Buddy Buie, Producer and Hit-Making Songwriter, Dies at 74
By BRUCE WEBERJULY 20, 2015
Buddy Buie, a songwriter and record producer who helped propel the Classics IV and the Atlanta Rhythm Section to pop prominence with melodic soft-rock hits including “Spooky” and “So Into You,” died on Saturday in Dothan, Ala., his hometown. He was 74.
The cause was a heart attack, said his son, Ben.
Mr. Buie (pronounced BOO-ee) was a textbook example of a figure behind the music without whom there would be no music.
Though he played guitar reasonably well and could sing passably enough to appear on a recording now and then, he was not inclined to perform himself. He managed bands, produced records and wrote or collaborated on hundreds of songs — primarily as a lyricist, though he also worked closely with musicians, and often directed them, as they molded songs together.
He helped write the songs “Traces” and “Stormy” for the Classics IV, a band that in the late 1960s reached the Top 10 with soothing pop songs, a stark contrast to the acid and protest rock then on the rise. The group’s most prominent hit, “Spooky,” was originally an instrumental; Mr. Buie and a frequent collaborator, the guitarist J. R. Cobb, added lyrics describing the flighty behavior of a young woman from the point of view of a befuddled man:
You always keep me guessin’, I never seem to know what you are thinkin’.
And if a fella looks at you, it’s for sure your little eye will be a-winkin’.
I get confused, ’cause I don’t know where I stand,
And then you smile, and hold my hand.
Love is kinda crazy with a spooky little girl like you.
In 1970, Mr. Buie, with Mr. Cobb and others, started a recording studio in Doraville, Ga., where he formed the band that came to be known as the Atlanta Rhythm Section, or ARS. He recruited other musicians, including three former members of the Candymen, a band that backed up Roy Orbison — the vocalist Rodney Justo, the keyboardist Dean Daughtry and the drummer Robert Nix — and employed them as studio players while they put together an album of their own. Called simply “The Atlanta Rhythm Section,” it was released in 1972.
“The drawing card was we didn’t have to starve to death while we were putting this album together,” Mr. Justo said in an interview on Monday.
Over the next several years, Mr. Buie managed the band, produced its records and helped write virtually the entire ARS songbook.
Though often cited as a descendant of the Allman Brothers Band and a formidable influence on Lynyrd Skynyrd and other practitioners of the sound known as Southern rock, the Atlanta Rhythm Section was known less for the driving melodies and pulsing rhythms characteristic of that genre than for middle-of-the-road pop songs with a rock beat; in addition to “So Into You,” which seized on a phrase, then au courant, suggesting an intense romantic interest, its hits included “Imaginary Lover” and its own version of “Spooky.”
Among the group’s dozen or more albums are “Dog Days,” “A Rock and Roll Alternative,” “Champagne Jam” and “The Boys From Doraville.”
“What was his role in the band?” Mr. Justo said. “Quite candidly, everything. Buddy was the producer, the manager, the visionary, the songwriter. His idea was to create a supergroup of musicians to be a vehicle for his songs.” A version of the band including Mr. Justo continues to tour.
Perry Carlton Buie — he was known as Buddy as a boy, his son said — was born on Jan. 23, 1941, in Marianna, on the Florida panhandle, and grew up about an hour north in Dothan, Ala., where his parents, Carlton Buie and the former Eva Grace Murphy, ran a popular cafe.
After graduating from high school, he attended Auburn University, but he dropped out to enter the music business, at one point moving to New York City and for a time working as Orbison’s road manager. Aside from the Classics IV and the Atlanta Rhythm Section, Mr. Buie’s songs have been recorded by artists in a variety of genres, including the country singers Garth Brooks and Wynonna Judd. “Spooky” has been covered by Dusty Springfield, Andy Williams and Lydia Lunch, among others.
Mr. Buie’s first marriage ended in divorce. He married his high school sweetheart, Gloria Seay, in 1972. They lived in Eufaula, Ala. In addition to her and their son, he is survived by a daughter, Belinda Davis; a stepson, Hunter Sheridan; a brother, Jerry; a sister, Gloria Moring; and five grandchildren.
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