Margo Smith was on stage with Lynn Anderson for a June 14 gospel concert at the Grand Ole Opry in Nashville. Smith had no way of knowing then that her longtime friend and fellow singer only had a few weeks to live.
“She seemed fine, we talked and laughed about old times; I can’t believe she’s gone,” Smith, a country music hall of famer who lives in The Villages, said Friday evening.
Lynn Anderson, 67, best known for 1970 megahit, “(I Never Promised You A) Rose Garden,” died Friday of cardiac arrest, according to her publicist.
“Sixty-seven is too young to lose someone like Lynn Anderson,” Smith said. “I’ve known Lynn a long time. She could always take a song and make it her own. ‘Rose Garden’ is one of the best country songs ever.”
Anderson grew up in a country music family. Casey and Liz Anderson, her parents, were songwriters. Liz Anderson wrote a couple of hits for Merle Haggard.
“I knew Liz and she was quite a songwriter, and she really cared about Lynn,” Smith said. Margo met the Andersons back in the early 1970s when she and Lynn were on the same record label. A few years later, Smith would score such top country hits as “Don’t Break the Heart That Loves You” and “It Only Hurts for a Little While.”
But Anderson, who was a regular on the Lawrence Welk TV show during the ’60s, became one of the biggest musical artists in the world after “Rose Garden.” The song was written by Joe South, who had a rock hit in the ’60s with “The Games People Play.” To see Anderson sing it, go to:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?
“Rose Garden” went to No. 1 on the country charts and No. 3 on the pop charts. “I totally believed in Joe South and this song,” Anderson once told CountryStarsOnline.com. She said the night she recorded it, “we thought we had a No. 1 country song. The public proved us wrong. We had much more than that.”
Anderson recorded 12 No. 1 country hits and 18 Top 10 songs. She stayed on the charts for much of her career and recently released a gospel album called “Bridges.” The Nashville Tennessean newspaper reported than Anderson had multiple arrests for driving under the influence, during the past decade.
In 2014, Anderson apologized to her fans for those incidents and in a statement affirmed that “she was committed to her recovery.”
Anderson sang a gospel version of the song, “Drift Away,” when she and Smith performed in June at the “Sunday Mornin’ Country Show” at the Grand Ole Opry.
