Darryl Worley: Looking Back…and Looking Forward

If you say the terms “South” and “Savannah,” you will likely be thinking of the Georgia city off of the Atlantic that has so captivated the imaginations of many over the years. However, just about two hours southwest of Nashville, you will find another Savannah. Granted, the population of just over seven thousand might not rival the Georgia city….but with the mixture of southern farm land and the Tennessee River just a few miles to the south – it’s no less beautiful.

That’s the opinion of the city’s favorite son, Darryl Worley. He was born there, went to high school there – and even was a middle school biology teacher for a brief period. For a special edition of our “Looking Back…and Looking Forward” series, Sounds Like Nashville made a ‘Tennessee River Run’ to find out what it is about the Hardin County area that captivated the singer so much – and has influenced him to give back to the area through his Darryl Worley Foundation.

On a picturesque spring day, we met up with Worley at a place he knows quite well – Pickwick Landing State Park. He reflected on just what the area meant to him growing up as a child. “It was so southern and so unique. It’s a little pocket of the world that is very different. I’ve been very blessed to have experienced that in my younger years. I wrote a song once called ‘Nothin’ To Lose,’ and there’s a line in the song that says ‘Build me a raft out of old inner tubes, and that’s exactly what we did. We used to find a bunch of old tubes, bind them together and throw some lumber on top, and we would float around on it for two days. It was so much fun. It wasn’t anything like kids have to have nowadays to entertain themselves. It was about the hills, the woods, and the streams. We fished, we swam, and we hunted. There wasn’t any computer games going on back then, and I’m thankful there wasn’t…because I would have missed all this,” he says thankfully.

Carole Hunt, who graduated with the singer – and works at their alma mater, Hardin County High School, said that his wide-eyed since of wonder was apparent from the start – along with his willingness to help others.

“I got to know him the best our senior year. He was just fun, and loved to dance. He also loved the outdoors, and is so kind hearted. I had a friend who had twins, and they were sick. It was really cold, and he took the medicine to her for them so he wouldn’t have to get them out of the house. He’s just always done for other people. That’s just the type of person he is.”

Growing up, the singer fondly remembers the influence that both sets of his grandparents had upon his musical tastes. “I started listening to Country Music rather early, because both sets of my grandparents had stacks of old vinyl records. My aunt introduced me to Merle Haggard and Vern Gosdin, among others – all of the traditional stuff. My paw on my mothers’ side – Grandpa Jones, would let me listen to all of his Marty Robbins records. I remember him telling me if you just sit there, and let the music just sink in, you can really see all of the stories unfold. I get chills thinking about it. We really didn’t have that much to do around here besides that, so music meant a lot to us.”

Darryl’s father, Tom, noticed that his son had a genuine love of music, particularly in his teenage years – though he admits that he wasn’t too comfortable with the idea of his son pursuing a career in it.

“I first realized that he had a musical talent when he started singing at events at school and in plays. You couldn’t help but see it. To be honest, I don’t know if I would have chosen for him to be a singer. He started off to be a doctor, and that was more in my line of my thinking. He was working in the chemical business on the sales and service side of it. I told him one day that he needed to go do music if he really wanted to, because he wasn’t getting any younger. He was giving up a good career. If he had stayed in the business, he would be making six figures,” Mr. Worley said, pointing out that “He sticks to his guns, and he’ll stick to them till the day he dies.”

Those ‘guns’ led the singer to Nashville, where he signed with James Stroud at Dreamworks. It was there in the spring of 2000 that he broke through with “When You Need My Love,” which made it all the way to No. 15 on the Billboard charts. It’s a time that he will be eternally grateful for.

“It was surreal – very much so. To this day, it was something that I really didn’t believe that I could do or not. I think that when you grow up somewhere like I did, I there were a lot of folks who said ‘People from places like here don’t accomplish things like that.’ I always just thought ‘Maybe I can get a song or two cut, and that would be good enough for me.’ I don’t know if I believed I could have hit songs on the radio myself. To this day, I’m still as thankful for that record as I was at any day in my life.”

The singer steadily built his career single by single, and topped the charts for the first time in 2002 with “I Miss My Friend.” The next year, he struck with what became his biggest hit, “Have You Forgotten?” Though some have wanted to stick him with the term of political activist due to the success of that song, Worley stresses over a decade later that there was – and is – no agenda with the song.

