Matraca Berg • Poets and Prophets, 2009
Poets and Prophets
•
1h 26m
Matraca Berg, in a wide-ranging, frank, and funny interview with the Museum’s Michael Gray, examines her life as a songwriter, performer, and recording artist. During the interview, Berg also performs songs she’s written: 1997 CMA Song of the Year, “Strawberry Wine,” “The Dreaming Fields,” and “Wrong Side of Memphis.”
Growing up immersed in the Nashville music community, with unfettered access to great songwriters, Berg learned the craft early and started practicing earnestly in her teens. Naming Dolly Parton, Bobbie Gentry, and Carole King as early influences, she credits her mother, Icie Berg, as her first coach and co-writer. Hit songwriter Bobby Braddock and Berg, then only eighteen, co-wrote the #1 hit song “Faking Love,” recorded by T.G. Sheppard and Karen Brooks in 1982.
Berg’s ability to express a woman’s viewpoint led a to a string of Top Ten hits that resonated with fans: “Hey Cinderella” (Suzy Bogguss); “Everybody Knows,” “Wrong Side of Memphis,” and “XXXs and OOOs” (Trisha Yearwood); “If I Fall You’re Going Down with Me” (the Chicks); “I’m That Kind of Girl” and “You Can Feel Bad” (Patty Loveless); “The Last One to Know” (Reba McEntire); “Strawberry Wine” (Deana Carter); and “Wild Angels” (Martina McBride). Kenny Chesney and Grace Potter’s version of Berg’s song “You and Tequila,” originally co-written and recorded by Carter, also reached the top of the charts in 2011.
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