Walt Aldridge Brings a Unique Sound to UNA’s Entertainment Industry

Oct. 27, 2014

Bryan Rachal, Public Affairs and Media Relations

FLORENCE, Ala. – Walt Aldridge is a very unassuming man when you first meet him. He’s tall, handsome and seems very quiet and down to earth. One would have to possess psychic powers to be able to guess his profession from just his looks.  But when he opens his mouth, it’s a different story.  His voice and the manner in which he speaks carries a melodic sound and from that point on it’s not hard to fathom that Aldridge is a famous singer and songwriter, with scores of chart toppers under his belt.  

Aldridge’s career had many stops along the way before turning back toward the University of North Alabama to teach as an artist in residence; and perhaps the most interesting stop was actually where he first started the journey, in the Entertainment Industry program at UNA. 

“Well, I actually got started through this program,” Aldridge said.  “I was one of the early graduates.  At that point it was called the commercial music program and I was one of the early graduates.  I did my internship at Fame studios and wound up working there for 17 years following.” 

After his internship, Aldridge graduated from UNA in 1978 with a degree in Business Management and Commercial Music (the program we now call Entertainment Industry) and was able to secure a job at Fame Studios. Aldridge worked at Fame honing his skills and managing different aspects of the business over nearly a two-decade period. During this time he was still playing on his own as well. 

“I grew up in the era of folk-rock-pop; whatever they called it; folk type singer songwriter artists.  So I was very heavily influenced by James Taylor and Joni Mitchell, and Neil Young and Cat Stevens, and all that era of acoustic guitar player singer songwriters.  So I had an acoustic guitar and played and wrote my little songs, and I had also become very interested in the fad of bluegrass music, which was kind of sweeping the nation at that at time, so I played some bluegrass as well.” 

Aldridge said he was primarily an acoustic guitar player and that was what he wanted to do with his career.  His goal was to become a session guitar player for recording studios.  It was the internship at Fame that changed that. 

“When I got my internship and got on the inside of some studios and began to hear some players, I always say I went back outside and tied my guitar on the back of my car and dragged it home, and decided I better diversify and learn how to song write and engineer and all the others things,” he said. 

Songwriting was something that Aldridge said was always in the background.  He said the beginning of his song writing career was much like other poets and artists; he needed a muse and as a teenage boy, his was girls. 

“You learn pretty quickly that if you write songs with girls’ names that are two syllables that they’re fairly interchangeable, because there are so many girls with names that are two syllables, depending on which one you’re interested in and trying to impress!”  

Aldridge said that for most people, their songwriting starts out being about their lives.  For him, it was during high school and it was songs about girls that he wanted to notice him and frustration with the ones that didn’t.  As he grew older his writing progressed to more worldly observations, and for him the process has always been a very important means of expressing his feelings; and it was something that he said always felt natural.  

After being a “gopher” at Fame early on, Aldridge eventually began working his way up the ranks.  At first he was cleaning up and fetching hamburgers, and then as he worked hard and showed promise he was given an opportunity to be an assistant engineer; eventually, he became an engineer.  He said songwriting was still a priority and he would use his evenings to practice his craft.  

The first song he cut was one he wrote while he was still a student at UNA.  “I’ll never forget it was performed on this country music program that was popular at the time called ‘Hee Haw,’ and the performance happened while I was in the collegiate singers and we took a spring cruise.  We were off on our Caribbean cruise and I was trying to find a TV to watch it.”  Aldridge said the credibility and the exposure was more helpful than the $14 he received.  

Aldridge said that during those early years at Fame he was getting songs cut, but nothing big was happening.  Then he had a song called “No Getting Over Me,” which was recorded by Ronnie Milsap, who was a crossover artist at the time. The song went to the top of the country music charts and the top five on the pop music charts. For Aldridge, it really validated what he had been trying to do for so many years.  

“Not only did it financially change my life, I mean, I think it changed my life in that way that people began to see me as a song writer.” 

That song allowed Aldridge to hit a groove. He figured out what he needed to do to be successful and the exposure also allowed him to be more recognizable to artists.  It was a perfect storm and even though he was a successful writer, he still kept at it in the studio producing and engineering.  In fact, Aldridge said it took quite a few years of successful writing before he decided he could go on without a studio job.  But as things sometimes do, that lifestyle eventually lost its luster.  So when UNA contacted Aldridge about coming back to teach a few classes, he thought it seemed like the right fit. 

“It was an opportunity for me to get back to my home and get back to the Muscle Shoals music scene which I had always really enjoyed being a part of, and it was kind of less of a machine-like approach than the Nashville approach and it was a chance to get back around aging parents and my hometown,” he said. 

For Aldridge, teaching has always been a family affair; he has teachers on both sides of his family.  He said he was raised believing that teaching was a dignified and important profession.  Throughout his career he tried to stay connected to teaching and spent a lot of time with students, helping them hone their craft.  Aldridge also attributes his willingness to teach to UNA’s Entertainment Industry program itself, saying that it was really helpful to him during his career.  

“I think you want to feel like you’re some part of the journey for people.   I think we all can probably look through our lives and name a couple of people who have been influential in our decisions in a positive way, and there’s nearly always a teacher in there.” 

With that in mind, Aldridge recently left the comfort of UNA’s campus to travel to St. Louis, where he worked with ASCAP on a project.  He was selected as one of eight mentors to go to different urban areas to work with at-risk students in order to introduce them to different ways of expressing themselves, including songwriting.  He said the collaboration was truly inspiring! 

“Ultimately we went into a recording studio, made a recoding out of it and the whole bit.  It was really cool, and frankly I was shocked.  I thought these kids would be quiet and reserved about it, but they all had a lot of ideas and were throwing them around; and as we guided those ideas into a song they got it, they understood we have to have a beginning middle and end, and it all has to make sense.”  Aldridge said the kids were fearless and extremely comfortable, and he found the experience to be pleasant the whole way through.  You can view a video of the song they created, “Secret Crush,” by clicking here. 

Throughout his career, Aldridge estimates that he’s written between 2,000 – 3,000 songs with seven or eight No. 1’s mixed in.  Of those, he jokingly says that 2,500 are completely forgettable and not even memorable to him!  “The old saying is, you write a hit song the same way you write a flop song, and I think that’s true.  You just sit down and you crank, and on some days there’s some kind of special spark and on a lot of days there’s not.” 

For more information on UNA’s Entertainment Industry program visit:

http://www.una.edu/entertainment/

To view the video “Secret Crush”:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gaPB_nu9yUk&list=PLB072CC14E50A1602&index=51