Jim McBride Dies at 78; Brought Honky-Tonk Back to Country Music

He was best known for his long-running collaboration with Alan Jackson and their signature hit, “Chattahoochee.”


Jim McBride in Nashville in 1981. He was a leading figure on Music Row at a time when some musicians were rejecting pop influences in favor of traditional country styles and instruments. Robert Johnson/The Tennessean, via USA Today Network/Imagn

By Clay Risen
Jan. 14, 2026

Jim McBride, a former postal worker from Alabama whose ability to write catchy country songs inflected with honky-tonk flair resulted in a long string of hits for artists like Alan Jackson, Waylon Jennings and Conway Twitty, died on Jan. 7 in Huntsville, Ala. He was 78. ... His death, at a hospital, was from complications of a fall at his home in Hazel Green, a community north of Huntsville, his son Brent said.

Mr. McBride was a leading figure on Nashville’s Music Row in the 1980s and early ’90s, when musicians like Mr. Jackson, Dwight Yoakam and the Judds rejected the pop influences of the late 1970s and ’80s in favor of traditional country styles and instruments.

His biggest hit, “Chattahoochee,” which he wrote with Mr. Jackson in 1992, is a case in point. A throwback to the honky-tonk sounds of the 1950s, it is propelled forward by an onslaught of piano, fiddle, steel guitar, an irresistible drumbeat and lyrics that hark back to rural adolescence:

Well, way down yonder on the Chattahoochee

It gets hotter than a hoochie coochie.

We laid rubber on the Georgia asphalt

We got a little crazy but we never got caught.

The song was Mr. Jackson’s first No. 1 hit on the Billboard U.S. Hot Country Songs chart; it was also Billboard’s top country song of 1993. It won a brace of awards, including Song of the Year from the Country Music Association.


Mr. McBride’s biggest hit was “Chattahoochee,” a throwback to the honky-tonk sounds of the 1950s. It became Billboard’s top country song of 1993. Arista Nashville

By then, Mr. McBride was a Nashville veteran, having written hit songs for Mr. Twitty, Johnny Lee and the band Alabama. Over his career, more than 80 acts recorded his songs.

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Mr. McBride was inducted into the Nashville Songwriters Hall of Fame in 2017. ... One of the keys to his success, he said, was not trying to imitate the flowery language of someone like Kris Kristofferson. ... “Another thing I had to unlearn was that I wasn’t Kristofferson,” he told American Songwriter. “I cut back on the poetic stuff. I’ve learned to write songs in the moment, not the great American novel in the song.”

Clay Risen is a Times reporter on the Obituaries desk.