Nothing to This Top Ten: It’s Nothin’ to Me (#4)

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Right on cue, the cooler weather has shown up. And, right on cue, I am going to warm myself up with another song that has “nothing” in the title. Of course, as it’s warming my heart, you know it’s country. Lookie who made the countdown…. #4: It’s Nothin’ to Me - Jim Reeves Linda? I’d say “no;” however, you would prefer this version over the one that Johnny Winter did. Winter’s version has steel guitar on it, and this version doesn’t! And lookie who else is back: Leon Payne! One of the great songwriters in country music history, Payne was also a recording artist. His only recorded hit was “I Love You Because.” He tried other recording adventures, including a band called “Pat Patterson and His Missouri Hillbillies,” but nothing matched the success of that 1949 hit, or any of the subsequent songs that Payne wrote throughout his life. Heck, even Elvis Costello recorded a song that Payne wrote! Anyway, this tune has a little bit of sarcasm in it. It’s the tale of a man warning a guy who’s making eyes at a woman in a bar that he’d better leave her alone, and that her husband is “a quick-tempered, jealous man.” Although the man’s reply is never quoted, you KNOW what he asks the narrator: “What’s it to you?” That gives us the song’s title. Well, the guy should have listened, because the jealous husband kills him. The narrator gives a great kiss-off shrug at the end: Ah, well, that’s life Or it WAS JJ will enjoy the video, which features the vinyl copy of Tall Tales and Short Tempers playing this song on a turntable. I seek to please everyone. It’s Nothin’ to Me Written by Leon Payne (under the pseudonym Pat Patterson) Recorded by Jim Reeves From Tall Tales and Short Tempers, 1961 I’d soon have a hot seat in Sing-Sing: