My Music Row Story: Robert K. Oermann

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Robert K. Oermann

The “My Music Row Story” weekly column features notable members of the Nashville music industry selected by the MusicRow editorial team. These individuals serve in key roles that help advance and promote the success of our industry. This column spotlights the invaluable people that keep the wheels rolling and the music playing.

Dubbed “the dean of Nashville’s entertainment journalists,” Robert K. Oermann has become one of Music City’s leading multi-media figures—a journalist, television personality, radio broadcaster, graphic artist, lecturer, photographer, archivist and author.

Oermann writes weekly columns for MusicRow Magazine and has been published in more than 100 other national periodicals. He has penned liner notes for more than 125 albums and boxed-set productions. His nine books to date include the New York Times best-selling Songteller with Dolly Parton (2020), the award-winning Finding Her Voice with Mary A. Bufwack (2003), A Century of Country (1999) and America’s Music (1996).

Oermann has scripted and/or directed more than 50 television specials and documentaries for CMT, CBS, the BBC, TBS, TNN and others, and he appears frequently on-camera as a commentator on VH-1, A&E, CMT and the BBC.

The University of Pittsburgh graduate worked as an advertising manager for the Discount Records retailer in St. Louis, Missouri in the 1970s. After obtaining his Masters degree, Oermann moved to Nashville in 1978 to become the Head of Technical Services at the Country Music Hall of Fame’s Library. In 1981-’93, he was the all-genre music reporter at The Tennessean and the founding country-music writer for USA Today. Oermann began working in television production during this same period.

His projects have included scripting the 2000 CBS TV special celebrating the 75th anniversary of the Grand Ole Opry, penning the liner notes for the Grammy-winning O Brother Where Art Thou soundtrack album in 2001 and co-writing Little Miss Dynamite, the autobiography of 2002 Rock & Roll Hall of Fame inductee Brenda Lee. He was a judge on the 2003 USA Network series Nashville Star, which launched the career of Miranda Lambert. In 2004 he wrote the PBS special celebrating George Jones and was the music supervisor and script writer for the United Stations syndicated radio series Honest Country, narrated by Willie Nelson. He was a writer/director of the six-hour TBS documentary series America’s Music: The Roots of Country, narrated by Kris Kristofferson.

Among Oermann’s projects in 2005-’10 were writing and/or hosting PBS specials about Patsy Cline, Marty Robbins and John Denver. He scripted the A&E Biography specials on Billy Ray Cyrus and Carrie Underwood. He co-hosted the PBS fund-drive broadcasts of Chet Atkins: Certified Guitar Player (alongside pop superstar Michael McDonald) and Opry Memories (alongside Country Hall of Fame member Bill Anderson). Behind the Grand Ole Opry Curtain was published in the fall of 2008 as Oermann’s eighth book.

In 2013, he scripted and co-directed Dolly Parton: Song By Song, a six-part documentary series for the Ovation arts channel. In 2016, he was the second-unit director of the streamed-concert series Skyville Live, which featured Cyndi Lauper, Gregg Allman, Chris Stapleton, Gladys Knight, Little Big Town, Taj Mahal, Martina McBride and Delbert McClinton, among others. He co-hosted the Children of Song podcast marketed by Fox News Radio in 2017-’18. During 2019 he worked in various capacities on documentaries about The Bluebird Cafe, The Florabama nightclub, Loretta Lynn, Dallas Frazier and Kenny Rogers. Also in 2019, he was a script consultant for the 16-hour PBS documentary Country Music by famed filmmaker Ken Burns.

His acclaimed Songteller: My Life in Lyrics book with Dolly Parton was published in November 2020. He was a consultant on the 2023 PBS documentary about Minnie Pearl and served in the same capacity for the American Masters documentary about Brenda Lee in 2024.

Oermann has been active on various boards throughout his career, such as the Nashville Public Library, the Country Music Association, the Recording Academy, WPLN Radio, Leadership Music and the Nashville Songwriters Hall of Fame. He has been honored by various organizations over the years for excellence in media and entertainment.

MusicRow: Where did you grow up?

I was born and raised in Pittsburgh. My dad taught at the University of Pittsburgh, where I ended up going. My mother was a pediatric nurse.

