“THIRD RATE ROMANCE” WAS ON A JESSE WINCHESTER ALBUM BEFORE THE AMAZING RHYTHM ACES EVEN HAD THEIR HIT VERSION. TWO OF WINCHESTER’S SIDEMEN THEN LEFT, BUILT A NEW BAND AROUND RUSSELL SMITH — AND TOOK THE SONG TO BOTH COUNTRY AND POP RADIO. In the early 1970s, bassist Jeff Davis and drummer Butch McDade were working with Jesse Winchester in Canada as members of his backing group, the Rhythm Aces. Winchester was still living outside the United States after leaving for Canada in 1967 rather than submit to the military draft. Unable to freely build a conventional American touring career, he developed his music north of the border with musicians around him who would eventually create a story of their own. In 1974, Russell Smith joined them in Montreal during the sessions for Winchester’s Learn to Love It. Smith brought songs. Two of them ended up on the album: “Third Rate Romance” and “The End Is Not in Sight.” Smith even sang “Third Rate Romance” on Winchester’s recording. Then the personnel began moving in another direction. Davis and McDade left Winchester’s orbit and joined Smith, keyboardist Billy Earheart, multi-instrumentalist Barry “Byrd” Burton and pianist James Hooker in Memphis. The new group mixed country with rock, blues, R&B and Southern soul. They became The Amazing Rhythm Aces. For their 1975 debut album, Stacked Deck, they went back to Smith’s “Third Rate Romance.” This time it carried their own name. The band did not expect much. In a 1976 interview, they recalled hoping the record might receive some regional attention. Instead, it escaped Memphis. “Third Rate Romance” reached No. 11 country and No. 14 on the Billboard Hot 100, an unusual crossover for a band that did not fit cleanly into either format. In Canada it went all the way to No. 1 on both the country and general singles charts. Their next single, “Amazing Grace (Used to Be Her Favorite Song),” reached the country Top 10. Then they returned to another Russell Smith song that had already appeared with Winchester: “The End Is Not in Sight (The Cowboy Tune).” Their recording earned the Amazing Rhythm Aces a Grammy for country vocal performance by a group. The band never became easy for the industry to classify. Their records could sound country, Memphis soul, blues or rock within the same album. Later releases earned critical respect without reproducing the commercial breakthrough, and the original run eventually ended in the early 1980s. But “Third Rate Romance” still had another trip ahead. In 1994, almost twenty years after the Aces’ version, Sammy Kershaw recorded it again and carried the Russell Smith song back onto country radio. A song that had passed through Jesse Winchester’s Canadian exile, a Memphis band and 1970s crossover radio had found its way into another generation of country music.

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“THIRD RATE ROMANCE” WAS ON A JESSE WINCHESTER ALBUM BEFORE THE AMAZING RHYTHM ACES HAD THEIR HIT. THEN TWO OF WINCHESTER’S SIDEMEN LEFT, BUILT A NEW BAND AROUND RUSSELL SMITH — AND TOOK THE SONG TO COUNTRY AND POP RADIO.

Before “Third Rate Romance” belonged to The Amazing Rhythm Aces, it had already passed through Jesse Winchester’s world.

In the early 1970s, bassist Jeff Davis and drummer Butch McDade were working with Winchester in Canada as members of his backing group, the Rhythm Aces. Winchester was still living outside the United States after leaving for Canada in 1967 rather than submit to the military draft. Because he could not freely build a normal American touring career, his music developed north of the border, surrounded by musicians who would soon carry part of that sound somewhere else.

Then Russell Smith arrived.

In 1974, Smith joined them in Montreal during the sessions for Winchester’s Learn to Love It.

He brought songs with him.

Russell Smith’s Song Entered Through Winchester First

Two of Smith’s compositions ended up on Winchester’s album.

“Third Rate Romance.”

“The End Is Not in Sight.”

Smith even sang “Third Rate Romance” on Winchester’s recording.

That detail matters because the song did not begin as a clean Amazing Rhythm Aces origin story. It was already moving through another artist’s sessions, another country, another set of circumstances shaped by exile, distance, and musicians looking for places to put their own voices.

The song was there before the band that made it famous had fully become itself.

Then the personnel shifted.

Davis and McDade left Winchester’s orbit and followed the song’s writer into a new band.

Memphis Gave The Song A Different Body

Davis and McDade joined Russell Smith, keyboardist Billy Earheart, multi-instrumentalist Barry “Byrd” Burton, and pianist James Hooker in Memphis.

The new group did not fit neatly into one format.

They mixed country with rock, blues, R&B, and Southern soul. There was enough twang for country listeners, enough groove for Memphis, enough looseness for rock audiences, and enough humor and melancholy to keep the songs from turning into easy category work.

