The Song Writers
By mid-1981, Mac Davis and his producer Rick Hall were down in Muscle Shoals, Alabama working on a new album at the FAME Studio. Among the musicians working those sessions were Walt Aldridge and Tommy Brasfield. Adding to the guitar playing, Aldridge also doubled as a studio engineer. The two men were also “closet” songwriters. They had been secretly writing songs in Muscle Shoals. For over a year, they’ve been writing songs before coming up with what they felt was worthy enough to show to a publisher. The guys called it “(There’s) No Gettin’ Over Me”. Aldridge and Brasfield had been working on the song between “takes” during the Davis’ sessions. At one point, they got stuck. So they went downstairs to the studio to ask Davis if he would help them. Davis’ mind was on the record he was making and he didn’t turn out to be much help.
Pitching the Song
After about a week, Aldridge and Brasfield finally finished “(There’s) No Gettin’ Over Me”. They made a demo with Walt singing lead and playing guitar. Then Tommy took the finished product to Nashville to pitch the song. He didn’t have to wait long to find a taker. The first artist he approached passed on it, but then he went to Ronnie Milsap’s office and played it for Rob Galbraith.
The timing was pretty bad because Ronnie Milsap had just completed an album and turned it into RCA.
However, Galbraith thought Ronnie should hear “(There’s) No Gettin’ Over Me” right away. After hearing the song, Milsap and his producer Tom Collins immediately moved to get it cut quickly.
Ronnie Milsap was a stickler for perfection and recorded the song some twelve times. In the end, the cut that they went with turned out to be the very first one. Both Milsap and Collins came to realize that the “magic” achieved on the first take subsequently diminished on each additional attempt.
Of Ronnie Milsap’s thirty-five No. 1 country hits, “(There’s) No Gettin’ Over Me”
ultimately became his all-time biggest single.
It yielded his third Grammy award. In addition to the record’s lofty No. 1 status on Billboard’s Hot Country Singles chart, it also spent five weeks at No. 5 on the Billboard Hot 100 pop chart. It also reached No. 2 on the adult contemporary playlist. By the way, most listeners (then and now) refer to the song by a grammatically incorrect title: “There Ain’t No Gettin’ Over Me,” which is completely understandable since that’s the hook line that Milsap used throughout the recording. At no time is the song’s official title, “(There’s) No Gettin’ Over Me,” ever used.
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