But my mother’s mother, Grammy Clara Lowe, had a music store in Dubois, Pennsylvania. It was the only music store for counties and counties around, so they sold everything. They had records, sheet music, song books, instruments and anything to do with music.

They also had a jukebox chain. There were jukeboxes in all the bars in those western Pennsylvania and West Virginia towns. My mother had four brothers: Chubb, Luther, Corny and Bill. They rode around and would stock Polka, hillbilly or R&B records, depending on what bar they were in. I would ride with them sometimes. I would also clerk in the store whenever I was there in the summertime and around Christmas. She paid me in used jukebox records, which I loved. That’s how I started collecting records and how I got passionate about the music business.

Robert K. Oermann and Naomi Judd. Photo: Courtesy of Oermann

What were you like as a kid?

I was very shy and very thin. My brothers and sister are all six footers, so I was the runt of the litter. I drew pictures and listened to records alone in my room a lot. I would study the labels, and notice names like Boudleaux and Felice Bryant and Billy Sherrill. I got to know these names. I was interested in all kinds of music, but in high school, I really fell for R&B.

In college, I started reading about the history of rock and roll and learned that it was a fusion of R&B and country. I read about Red Foley, Hank Williams and Kitty Wells, and realized I had records by them that I never played. So I went home from college and got them out. I played Hank Williams and I got it! I thought, “Oh, this is white people’s soul music.” I became really passionate about it at that point.

What happened after college?

I went to St. Louis and got a job at Discount Records. They had a policy of stocking at least one copy of every record in print. Nobody in the store knew anything about country or classical music, so I became their country and classical person because I knew both of those areas fairly well. I did that and I painted for 10 years. [My wife] Mary [Bufwack] was teaching women’s studies in college.

Robert K. Oermann, Dolly Parton and Mary Bufwack. Photo: Courtesy of Oermann

I realized if we had to live on what I was making, we would starve to death, so I went back to Syracuse University and got a Masters degree in information studies. In that program, you took half of your coursework in library and archival work and the other half in whatever you wanted. They had the Newhouse School Of Public Communications there which had everything, so I took film, video, animation, photography and recording studio technology. I didn’t realize it, but I was preparing myself.

At that time, upstate New York was a huge country music area. On the way back and forth between Colgate and Syracuse—at least an hour drive each way—all the stations were playing country. So I started knowing every single country hit that was on the radio. I was getting more and more immersed in country music.

How did you get to Nashville?

I was really digging Loretta, Dolly and Tammy, so Mary and I decided to combine our interests and write a book about women in country music. We got a list of record collectors across the country and a list of archives where there were collections of folk and country music. We went off across the nation and stopped at about every place. It was a massive educational trip.

When we stopped in Nashville, the Country Music Hall of Fame and Museum’s library was looking for someone who had a library degree specializing in non-print media and who was an encyclopedia of popular music. I said, “That would be me.” That’s how we got here in 1978.

Robert K. Oermann is honored with the Keynote Award during the 2016 Nashville Songwriters Hall of Fame gala. Photo: Bev Moser

How did you start writing in Nashville?

Most of the people that used that library were writers, so I got to know most of the writing community here at the time. I would read what they wrote and think, “I could do that.” So I started writing on the side while I was still at the library, particularly for Country Song Roundup and Country Music Magazine.

My friend John Lomax had pitched Esquire magazine for a piece on the 100 most influential people in country music, so the two of us wrote it. Within three years of writing in town, I was published in Rolling Stone and Esquire.

Lomax helped me so much—he believed in me. He had one of the first alternative newspapers in Nashville called the Nashville Gazette. He published me in that and my first feature was Brenda Lee. I started writing more and more, and then a job opened at The Tennessean.

Tell me about that.

I applied and so did 250 other people. The editor of that section of The Tennessean was a guy named Gene Wyatt. He didn’t like people with journalism degrees, he liked people that knew their subject area and who could work the beat. By then, I had been doing profiles on songwriters for publishing companies and writing bios for executives and producers, so I knew the Row pretty well.

So he hired me and Sandy Neese to be the two country music reporters at The Tennessean. That was in July. In September, USA Today started [and became The Tennessean’s parent company] and I went from never having been in a newspaper office to being in the national newspaper. That’s also when the big country music explosion happened in the ‘80s. I was just in the right place at the right time. I stayed there until ‘81.

