Hit Song Inspired by Narrows of the Harpeth

If you’re a country music fan, you’re probably familiar with singer John Anderson and his hit songs, “Swinging”, “Seminole Wind” and “I’m Just An Old Chunk Of Coal”. But you may not know that one of those top five chart toppers was inspired and written by the late songwriter, Billy Joe Shaver, as he climbed the steep Bluff Trail at the Harpeth River State Park.

The back story, as told by Shaver in an interview with the Songfacts.com website, goes as follows:

“I was about to die because I’d been doing so much dope and just everything in the world you could think of and drinking and just about driving everybody crazy. There was this place outside of Nashville that’s called the Narrows of the Harpeth River and there’s this peak-like thing out there, and it’s a real sheer drop-off cliff. You have to go up a real treacherous path to get to it.  Not many people know about it, but my son had showed it to me. And it was at the top of this thing that I arrived one night when I felt I was about to die. There was an alter up there, it looked like the wind, rain or something had hewn the alter out and it looked like a mushroom. There was just a small place between the alter and the sheer cliff. I was just so ashamed of myself for what I’d done, I asked God to help me. I thought I’m just a worthless good-for-nothing dragging everybody down. I found myself on my knees with my hands and elbows on top of the alter and asking God to help me. That’s when he gave me that song.

All of the sudden everything brightened up for me and this inaudible voice told me to go, to get out of Nashville. I left Nashville and I went cold turkey on everything. I quit smoking, drinking, doping, doing the whole smear."

The song that Billy Joe believed God gave him on the Narrows of the Harpeth Bluff Trail was, “I’m Just An Old Chunk Of Coal (But I’m Gonna Be A Diamond Someday)”. The lyrics recall Billy Joe’s troubled emotional state the evening in 1980 when he climbed the Bluff Trail over the Montgomery Bell Tunnel and pleaded with God to help him beat his drug and alcohol addiction.

He stated that he came down the Bluff Trail “singing the first part of the song” and when he got to the foot of the trail, he had the song half written.  County singer John Anderson recorded Billy Joe’s song, and it reached #4 on Billboard Magazine’s Hot Country Singles in March of 1981.

“I’m Just An Old Chunk of Coal” was also recorded by Johnny Cash, Kris Kristofferson & Miranda Lambert.