3 Songs Written by Tom Douglas That Are Pure Country Gold

Songwriters often go unnoticed, but their songs live on for decades. Tom Douglas is the songwriter behind some of country music’s biggest hits. He might be able to walk around in anonymity, but virtually any country fan knows his songs. We picked three songs written by Tom Douglas that are pure country gold.

“Little Rock” by Collin Raye

Collin Raye released “Little Rock” in 1994, from his third studio album, Extremes. The heart-wrenching song, written solely by Douglas, is about a man who is living the consequences of his choices, working in a Walmart in Arkansas after his drinking brought an end to his marriage.

“I haven’t had a drink in 19 days,” Raye sings. “My eyes are clear and bright without that haze / I like the preacher from the Church of Christ / Sorry that I cried when I talked to you last night / I think I’m on a roll here in Little Rock / I’m solid as a stone, baby, wait and see / I’ve got just one small problem here in Little Rock / Without you, baby, I’m not me.”

The song is loosely based on circumstances surrounding Douglas’ own life.

 “I was in the real estate business, so I was working with Walmart stores at the time, and Bill Clinton was running for president,” Douglas recalls to Songfacts. “I felt like I was starting over, just like the guy in the song. It was a convenient way for me to tell a story. I guess I was looking for a way to reveal something about myself, so it was more of a cathartic experience rather than thinking about the radio. I wasn’t thinking about trying to write a song that somebody could record; I was just trying to validate and explain what was happening to me and was happening in the culture at the same time.”

“The House That Built Me” by Miranda Lambert

Miranda Lambert released “The House That Built Me” in 2010, on her Revolution album. The country song, written by Douglas and Allen Shamblin, was originally pitched to her then-boyfriend, Blake Shelton. But Lambert had such a visceral reaction to the song, Shelton let her record it instead.

“Momma cut out pictures of houses for years / From Better Homes and Garden magazine,” Lambert sings. “Plans were drawn and concrete poured / Nail by nail and board by board / Daddy gave life to momma’s dream / I thought if I could touch this place or feel it / This brokenness inside me might start healing / Out here, it’s like I’m someone else / I thought that maybe I could find myself / If I could just come in, I swear I’ll leave / Won’t take nothin’ but a memory / From the house that built me.”

“That song came on and my reaction to it was… I just cried. I don’t really cry when I listen to music, but that song definitely hit me really hard,” Lambert remembers (via Songfacts). Fortunately, Shelton saw the song really was meant for Lambert.

“We called the producers at midnight and asked, ‘Can we switch this? It’s on hold for Blake… can we put it on hold for Miranda?”

 “Grown Men Don’t Cry” by Tim McGraw

Tim McGraw released “Grown Men Don’t Cry” in 2001, on his Set This Circus Down album. Douglas penned the song with fellow hit songwriter, Steve Seskin.

“Grown Men Don’t Cry” says in part, “Keep having this dream about my old man / I’m ten years old, and he’s holding my hand / We’re talkin’ on the front porch watchin’ the sun go down / But it was just a dream he was a slave to his job and he couldn’t be around / So many things I wanna say to him / But I just placed a rose on his grave, and I talk to the wind / But I don’t know why they say grown men don’t cry.”

“I was going to get doughnuts early one morning for my son’s third-grade class at the Oak Hill School,” Douglas recalls to The Tennessean. “I rushed in because I should have gotten the doughnuts the night before. As I rushed in, I literally saw a lady talking on a pay phone and a very distressed situation. She had a little boy who was weaving himself in and out of his mother’s legs, and she was weeping. … I saw them in a rusted red Corvair with newspapers and soup cans littered in the car.”

Douglas considered giving them ten dollars, or offering help, but in the end he just walked away. It’s a decision that still haunts him.

“I did nothing,” he reveals. “And I was so ashamed that I let something kind of insignificant get in the way of a real life experience. I was telling Steve (about it). I think literally we just wrote the first verse based on that experience, and then, I think we stopped. In my memory, the second verse, Steve almost just wrote.

Photo Credit: Getty Images for Inspirational Country Music Association