. “I tease him, this is the classic jumping from the frying pan into the fire.”
I hope you like Bob Morrison’s and Billy Henderson’s A Wheel Is A Wheel as much as I do, because at the end of the day:
If you know where you’ve been,
style is no big deal
Who cares how you get there,
a wheel is a wheel is a wheel
