But it never happened, even though his songs have been covered by everyone from Jerry Lee Lewis to Van Morrison. Though at the height of his career Rich had strong «cross-over» appeal, he was always something of an oddball in the very conservative country scene, and it was not surprising that he was never able to become a mainstream artist like so many other Sam Phillips discoveries. Actually, it was Phillips’s musical arranger, Bill Justis, who listened to the jazzy demo tapes of songs like «River Stay Way From My Door», which Rich’s wife, Margaret Ann, was hawking round, and took the young man on as a session musician and arranger. Rich’s first instrument was actually tenor saxophone, and his first musical favourites were the big-band progressive jazz of Stan Kenton and the pianistics of Oscar Peterson, unusual influences for a country musician. It was jazz he played in the US Army Air Force while stationed in Enid, Oklahoma, in the mid-Fifties, a...