Clifford Curry

“They don’t get the recognition they deserve,” says Nashville R&B/beach music legend Clifford Curry, when talking about the city’s show bands.

Curry, who had a two-sided 1967 hit with She Shot a Hole in My Soul and We’re Going to Hate Ourselves in the Morning, makes his living both as a songwriter and as a performer.

Clifford Curry performs during the 1960s at the Centennial Park bandshell.

Although he’s never had his own band, the affable fellow who admits to “being somewhere in my 70s” sings regularly with various outfits, most recently taking the microphone with a local seven-piece band called Fade to Black.

“Lord have mercy, Jesus,” says the venerable showman. “I was gigging in high school.”

Whether singing his way to glory as a vocal sensation while in high school in Knoxville or later finding long-lasting success by adapting his sound to the Myrtle Beach, S.C., beach scene and as a resident musical guru in Nashville, he’s always had a great appreciation for the big bands providing the music.

A stalwart of the Nashville pop and R&B scene, he has seen his share of fame.

But the Berry Hill resident admits to being bothered by the fact Smith and Church – the best of the show bands – and their comrades aren’t widely recognized as artists in Music City USA. “I don’t know why people around here don’t write about them more.”

Despite the fact he’s not had his own band, he’s a frequent guest on bandstands with the likes of The Jimmy Church Band.

“I’m one of Jimmy’s ardent admirers,” he says. “He’s a businessman and a bandleader.

“He’s been able to maintain his success without a record, without any notoriety at all.”

Similarly, he adds, “I admire Tyrone.”

Both men’s outfits are successful “because they play the right songs, the songs that the people still want to hear, because that kind of music was a part of them when they got married and now their sons and daughters are getting married.”