Songwriterobit: Curly Putman

Curly Putman, songwriter, has died at the age of 85.

Yes, Green Green Grass of Home. Yes, DIVORCE. But, mostly, this is his masterwork:

Bobby Braddock remembered how Putnam breathed life into DIVORCE:

"I said, 'Curly, why is it that we don't have any takers on this song?' Nobody was jumping on board with it. He said, 'I think it seems a little bit too happy for such a sad song.' I said, 'Do you think it needs a new melody?' He said, Well, just in a couple of places. The last line of the verse and the last line of the chorus.' What I had, looking back, it sounded kind of like a soap commercial... I thought we should split the writer's share on the song, and he didn't want to take it, so we compromised. He took 25 percent, and we put his name on there. If we'd done it today, we probably would have split it right down the middle because the song had been sitting around and nothing had happened with it. Then, Curly made that little change and it made so much difference."

Putman, like the Waltons, spent his early years living on a mountain which bore the family name.

As if his own work wasn't immortality enough, he's also recorded in a Paul McCartney song, Junior's Farm - written after Putman had rented his farm to Paul and Linda for a period in the early 1970s.