Story Behind the Song: George Strait, ‘I Ain’t Her Cowboy Anymore’
In 2006, George Strait included "I Ain't Her Cowboy Anymore" on his 24th studio album, It Just Comes Natural; although Strait didn't release the song as a single, it became a fan favorite, and occasionally made it into Strait's setlists. Below, Marla Cannon-Goodman -- who wrote "I Ain't Her Cowboy Anymore" with Dean Dillon and Scotty Emerick -- shares the story behind the song with The Boot.
I’ve known Dean my whole life, pretty much; he and my dad [producer Buddy Cannon] have been friends my entire life. And Scotty and I both wrote at the same publishing company for a long time. It just happened that day, we were sitting in there, and I don’t even remember where the idea came from. We were literally just sitting in there throwing around ideas, and wrote it.
I remember getting the call that George had it on hold. I was like, “Oh my God, I can’t possibly believe I could get a George Strait cut.” I’m a huge George Strait fan, of course -- being a product of the ‘80s, you can’t help but be one. I remember, they had finished cutting, and they were going to go fishing, and I had not heard anything about our song. It started raining, and they ended up not going fishing and [instead] going in and cutting our song; it was not cut, and the rain got them back into the studio, and I ended up getting a cut on that record.
It was up for the single every time off that record; because it was almost five minutes long, it kept getting booted out. The first single was “Give It Away,” which was [written by] my dad, Bill Anderson and Jamey Johnson. They were between the two of them. I called Bill Anderson, and I said, “Bill, just let me have the single,” and he said, “Well, Marla, if you’d stop writing such sh--ty songs, you might get one on the radio someday.”
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