Robert K. Oermann, Taylor Swift and Mary Bufwack. Photo: Courtesy of Oermann

David Ross started MusicRow Magazine in ‘81. You became a contributor shortly thereafter and have remained part of our family since then. Tell me about the early days of MusicRow.

David had started this directory with contacts for audio rental services and whatnot. When I was still the librarian at the library, he came by and asked if we would carry it in the library. After the first or second edition, he decided to put some editorial in it. Al Cooley, who worked at Combine Music, did an issue where he was the record reviewer. After the first reviews came out, Al said, “Wait a minute. I’m a song publisher. I could get in some serious hot water doing this.” He came to me and asked if I would take over the column. Then it started to grow. Kerry O’Neil did a financial column, I did record reviews and David did the news.

MusicRow grew and prospered and I just stayed with it. It’s still one of my favorite gigs. I believe in the publication. It’s an extremely valuable source, knitting the community together, which is needed more now than ever. It’s a local publication and it helps the community understand each other. I really believe in it, both as a journalist and as a sociologist.

In addition to being a prolific writer, you’ve also done a lot of work in television and other media arts. How did you diversify?

The Women in Country Music book came out in ‘94. It won awards and made a big splash. I met this guy named Bud Schaetzle through Bob Doyle and Pam Lewis. Bud was a television producer, and he had this idea to do a special on women in country music. So Mary and I did this two-hour special for CBS, and that opened the television door.

At that same time, Tipper Gore was on a big tangent about sinful lyrics poisoning our children’s minds. Channel 5 had me come on TV every Friday to talk about the concerts that were going to be in town for the weekend, and should little Susie be allowed to go to the Poison concert? [Laughs] I always said sure!

Robert K. Oermann is honored with the Storytellers Award. Photo: Courtesy of Oermann

I got hired by Lorianne Crook and Charlie Chase to be a weekly reviewer for them. I would come on once a week and talk about the latest records that had come out.

I hated being on camera—still do—I wanted to produce and direct. I finally got my wish and started doing that a lot. I was doing EPKs and television specials. TNN and CMT came to town, which brought opportunities because they needed content all the time. I also had a radio show on WSM.

I look back now and wonder how I did all of this at the same time. It was about being in the right place at the right time, but I worked hard. I could outwork anybody. I loved the music so much that I wanted to be part of it. I wanted to be here so badly.

Who helped mentor you in the beginning?

There was a publisher named Don Gant. I would go over there and hang out and he would teach me how things worked. Back in those days, you could pretty much go into anybody’s office, sit down and listen to music. Lomax was a huge help, particularly on the writing side. On the TV side, Lorianne Crook, Charlie Chase and Jim Owens were very encouraging.

You have authored and contributed to so many country music books. Most recently you co-authored Dolly Parton, Songteller: My Life in Lyrics. Tell me about that experience.

That book was hard work. It had a tight deadline and there were lots of clearances I had to get. But it’s a beautiful book. Dolly is a total pro. She would outwork me. We’d be doing an interview and it would get to be five o’clock. I would say, “Let’s stop here and pick up tomorrow.” She would say, “No, let’s keep going!” She will outwork anyone. That was a fun project.

Who have been some of your favorite interviews through the years?

Dolly is a great interview. She’s a great role model for everyone—we should all be that nice and good-hearted. I love Bill Anderson. Jeannie Seely is always a ball. Randy Travis and I were very close. Vince Gill is great. Kathy Mattea is an old friend. Steve Earle and I were tight. Those relationships were forged in a time when the industry wasn’t nearly what it is today. It was small and special.

What projects are you most proud of?

The Women in Country special is a beautiful project. It’s really moving. When the Recording Academy was starting its oral history program, they hired me to do a documentary called Nashville Songwriter, which I’m also very proud of. I interviewed so many early songwriters, like Marijohn Wilkin, Felice Bryant, Harlan Howard, Hank Cochran, Cindy Walker and all the greats. I made it into chapters about the creative process, how the money happens, what a publishing deal is, etc. I love that project.

Of the books, I will always be proud of the Dolly book. Before I came to Nashville, I was listening to country radio all the time. There were three new people coming along at that time: Kris Kristofferson, Tom T. Hall and Dolly Parton. They were writing songs that were just another level up. That was an inspiration for me to get to Nashville, so I’ll always be proud of that project.

LB Cantrell
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