Jerry Reed was joking with friends at a Nashville backyard cookout, swapping stories about life’s ups and downs. Tim DuBois, a songwriter pal, tossed out a line about a divorce where one side walked away laughing and the other got nothing but heartache. Jerry, with his quick wit and Georgia charm, cracked up and saw a song in it. He grabbed a napkin, scribbling a tune that poked fun at getting the short end of the stick. When he sang it, his voice dripped with sly humor, like a guy shaking his head at his own bad luck. Recording later, he kept it light but real, turning a bitter split into a barroom chuckle.

That exclamation – uttered during the fade-out at the end of both records – provides a clever link between Jerry Reed’s first #1 single “When You’re Hot, You’re Hot” in 1971 and his third, “She Got the Goldmine (I Got the Shaft)” eleven years later.Unlike the first one, “Goldmine” came from an outside writer and was based on a real-life court case, albeit somewhat loosely. Tim DuBois wrote it for the House of Gold publishing company in Nashville several years before Reed actually cut it in Muscle Shoals with Rick Hall producing.

Thinking back on the song’s writing, DuBois recalled that he had a friend who was going through a divorce. He told Tim that he considered his marriage to be like a goldmine and when he and his wife split, she got all the gold and all he got was the shaft.
That line always stuck with DuBois and one day in January, he was snowed in and decided to start writing a song to pass the time. Tim usually had a co-writer, but on this particular day he was alone. In order to write alone, the storyline had to be something funny that kept his attention. Although mainly written just to amuse himself, Tim went ahead and submitted “She Got the Goldmine (I Got the Shaft)” to House of Gold. Nothing happened with the song for several years.

Meanwhile, Jerry Reed had lost much of his musical focus to the acting bug during a large part of the 1970s. He appeared in several hit movies with his pal Burt Reynolds including “W. W. and the Dixie Dance Kings,” “Gator” and the fabulously successful “Smokey and the Bandit.” Jerry also did many  TV guest shots and starred in his own short-lived series, “Concrete Cowboys.” That program’s cancellation after just seven episodes led Reed to a musical re-commitment.

Although Jerry was contracted to RCA, the company allowed him to travel down to Muscle Shoals, Alabama to record “She Got the Goldmine (I Got the Shaft)” at Rick Hall’s renowned FAME studio. With Hall producing, the song featured hot  guitar licks by his regular session players Walt Aldridge and Kenny Bell. Jerry’s legendary status as one of the nation’s greatest guitar players frustrated Aldridge and Bell somewhat, because everyone assumed Reed played guitar on the record. He did that many times, of course, but not on this one. Walt and Kenny provided the guitar parts. Although the two men’s work was mistakenly overshadowed, they were nonetheless proud of the record’s success.
“She Got the Goldmine (I Got the Shaft)” brought Jerry Reed back to the musical forefront. It became his first top ten single in five years and his first number one record since 1973’s “Lord, Mr. Ford.” The tune reached the top of Billboard’s country singles chart on September 11, 1982.

“Goldmine’s” writer Tim DuBois went on to helm an important period as head of the Nashville headquarters of Arista Records, guiding the recording careers of such artists as Alan Jackson, Brooks & Dunn, Pam Tillis, Diamond Rio, Steve Wariner & Brad Paisley. Under DuBois’ leadership, Arista Nashville sold over 80 million albums in its first 11 years of business. Tim also championed Vince Gill during the formative years of his career, co-writing Gill’s star-making single, “When I Call Your Name” in 1990. DuBois also produced three gold-certified albums recorded by Restless Heart in the late 1980s and co-wrote several of the group’s hits.