Mickey Newbury
Bio
Mickey Newbury quietly shaped the sound of American music.
His works have been out of print for years, something that Fat Possum Records will change having acquired both master recordings and publishing for his entire catalog from Mickey Newbury’s estate. Looks Like Rain is in stores July 25, 2025, followed by ‘Frisco Mabel Joy and Heaven Help The Child on August 29, 2025.
“We’re going to try our best to give Mickey Newbury the credit that he deserves,”says Matthew, founder of Fat Possum Records.
A key player in Nashville at the turn of the 1960s, it was Newbury who was responsible for bringing Townes Van Zandt & Guy Clark to Nashville and introducing Roger Miller to Kris Kristofferson's 'Me and Bobby McGee.'
Every door was open for Mickey Newbury. Penning songs like “An American Trilogy” (Elvis Presley), “Just Dropped In (To See What Condition My Condition Was In)” (Kenny Rogers and the First Edition), “She Even Woke Me Up To Say Goodbye,” (Jerry Lee Lewis), “Funny, Familiar, Forgotten Feelings” (Tom Jones), and other hits for Johnny Cash, Roy Orbison, Andy Williams, Etta James, Solomon Burke, Ray Charles, with many more (over 1,500 acts) covering his work over the decades, including more recently Bill Callahan, Phish and Vampire Weekend.
Newbury wasn’t just a songwriter’s songwriter. He was wildly ambitious in his own recordings—pushing boundaries in production, song structure, and emotion long before other contemporaries. Mickey Newbury himself was by far the best interpreter of his own songs. His albums were intimate, cinematic, and decades ahead of their time. Rain & train sounds included.
He was a songwriter first, entertainer second. He refused to compromise his vision for mainstream success. Staking claim at the independent Cinderella Sound studio - a converted garage - quite literally, working outside the Nashville corporate system. It was here where Newbury recorded his trilogy of albums – Looks Like Rain, Frisco Mabel Joy and Heaven Help The Child that are often referred to as masterpieces.
A visionary album, Looks Like Rain immerses the listener into a vividly-painted emotional landscape of heartbreak, madness and despair tracked by the sound of wind chimes and rain. Mickey followed this masterpiece with another, 1971’s ‘Frisco Mabel Joy. Here he broadened the palette, incorporating the sound of the Nash Philharmonic, an ‘orchestra’ consisting of electric and steel guitars. The cycle of Cinderella Sound albums ended in 1973 with a third epic, Heaven Help The Child, by which time Mickey’s increasing confidence in the studio was clear and he had definitively laid out his stall as a recording artist.
