Bluegrass legend Larry Cordle has a new single our today, one he wrote with frequent co-writer Larry Shell called November Wind.
Growing up alongside childhood friend Ricky Skaggs in eastern Kentucky, Cord has been dedicated to authentic bluegrass and country music from a young age. He has written songs for Skaggs (Highway 40 Blues), Alan Jackson (Murder on Music Row), IIIrd Tyme Out (Lower on the Hog), Daryle Singletary (Jesus and Bartenders), and many others, often recorded first by him either as a solo artist or with Lonesome Standard Time.
At 74 years of age, he is still going strong, writing and releasing new music. His 2022 single, East Kentucky Blues, stayed on our Bluegrass Today Weekly Airplay chart for several months, hitting #1 on multiple occasions. It reappeared again this week nearly a year after it first hit in October of ’22.
Cord says that, like most veteran songwriters, he had held on to the gist of this lyric for some time before finally getting it out.
“November Wind was a song idea that I’d had in my back pocket for a good while. I was saving it for my old friend and frequent co-writer, Larry Shell, hoping that he would like it, the next time I got the opportunity to write with him. We had already written a few songs with our pal Trey Hensley and so when Shell came back to Nashville, from his Florida home, we managed to get Trey to a writing session with us.
I had written down some of what I thought might be the first verse of the song. I didn’t start out the session by pitching the song idea to the boys. As we always do, we kicked around a couple of things which didn’t seem to be going anywhere, so Shell said what about the ‘November’ thing you were telling me about.
I played what I had of it, and it seemed to gain traction from there. I had had the cold shoulder thought… a person’s cold shoulder and a cold highway shoulder, and the boys helped me craft the melody and the tale into what you hear. It just naturally felt like a breakup song and so, we just let it be what it was gonna be.
I love writing with these two. We always get something I like. I only wish we got to do it more.”
Have a listen to November Wind in this lyric video.
November Rain is available now from popular download and streaming services online. Radio programmers will find the tracks via AirPlay Direct.
