Chords for Jerry Fuller and the Amazing True Story of Ricky Nelson's "Travelin' Man"

[F#] _ _ _ _ _ _ [C] _ [Am] _
_ _ _ [C] _ _ _ _ [Am] _
_ [C] I'm a traveling _ man, [Am] and I've made a lot of stops [C] _ all over the [Am]
world, _ [C] and in every port
[F] I own the heart of [C] at least [G] one lovely [C]
girl.
[G] _ The first song I wrote for Rick [N] was, I didn't write for him, I wrote for Sam Cooke, and
I was the, I'm a traveling man, you know how he sang, and did all the, _ _ little licks of
his, and I was big Sam Cooke fan.
And I was sitting in a park in Los Angeles, or in Hollywood
called DeLong Pre-Park, and I used to sit there and wait for my wife to get off work
so I could go pick her up.
And I didn't play an instrument, I just beat on my dashboard.
I'd beat out the rhythm and hum the melody.
I knew what melody I wanted and I'd occasionally
go to a piano and find the chord.
But, and I didn't play piano either, I would just find
the chord and say that's what I want there.
_ And it's a fairly simple song, you know, traveling
man was, but I took a world atlas, and I looked up what do they call a girl in Germany, you
know, a fräulein, what do they call, a señorita in Mexico, I didn't know wahine, so for Hawaii
so I said Polynesian baby, and I made a song out of it.
A girl in every port was the idea.
And so, _ after I finished the song I called up Glenn Campbell, and he and I went into
the studio and I couldn't play guitar so I just beat on the back of one, the rhythm of
the thing.
And Glenn played guitar and I sang the thing like Sam Cooke.
So we took the demo,
a little acetate up to J.W. Alexander, who was Sam Cooke's manager.
And so I had met
J.W. before through a friend, and he said, yeah Jerry, he had this raspy voice kind of
thing, he said, _ I'll give it a listen when I get a chance.
I said okay, fine.
He obviously
played it right after we left, or at least he played the song because Joe Osborne, who
_ was Ricky's bass player, _ heard it through the wall.
He went next door and he said, J.W.,
do you have that traveling song you were just playing?
_ And he said, oh yeah, Joe, you can
have it.
And he reached in the trash and he pulled out the demo and he gave it to Joe,
who took it to the bungalow and put it in Ricky's pile and Rick locked it so they recorded
it.
And it sold like six million records right off the bat.
Did you know J.W. at that point?
Never met him.
He called me.
I was over at Four Star.
I had a little office over there
that they gave me to write in and call people to show my songs.
But he _ called me over there
and he said, Jerry, it's Joe Osborne.
I'd heard of him, but I knew he played with Ricky.
_ And I said, hey, Joe, how are you?
Nice to meet you.
What a pleasure.
And he said, Ricky
just cut your song.
I said, Ricky who?
And what song?
And he said, Rick Nelson.
He's
just Ricky Nelson.
He just cut your Traveling Man.
I said, no kidding.
How'd he get it?
And he told me the story.
And I said, hey, great.
And a little while later it came out.
He said, Ricky was asking if you had some more songs.
I said, yeah, I got about 80 of
them.
I'll get them over to you.
And he wanted to know who sang the backgrounds _ on the demos.
And I said, that was me and Glen Campbell and Dave Burgess.
And so from that point on,
he had already recorded Traveling Man.
He had the Jordan Airs singing backgrounds on
that.
But from that moment on, all the other stuff and even stuff [D#] I didn't write, [C] Ricky
hired us to do the background vocals.
So [G] we took over where the Jordan Airs left off
and did a lot of [Am] his records.
I'm [C] a traveling _ man.
[Am] I've made a lot of stops [C] _ all over the [Am]
world.
_ And in [C] every port, [F] I own
the heart of [C] at least [G] one lovely [C] girl.
_ [G] _ _ _ _ _ _ _
_ _ _ _ _ _ _ _
_ _ _ _ _ _ _ [N] _