Lee Greenwood and Sara Evans are releasing new songs with a surprise songwriter in the credits, the late President Ronald Reagan.
Reagan may have been busy running for president of the United States back in the 1970s and finishing out his tenure as California governor, but he still made time to co-write a few patriotic songs with record producer Mike Curb, the founder and chairman of Curb Records.
Curb said that he met Reagan in 1974, his last year as governor, at an event for Junior Achievement, a charity that teaches students the concepts of free enterprise. The two hit it off and Reagan asked the songwriter if he wanted to help him in his campaign for president.
Curb credits brutal California traffic for giving him and Reagan plenty of time to write songs together in the ‘70s, starting with “Together, a New Beginning.”
“And so back in the ’70s, there’s so much traffic in California that I used to travel with them,” Curb told Fox News Digital. “And on several occasions, we wrote songs together. One of them was the theme for the convention in 1980 that played. It was called, ‘Together, a New Beginning’… several of our recording artists came to the convention. It was in Detroit that year… And then that song was sung at the convention.”
Reagan lost the Republican nomination to Gerald Ford in 1976, but Curb said he channeled his disappointment into writing more music.