Customer Reviews

Down in Orburndale: A Songwriter's Youth in Old Florida

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Bobby Braddock is just as convincing a storyteller as he is a songwriter. After receiving an advanced copy of this book I read it cover to cover over a weekend and loved it. Being a country music fan I grew up on great Bobby Braddock penned tunes like "He Stopped Loving Her Today", "D-I-V-O-R-C-E", "We're Not The Jet Set", "Time Marches On" and so many others. Reading this book gave me excellent insight in to the mind and backstory of a true legend in Nashville. The stories are often humorous and its really something else to see the spots that Braddock got himself into, and then out of. Florida before Disney world really comes to life as well. He describes it so well that I can close my eyes and see it, even though I am too young to have witnessed it myself.
Anyone with an interest in Florida lore, songwriting, or just good story writing in general should check out Down In Orburndale.

As a Polk County, Florida native and music aficionado, I felt an obligation to read this book in support of the local boy who "done good" in the music industry. I was pleasantly surprised when that obligation soon turned to fascination. The book passed all the tests for a well written book - I cared about the people and felt like I knew them; I didn't want the book to end; and I can't wait for his next installment about his life and success in Nashville. In this book about his first 24 years, Mr. Braddock conveys especially well an affection, appreciation, and understanding of the people, places, and the times. Well done!

Bobby Braddock has written an exceptional book -- a portrait of an artist as a young man, if you will. So much honesty about a part of America that is gone. So much honesty about a boy who grew up there and would go on to become one of America's great songwriters. He sees the humor of his darkest moments, and I'm still laughing just thinking about those moments. The book ends just before he makes his fateful journey to Nashville, and fame and fortune. I can't wait to read the sequel. If braddock the bumbling, stumbling boy-to-man is such a hoot, then Braddock in the weird wild world of the Nashville Music bizz is bound to be a classic!

I was on TV once, flogging a book, when the interviewer, a Terry Splendid-looking mannequin of a guy who could read without moving his eyes but not without moving his lips, got the 30-seconds-and-counting signal from the control room. "We're about out of time, Mr. Adams," he said, hefting my 700-page book as if he were guessing the weight of a hooked mackerel. "This is quite a tome you've created. Could you tell us, in a few words, what you were trying to say in it?"

The answer came to me in a split second, like lightning from the night sky, and I threw it straight to Terry quicker than a baked potato from the oven: "I was trying to say, in three or four hundred thousand words, what a great songwriter named Bobby Braddock typically gets said in three or four hundred. A beginning, a middle, an end. A story, a narrative about original sin."

The red light on Camera 1 was blinking. "That's all our time, folks, see you tomorrow!" Splendid's image vanished from the monitor, to be replaced in an instant by a commercial about Rolaids. Terry and I both looked like we could have used a couple.

Those of us who write long for a living are filled with envy for the likes of Bobby Braddock, the masters of writing short. And so it is with green-eyed admiration that I report the recent arrival of Down in Orburndale, a finely paced, 271-page, growing-up-Southern memoir by--you guessed it--Bobby Braddock, the quiet man behind the words and music of some of George Jones and Tammy Wynette's greatest hits.

If I could write songs half as well as Braddock writes books--this first one, at least--I wouldn't have to worry about my obscurity in the field of long prose. I'd be rolling in clover. The boy from post-World War II Auburndale, Florida, has got the knack, short and long. This book is a confessional of lessons learned from a fully-spent youth, remembered with humor, pain and unflinching honesty.

Having grown up in Auburndale, Florida, my husband I really enjoyed reading Bobby's book. Even if you have never visited this quaint little southern town, Bobby's ability to recreate the places and times of a simpler life in words makes you feel like you are right there listening to the crickets along with him. Good job Bobby, don't we wish we could go back!

Great book! I enjoyed every chapter. It not only let's you smell the roses from your childhood since I lived in Polk County Florida during these times, but it definitely lets you smell the orange blossoms!

I went to High School with Bobby. This is a great book of the small town of Auburndale, Fl. It's fun reading. I can assure you that you will laugh a lot if you put yourself in his shoes.
I recommend it highly.

Although just a bit younger, being from "Inwood" between A-dale and Winter Haven, I know/knew some of the people mentioned in the book. I also have some of the same memories growing up in the area. I went to Winter Haven High School because back then we had a choice. Today I would be going to A-Dale High. I enjoyed the book very much. I don't think Bobby Braddock and I ever met but we do share friends and what it was like grow up back then. It is a time gone for good and that is tough to face sometimes. We had quite a few talented people in music come from Auburndale and Winter Haven.