Remembering Peter Cooper

By Johnny D. Boggs

“Somehow, Johnny Cash is dead.”

We’re taught in Journalism 101 to tell readers what they need to know in that first paragraph. Make every word count. And force those readers to keep reading.

Peter Cooper nailed it on September 13, 2003, when his obituary of The Man in Black appeared in The Tennessean, Nashville’s daily newspaper.

For 19 years, I’ve been saying that’s the best lede to any newspaper story I’ve ever read.

Peter, newspaper journalist turned musician, songwriter, historian, music producer, author of liner notes and senior director, producer and writer at the Country Music Hall of Fame, died Dec. 6. He had sustained a head injury after a fall the previous week.

He was only 52 years old.

We both hailed from South Carolina. Peter was born in Spartanburg – he wrote Hub City Music Makers: One Southern Town’s Popular Musical Legacy about his hometown’s music scene (the Marshall Tucker Band, Walter Hyatt …) – and taught school in Rock Hill (“I used to live in Rock Hill/South Carolina, South Carolina/I’m glad I’m not living there still/I feel much better now” he sings in one of his songs).

I grew up farther south in the Pee Dee country. Living in New Mexico, I feel much better now, too.

Peter Cooper. Photo by Deone Jahnke

Courtesy PeterCooperMusic.com

After Peter’s death, I started rereading his Johnny’s Cash & Charley’s Pride: Lasting Legends and Untold Adventures in Country Music. If you want to know about Nashville, songwriters and country-music stars, that’s the book to read. And Tom T. Hall’s The Storyteller’s Nashville: A Gritty & Glorious Life in Country Music (Peter wrote the preface).

How do writers improve their writing? They read great writers.

I read Peter Cooper. And learned a lot.

Peter wrote:

“[O]bjectivity is the mortal enemy. …

"But objectivity is dispassionate.

"And we’re in the passion business.

"We’re trying to make people feel something different than what they felt before they read our words.”

That’s a concept White House beat reporters or those covering cops in Dallas might have trouble wrapping their heads around, but for entertainment writers or fiction writers, it’s a subject worthy of discussion in the bar after deadline.

Recalling an interview during which Johnny Cash told Peter, “I read everything you write,” Peter wrote:

“Immediately, I was ten feet tall.

“Johnny Cash reads all my stuff.

“Then I shrunk eight feet down from ten.

“Johnny Cash reads all my stuff.

“All my stuff.

“Stuff I write on deadline … stuff I just can’t nail … stuff where I am writing over my head … stuff where I am unduly judgmental … stuff where I am overly kind.

“All my stuff.

“Johnny Cash.

“Writer’s block ensued.”

Peter was a writer I wanted to sit down with at Nashville’s Loveless Café and talk craft. Now, all I can do is listen to his music and reread his prose.

Because I’m still waiting for my brain to accept this fact:

Somehow, Peter Cooper is dead.