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Crooner’s Corner: The Lost Tale of ULM Coach Terry Bowden’s Singing Career

Crooner’s Corner: The Lost Tale of ULM Coach Terry Bowden’s Singing Career

Football Sep 08
"Oh Susannah" by Muse, featuring Terry Bowden on vocals

"Home On the Plains" by Muse, featuring Terry Bowden on vocals

By ULMWarhawks.com Online Columnist Paul Letlow

If you want to hear Terry Bowden singing these days, you can find him belting out hymns with the congregation during the early service at First Methodist Church in Monroe, Louisiana.

"You'll probably hear me louder than anybody else," the third-year ULM head football coach said. "It's not a beautiful noise, but I make a happy noise."

But rewind 30 years ago when he was head coach at Auburn, and Bowden was a little more daring with his music. He occasionally performed on stage with a local band called Muse and even recorded two songs on their 1995 album "At Home."

"It was something that occurred," Bowden said. "I guess if I'd thought too much about it, I might not have done it.

"But I'm a 36-year old coach and I ain't lost in a long time, so you're kind of bullet proof and invincible. You're young and enjoying being an undefeated head coach at Auburn."

Formed in 1978, Muse was the house band at Denaro's, a now-defunct lounge and Italian restaurant located in a two-story red brick building on College Avenue in Old Auburn, near Toomer's Corner. They performed some original songs, as well covering folk and adult contemporary classics from the 1970s.

According to original and current band member Tom Harper, a woman approached the stage one night and told them the new head coach at Auburn was in the house and wanted to join them on stage to perform. Although skeptical at first, the band quickly realized the offer was real and invited Bowden up.

"Sure enough, he did," Harper told ULMWarhawks.com. "He was a big James Taylor fan and we play a lot of acoustic and vocally-oriented music. James Taylor, we played a lot of his stuff. He wanted to sing James Taylor stuff and he did. He did a pretty good job."

Bowden, who enjoyed going out with friends to hear live music, was feeling bold on that occasion.

"They played James Taylor type songs, which I grew up with and were my favorites," Bowden said. "So one night, they got me to sing with them – 'Sweet Baby James' and some of the songs that I knew. Anybody that can get a coach up to sing, they love it.

"We had a basketball coach who is now at Coastal Carolina. Cliff Ellis was in a band and he sang beach music. Here he is 10 years older than I am and he's out playing beach music. So it was like, 'What's good for him is good for the kid.'"

Going forward, Bowden would occasionally perform with the band and actually developed a following.

"When he got up on stage, it was pandemonium," Harper said. "Everybody loved it."

Bowden's early success at Auburn (he won his first 20 games) and willingness to celebrate with fans afterward on stage became the stuff of local legend, according to Muse's George Konstant.

"After the first season, he was undefeated," Konstant said. "In the second season, word was getting around. He started coming out after the games he won. He won 'em all, so people started expecting him to be there."

Said Harper: "This was the bar near Toomer's Corner. When they won, everybody came to Toomer's Corner on the weekend and a lot of times we were playing. That was the spot to be. The place we played and where he sang was like, three businesses down from the corner. The place was just packed.

"To let you know the kind of crowds we got on football weekends, and especially after he started playing, we were charging $2 a head to get in. Over the course of two nights, we played Friday and Saturday nights, our door take was about $3,000 to $3,200. This was not a very big place."

Added Bowden: "It was a lot of fun and we had quite a following. When you have a group that plays '70s music, you get a bunch of old people out there listening to it all. That was another time and another place, but I enjoyed it. You wouldn't get me up signing karaoke anymore at 67. But at 36, we had a lot of fun."

Naturally, the next step was for Bowden to record an album with the band.

Harper said that a friend named Steve Bronson, who occasionally performed with Muse, had written an original song about Auburn football called "Home On the Plains" and suggested that Bowden record it.

"He said, 'I've got this song that I wrote about Auburn,'" Harper said. "Wouldn't it be great if we could get Terry to sing it and make a record and put it out around here, kind of a local thing with him singing about Auburn?'

"We approached him with it, and unbelievably, he said yes."

Bowden knocked out his part of the album in one short session.

"The truth of the matter is, he spent very little time with the recording," Harper said. "We decided to put out the CD and have the song on it. We threw together a bunch of other songs and put out a whole CD and just added him on it. We had everything done, so that he came to my house in my little studio and recorded his vocal part. The total time he spent on the whole project probably wasn't more than two or three hours."

Said Konstant: "He did a heck of job on that recording. He can sing. We were really taken aback."

Indeed, Bowden's rendition of Taylor's "Oh Susannah" sounds remarkably like the folk singer that he admires so much.

"On the album, that was their music," Bowden said. "Oh Susannah' is actually the same way James Taylor sings that song. I just copied him. That's a James Taylor version of 'Oh Susannah,' and then they wrote a song that I sang with them – 'Home on the Plains.'"

Former ULM football player Heath Forbes, now a singer and recording artist in Nashville, was stunned when he recently heard Bowden's vintage rendering.

"I was like, 'Wow, that's not too bad,'" Forbes said. "Sounds like a James Taylor impersonator."

In "Home On the Plains," Bowden brought Bronson's lyrics to life, "When I was a young man life was such a race, to see how far and wide that I could go. But I been a lot of places, seen a lot of faces, just looking for that some place I call home."

"I had a lot of fun with it," Bowden said. "I look back on it and I had great times."

Alas, Bowden didn't make any money off the recording. "Neither did we," Harper said with a laugh.

But Harper added: "He loved singing and he sang for the fun of it. For being a football coach, he did a great job."

Both Muse and Bowden are still doing their thing decades later. Featuring three original members, the band regularly performs together. Bowden, who resigned at Auburn in 1998, is entering his third year as head coach at ULM.

"He was there for just a short part of the journey for us," Harper said.

Going into his 40th season as a head coach and the 30th anniversary of his arrival at Auburn, Bowden says the years have taken their toll on his voice. He isn't able to perform like he did back then.

"Now, I tell people if I ever stand up to sing anymore, get a sledgehammer and hit me upside the head before I get started," Bowden said. "so I don't go down that road again."

However, a breakthrough bowl season for ULM might be enough to put Bowden in a musical mood again.

"I don't sing for a reason now," Bowden said. "I don't have a voice anymore. I'm older and there's been a lot of hollering (as a coach).

"But I promise you, if we get ourselves to a bowl I'll be singing and dancing. That's our goal – to give our people something to sing and dance about."
 
Muse featuring Terry Bowden on vocals


 
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