Story Behind the Song: George Strait's 'Baby Blue'

When songwriter Aaron Barker showed his mother and stepdad his first royalty check, his stepdad thought it was a fake from Publishers Clearing House.

In fact, Barker had gotten a luckier break than any sweepstakes winner. Somehow, a Texas musician who had never heard of George Strait got his (rejected) demo in the hands of Strait’s manager. In 1988, Strait recorded his first of many Barker compositions, “Baby Blue.” It topped the charts and ushered in a long career for Barker, now a member of the Nashville Songwriters Hall of Fame.

Barker told the remarkable story behind the song to Bart Herbison of Nashville Songwriters Association International.

Bart Herbison: This thing was released in April of ‘88. How long before that had you written this song? Were you co-writing (at the time), and why did you write it by yourself?

Aaron Barker: I was not co-writing. Bart, I was so naive and ignorant...I'm just an idiot off the street in a rock and roll band, playing cover music across the country. But I love this James Taylor, Carole King, Cat Stevens stuff that was going on.  So I carried an acoustic with me, and I was really lame on it. I knew the standard three chords. But I had all of this input from people on the road that had stories and life that they were living. I mean, it was an amazing time in my life, and it went on for almost 20 years.

I think playing other people's hits...you play enough of them that many years, you kind of get a flu. And so I wrote this, I think it was a pretty passionate song called "Baby Blue," but I wrote it with the three chords that I knew. So it was kind of bland. I did a little tape of it, and a friend of mine, Ernie Lobello, heard it and said, "Let's get a demo on that." Bart, I didn't even know what demo meant. “Demo” to me was walls in a house. We cut a little demo on it and an amazing musician, a fella that was married to (country singer) Barbara Fairchild. He is one of the finest musicians I've ever known. He played keyboard and played great steel guitar. But you couldn't say either one was his primary instrument. He was so good on both of them. A Texas fella, he lived in Helotes. We went out to his house, he had a little band there. And he arranged that song to what it is today. He knew chords I couldn't even dream of and turned it into this beautiful ballad and captured the emotion that I thought the lyric had.

Ernie Lobello took (the tape)to a fellow named Bill Butler… five songs I had written. And he passed on all of them. Every year (Butler) would make a trip to Nashville and meet with different people, and Erv Woolsey (Strait’s manager) was one of them. He took five cassettes with him and mistakenly had mine in that stack of five.

BH: What? Are you kidding me, Aaron?

AB: God comes in, the angels start moving things around, and it got into Erv Woolsey's hands. He heard it, and played it for George. George loved it. I'm just about to lose my house down in Texas because the band had broken up.  I was making about 40 bucks a day selling oranges off of a Farm road for a couple of seasons and things were getting really tight. And I was pretty worried. I had a wife and a kid and a house. And here comes this call from -- at the time I'd never heard of him, but it was Erv Woolsey and he left a message. He said, "Call me. George Strait wants to record one of your songs." But I didn't know what that meant. I didn't know who George Strait was… I thought, “Well, if he does any good with this, maybe he'll send me, like, 500 bucks.”

I go check my mail one day and there's this envelope from BMI in there…I opened that check, and there was a check in there with my name on it for an amount more than my house had cost on the day I bought it. I had never seen that. I was sure that was a mistake. I thought, "Well, they sent me Robert Plant's 'Stairway to Heaven' check."  I think it was like $54,000, and for a guy making 40 bucks a day. I had never even dreamed of money like that. Well, it kept me from losing my house. I was so excited about it, but I thought it was a mistake. It was a Friday so I couldn't do anything about it. I thought well, Monday I'll call BMI and get it straightened out." But I wanted my mother to see that check, because she had to put up with the band practices until the cops came, you know, all that stuff when I lived at home.  I just showed it to her, and she handed that check to my stepdad...And he says, "Aaron, I get these all the time. You never really win."

BH: He thought it was Publishers Clearing House! That's fantastic.

AB: He was looking for Ed McMahon's picture on it or something. But anyway, I call Harry Warner at BMI Monday...he verified it was mine. And I said "Okay, then I'm going to fix my house problems and stuff." And he said, "Oh, by the way, those will be coming about every three months for a while." And I was shocked. I was learning about publishing and writing, and (that) it was a viable path. You know, it didn't matter to me. I was in the art thing, and it was about people hearing it and liking it

BH: And I'm guessing that helped eventually lead you to Nashville.

AB: It bought me a ticket to Nashville, and it put me in the club.

About the series

In partnership with Nashville Songwriters Association International, the "Story Behind the Song" video interview series features Nashville-connected songwriters discussing one of their compositions. For full video interviews with all of our subjects, visit www.tennessean.com/music.

This article originally appeared on Nashville Tennessean: Story Behind the Song: George Strait's 'Baby Blue'