Long before Alabama became a name etched into country music history, there was a young man in Fort Payne, Alabama, with a guitar on his knee and a song in his heart. That man was Randy Owen.
It wasn’t a radio single. It wasn’t even recorded in a studio. It was the very first song Randy ever carried with him — a melody born on the porch of his family’s farm, wrapped in the sound of cicadas and the red clay silence of the South. Friends say he sang it at church gatherings, late-night bonfires, and school halls, but it was never officially released.
And yet, those who heard it never forgot. They whisper that the song carried all the themes that would later define Alabama — faith, family, and the ache of small-town life. Some claim lines from that very first tune resurfaced in later hits, hidden like a thread woven through decades of music.
Even now, fans speculate, asking one another: What was the first song Randy Owen wrote? Why did he never share it with the world? Perhaps the answer lies in the way he held it — not as a hit for charts, but as a piece of himself, too personal to ever let go.
And that’s the mystery: a song that still lingers in memory, but belongs only to Randy.