“I had to defend myself a few times on that song. If you’re bashing that song, you’re bashing a lot of people who have stood up and kept this country great and strong. My little girl is in the second grade and has no difficulty understanding it, so it’s hard to understand why so many news people and commentators get it so goofed up in their head. I just wanted to pose the question ‘Have people forgotten how strong and united the people were? Have people forgotten the people on the home front that take care of us every day, and the troops in the Middle East.’ Obviously, we weren’t too far off base, because it resonated with the people,” he noted.

As the decade went along, Worley’s singles success started to see an up and down trend. He says that the shift in sounds had a little something to do with that, but also laments that he might have been led away from what brought him to the dance.

“I think I got away with a few songs on the front end that if we had gone to radio with something like “A Good Day To Run” two years later, we wouldn’t have had a prayer. Things changed that fast. I made some moves to try to stay current, and we made some great music. Take ‘Nothing But A Love Thing.’ I didn’t have a problem with the song, but I don’t think it would have been my choice as a single if things hadn’t been changing the way they were. We had success with songs with a lot of substance, and that was the route that I liked.”

Still, Worley’s success enabled him to give back to his home area. His “Tennessee River Run” yearly concert events have been consistent money-makers for his non-profit Darryl Worley Foundation, which has helped to build the Darryl Worley Cancer Center in Savannah, as well as other charitable initiatives. Community business leader Clark Jones, who runs Jones Nissan in Savannah, and sits on the Foundation’s board says it’s part of Worley’s calling to give back.

“He’s very much been called to service. He has such a passion for his fellow man, and he cares about this community so much. A few years ago, he asked me to serve on his Foundation here in Savannah, and I’m very passionate about the work he does for the community, both with the Cancer Center, and a program called Leader In Me that our foundation is now sponsoring in the elementary schools.”

That giving nature also has impressed Bonnie B. Worley – also Darryl’s mother. Having a song with Gold and Platinum records is one thing, but what he’s done for Savannah makes her the proudest.

“That’s number one. A lot of people give back, but they do so with a motive. That’s not him. He does it because that’s the way he is. He always has.”

Worley says that simply being able to give back to his hometown is a blessing – and it’s something he doesn’t take for granted. “I always think of both of my grandfathers, who both fought a horrible fight with cancer. I just remember thinking that if I could have spared them that horrible drive to and from for the treatments – I told my dad that if I ever was anything that mattered, I was going to change that for the people here, and we did that – we made it happen. It was a hard fought battle. God is good, and he always is. To have people come up to me and say those things is much bigger than anything I’ve ever done in the music industry. We do all of the other stuff so we can do that, and it has made a huge difference in peoples’ life. At the end of the day, those are the things that really matter.”

That being said, Worley isn’t going anywhere. He’s working on several new releases, including a Greatest Hits collection, and his first-ever Christian release. He’s also about to issue his first single in a while, “Rainmaker.” The title is somewhat ironic because of Worley’s recent trip to the Fiji Islands to play a concert date – right in the path of Tropical Cyclone Winston. When asked about the experience, his sense of humor remained intact.

“You know, I think I’ll pass on it if I ever get the opportunity again. When we were in LA, it had already passed Fiji, and was going southwest. About an hour and a half into our time there, they had already closed the airport. I just started talking to some people, and they were talking about the storm. I said ‘It’s long gone past here, right?’ They said ‘Yeah, but it looks like it might be turning back.’ It did a u-turn, and the water in the ocean was unusually warm for that time of year, so it strengthened the storm tremendously. It hit the island at a category five. It was intense.”

The intensity of the storm is only matched by Worley’s dedication to the place he calls home, and Savannah mayor Bob Shutt says the town couldn’t have a better friend. “If I had one word to describe him, it would be real. That’s what he is. He’s the most sincere person I’ve ever met. I could call Darryl Worley right now, and ask him to do something for someone here, and he’s going to do it. He wants to be here, and considers all of us his family.”

All told, Darryl Worley is a man who is very much content and thankful to have had the life that he has had – and continues to enjoy. “I can’t imagine how I could be more blessed and have had so many grand opportunities. I think that anyone who gets to do what they love and make a living at it is blessed. In all facets of my life, I’ve been blessed, and I try not to take any part of it for granted.”