They became The Amazing Rhythm Aces.

For their 1975 debut album, Stacked Deck, they returned to Smith’s “Third Rate Romance.”

This time, the song carried their own name.

The Band Expected A Regional Record

The Aces did not expect a national breakout.

In a 1976 interview, they recalled hoping the record might get some regional attention. That would have made sense. They were not an obvious Nashville act, not a clean pop act, and not a straight rock band. Their sound came from the messy middle where country bars, Memphis studios, Southern humor, and adult disappointment all touched.

But “Third Rate Romance” escaped Memphis.

The record reached No. 11 on the country chart and No. 14 on the Billboard Hot 100, an unusual crossover for a band that did not belong fully to either world. In Canada, it went even higher, reaching No. 1 on both the country and general singles charts.

A song first heard through Jesse Winchester’s Canadian exile had become a hit for a Memphis-rooted band that radio did not know how to file cleanly.

That was part of its charm.

The Second Winchester Song Went Even Farther In Another Way

The Aces followed with “Amazing Grace (Used to Be Her Favorite Song),” which reached the country Top 10.

Then they returned to another Russell Smith song that had already appeared with Winchester: “The End Is Not in Sight (The Cowboy Tune).”

Their recording earned The Amazing Rhythm Aces a Grammy for country vocal performance by a group.

That gave the story a deeper shape.

The Winchester sessions had not simply provided one stray song. They had helped reveal material that would become central to the Aces’ identity. Smith’s writing, Winchester’s orbit, Davis and McDade’s move, and the Memphis band that formed afterward were all connected by songs that kept finding new rooms.

The records sounded casual.

The path was anything but simple.

The Industry Never Quite Knew Where To Put Them

The Amazing Rhythm Aces never became easy to classify.

Their albums could move from country to Memphis soul to blues to rock without asking permission from any format. That made them interesting, but it also made them harder for the industry to sell once the first burst of success passed.

Later releases earned critical respect, but they did not reproduce the same commercial breakthrough.

The original run eventually ended in the early 1980s.

Still, “Third Rate Romance” did not vanish with the band’s peak. The song had already proved it knew how to travel. It had gone from Winchester’s album to the Aces’ debut, from Canada to Memphis, from country radio to pop radio.

Then it found another singer nearly twenty years later.

Sammy Kershaw Took It Back To Country Radio

In 1994, Sammy Kershaw recorded “Third Rate Romance” and carried the Russell Smith song back onto country radio.

That version gave the song a second country life in a very different era. The 1970s Aces recording had lived in the borderland between country, pop, Southern soul, and rock. Kershaw brought it into the 1990s country mainstream, where its mix of sly humor, motel-room realism, and adult compromise still worked.

The song did not need to be reinvented completely.

It already had the bones.

Two strangers.

A cheap room.

A small transaction dressed up as romance.

A title that said the quiet part out loud.

That kind of story does not expire easily.

What “Third Rate Romance” Really Leaves Behind

The deepest part of this story is not only that The Amazing Rhythm Aces had a crossover hit with “Third Rate Romance.”

It is how far the song traveled before and after that moment.

Jesse Winchester in Canada.

A backing band called the Rhythm Aces.

Russell Smith arriving in Montreal with songs.

Jeff Davis and Butch McDade leaving to build something new in Memphis.

Then Stacked Deck, country radio, pop radio, a Canadian No. 1, a Grammy for another Smith song, and Sammy Kershaw carrying “Third Rate Romance” back into country music almost twenty years later.

The Amazing Rhythm Aces were never easy for the business to define.

That may be why the song fit them so well.

It had already crossed borders before most listeners knew it existed — between writers, bands, countries, formats, and generations.

And by the time Sammy Kershaw sang it in the 1990s, “Third Rate Romance” had become more than a hit from one band’s debut.

It was a Russell Smith song that kept finding new voices, new rooms, and new listeners willing to recognize the lonely little bargain inside it.

