Act Naturally

• 1. Introduction

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  "Act Naturally" began as a throwaway line and became one of the most traveled songs in country music history. Johnny Russell was in Fresno, California, in the early 1960s when some friends from Oklahoma asked him to join a recording session in Los Angeles. He had to cancel a date with his girlfriend. When she asked why, he told her they were going to put him in the movies and make a big star out of him. They both laughed. That joke planted a seed.

  Russell wrote the song that same day. It tells the story of someone who has been jilted and, because of that heartbreak, can convincingly play a lonely, sad person in a film without any acting training at all. A simple premise, a wry twist. But for two full years, nobody wanted to record it. The song Russell was convinced could be a hit gathered dust while he searched for any taker at all. What happened next sent it to number one on the country charts, into the hands of the Beatles, and eventually into a music video involving cowboys, bumbling actors, and one very famous drummer.

• 2. A Song Nobody Wanted

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  Russell, originally from Mississippi, was based in Fresno when the idea came to him. He tried first to teach the song to the singer he had traveled to Los Angeles to help, but that singer could not learn it. Russell then wanted to record it himself, only to have his producer reject it on the grounds that songs about the movies were not hit material.

  "No matter how hard I tried, I couldn't get anyone interested in it," Russell later said. Two years passed. That stretch of rejection shaped how the song eventually found its home, because when it did land, it landed sideways. By 1963, Russell was writing with a woman named Voni Morrison, who also worked with a Bakersfield, California-based singer named Buck Owens. Morrison heard the song, believed it was right for Owens, and said she could get him to record it. Because the song had sat unrecorded for so long and Russell had an agreement with Morrison to share credits, he gave her partial credit even though her only role was submitting it to Owens.

• 3. Buck Owens Takes the Wheel

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  Owens did not like "Act Naturally" at first. It was Don Rich, the leader of Owens' band the Buckaroos, who changed the song's fate. Rich heard Russell's demo and liked what he heard, and gradually the song grew on Owens. Then came a phone call. One night, Owens called Russell to ask permission to record it. Russell said yes. "I later found out that he had already recorded the song that day and just wanted the publishing rights," Russell said. "I was more than pleased to give him the rights in order to get the song recorded."

  Owens cut "Act Naturally" at Capitol Studios in Hollywood on the 12th of February 1963. It was released as a non-album single on March 11 of that year. The song entered the Billboard country charts on the 13th of April 1963. By June 15, it reached number one, where it spent the first of four non-consecutive weeks. It remained on the charts for 28 weeks in total. Before the 1960s ended, Owens had placed 19 singles at the top of the Billboard country charts, and the song also lifted Russell himself into modest success as a singer during the 1970s.

• 4. Ringo's Song

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  The Beatles came to "Act Naturally" somewhat by accident. They had originally recorded "If You've Got Trouble" earlier in 1965 as the track intended to give drummer Ringo Starr a vocal on the Help! album. They were dissatisfied with those results. Then, with the album sessions nearing completion, they realized Starr still did not have a lead vocal on the record. They almost recorded a song by their own engineer, Norman Smith, before settling on "Act Naturally" instead.

  Recorded on the 17th of June 1965, the session took 13 takes. The first 12 were used to work out the arrangement. Take 13, the only one with vocals, became the master. It was mixed the following day. According to author John C. Winn, the personnel on the track were Starr on lead vocal and drums, Paul McCartney on harmony vocal and bass, and George Harrison on double-tracked lead guitar and acoustic guitar. Stephen Thomas Erlewine of Allmusic called it "an ideal showcase for Ringo's amiable vocals." It was the last cover version the Beatles recorded until the Get Back and Let It Be sessions in 1969.

• 5. Release and the Capitol Puzzle

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  Capitol Records released Help! differently in the United States than in the United Kingdom. The American version of the album included only songs from the film itself, plus incidental music. Capitol held back both "Yesterday" and "Act Naturally" and issued them together as a non-LP single instead. "Yesterday" received the A-side designation in most people's minds, but the situation was more complicated than it appeared.

  As the B-side of the U.S. single, "Act Naturally" peaked at number 47 in October 1965. When the single was reissued on Apple Records in 1971, the labels on the record quietly told a different story. "Act Naturally" appeared on the "full apple" side of the disc, and "Yesterday" ended up on the "sliced apple" side. That was because "Act Naturally" had always been the intended A-side and had always been listed as such in Capitol's internal files. Both songs made their first appearance on an American album on Yesterday and Today, released on the 20th of June 1966.

  Starr performed the song on The Ed Sullivan Show in a taping on the 14th of August 1965, broadcast on September 12 of that year. He also played it at the famous Shea Stadium concert on the 15th of August 1965. From then on it became a fixture, alternating at some shows with his other song, "I Wanna Be Your Man."

• 6. The 1989 Reunion

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  Twenty-four years after the Beatles' recording, Owens and Starr came together to record a duet version. The session was produced by Jerry Crutchfield and Jim Shaw. A music video was made depicting the two men playing bumbling versions of themselves as cowboys on a western film set. George Bloom directed the video; Ken Brown produced it.

  Released on Capitol Records on the 29th of July 1989, the duet peaked at number 27 and spent 11 weeks on the Billboard country chart. It was Owens' last top 40 single on that chart. The recording also marked Starr's only appearance on the country singles chart. He was not the first Beatle to cross over: Paul McCartney had appeared on the country charts with Wings in 1974-75 via "Sally G."

  The duet was nominated for the 1989 Country Music Association Vocal Event of the Year and a 1990 Grammy for Best Country Vocal Collaboration. Both times it lost to "There's a Tear in My Beer," the posthumous duet recorded by Hank Williams Sr. and Hank Williams Jr. Since 1989, Starr has performed "Act Naturally" on every tour iteration of Ringo Starr and His All-Starr Band, at virtually every show.