The “Golden Hits Of The 70s”
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SAMMI SMITH
“HELP ME MAKE IT THROUGH THE NIGHT”
(Kris Kristofferson)
Mega 0015
No. 8 March 27, 1971
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She was born Jewel Fay Smith, August 5, 1943, in Orange, California. Her family moved often; before she
dropped out of school at 11 she had lived in Oklahoma, Texas, Arizona, and Colorado. At 12, she was singing
nightly in smoke-filled bars.
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”I’ve been singin’ as far back as I can remember, and there’s always been music around me,” saucy-voiced
Sammi Smith, recalled in an exclusive interview. “While other kids were out doin’ stuff, I’d be staying
home, singin’ or listenin’ to records by Dinah Washington and Louis Prima and Keely Smith–not country
music. I got into country proper a long time later. When I was 12, I started doin’ pop standards with the big
bands, but I also sang with some rock bands.”
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At age 15, Sammi was married and soon with four children. While Sammi was fronting a country unit in
1967 in Oklahoma, bassist Marshall Grant–half of Johnny Cash’s back-up band, the Tennessee Tw–spotted
her and convinced Sammi to take the Greyhound to Nashville. There, Johnny Cash hooked her up with his
label, Columbia. Some moderately successful singles were issued, like “So Long Charlie Brown, Don’t Look
for Me Around” (C&W: #69, 1968).
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Two years later, Columbia terminated their contract with Smith. “What happened next was, I was playing
the Alley in Nashville, and the chairman of the board of Mega [Records] kept harassin’ me–sayin’ that he
wanted to have me be the first artist with this new label. Finally, I did go ahead and sign with ’em. The
label, I found out later, was actually formed as a tax write-off, and I wasn’t supposed to have a hit record!
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“Trouble for them was that once my album [He’s Everything,retitled Help Me Make It Through the Night]
came out [in 1971], DJs were playin’ ‘Help Me Make It Through the Night’ and there was no stoppin’ it. They
had to issue it as a single,” More than 2 million copies have been sold since. The song was awarded two
Grammies–“Best Country Vocal Performance, Female” and “Best Country Song”–and was named the
Country Music Association’s “Single of the Year” (1971). “Help Me” was also used on the soundtrack of
John Huston’s flick Fat City (1972).
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While Smith has made the pop listings on only one other occasion, with “I’ve Got to Have You” (#77; C&W:
13, 1972), she became affiliated with Waylon and Willie’s “Outlaw Movement” of the ’70s and appeared near
continuously on the C & W charts with songs like “Then You Walked In” (#10, 1971) and “Today I Started
Loving You Again” (#9, 1975). She has had more than 40 charting C & W singles.
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Nicknamed “Girl Hero” by Waylon Jennings, Sammi moved to Globe, Arizona, in 1975 to adopt three
Apache children and to live on the San Carlos Apache Reservation. Smith, part Kiowa-Apache and a direct
descendant of the famed chief Cochise, continued to crusade for the rights and conditions of the Apache
Indians.
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“There are those who sell a million records and as quickly as it happens, it’s gone–I was one of those,”
Sammi noted. “But I knew I was gonna always sing whether it was for $10 a night or in the big time. I’ve
forfeited makin’ the Top 10 cause I’ve always felt I would only do songs I wanted to do.”
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