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Country Music

In the small West Nashville house Dottie West and her family could finally afford in 1961, supper often came with a guitar. Songwriters arrived carrying unfinished verses, stayed around the table, and played what they had written. Dottie cooked, listened and learned. She was not yet the woman Nashville remembers from “Country Sunshine” or her duets with Kenny Rogers. She and her husband, steel guitarist Bill West, had moved their young family from Cleveland after years of driving south on weekends, trying to establish enough contacts to make the move possible. Starday Records had given Dottie a chance, then little came of it. Atlantic did not change her fortunes either. The house supplied what the record companies had not: a place inside Nashville’s working conversation. Hank Cochran, Roger Miller, Red Lane, Willie Nelson and Justin Tubb were among the writers moving through the Wests’ circle. Published accounts recall Dottie feeding musicians and absorbing what they knew about constructing a song. The arrangement carried no formal title. People brought guitars; she put food on the table. Everyone was still trying to write the piece that might keep them in town. One of Dottie’s songs eventually opened the door the labels had kept half-closed. Jim Reeves recorded “Is This Me?” in 1963 and spoke to Chet Atkins about the woman who had written it. RCA signed her. The next year, her own “Here Comes My Baby” reached the country Top Ten, helped secure her Grand Ole Opry membership and earned a Grammy—the first awarded to a female country performer. Success did not close the house. West later encouraged Jeannie Seely to move to Nashville, hired a young Steve Wariner and helped Larry Gatlin when each was still trying to find a place in the business. Her daughter Shelly remembered being included rather than kept outside the career: sitting on a bench in the Ryman wings, watching her mother work. Dottie West’s Nashville home never became a museum. Its importance was less formal than that. Long before the awards filled a room, there had been children in the house, food on the stove and another writer at the table, holding a song that was not finished yet.

Country Music

After the Crash, Bill Anderson Had to Learn the Woman His Wife Had Become On October 13, 1984, a truck carrying irrigation pipe crossed into Becky Anderson’s path. The collision left her with permanent brain damage, memory loss and no sense of taste or smell. Bill Anderson soon discovered that survival did not mean returning home to the life they had left that morning. Bill and Becky had married in 1970 and were raising their son alongside Bill’s two daughters from his previous marriage. By 1984, the family had settled into the rhythms surrounding his Grand Ole Opry career. Then hospital rooms, rehabilitation and medical assessments replaced the familiar calendar. Becky recovered beyond the bleakest early expectations, but the injury altered how she experienced the world. A psychiatrist later testified that she had lost part of her normal emotional range. Becky described feeling “flat,” without the peaks and valleys she had known before. The family could see her, speak to her and bring her home, while also adjusting to changes no photograph could show. Two years after the crash, the Andersons faced the driver in court. He acknowledged drinking twelve or thirteen beers before the collision. Bill’s testimony included a sentence stripped of the language he normally shaped so carefully: Becky was no longer the woman he had married. He was not saying that she had ceased to be his wife. He was trying to explain an injury that had left much of her outward appearance intact while changing memory, sensation and emotion. A jury awarded the couple $1.2 million, but the verdict could only assign money to a life that now had to be organized differently. Bill later built his 1989 autobiography around two versions of himself—the man he had been before the accident and the man formed by its aftermath. Becky’s recovery had changed more than her own future. Their marriage continued until their divorce in 1997. Bill did not reduce those thirteen intervening years to an easy lesson, and the public record does not justify doing it for him. What remains is the family’s more difficult achievement: after the hospital, the testimony and the settlement, they kept living inside a home where the person who returned was familiar, altered and still Becky.

Country Music

Roy Acuff Built a Second Career in the Place Where Songs Became Property In 1942, Roy Acuff was earning more money than most country performers had imagined possible. His records were selling, roads jammed when his touring show came to town, and the Grand Ole Opry had placed him near the center of its growing star system. That same year, Acuff put his name on a business with no audience, applause or visible stage. Acuff-Rose Publications began with Acuff and songwriter Fred Rose. Nashville had singers, radio programs and recording sessions, but it did not yet possess a major country publishing company capable of keeping songs—and their long-term earnings—inside the city. Performers and writers regularly surrendered copyrights to distant firms or sold songs outright without understanding what later recordings might be worth. Acuff supplied money, stature and the needs of a working performer. Rose understood song structure, copyright administration and the larger publishing world. Their company initially gave Acuff control over his own material, then opened its doors to other writers. On April 12, 1948, Hank Williams signed an exclusive agreement with Acuff-Rose. Rose became his editor, publisher and producer, helping bring discipline to songs whose language remained unmistakably Williams’s own. The resulting catalog continued producing income long after the singer’s death. Other writers followed: Felice and Boudleaux Bryant, Don Gibson, Roy Orbison and many more. Their songs traveled through recordings by artists far beyond Nashville, but the paperwork returned royalties to a company based there. Acuff’s recording career eventually cooled. Honky-tonk and smoother country voices moved ahead of his older string-band sound. The publishing company kept growing. By then, Acuff had helped establish a principle that would shape Music Row: Nashville did not have to supply talent while New York, Chicago or Hollywood owned what the talent created. A song written in Tennessee could be registered, promoted, licensed and paid from Tennessee. Audiences remembered Acuff standing beneath the Opry lights with a fiddle nearby. Much of his lasting power, however, rested in an office where someone opened an envelope, read a royalty statement and entered another song into the ledger.

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