Doug Supernaw was a college golfer in the late 1970s, but dropped out of school in 1979, working on an oil rig and serving as a concert promoter for a while before starting in earnest on a career as a Texas troubadour of sorts.
After playing the bars and honky tonks in the Lone Star State, Supernaw moved to Nashville in 1987, finding work as a songwriter. He spent 4 years in Music City then moved back to Texas to front a band called Texas Steel.
Performing as an opening act for national artists that came through Tyler, Texas, Supernaw started attracting attention from Nashville record labels.
He would parlay his success as a bandleader into a contract with BNA Records in 1993 and shot to stardom soon thereafter with the release of Red and Rio Grande.
"Reno," Supernaw's second single of the debut album, was released May 17 of that year and quickly climbed the charts into the Top 5. Supernaw collaborated on the songwriting as well and it ultimately peaked at No. 4.
Had I been in charge of the charts, "Reno" would have reached and stayed at No. 1 for the better part of a decade. It is that great of a song.
The mayor of Reno, Nevada said Supernaw's number portrayed the Biggest Little City in the World as "heartless." Perhaps he was on to something. One country station in town refused to play the song altogether thanks to a litany of complaints from listeners.
Supernaw's next single and his only No. 1, "I Don't Call Him Daddy," a single that Kenny Rogers only took to No. 86 in 1988, topped the charts in late 1993.
From 1993 to 1996, Supernaw had 11 singles chart on Billboard's Hot Country Singles & Tracks while Red and Rio Grande became a certified gold record.
In 1995, however, Supernaw's career plummeted almost as quickly as his rise to stardom occured.
For his sophomore effort, Deep Thoughts from a Shallow Mind, Supernaw cut "What'll You Do About Me," a Dennis Linde-penned track that two greats, Steve Earle and Randy Travis, had already done well with.
Earle released the song in 1984, while it was also included on Always & Forever, the 5x Platinum (!) second studio album from 1987 by Randy Travis.
Travis was smacking the ball all over the field in the late 1980s and Always & Forever remains my favorite album of his. Though I find the song in question a crucial part of the album, Travis never released "What'll You Do About Me" as a standalone single.
Earle's version made it to No. 76, while a version by The Forester Sisters made it to 74 in 1992.
In January of 1995, Supernaw debuted his take on "What'll You Do About Me" at the No. 62 spot, and the single eventually reached No. 16 at its peak.
But controversy soon hit.
In the wake of the O.J. Simpson trials—of all things—Supernaw's label had him record an alternate take with some slightly different lyrics, for there were concerns that Linde’s original words were "overly favorable to the concept of a stalker." Several stations refused to even air the song.
Author David McGee, commenting on the song in his book Steve Earle: Fearless Heart, Outlaw Poet said Earle’s version “had a hard country edge and a snarling, borderline confrontational vocal.” McGee contrasted it with the Travis version, saying Randy “played the part of the cool, maybe even slightly goofy would-be paramour, reversing the dark tint of Steve’s version and treating it as a humorous depiction of all-consuming love—no harm, no foul.”
Even though one would probably view Supernaw’s version as somewhere closer to the interpretation that Travis used, there nevertheless remained a stink in the air with the label and the country music radio scene. Unjustified, in retrospect, if you go back and listen to the song.
Virtue-signaling by the label and the industry, well before there was even a term for it.
Yet, due to the controversy, Supernaw was still magnanimous. He encouraged his label, BNA Records, to simply release another single off the album.
Instead, the label dropped Supernaw as an artist!
For the latter half of the 1990s, Supernaw hopped from label to label and wasn't really heard from for over a decade and a half, save that—aside from the "Juice"—there's another pro football connection in this story.
Supernaw was the father of former NFL tight end Phillip Supernaw. The younger Supernaw played for 4 teams from 2012 to 2017, but had his best years from 2015-2017 with Tennessee, playing in 47 of the Titans 48 games over three seasons.
Like his father, Phillip is a keen golfer and held a 2.0 index at one point. I believe Phillip also co-starred with his father in the "I Don't Call Him Daddy" video as a youngster.
Doug Supernaw returned to playing local clubs in Texas in 2016 and went back into the studio in 2017. Though his comeback would be cut short. In 2019, he announced his diagnosis of stage IV cancer.
Doug Supernaw died at age 60 on November 13, 2020 from complications of lung and bladder cancer.
Sad end to one of the real powerhouses of 90s country music.
As this vignette about the Great Supernaw is also part of our longer—still unfinished—treatise on Dennis Linde, the great songwriter mentioned above, we set up a Linde "resource page" that will certainly be expanded soon.
As always,
Brian
