Johnny Bush, country singer whose ‘WhiskeyRiver’ became a Willie Nelson staple, dies at 85
Johnny Bush, a Texas singer whose rowdy honky-tonk hit “Whiskey River” became a signature song for his friend Willie Nelson, butwhose own career was interrupted by a neurological condition that robbed him of his voice for years, died Oct. 16 at a hospital in San Antonio. He was 85.
The cause was complications from pneumonia, said Ronnie McHan, his drummer and touring manager. He added that Bush had recently tested negative for the coronavirus.
Bush was a drummer, guitarist, fiddler and singer-songwriter with a distinctive, vibrato-heavy tenor that earned him the nickname “the Caruso of country,” a nod to Italian opera star Enrico Caruso. In the late 1960s and ‘70s he recorded a string of country hits, including versions of hismentor Ray Price’s “I’ll Be There,” Marty Robbins’s “You Gave Me a Mountain” and Willie Nelson’s “Undo the Right” and “What a Way to Live.”
But soon after signing with RCA Records, his new label tasked him with composing a song of his own. He responded by writing “Whiskey River” with Paul Stroud, whom Bush later described as “an old rodeo cowboy friend.” Bush said he began writing it while traveling from Nashville, Tenn., to Texas by bus, jotting down lyrics on a paper sack that someone had used to bring him a cheeseburger:
Whiskey River, take my mind
Don’t let her memory torture me
Whiskey River, don’t run dry
You’re all I got, take care of me
Released as a single in 1972, the song reachedNo. 14 on the country charts while receiving near-constant airplay on Texas country stations. Thick with fiddles, driven by a propulsive bass line, it was an infectious anthem about alcohol-induced forgetfulness and the solace offered by an “amber current,” when the memory of an old love has left you feeling cold.
The song was shaped in part by Nelson, whom Bush called for advice. “Whiskey River” only had one verse and one bridge, he said, and didn’t it need something more? “Well, you’ve already said what you need to say,” Nelson told him, according to a Texas Monthly report. “In a country song, you tell your life story in two and a half minutes.”