The Doobie Brothers Forget ‘China Grove’ Is Real

Tom Johnston of the Doobie Brothers assumed the music he was writing in 1973 a few slow-moving Texas city referred to as “China Grove” was fictional. Until he remembered that it wasn’t.

The music began merely. “I wasn’t quite sure what it was,” Johnston recalled in 2022’s Long Train Runnin’: Our Story of The Doobie Brothers. “I just had the chords and little else, but I really liked the chords.”

Johnston felt he was onto one thing. He grabbed drummer John Hartman so they might strive it out with a more durable rocking sound. The subsequent step was bringing the music, which nonetheless did not have any lyrics, into the studio.

At Hollywood’s Amigo Studios, Little Feat keyboardist Bill Payne joined in, providing a piano half that Johnston instantly acknowledged because the lacking hyperlink to the music.

“I remember when I played that little bridge on what would become ‘China Grove,’ and [producer] Ted [Templeman] just freaked out,” Payne recalled within the guide. “He loved it. He kept saying that it sounded ‘Chinese’ to him, and I wasn’t sure what he meant. Looking back on it, I kind of get it. But at the moment, I had no clue. I just liked that he liked it.”

Listen to the Doobie Brothers’ ‘China Grove’

As it turned out, that bridge helped encourage Johnston to write the lyrics.

“Rarely when I sat down to write would I be very specific about things. It would just be what I was feeling at that moment, making up a story on the spot,” Johnston defined. “And then you never know what will get stuck in your brain from being on the road. In this case, it was a leftover from driving toward San Antonio on a tour in ’72. There was a road sign that said ‘China Grove city limits.’ I completely forgot about that until Billy played that piano line. And even then, I didn’t remember the road sign, but that’s where the idea for the sheriff and the samurai sword came from.”

Johnston could not have realized it, however he was portray a fictionalized portrait of an actual city referred to as China Grove, a few 20-minute drive outdoors of downtown San Antonio: “When the sun comes up on a sleepy little town / Down around San Antone / And the folks are risin’ for another day / ‘Round about their homes.”

When the music was launched as a single on July 25, 1973, it reached No. 15 on the Billboard Hot 100. The monitor was additionally launched on the band’s third album, The Captain and Me, which got here out 4 months earlier. Johnston received one other shock not lengthy afterward when he was in a cab in Houston and his driver requested him why he had written a music in regards to the close by little city. It turned out there was a second China Grove, this one situated simply outdoors of Houston.

Dolly Parton took a liking to “China Grove” and carried out the music on her TV program The Dolly Show throughout its 1976-77 season. It wasn’t till many years later that Johnston lastly noticed her efficiency and was blown away. “I just saw this six months ago for the first time,” he instructed The Tennessean in 2014. “I had never heard of it. I was shocked, going, ‘You’re kidding.’ But I’ve got living proof: It’s on YouTube.”

Watch Dolly Parton’s Performance of ‘China Grove’